Glenn Greenwald has faced pushback for his reporting before. But not like this.

By

Terrence McCoy

washingtonpost.com

Glenn Greenwald was jittery. He had another big story in the works, and the atmosphere around his home office was frenetic: Dogs barking, 27 security cameras filming, big men with guns standing guard.

For weeks, from a house transformed into a bunker, Greenwald had published allegations casting doubt on the impartiality of the corruption investigation that led to the imprisonment of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and contributed to the rise of President Jair Bolsonaro.

In two days, he would publish another story alleging that the judge who’d overseen Lula’s case, Sérgio Moro, a national hero in Brazil for his role taking on corruption, had colluded with prosecutors to convict him.

“This material is going to come out,” he said. “Even if they put me in prison.”

The prospect felt real enough. Greenwald, the polarizing American journalist who came to prominence reporting on the U.S. government surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden, had promised months of stories — a steady drip of leaks that could imperil the Bolsonaro agenda. Some members of Brazil's National Congress had called for his deportation. Others accused him of committing a crime. Death threats were rolling in.

Most recently, the federal police, commanded by Moro, now Bolsonaro’s justice minister, reportedly began investigating Greenwald’s finances in a probe that press advocates here see as an attempt to silence him.

The public threats against Greenwald represent an early test for Brazil under Bolsonaro, the right-wing former military officer who won the presidency last year with appeals to nationalism, homophobia and nostalgia for the country’s two-decade military dictatorship.

Will this government tolerate damaging reporting by a gay foreign journalist? Or will it move to silence him, confirming fears of Bolsonaro’s potential for authoritarianism?

“There are all of these lurking questions that have found a vehicle for expression in this story,” Greenwald said. “It’s more than just Sérgio Moro. It’s about what kind of government we’re going to have.”

[He’s the ‘hero’ judge who oversaw Brazil’s vast Car Wash corruption probe. Now he’s facing his own scandal.]

Greenwald moved to Rio in 2005, after meeting the man who would become his husband while vacationing here. Over the next decade, as he covered American issues from afar, he built a Brazilian life. His husband, David Miranda, is a socialist member of Congress. They adopted two Brazilian children and opened a dog shelter. They now live in a cavernous house, built around a giant boulder, on a leafy street in a gated community near a mountain.

His divisive reporting and opinions have long attracted fans in the United States — and also critics, some of whom he has viciously attacked online: “You idiot” is a favorite epithet on Twitter.

It wasn’t until 2016, however, that he became a polarizing figure here, too. The impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s anointed successor, was cleaving the country along partisan lines. Greenwald started writing Portuguese-language columns critical of the proceedings. They found a massive audience, convincing him there was room here for an investigative news site.

The Intercept Brasil, launched in August 2016 as a Portuguese-language offshoot of the online news organization Greenwald co-founded two years earlier, joined a media industry that would soon be strained by a divisive political campaign, the imprisoning of Lula and the ascent of Bolsonaro. The right-wing candidate made attacks on the mainstream media a pillar of his campaign.

“Bolsonaro uses Trump as a role model,” said Rosental Calmon Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. “Part of Trumpism is attacking the press and having the press as the enemy. Bolsonaro has tried to play by the same playbook.”

Bolsonaro supporters harassed and threatened fact-checkers, advocates for the press say. The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism counted nearly 62 instances of physical aggression against journalists in 2018 in a political context.

“The fact that we had to create a systematic survey of instances — a need that had not been perceived until then — shows that the last campaign was atypical,” said the organization’s executive manager, Marina Iemini Atoji.

When Bolsonaro won the election, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders called him “a serious threat to press freedom and ­democracy in Brazil.”

It was in this context, Greenwald says, that a person — he declined to say who — got in touch to offer information that would send tremors through the political order.

A central figure in the archive of materials he obtained was Moro, one of Brazil’s most popular people, seen by many as a crusader for public probity.

The Intercept’s first story, published in early June, challenged that narrative. It alleged that Moro had worked inappropriately with federal prosecutors to imprison Lula, the leader in presidential polls, clearing Bolsonaro’s path to the presidency. Moro has denied wrongdoing.

[Brazil’s top anti-corruption judge joins Bolsonaro government amid outcry]

The reporting triggered responses that reflected the country’s divisions. While a majority disapproved of his alleged communications with prosecutors during the “Car Wash” investigation, polling has shown, most have continued to support him. And Greenwald, who has never hidden his disdain for Bolsonaro, found himself facing an accusation he’s heard before: that he’s less a journalist than an activist.

“He’s very clearly positioned in Brazil,” said Oliver Stuenkel, an assistant professor of international relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. “A lot of people say he has an agenda and he’s not objective.”

Soon the story became as much about Greenwald — his sexuality, his marriage to a Brazilian man, his status as a foreigner — as about the allegations the Intercept was publishing.

Carlos Bolsonaro, the president’s son, fanned conspiracy theories and appeared to call Greenwald’s husband a girl. An online petition for the journalist’s deportation amassed nearly 100,000 signatures. Homophobic messages tore across social media. Moro said the Intercept was “allied” with “criminal hackers.”

