Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro by Richard Lapper

Author:Richard Lapper [Lapper, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Latin America, South America, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies), political science, Comparative Politics, International Relations, General
ISBN: 9781526149015
Google: siGizQEACAAJ
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2021-06-03T23:46:52.570931+00:00

9

AND GOD TOLD ME TO VOTE FOR BOLSONARO

Fashionably dressed in a dark red shirt and plain dark slacks, Antônio Pires did not look like a typical evangelical preacher. Yet in December 2019 Pires and his wife – who is also a pastor at the Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ the Nazarene – welcomed me warmly into a church decorated with posters that extolled the “plenitude of God”. The church, a humble affair made from breezeblocks and topped with an aluminium roof, was barely distinguishable from the neighbouring shacks on the dusty tracks of Glória, a favela on the eastern edges of the central city of Uberlândia, but the atmosphere inside was cheerful. As a group of women banged out gospel songs, we sat on white plastic chairs in a dimly lit corridor and Pires, a slim, fit and muscular man of 43, told me why a year previously he had cast his ballot for Jair Bolsonaro. “Each Christian, each person, started to pray. And I, Antônio, started to pray and I asked God who I should vote for”, said Pires, as if he were reading a biblical text. “And God showed me that I should vote for Bolsonaro. If you ask me why it was because of this revelation: Christians can’t act on the basis of emotion but follow what God directs. The Workers’ Party did good work here but it was not right for them to continue.”

I was meeting Pires and other evangelical preachers in Glória because Igino Oliveira, the distraught left-wing labour lawyer who we met in the introduction to this book, was convinced that the evangelical churches were a big reason why his Workers’ Party had done so badly in the 2018 election. Glória, an informal settlement of simple one-storey houses and unpaved roads established on land owned by the local university, was one place where the party really ought to have done well. Home to 15,000 people, most of whom were migrants from rural areas in the centre of the country, the favela had survived demolition only by dint of a party campaign. But large numbers of residents had voted for Bolsonaro. This had contributed to an impressive win for the right-wing candidate in the city, where Bolsonaro won 63 per cent against 37 per cent for the PT in the second round run-off, 8 percentage points more than the national average. “The evangelical church was one of the main reasons for our defeat”, said Oliveira, who reckoned that 70 per cent of Glória’s population attended evangelical churches of one form or another.

These churches sink such deep roots into these communities. When squatters occupy land or the occupation develops almost at the same time you get these evangelical and neo-Pentecostal churches branching out. They have a powerful appeal that you just can’t ignore. It is incredible. Various people say they have spoken with angels and talk about revelations from God. And when you are arguing against a revelation and God said Bolsonaro was better what can

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.