A bank robber, a gunrunner and a weed smuggler sat down in a square, surrounded by rifle-toting bodyguards and locked in passionate debate over their country’s political future.
“Life’s been easier under Bolsonaro. It’s easier to get guns. It’s easier to get ammunition,” admitted the gun trafficker as he and his clique pondered the battle for power between Brazil’s far-right president and his challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
“But the one who governed for the poor was Lula,” he said of the leftist former president whose social programs helped millions escape poverty.
“For me and my family, Bolsonaro’s better. But what about my roots? What about the kids around here?” he asked, pointing to the deprived favela around him.
“Bolsonaro’s the rich man’s president, blud,” the gunrunner summarised. “He’s the madman’s president,” said another participant.
Yet not all the debating gangsters agreed. “These guys are barmy,” vented a dread-locked bagman who voted for Bolsonaro in the election’s recent first round, which Lula won with 48% of the vote against 43% for Bolsonaro.
“Lula’s a scumbag – a SCUMBAG,” the 37-year-old crook proclaimed, denouncing the huge corruption scandals that scarred the 14 years during which Lula’s Worker’s party (PT) governed. All criminal charges against the former presidents have been quashed. “Why does he want to return to power? Because he wants to carry on sucking on the country’s teats.”
The criminals’ conflicting opinions were a microcosm of a far broader fissure within Brazilian society as the South American country approaches its most discordant election in decades.
The stark choice between Lula and Bolsonaro has fractured families, friendship circles, workplaces and church congregations, with Lulistas convinced Bolsonaro is a hate-filled authoritarian extremist and Bolsonaristas calling Lula a corrupt communist thief.
“We are experiencing a state of utter division,” said Felipe Nunes, the head of the polling group Quaest, whose research suggests 50% of voters think Bolsonaro deserves a second chance and about the same number think Lula does. The number of voters afraid of a third Lula term was only slighter lower than the number afraid of Bolsonaro returning to power.
Nunes said the 2022 election is “far more than simply a contest between two people”. “It’s a battle between two worldviews … and this is unique in Brazilian history – we’ve never had an election like it,” he said. “The country is divided.”
Even Rio’s gangsters are split over the best result for their country – not to mention their illegal trade.
The gunrunner said that when it came to the latter, Bolsonaro was the better choice. The president’s relaxing of gun controls for hunters, marksmen or collectors – known in Brazil as “CACs” – had made acquiring high calibre firearms a cinch. “More than 60% of the weapons traffickers now have are from CAC,” he said, adding that he had one such gun in his car.
The weed smuggler remembered how authorities began using unmanned drones to monitor Brazil’s western frontier during Lula’s two-term government – a blow to cross-border traffickers.
But on a personal level, the gunrunner considered Bolsonaro’s four-year presidency – during which Covid killed nearly 700,000 people – a disaster. “This president’s no good. He took the piss during the pandemic. People died,” he said of Bolsonaro’s sabotage of containment measures and vaccination.
At a gang safe house in a nearby favela, one drug boss lambasted Bolsonaro’s assault on the Amazon, which has seen deforestation surge. “The environment’s screwed,” the capo said as a capuchin monkey scurried along the wall above the swimming pool behind him and a huddle of colleagues sorted rocks of crack into plastic baggies.
“Lula might steal – but at least he puts food on people’s plates,” the trafficker lamented of the social crisis that has exposed millions to extreme poverty and hunger.
The gunrunner voiced exasperation at the deluge of misinformation his employees were consuming on their mobile phones. “It’s fucking fake news,” he snapped after one accomplice falsely claimed Lula had recently sold off a chunk of the Amazon to foreigners.
But the bagman was unmoved and insisted he would again vote Bolsonaro when Brazil holds its make-or-break election on 30 October.
“He’s an authentic guy,” enthused the criminal, who gets his news from Jovem Pan, a rightwing network similar to Fox News in the US. “Whoever imagined having a president who says what he actually thinks and feels?”
The gangster defended his president’s handling of Covid: “It was something out of the ordinary that nobody knew how to handle.”
He also rejected claims Bolsonaro was a racist or a bigot. “What’s he ever done that was racist?” demanded the criminal, himself black. “What’s he ever said that was homophobic?”
As night fell on the redbrick ghetto, the debate raged on in a haze of marijuana smoke, although underworld etiquette ensured the discussion remained gentlemanly. No fists or guns were raised, despite the powerful arsenal on show.
Yet there was no hint of the men overcoming their seemingly irreconcilable differences over Lula and Bolsonaro – let alone agreeing on which man would prevail.
“I think Bolsonaro will win,” said the Bolsonarista bagman, who identifies as an evangelical Christian. “And if he doesn’t – God knows something out of the ordinary is ordained to happen.”
Despite his violent line of work, the gunrunner said he feared bloodshed as the ill-tempered political struggle entered its final days. “They’re all radicals,” he said of Bolsonaristas. “Blud, if you say something bad about Bolsonaro to his supporters, you’ll get shot.”
Nunes, the pollster, called the bickering outlaws “the most faithful portrait” of an election which has pitted Brazilians against Brazilians like never before.
“The word that captures the moment in Brazil is division,” he said, pointing to the profound social, religious, economic and cultural cleavages the vote has exposed.
“You have the poor voting for Lula and the rich for Bolsonaro. You have black people voting Lula and whites for Bolsonaro. You have women voting for Lula and men for Bolsonaro. You have evangelicals voting Bolsonaro and Catholics for Lula.”
“This,” he concluded, “is a clash of two Brazils.”