Then this month, the website Antagonist, which has a reputation in Brazil as anti-Lula, reported that the federal police were investigating Greenwald’s finances. Officials have declined to confirm or deny an investigation.

“Our constitution is very hard in the defense of freedom of expression and the press,” said Leandro Demori, executive editor of the Intercept Brasil. “But are our institutions strong enough to protect the constitution? I don’t think so. I really don’t. We’re afraid.”

Greenwald is inclined to agree. He experienced threats and denunciations in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations. But this feels different, he said. It’s more personal.

“In Snowden, I was only the reporter,” Greenwald said. “In this case, there’s no identifiable source, so they’ve personally identified me, like I was the person who took the material.

“I’m a good target. I’m a foreigner. I’m gay. I’m married to a socialist politician.”

He looked outside for a moment, where it was all sun and foliage. He says Brazil is still “paradise.” But beyond the trees were concrete walls, now freshly fortified with coils of electrified barbed wire. These days he rarely ventures beyond its barrier, he said, for fear of assassination.

Still, he has no plans of leaving.

“I don’t look at this as a foreign place,” he said. “It’s my home.”

Relatório da Aeronáutica desmente Bolsonaro sobre vítima da ditadura

por Bernardo Mello Franco

Um documento secreto da Aeronáutica desmente a versão de Jair Bolsonaro para o desaparecimento de Fernando Santa Cruz, morto em 1974 pela ditadura militar.
Nesta segunda-feira, o presidente disse que o estudante, pai do presidente da OAB Felipe Santa Cruz, teria sido assassinado por outros militantes de esquerda.
— Não foram os militares que mataram ele não, tá? É muito fácil culpar os militares por tudo o que acontece — disse.


Segundo a versão de Bolsonaro, Santa Cruz teria sido morto por outros militantes da Ação Popular, uma das organizações que combatiam a ditadura.
No entanto, o relatório secreto RPB 655, do Comando Costeiro da Aeronáutica, atesta que o estudante foi preso pelo regime em 22 de fevereiro de 1974, no Rio de Janeiro.
O documento, anexado ao relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade (CNV), comprova que Santa Cruz estava sob custódia do Estado quando foi assassinado.
Em depoimento à CNV, o ex-delegado Cláudio Guerra disse que o corpo teria sido incinerado na Usina Cambahyba, em Campos.
A família de Santa Cruz nunca recebeu informações oficiais sobre o paradeiro de Fernando. Em 1995, o nome dele foi incluído na Lei dos Desaparecidos Políticos, sancionada pelo presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Veja o trecho do relatório que cita a prisão de Fernando Santa Cruz:

 

 

Leia também: Bolsonaro diz que militantes de esquerda, e não militares, mataram pai de presidente da OAB

Cartunista Miguel Paiva, pai da Radical Chic, ganha retrospectiva

O livro 'Memória do Traço' fala de criações como o Gatão de Meia-Idade, Ed Mort e Chiquinha

Ivan Finotti

RIO DE JANEIRO

​Radical Chic se aposentou e hoje mora num sítio em Mauá, onde passa a vida fumando maconha e fazendo sexo. Esse é o destino da personagem mais importante criada por Miguel Paiva, que fez 50 anos de carreira e agora lança o livro “Memória do Traço”, no qual fala dela e de outras criações, como o Gatão de Meia-Idade, Ed Mort e Chiquinha.

Cartunista, artista gráfico, diretor de arte de “O Pasquim”, escritor de quadrinhos, de roteiros de cinema, de musicais, compositor, criador de aberturas de novela, não falta assunto para Paiva colocar no que ele descreve como “uma biografia profissional”.

“A ideia inicial, há uns 10 anos, era fazer uma exposição de todo meu trabalho. Mas ficou inviável, precisava de patrocínio. Acabou virando um livro”, conta o artista. A obra, fartamente ilustrada, foi escrita por seu filho, Vitor Paiva, que realizou 20 entrevistas com o pai em 2017 e transformou as conversas em texto. Outro filho, Diego, foi o responsável pela capa.

A Radical Chic era uma garota de uns 30 anos, de cabelos curtos e vermelhos, independente, desinibida e moderna. Isso no comecinho dos anos 1980. “Foi uma personagem inovadora em uma época em que as mulheres não tinham lugar de fala. Eram histórias favoráveis às mulheres e bastante críticas ao machismo”, diz Paiva.

[ x ]

“Hoje não cabe mais um personagem como ela escrito por um homem. As mulheres estão falando por elas. Eu não fui radical como o Angeli, que matou a Rê Bordosa, mas ela está aposentada, sim.”

Além do fino humor que desafiava as convenções mais tacanhas da família, tradição e propriedade, os desenhos angulosos e bem coloridos causaram furor. Radical Chic teve suas histórias publicadas em quase toda a grande imprensa brasileira na época.

