Along the waterfront, luxury car owners honk their horns at a man selling Brazilian flags in front of the neighborhood where Jair Bolsonaro lived before he became president.
In Barra da Tijuca, a wealthy neighborhood located 30km west of downtown Rio de Janeiro, the far-right president is apparently supported.
Nicknamed the “Brazilian Miami”, Barra is known for its luxury apartments, ultra-safe neighborhoods, modern shopping malls, business towers and beaches that border the ocean as far as the eye can see.
If at the scale of the city of Rio, Jair Bolsonaro beat the leftist candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the first round with 47% against 43%, here the gap widens: 50-37.
“In Barra, people are ideologically very close to Bolsonaro, most of them defend him, because there are a lot of businessmen here,” said the AFP. Communications security and partner of two restaurants Felipe Fontenelle, 58, economist and entrepreneur.
Designed in 1969 by urban planner Lucio Costa, who designed Brasilia with Oscar Niemeyer, the neighborhood is reminiscent of the modernist capital with its wide freeways, lush tropical gardens and the automobile as a means of transport par excellence.
Since the 1980s, Barra da Tijuca has established itself as the place of residence for many celebrities, politicians, businessmen and members of the Brazilian wealthy class, all of whom have come to take refuge in its ultra-protected residential complexes. .
Its growth was crowned by the construction of the Olympic park and village during the Rio 2016 Games and the extension of the metro line.
“It is a neighborhood of new rich people, mainly people who believe in the idea of the + self made man +, who working, will succeed”, sociologist Paulo Gracino Junior, professor at Candido Mendes University, explains to AFP.
” He’s my friend “
Son of an army colonel of staff, Felipe Fontenelle supports Jair Bolsonaro for his economic policy but also for his aversion to “communism”.
“My father had already warned in 1989 – when Lula ran for the first time -, I say it myself: a new government of the Workers’ Party would be harmful for Brazil”, he prophesies.
It is in one of the private complexes by the sea that Jair Bolsonaro and his family moved in the late 2000s, when he was still only a deputy, and divided his week between Rio and Brasilia.
“He is my friend. Here we all know him very well,” says Cacalo Matarazzo, showing on the phone several photos of him alongside the president.
“It’s not about Bolsonaro himself, but about supporting a man who fought to make Brazil better,” says the 73-year-old lawyer and jiu-jitsu instructor, who lives in a nearby building in the neighborhood. he closed Vivendas da Barra, where the Bolsonaro family home is located.
Barra da Tijuca, where more than 135,000 people live according to the latest census (2010), brings together “businessmen, freelancers, high-ranking soldiers and even criminals”, such as the now incarcerated former policeman, Ronnie Lessa, accused of having executed the city councilor Marielle Franco in 2018 and that she was a neighbor of the Bolsonaro, recalls Paulo Gracino Junior.
Bolsonist pilgrimage
The president’s condominium is protected by a concrete wall, barbed wire and a security gate that controls the entry and exit of vehicles. Since 2018 it has been a place of pilgrimage for the Bolsonarians.
Retired lawyer Mirian Rebelo, 65, and her son Rodrigo, a 41-year-old dentist, stop at the entrance to the closed neighborhood to take a photo.
Originally from Santa Catarina (south), they are in Rio for a conference and are staying at a nearby hotel. “The president places a lot of emphasis on family. And he doesn’t use half words (…) he says what he thinks, ”says Mirian Rebelo, colored brown hair, big black glasses and a branded T-shirt.
“It fights corruption and evil ideology. Every country deserves a Bolsonaro “, adds the son.
