INTERNATIONAL
Bolsonaro Gay-Baits on COVID
Brazilian strong man says don’t be a “faggot” about it
What, Us Worry?: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with America’s Bolsonaro, former reality TV star and lame duck President Donald
Trump.
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
There he goes again!
Jair Bolsonaro has
returned to the homophobia
well.
As Brazil’s coronavirus
death toll surpassed 162,000
— the second worse mortality
count in the world after the
US, which has now surpassed
250,000 — Bolsonaro, its
president, scolded his country,
saying essentially it’s time
to just get over it.
According to Reuters reporting,
quoted in the Washington
Post, Bolsonaro, a hard-right
conservative and key ally of
President Donald Trump who
has so far declined to congratulate
or recognize President-
Elect Joe Biden on his November
3 victory, said, “All of us
are going to die one day. Everyone
is going to die. There is
no point in escaping from that,
in escaping from reality.”
The sentence that followed
in Bolsonaro’s dismissal of
concern about COVID’s deadly
reign in Brazil was quoted by
both the Post and Reuters as,
“We have to stop being a country
of sissies.”
The Post, however, hastened
to add that the Portuguese
word the Brazilian president
used was “maricas,’ which the
newspaper explained was a
slur used against gay people.
In Spanish, the comparable
word is maricón, also an antigay
slur. Though that word is
translated variously into English
— including to mean sissy
— the more common English
language understanding of
what is meant by the word is
“faggot.”
That understanding is
in line with the Brazilian
strong man’s long history of
homophobic outbursts. Before
becoming president last
year, he had described himself
as “homophobic and very
proud of it.”
Shortly after taking offi ce in
early 2019, he posted a video
mocking gay men showing
some of them partying during
Carnival and warning
that Brazil should not become
“known as a gay tourism paradise.”
In December of last year, he
responded to a reporter asking
a question about an inquiry
into alleged fi nancial improprieties
by his son, Senator
Flávio Bolsonaro, by saying,
“Your face looks an awful lot
like a homosexual’s, but that’s
REUTERS/ TOM BRENNER
no reason to accuse you of being
a homosexual.”
Bolsonaro’s reputation as
a bigot drew fi re from out gay
Manhattan State Senator
Brad Hoylman in the spring of
2019 when the Brazilian president
was due to be honored at
Manhattan’s American Museum
of Natural History by the
Brazilian-American Chamber
of Commerce.
The ensuing controversy
forced cancelation of the
event.
In April, Bolsonaro borrowed
a page from Donald
Trump’s “What, Me Care?”
playbook in response to the
COVID crisis.
“So what?,” he replied to a
reporter who asked him about
it, according to CNN. “I’m sorry,
but what do you want me
to do?”
He added, “I’m sorry for the
situation we are currently living
with due to the virus. We
express our solidarity to those
who have lost loved ones,
many of whom were elderly.
But that’s life, it could be me
tomorrow.”
In fact, like Trump, Bolsonaro
— in July — contracted
COVID, but apparently suffered
only mild symptoms.
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