This is a story that happened to me (27M Brazilian) in September 2018. At that time, Brazil was in the middle of its most divided electoral disputes in its history. On 6 September, one of the main candidates for Presidency got stabbed while rallying on the streets. Uncertainty was in the air, and this is my first-person account about what happened in the next 24 hours after the stab.
Political context of Brazil in 2018 (good to know, but not necessary if you don’t like politics)
In Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, there were two candidates who had a chance to hit the jackpot: in the right-wing, Jair Bolsonaro, a veteran parachutist banned from the Military and whose role as a Congressman was constantly mocked by military High Command and humoristic TV-shows; and, in the left-wing, Fernando Haddad, a Professor of Economics, former Mayor of São Paulo, and former Minister of Education, who, to some, raised doubts of being but a puppet of Lula, former President of Brazil who was then in jail (now released due to significant doubt about Judge’s impartiality). There were (still are) rather strong ideas and prejudices about each candidate in the voters’ minds.
Turning off value judgements, a right-winger could only see Haddad as a member of PT (Workers Party), which would be nothing but a cartel or a criminal gang. This gang allegedly walked all over the country, corrupting every public institution they could, and worst, getting away with it as the “nice guys” because of a stroke of luck (some good economical years due to a commodities boom in international trade). For a left-winger, on the other hand, it was Bolsonaro who was the embodiment of the banality of evil: a rogue low-rank military who despised everything an inch to the progressive agenda, didn’t pass any bill while serving as a Congressman for more than 16 years in office, was a “widow” of Brazilian military dictatorship (defending the use of torture against socialists and communists inside the country and suggesting the return of a dictatorship to “moralize” the country), and bore “contradictory” – actually very common in Latin America – ideologies. For example, he always defended a strong militarized right-wing State while also defending economical liberalism; he wanted an autonomous foreign policy but only if automatically aligned to Western interests, aka to the US and especially Trump. Although being despised by part of the old High Command of the Army, newer generations of the Army officers started to support him. For them, and for the majority of the Bolsonaro supporters, Bolsonaro was the only chance to get the country free of the Workers Party. If this attempt failed, Brazil would be doomed to be forever commanded by a single and corrupt party. For most, this was a now-or-never situation.
As you can probably guess from my writing, I belong to the left-wing spectrum in Brazilian politics, and these were the set of ideas towards Bolsonaro that informed me in the story that follows, especially the ones regarding his awe of dictatorship and the love-hate posture of the military towards him.
The stab
The 2018 Presidential campaign in Brazil can be divided in two phases, before and after the stab. Before the stab, Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate, was losing a lot of his margin on the lead. Haddad, the left-wing candidate, joined the campaign late as the official candidate of PT (Workers Party), and many were only getting to really know him during the campaign. On the 6th September, however, nearly one month to the election, Bolsonaro was stabbed while rallying on the streets. The whole country was in shock, as there is no “tradition” of assassination attempts against presidents in Brazil (the only historical account of an attempt of this kind was in the 1890’s, when some pro-military “jacobins” tried to assassinate the first civil president of Brazil, Prudente de Morais, after almost a century of monarchical government and some years of putschist military rule). After the stab, right-wingers blamed the left-wing for the assassination attempt, while left-wingers blamed the right-wing back. If this was a movie scene, I’d represent it as a bunch of people inside a burning house running in circles with their arms in the air, screaming “what is happening?” and finger pointing each other.
Bolsonaro was hospitalized that day. He had to face surgery and was allocated into an Intensive Care Unit. The stab punctured his intestines. The surgery would be difficult, since there were high chances of contamination and sepsis. In the best case scenario, he would survive but would have to use a colostomy bag, forever attached to his belly. The stabber was arrested in the act, but his identity and intentions were still unknown. While Bolsonaro got his surgery done, the country went to sleep without knowing what would happen next day. Bolsonaro could be dead, if surgery went bad. He didn’t have a strong vice-president candidate, so if he actually died, the Workers Party would certainly win (again) the elections, just like they did in the last 4 times. What would be the reaction of the supporters of Bolsonaro one month before the election whereby the right-wing was leading the pools, something that didn’t happen in more than 16 years?
