Would Bolsonaro Turn Down A Human Liver With Some Fava Beans And A Nice Chianti If It Was A 'Cultural' Thing?

Would he do cannibalism? Depends on the circumstances.

After neither candidate managed to get over 50 percent of the vote in Brazil's presidential election last week fascist, homophobic, Trump-like incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and Leftist Socialist former Brazilian President Lula (one name, like Madonna) are headed to a run-off. Lula currently has the advantage, having received 48.4 percent of the vote to Bolsonaro's 43.2 percent. Taking up four percent of the vote was Simone Tebet of the fiscally liberal, socially conservative MDB, while three percent went to Ciro Gomes of Brazil's Democratic Labor Party. Hopefully this means that everything will shake out in Lula's favor.

One thing that may count against Bolsonaro, apart from his general terribleness, is a recently unearthed 2016 video of the current President telling a New York Times reporter that he totally would eat human flesh if it were a "cultural" thing, describing a time he almost had an opportunity to do so while visiting indigenous the Yanomami community in Roraima, a state in northern Brazil.

The Lula campaign decided to integrate this footage into a campaign ad against Bolsonaro, in which a narrator says “After all the absurdities Brazil has heard from Bolsonaro, here’s another, even more horrifying: he reveals that he would eat human flesh. Brazil can no longer put up with Bolsonaro.”

Via The Guardian:  

“There was this time I was in Surucuru … and an Indian had died and they were cooking him. They cook Indians. It’s their culture,” Bolsonaro claims to the correspondent’s apparent befuddlement.

“Their bodies?” the journalist replies.

“Their bodies,” Bolsonaro confirms.

“But not to eat?” the journalist asks.

“Yes, to eat,” answers Bolsonaro, then an obscure congressman. “They cook it for two or three days and then eat it with banana. I wanted to see an Indian being cooked 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 at all. It’s their culture.”

Both anthropologists and Yanomami activists are pushing back, saying that Bolsonaro was making this up.

"I'm indignant, angry. How can a president who is a candidate say that? He's a person who doesn't know Brazil. My people are not cannibals, they don't eat humans." Yanomami activistJunior Yanomami told the Folha De Sao Paulo newspaper.

Anthropologist Rogério Pateo told the paper that he had lived with the Yanomami in Surucuro for years and this was not a thing, noting that the Yanomami don't even eat undercooked animal meat.

So perhaps Bolsonaro has just watched Cannibal Holocaust too many times.

Admittedly, there is a lot of information online claiming that the Yanomami do practice endocannibalism — the practice of eating a member of their community after death, with the bones being mixed into a banana soup they then drink from a squash.

One would think the pockets of the internet that have been so het up over cannibalism over the past few years would have something to say about this. But they do not — largely because they happen to be very big fans of Bolsonaro. Indeed, the only thing I really see about him around those parts is a theory from QAnon influencer BioClandestine (a.k.a. Jacob Creech) that Donald Trump congratulating him on there being a runoff is part of a secret White Hat operation to make them pay attention to what is going on in Brazil.

The Lula campaign was barred on Saturday from running the "Bolsonaro Is A Cannibal" ad by Judge Paulo de Tarso Sanseverino of the Superior Electoral Tribunal, who said the quote was taken "out of context," and that the comments “referred to a specific experience in an Indigenous community, lived according to the values and morality existing in this society,” whereas the ad implied that Bolsonaro "could accept the possibility of consuming human flesh in any circumstance.”

Even if this specific ritual is a thing, it would not be part of Bolsonaro's personal cultural or spiritual beliefs — and thus would pretty much just be him eating a soup made from the bones of a dead person. This is not to say people cannot participate in the culinary traditions of other cultures, but how often does anyone do that with things they would not eat under any other circumstances? Like a vegan isn't gonna go to France and be like "Oh well, gotta have the boeuf bourguignon, I guess!" I'm not going to go to some country where they really like cottage cheese and eat cottage cheese, I guess. Because surely there are either other gastronomical options out there.

Clearly, whatever the circumstances, Bolsonaro is not as nearly wigged out by the idea of eating people as I am by the idea of eating cottage cheese.

[ Guardian ]

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