From Rio de Janeiro
About forty-odd years ago, and referring to a certain president of the United States, I don’t remember who he was, Eduardo Galeano said that he was a King Midas in reverse.
According to Greek mythology, Midas, king of Trigia, turned everything he touched into gold. And Galeano said that the president he was referring to turned everything he touched into shit.
I remember that we both lived our second exiles in Spain. He, from Uruguay first, from Videla’s Argentina later. Me, first from Brazil, and then, from that same and dark Argentina.
I remember that I told him that the word “shit” sounded bad to me to be published in a newspaper. Galeano argued that it was much heavier and truer than a supposedly more elegant, “poop” type thing. Once again in our discussions, he was absolutely right in the world.
Well, what we are experiencing today in Brazil shows that the ultra-right Jair Bolsonaro it was exactly what Galeano called “Midas backwards”.
We all knew – at least all reasonably lucid Brazilians – that the inheritance that Lula da Silva would receive from Bolsonaro was tremendous and very difficult to overcome.
Well, with each passing day it becomes more and more tremendously clear that the most abject and worst president in the history of the Republic – including a military regime – was much more Midas backwards than all those who preceded him. Everybody.
The filth that spreads through any aspect of Brazilian life is immense. The most obvious is in the destroyed environment. New and compelling evidence emerges every day that Illegal miners invaded indigenous lands devastating everything, thanks to the omission of the responsible authorities and with full encouragement from Bolsonaro himself.
This is the most evident field of destruction and genocide -there is no other word to define what his government carried out- that Bolsonaro will have to answer to Justice here in Brazil and in the Court of The Hague.
But there are other equally forceful aspects that little by little are emerging in the investigations after the coup attempt on Sunday, January 8, when the headquarters of the three branches of the Republic were invaded.
Going back to Galeano and the question of Midas in reverse: to what extent did Bolsonaro touch the Armed Forces and the Military Police of all the Brazilian provinces?
How many were contaminated and to what degree? Hopefully his hand has barely slipped in tiny plots of uniformed. Hardly slipped, without contaminating significant groups. That at least there the shit is little, very little, almost insignificant.