I went to sleep thinking about what would be of this election. The right-wing was so pissed off for such a long time that they really could do anything to get rid of the Workers Party once and for all. If Bolsonaro died, they wouldn’t accept an easy win of Haddad and the Workers Party. There would be serious chances of institutional breach. And since the military started to engage in political affairs again (what they avoided to do since they were ousted from power in 1985), it was possible that some radicalized factions in the Army could support this institutional breach, if there was also unrest in the Congress and among the country’s elite. So a military coup was, at least for me, a left-wing person, a possible outcome, although not the most plausible one.
The wakening
I remember waking up to a buzzing sound in the distance. The annoying noise sounded like a squawk made by a desperate, dying goose or a child practicing a brass instrument for the first time in his life, maybe a sax or something higher-pitched. I searched for my phone and the clock said 6:34. Who the hell would wake up at this hour on a Sunday to practice this terrible brass thing and wake everyone up? I found a T-shirt and put in onto my face, covering the ears and letting some space for my nose to breathe. I fell asleep just to be woken up again by the same noise, louder and clearer. Now I could hear that it was undoubtedly a trumpet and the person playing it sounded way better than before. He was playing something like a military march-ish thing. Considering that I lived in the 14th floor, and judging by the strident noise he was making, I concluded that the trumpet blower was actually quite close to my building. I searched for my phone again, and the clock struck exactly 7:00. I could also hear now, with a clearer head, that there was a muffled, distant hubbub coming from outside of my window. Down there, the main avenue of the city, which starts in the foothills of the local mountain range, connected my neighborhood, packed with middle class residential buildings, to downtown. I didn’t get why there would be people in the streets making that much noise on a Sunday morning. I decided to open the window and investigate what the fuck is going on. As I approached the window, I could tell by the noise outside that there was probably a relatively big crowd in the street, whose chants were being coordinated by a band playing military marches. I felt a chill down my spine. Why would there be people in the street at such an early hour on a random Sunday? Unless…
Unless Bolsonaro was dead. Unless Bolsonaro was dead and he became from day to night (or from night to day) a martyr of the right-wing in Brazil. If he had died during or after surgery, the military might have been pissed and might have reacted to a dirty move against one of their fellow, although rebellious and doubtful, brother in arms. They might have embarked on a putschist adventure with the right-wing in the Congress and the big business. Maybe they missed the smell of napalm in the morning, like they did in 1964… I opened the window and I could see what I feared most: the crowd was packed against the temporary guardrail that enclosed both sides of the avenue. Under the canopy of the trees, which grew in the central boulevard separating the two-way avenue, I could see a small greenish armored vehicle, like a small tank, slowly moving out of the shadows, aiming the barrel if its gun forward, heading it dramatically to the center of the city. Two cavalry regiments marched boastfully on the flanks of the parade. The horror. Bolsonaro has certainly died after surgery, probably couldn’t stand it, and the military decided to act in the shadows of the night to prevent the Workers Party to perpetuate itself in power. There was a coup d’état on the march! And not only that, but judging by the way they were behaving down below, they had already won. This military parade was their moment of glory, and the crowd outside was cherishing what they considered a brave attitude of the Army to save them from the commies. The horror.
I close the window immediately. I start googling frenetically about what was happening, about the death of Bolsonaro, about the military coup. For my surprise, there was nothing online. I break out in cold sweat. They have already controlled the media! They have already got into all media corporation and prohibited them to publicize anything about the coup. I access foreign and small local media without success either. I log on social media and, again, there is no clue, nothing about it. I rack my brains to formulate a new hypothesis. Maybe the troop mobilization was just getting started and my city, the capital of a conservative State, was leading the rebellion. It made sense. If there wasn’t anything online, then I needed to inform all my friends and family about what was going on. Since I lived with my brother (three years younger than me), I ran to his room, woke him up and explained to him what was happening. I tried to make sure he understood how serious was the situation. He was still half-awake when he said to me, with a sleepy, hoarse voice: “Dude, it’s the 7th of September… It’s Independence Day”.
Suddenly, it all made sense to me. I started laughing and let my brother go back to sleep. I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up until noon.
After actually surviving to surgery, Bolsonaro used his wound in 2018 as an excuse to avoid debating with the opposing candidate for presidency (since he was always losing the debates) and got elected for the 2019-2022 term. This year (2022), in a couple of months, there will be the next presidential election, and Bolsonaro seems to be on thin ice. He won’t be able to capitalize on the Football World Cup, which will kick off after a possible (yet increasingly unlikely) runoff. He will be able to use, however, the 200th anniversary of the Independence of Brazil to promote himself based on his nationalist propaganda. My only hope is to remember it when that day comes.