International
Brazil town aspires to be champion of Bolsonaro vote
| By AFP | Anna Pelegri |
On Holy Christ Avenue, in front of Bible Square, Brazilian businessman Gilberto Klais buoyantly hops out of an SUV decorated with a giant decal of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Smiling in a denim shirt, the 39-year-old head of the local business owners’ association is a man on a mission: “On election day, the town of Nova Santa Rosa will cast more votes for Bolsonaro than anywhere else in Brazil,” he says.
The small town in the southern state of Parana already voted massively for the incumbent in Brazil’s first-round election on October 2, casting 82 percent of its ballots for Bolsonaro — the second-highest percentage in the country.
Now, as the president heads for a runoff Sunday against veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro backers are pushing for an even bigger win.
But this small community of trim little houses surrounded by endless expanses of soy and corn fields has some tough competition, in one of Brazil’s most conservative regions.
The neighboring towns of Quatro Pontes and Mercedes finished third and fifth in the Bolsonaro love fest, voting 80 percent and 78 percent for the former army captain, respectively.
And the town of Nova Padua, in neighboring Rio Grande do Sul state, cast the highest percentage for him with 84 percent.
“Bolsonaro lit our flame for Brazil,” says Klais, who owns a local bakery.
Visitors don’t have to look far for proof: a sea of yellow-and-green Brazilian flags hangs from buildings — a symbol Bolsonaro has adopted as his own — and his smiling face beams from campaign posters all over town.
Opponents’ criticisms of the president — Brazil’s 687 000 deaths from Covid-19, increasing hunger, destruction of the Amazon rainforest — are mute here.
Finding a Lula campaign sign is an impossible task.
Farming is king in these parts, and Bolsonaro, a close ally of Brazil’s powerful agribusiness sector, “has given us security to invest,” promotes “a strong economy,” and upholds God and family “as the supreme good,” says Klais.
“He’s just like us.”
Battle for Brazil’s soul
On his father’s farm, where a feed truck has been turned into a makeshift billboard with Bolsonaro’s slogan — “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” — Ricardo Lorenzatto is on a mission, too: convince at least 200 of the 800 residents who voted for Lula to switch sides in the runoff.
Bolsonaro “promised to visit the city that casts the highest percentage of votes for him,” says the 35-year-old agricultural engineer, his blue eyes alight.
“My heart leaps just thinking about it.”
He is active on WhatsApp message groups rallying the faithful for pro-Bolsonaro events, such as an Independence Day motorcade on September 7, which, he proudly boasts, stretched four kilometers (2.5 miles).
Lorenzatto says ex-president Lula (2003-2010), who the far-right labels a “communist,” is a threat to his children’s future.
If Lula wins, “indigenous tribes could invade our land, force us to share our cattle,” he says.
Holding her one-year-old grandson on her porch, Clarice Radoll agrees.
“I would feel very insecure if Lula won,” says the 60-year-old Evangelical Christian, who has Bolsonaro’s picture proudly displayed on the front of her house.
In this town of a dozen churches and around 6,000 inhabitants, Radoll repeats a line often used by conservative pastors: that Lula represents “moral perversion.”
“It’s every Brazilian mother and father’s fear,” she says.
Agribusiness hero
In Mercedes, just up the road, farmer Andre Fiedler admits Lula’s government also took care of the agribusiness industry during the economic boom of the 2 000s.
“I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” he says.
But Bolsonaro’s administration has backed farming and agricultural exports like no other, “opening new markets for our products,” he says.
He brushes off international criticism over surging Amazon deforestation under Bolsonaro, which experts say is driven by agriculture.
“People say Bolsonaro is damaging Brazil’s image overseas… but that’s just a trade game — protectionism by France, Germany, the United States,” Fiedler says.
“Who’s the biggest soy producer in the world? The biggest poultry exporter? Brazil,” he says.
“There are vested interests trying to hold us back.”
Bolsonaro, who took 43 percent of the vote in the first round to 48 percent for Lula, trails his leftist rival heading into the runoff — but by a narrowing margin, according to opinion polls.
International
U.S.-Colombia Tensions Escalate as Trump Ends Subsidies, Criticizes Petro
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday accused his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, of tolerating drug production and announced that the United States will end “large-scale payments and subsidies” to the South American nation.
The relationship between the two historically allied countries has reached a low point with the arrival of Trump in office and Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president in history, assuming power.
“As of today, these payments, or any other form of payment or subsidies, will no longer be made,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that Petro is “strongly encouraging mass drug production.”
In response, Petro took to X (formerly Twitter), claiming that the U.S. president is “misled” by his advisors. He added, “I recommend Trump carefully read about Colombia and distinguish where the drug traffickers are and where the Democrats are.”
Last month, Washington revoked Colombia’s status as a key ally in the fight against narcotrafficking, a certification that had previously enabled the country to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.
International
María Corina Machado: “Venezuela is closer than ever to regaining freedom”
Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado declared on Friday that Venezuela is facing “the most decisive moment in its contemporary history” and that the country is “closer than ever to regaining freedom and democracy.”
Her remarks were delivered via video message during the 81st General Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), held in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
Machado emphasized that the situation in Venezuela remains “extremely serious” due to censorship and repression imposed by Nicolás Maduro’s regime, particularly in a global context where “society is built on information.”
She warned that authoritarian governments manipulate public opinion through “psychological warfare” and disinformation, while shutting down media outlets and persecuting journalists.
“The only way to topple these regimes is through the constant, relentless, and unrestricted preaching of the truth. It is absolutely true that the truth will set us free,” she stated.
International
Millions to join “No Kings” march in U.S. amid Trump’s growing authoritarian backlash
Millions of Americans are set to take to the streets this Saturday in more than 2,500 cities across the United States for the second edition of the “No Kings” march, a massive protest organized by progressive groups and activists against what they describe as the authoritarian direction of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
The demonstration, expected to be the largest since Trump’s return to power, comes amid a federal government shutdown, further heightening political tensions in Washington.
From the White House, press secretary Abigail Jackson dismissed the event with a brief “Who cares?”, while senior Republican leaders labeled the march as an act of “hate against America.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson accused Democrats of blocking negotiations to reopen the government and claimed they were “unable to stand up to their raging base.” He also linked the protests to “supporters of Hamas and the Antifa terrorist group.”
President Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News, blamed Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer for the legislative deadlock.
“He’s got nothing else left to do. Everyone’s hitting him hard,” Trump said.
The organizers — a coalition of Democratic leaders and more than 200 civil society and labor groups — argue that the Republican refusal to reopen the government is a clear symptom of the authoritarianism they seek to denounce.
The main rally will take place in Washington, D.C., which has been under heightened National Guard surveillance for weeks, officially to control rising crime. However, organizers contend the deployment is aimed at intimidating and silencing dissent.
Protesters have been urged to wear yellow, a reference to the 2019 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
“With this color, we align ourselves with a historical context and remind the world that power must come from the people, not from crowns,” organizers stated on their website.
In addition to the capital, large marches are scheduled in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, and Honolulu, as well as abroad in London, Paris, Frankfurt, and several Spanish cities — Madrid (Puerta del Sol), Barcelona (Plaça Sant Jaume), Seville (Plaza Nueva), and Málaga (Plaza de la Marina).
During the first edition, held in June, the movement gathered around five million people, a figure organizers expect to surpass this weekend.
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