Where was Jair Bolsonaro as his supporters stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices? He has been holed up thousands of miles away from home, in Florida in the United States.
He left for the US on 27 December, two days before the inauguration of his successor Luiz In?cio “Lula” da Silva. He took off from Bras?lia’s air base in a Brazilian Air Force plane with his wife Michelle Bolsonaro and his advisers, even as his supporters continued to camp in front of military barracks in the capital to protest against Lula’s victory.
The former president is expected to be in the US for a month until the end of January. But what is he doing there?
Also read: A Capitol Hill-Like Riot in Brazil: Why Bolsonaro’s supporters raided Congress, top court
Life in Florida
A day after the riots, the far-right leader is in a hospital. He posted a photo of himself from a hospital bed in Orlando.
“Yesterday I had new adhesions” and was hospitalised “in Orlando/USA,” he wrote on Twitter. He was stabbed in the abdomen in an attack that nearly claimed his life during his winning campaign in 2018 and has undergone multiple surgeries since. He is now reportedly receiving treatment for complications relating to the old wound.
Earlier, his wife, Michelle, said in an Instagram post that he was admitted on Monday for abdominal “discomfort” related to injuries from the knife attack.
Before the hospitalisation, Bolsonaro seemed to have a jolly good time in Florida, which has the largest population of residents who were born in Brazil, nearly 130,000 people, of any US state, according to the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Many more come as visitors, with 830,000 Brazilians travelling to central Florida in 2019, the third largest international market for the area.
The politician has been staying in a resort in the suburbs of Orlando, rubbing shoulders with Brazilian ex-pats.
According to reports, he is put up in a gated community with towering waterslides at the home of Jose Aldo, a retired Brazilian professional MMA fighter and UFC champion.
The pair were photographed at Aldo’s home near Orlando’s Disney World. Bolsonaro posed in MMA gloves, and in one image he had Aldo jokingly in a headlock, according to a report in Daily Mail.
The politician also met expat-turned-Florida realtor Cristiano Piquet, a paraglider who made an emergency landing after spotting a struggling and terrified woman clinging to submerged her car in a canal, the report says.
Jair Bolsonaro meets with supporters outside a vacation home where he is staying near Orlando. Hundreds thronged to meet the far-right leaders. Orlando Sentinel via AP
KFC and supermarket runs
Pictures and videos of the former Brazilian president from his stay in Orlando have gone viral over the past few days. He was spotted walking by himself at Publix supermarket in Florida wearing a blue polo shirt. A shopper filmed Bolsonaro, who then flashed a thumbs-up.
“I will pay a large commission for a painting of this photograph of Brazil’s disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro eating KFC in Orlando, Florida on the day of Lula’s inauguration,” activist David Adler wrote on Twitter in a post, which has been viewed 4.5 million times.
Thronged by Brazilian devotees
Lula was inaugurated on 1 January and Bolsonaro, “whatever one might think of his right-wing politics is not ‘disgraced’ in the conventional sense of having resigned amid scandal or criminal prosecution”, writes journalist Ben Mathis-Lilley in The New York Times.
His popularity cannot be questioned even in the US as droves of supporters flocked to cheer him. Devotees have travelled in recent days to the temporary home of Bolsonaro for a chance to see him. He signed autographs, hugged children and took selfies with adoring masses, some sporting “Make Brazil Great Again” shirts, according to a report in The Associated Press. Some even staged a rally in his support.
Also read: Going the US way: Did Donald Trump’s allies influence Capitol-like riots in Brazil?
Supporters rally to show their support for Bolsonaro outside a vacation home where he is staying near Orlando. Orlando Sentinel via AP
Bolsonaro has long been called the “Trump of the Tropics”, so it may come as no surprise that he wound up just a few hours’ drive away from the former American president’s Palm Beach compound.
More than 50 well-wishers, some draped in the yellow and green flags of Brazil, gathered outside what was reported to be Aldo’s home. Bolsonaro posed for photos and even wore a USA soccer jersey, according to a report in Orlando Sentinel.
“I will always support him,” 31-year-old Rafael Silva, who left Brazil eight years ago and now installs flooring in central Florida, where he stood outside Bolsonaro’s rental home Monday told AP. “He was the best for the country.”
Bolsonaro arrived in Florida when he was still the president of Brazil. But more recently he has not been surrounded by a noticeable phalanx of security.
“He will make himself right at home in Florida’s right-wing ecosystem of grifting and podcasting, finding allies with whoever thinks they can use him to advance their far-right agenda,” Andy Reiter, a professor of politics and international relations at Mount Holyoke College who has researched foreign strongmen, was quoted as saying by AP.
Alessandra Vieira, a Brazilian Cape Canaveral resident who runs a Brazilian food business and was in the area making a delivery, displays the homemade coxinhas she brought to offer Bolsonaro, outside the house where he is staying, in Florida. AP
Call to extradite Bolsonaro
While Brazilian supporters are making Bolsonaro feel at home, American lawmakers are not too happy. There is a growing call to extradite the former president in the wake of the riots in Brasilia.
Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democratic lawmaker in the US Congress, said on CNN that the US should not give refuge to an “authoritarian who has inspired domestic terrorism” and should send Bolsonaro back to Brazil.
Other Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Mark Takano echoed calls for his removal from the country.
“Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, adding that the “US must cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida”.
Bolsonaro has been staying in a resort in the suburbs of Orlando. As Brazil reels from mobs of rioters swarming its seats of power, droves of supporters have flocked to cheer on their ousted president. AP
When asked by reporters Monday if the US would send Bolsonaro back to Brazil, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the Biden administration hadn’t received any requests from Brazil related to the former president.
Brazilian Justice Minister Flavio Dino told reporters that, as of now, Brazil had no plans to ask the US for Bolsonaro to be extradited.
The leader faces several investigations before the Supreme Court in Brazil and his future in the United States, where he travelled with a visa issued to heads of state, diplomats and other government officials, is in question.
With inputs from agencies
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