It was a shocking statement, even for a politician who has glorified torturers and called for rivals to be shot.
“I would eat an Indian, no problem,” Jair Bolsonaro boasted to a foreign journalist in 2016, while describing a trip to an indigenous community where he was allegedly offered the chance to consume human flesh.
Indigenous leaders have dismissed Bolsonaro’s boast as yet another lie from Brazil’s far-right president. The Yanomami of the territory that Bolsonaro claims to have visited say that they have never been involved in these acts.
However, footage of Bolsonaro’s cannibalism comments, first broadcast on his official YouTube channel six years ago, has gone viral on social media and has been seized upon by Brazil’s opposition as further evidence of the president’s depravity.
“Bolsonaro has revealed that he would eat human flesh,” declared a television ad produced by Bolsonaro’s leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Friday after the remarks were discovered.
Lula narrowly beat Bolsonaro in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election last Sunday and hopes to finish the job when 156 million Brazilians vote in a second-round showdown between the two men on October 30.
In its efforts to re-elect Lula, president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, his campaign has delved into Bolsonaro’s extensive back catalog of insensitive and inflammatory pronouncements.
A recent Lula ad shows Bolsonaro pushing a female politician and calling her a “bitch”. In another scene, the right-winger mocks the victims of Covid and pretends to not breathe air.
But Friday’s campaign announcement was perhaps the most shocking yet.
Bolsonaro’s communications minister, Fábio Faria, called Lula’s announcement “fake news” and claimed the comments had been distorted. Bolsonaro’s lawyers demanded that the electoral authorities ban the ad.
An analysis of the full 76-minute interview with New York Times reporter Simon Romero leaves little doubt about the nature of Bolsonaro’s comments.
After describing the misery he witnessed during a visit to Haiti, Bolsonaro moves from discussing “unhygienic” Haitian women offering sex to making claims about cannibalism allegedly perpetrated in Yanomami territory in the Amazon.
“This time I was in Surucuru… and an Indian had died and they were cooking him. Indians cook. It’s their culture,” says Bolsonaro to the correspondent’s apparent confusion.
“Their bodies?” the journalist answers.
“Their bodies”, confirms Bolsonaro.
“But not for food?” asks the reporter.
“Yes, to eat,” replies Bolsonaro, then an obscure deputy. “They cook it for two or three days and then eat it with banana. I wanted to see an Indian cook, but the guy said if you go, you have to eat it. “I’ll eat it,” I said. But no one else in my group wanted to go… so I didn’t go. But I’d eat an Indian, no problem. It’s their culture.”
Yanomami leaders and anthropologists denounced Bolsonaro’s “delusional” and prejudiced claims. “My people are not cannibals… This does not exist and has never existed, not even among our ancestors,” Yanomami activist Júnior Yanomami told São Paulo newspaper Folha.
“Bolsonaro is a compulsive liar,” tweeted Sônia Guajajara, an indigenous leader who was just elected to Congress.
Lula denied spreading disinformation. “I saw the footage… It’s not a fabrication, we’re simply letting people know what our opponent is like,” he told supporters, claiming foreigners were shunning Brazil “for fear of the cannibal.”
On Saturday, a preliminary ruling by an election judge ordered Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) to withdraw an ad that risked damaging Bolsonaro’s reputation and affecting “the integrity of the electoral process.” The judge argued that Bolsonaro’s statements “referred to a specific experience in an indigenous community, lived in accordance with the values and morals existing in this society.”
The decision seemed to close the stable door after the horse had bolted. On Sunday, social media was awash with mentions of “Cannibal Bolsonaro” and memes comparing the president to Hannibal Lecter and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Images of Bolsonaro’s statement had been viewed millions of times.