“Regrettable that there [caso de assassinato de homem negro]. This is unfortunate. In principle, security is totally unprepared for the activity you have to do […] For me, in Brazil there is no racism. This is something they want to import into Brazil. That doesn’t exist here, ”said Mourão to the local press.
One of the journalists at the scene again reinforced the question, asking Mourão to confirm that he does not believe in the existence of racism in Brazil.
“No, I say to you with complete peace of mind: there is no racism here”, stressed the general, arguing that this problem exists in the United States of America (USA).
“I tell you the following, because I lived in the USA: there is racism there. I lived in the USA for two years, and at school the ‘colored people’ were separated. I had never seen it here in Brazil. I left Brazil, went to live there, I was a teenager and I was impressed with that. This in the late 60s ″, reported the vice president about his experience in North American territory.
Hamilton Mourão’s opinion, however, is not shared by other Brazilian politicians, who consider racism as “the origin of all the gaps” in the country.
“We woke up disturbed by the brutal scenes of aggression against João Alberto Freitas, a black man, beaten to death at Carrefour. Racism is the origin of all the chasms in that country. It is urgent to interrupt this cycle ”, wrote former President Lula da Silva on the social network Twitter.
The candidate for the mayor of São Paulo and leader of the Movement of Homeless Workers (MTST), Guilherme Boulos, said that racism is “structural” in the South American country.
“’There is no racism in Brazil,’ said Mourão a little while ago. Racism not only exists, it is structural. Combating it is at the heart of our project to reverse priorities. We are going to turn São Paulo into the capital of resistance to this genocidal Government, ”Boulos, who ran for President of Brazil in 2018, said on Twitter.
“When the President is racist and Vice President Mourão denies racism in Brazil and speaks in person of color, we see the level we have reached. Crimes such as the murder of João Alberto at Carrefour are not isolated facts. There is racism and Bolsonaro is encouraging hate and prejudice ”, said, in turn, the president of the Workers’ Party (PT), Gleisi Hoffmann.
So far, the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has yet to comment on the death of the 40-year-old man, who was violently killed by security guards at the Carrefour supermarket chain in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
The death occurred on the eve of Black Awareness Day, a celebration instituted in Brazil in honor of Zumbi, the historical leader of the Palmares quilombo, a community created by black fugitives in northeastern Brazil who resisted slavery imposed by the Portuguese during colonization.
In this sense, Bolsonaro published only a photo of a Santos soccer team jersey, signed by former soccer player Pelé, who received this morning, in an allusion to the Black Awareness Day celebrations.
Bolsonaro came to trial in 2018 for the crime of racism. At stake is a conference held by the now President at Clube Hebraica, in Rio de Janeiro, in April 2017, in which, before an audience of 300 people, Bolsonaro allegedly used expressions of a discriminatory nature against black quilombolas.
Quilombola blacks are the descendants of black slaves who fled before abolition and live in small rural communities in the interior of the country, in demarcated areas.
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