Florida consolidates itself as a Bolsonarist bastion – 02/04/2023 – Politics

The three months that former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) spent in the United States made groups of conservative and right-wing Brazilians grow and organize in the country, which has consolidated itself as one of the main strongholds of Bolsonarism outside of power.

Bolsonaro traveled to Florida in December 2022, before completing his term as president, and only returned to Brazil last Thursday (30).

In the United States, he stayed in Kissimmee, in the Orlando area, and wherever he went he was treated like a celebrity: there were queues to take pictures in restaurants and supermarkets, he had a vigil of supporters in front of his house and even participated in the inauguration of a Brazilian hamburger shop.

Starting in February, he gave lectures mainly to the Brazilian community in the region.

The first were organized by Yes Brazil, a group that was formed in 2018 and gained prominence by organizing a motociata in June last year for the then president in Orlando, who inaugurated a vice-consulate in the city.

“The president’s presence here made Brazilians unite and truly organize the right wing”, says the coordinator of the group in the Washington region, Cláudio Martins.

“Starting to say that they stole the election [não há prova ou indício de fraude], saying that the PT is bad, nothing will happen in our lives except gastritis. You have to show that we are alive,” he says.

“They [esquerda] They are small, but they make noise. We are big but super disorganized. It’s time for the right to organize.”

Yes Brazil was founded by the couple Mário and Larissa Martins, who live in Fort Lauderdale.

From a political family in Pará, Mário was an advisor to former governor Jader Barbalho (MDB-PA) before moving to the United States, where he works with the production, slaughter, processing and export of beef and buffalo (buffalo), according to information on a social network —he did not want to talk to the reporter.

The group also organized demonstrations in favor of Bolsonaro on the Independence holiday last year, when they put the then president in a videoconference to speak with supporters in Pompano Beach and Orlando (both in Florida), in addition to Washington, Atlanta, New York, Boston. and Las Vegas.

With broad access to Bolsonarist right-wing politicians, the group also accompanied congresswoman Carla Zambelli (PL-SP) in Washington, when she filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for alleged violation of human rights, after having her social networks blocked. after the election.

Yes Brazil expanded beyond Florida, and Cláudio Martins (who, despite his name, is not related to the founders) became coordinator in the capital of the United States —he has lived for 21 years in Manassas, Virginia, in the metropolitan area of Washington.

Pastor at the Assembly of God in Jundiaí and councilor advisor before moving to the US, he also founded the International Christian Alliance, which houses the Christian Political Front, with the mission of disseminating the former president’s right-wing ideals around the world.

With Bolsonaro out of power, Cláudio says that the group wants to encourage candidacies from the right not only in mayoralties across Brazil in next year’s election, but also from Brazilians in local parliaments in the United States.

The first to try was Bruno Portigliatti, who sought to run for state representative for the Republican Party in Florida, but did not pass the party’s primaries. He is the son of Anthony Portigliatti, owner of Florida Christian University, where Bolsonaro also spoke, accompanied by Rodrigo Constantino.

Constantino is part of the network of Bolsonarist influencers who live in Florida, as is Paulo Figueiredo (grandson of João Figueiredo, last president of the military dictatorship) and blogger Allan dos Santos, a fugitive from Brazilian justice.

In the second round of the 2022 election, Bolsonaro had 81% of the votes in Florida – in 2018, in the second round he had 91%.

The former president’s presence shed light on right-wing groups in the state, but Florida was already the main refuge for conservative Latinos in the US long before Bolsonaro arrived. It has a powerful community of Cuban exiles who left the country fleeing communism and who, to this day, influence the US government’s foreign policy towards the Caribbean country.

It was also where other presidents and dictators went into exile after leaving power, such as Ricardo Martinelli, former president of Panama arrested in Florida in 2017; Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, former president of Bolivia; Marcos Peréz Jiménez and Carlos Andrés Pérez, both from Venezuela; and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, from Nicaragua, among others.

If the southeastern state of the country has seen a boom in recent months with Bolsonaro, the other large Brazilian community in the US, in Massachusetts, more than 2,000 km from Orlando, has not seen this growth, says Newton Martins, who lives in the Boston area. , on the other side of the country, and owns Zap Bolsonaro.

He commands a network of more than 50 groups of supporters of the former president, which, he says, brings together 8,000 people in total, in addition to an Instagram page with 30,000 followers and a blog.

“In my case [do ZapBolsonaro]nothing has changed, I don’t think the audience has grown”, he says to the report. “A lot of people went to Florida, but [os grupos bolsonaristas de lá] as they are closer, they are perhaps more influential.”

Martins says that he even participated in the motociata that Bolsonaro did in Orlando last year, organized by Yes Brazil, and that the last time he saw the former president was in New York, in September, at the UN General Assembly, but not saw him more after he left power.

When Lula (PT) took office, Martins even suspended Zap Bolsonaro on the internet and closed WhatsApp groups, but reactivated it a few weeks later. Telegram and YouTube channels, on the other hand, have not returned. On Instagram, he continues to share videos in favor of the former president.

The Boston region has the second largest community of Brazilians in the United States, concentrated mainly in the city of Framingham. In the second round of the 2022 election, Bolsonaro had 76% of the valid votes in the region.

Recently, calls circulated on social media for a protest — which in the end did not take place — during the Brazil Conference, an event held this weekend in the Boston area and organized by students from Harvard and MIT.

Among the conference guests mentioned in these materials were STF (Supreme Federal Court) Minister Luís Roberto Barroso and Congresswoman Tabata Amaral.

STF ministers were the target of noisy protests in November last year when they attended an event organized by Lide in New York. The Bolsonarist community in the region, which includes Brazilians not only from the metropolis, but from the regions of New Jersey and Connecticut, is also engaged.

Geralda Gonçalves, known as Geigê, is cited as the main organizer of Bolsonarist networks in this area. She organized warm receptions when Bolsonaro passed through New York, mobilizing supporters in the country to welcome him with signs, green and yellow clothes, musical instruments and war cries.

A former cleaning lady, in the country for more than two decades, she had influence over the area of ​​culture at the beginning of the Bolsonaro government and said in an interview with Veja in 2020 that she had appointed eight secretaries in the government, including former head of Culture Roberto Alvim , fired amid scandal for publishing video with Nazi content. A Sheet Geigê said by message only that she is not “an organizer of any group.”