Em 1993, foi convidada, e aceitou, posar para a Playboy. No mesmo ano, estreou em um programa da Rede Globo, vivida por Andréa Beltrão. Virou agenda, caneca, jogo e cartilha do Ministério da Saúde em campanha contra a Aids.

Outros personagens de grande alcance foram o Gatão de Meia-Idade, que virou filme com Alexandre Borges em 2006, e o detetive Ed Mort, este inspirado nos contos de Luis Fernando Veríssimo. Mort também ganhou especiais da Globo e filme.

Se Paiva foi criticado por homens quando deu voz à ala feminina, foi também por mulheres quando desenhou a Radical Chic pelada. E as críticas estão todas no livro, sem pudor.

Conta por exemplo, como Millôr Fernandes, um de seus maiores influenciadores, reagiu à Radical: “ela fez humor a favor das mulheres”, e o humor jamais poderia ser a favor, tinha de ser sempre contra. Paiva saiu-se com essa: “Ela faz humor contra o machismo”. E estamos conversados.

Calling Boris Johnson a clown is unfair to clowns

By

Alan Beattie

ft.com

 

You don’t have to read too many profiles of Boris Johnson before you notice a particular epithet recur. People have many and varied opinions about the odds-on favourite to be Britain’s next prime minister. But almost everyone, it appears, thinks he is a clown.
It’s easy to see why. The eccentric appearance, at least by politicians’ standards: wild hair, unkempt dress. The exaggerated gestures: windmilling arms, excitable hands. The outlandish props: waving around a kipper at a hustings to illustrate a (completely false) claim about British fishing and Brexit. Mr Johnson has a talent for comic showmanship above and beyond the arch verbal wit typical of British political humour.
Yet while the term “clown” is often used as an insult, it is in fact a compliment Mr Johnson does not deserve. Clowning is a noble art form animated by a spirit he does not share.
Britain’s community of professional clowns is fizzing with indignation that their calling is thus being traduced by association. Certainly, clowning uses techniques such as exaggerated movement and incongruous clothing, derived from centuries-old European traditions of rambunctious physical theatre. But true clowning is about more than slapstick. Jack Stark, a British clown well known on the theatre and cabaret circuit, says: “Clowns can be clumsy and gaffe-prone, and live in a world of chaos. But how they respond to that world is different. Clowns want to make things better. Boris uses his act to get himself out of troubles of his own making.”

Modern theatre clowning, as developed by the French master Philippe Gaulier from the 1960s onwards, says that clowns are essentially children playing games. They embrace their own failures, mistakes and misunderstandings. They aim to evoke empathy: their mishaps stand for everybody’s mishaps. The audience is usually included in their games rather than being mocked or deceived. John Wright, who studied under Mr Gaulier, theorises that unlike many actors, clowns “declare the game”. They will hold up a potato and insist it is an apple. But they wink at the audience, and everyone is in on the joke.
Politicians, by contrast, often use buffoonery to misdirect the public. Occasionally, the act becomes obvious. Mr Johnson’s shtick was clearly shown up by a famous BBC interview in 2013, when the presenter Eddie Mair relentlessly pursued his past dishonesty. Mr Johnson blustered and obfuscated. A true clown would have admitted and rejoiced in his failings.
For sure, clowns and politics can mix. Clowning is frequently used in public demonstrations. Mr Stark says that when he and a group of other clowns once gathered on a street in London to celebrate their profession, they rapidly attracted the attention of the police, who assumed a gang of clowns in public must be protesting against something. Charlie Chaplin, the greatest clown of all, delivered a sharp indictment of industrial capitalism in his Depression-era classic film Modern Times.
But the politics of clowns are usually subversive and satirical, not controlling and deceptive. Politicians have agendas: clowns do not.

So if Mr Johnson is not a clown, what is he? A tale recounted recently by the broadcaster Jeremy Vine gives the reveal. Mr Vine described Mr Johnson delivering a hugely entertaining after-dinner speech at an industry convention, arriving at the last moment with almost no visible preparation and stumbling through a disorganised address which nonetheless brought the house down. Mr Vine was impressed with Mr Johnson’s ability to extemporise until he saw him give exactly the same act — same lateness, same simulated improvisation, same verbal floundering — at another dinner 18 months later.
Many performers will recognise this not as clowning but as stand-up comedy, where verbal spiels and accompanying physical tics appear spontaneous but are closely rehearsed. Oliver Double, a former comedian who now teaches performance at the University of Kent, says Mr Johnson has carefully developed a persona as would a stand-up comic, complete with performative habit of constantly dishevelling his hair. But instead of using it simply to get laughs he employs it to further his career.
It is possible that this affectation will be exposed by greater scrutiny. In a TV interview last week with Andrew Neil, Mr Johnson looked panicked, bad-tempered and out of his depth, as his charismatic persona failed to deflect an uncharmable host. He recently cut his hair and lost weight, perhaps wanting to moderate his pantomime appearance.
But whichever way Mr Johnson takes his act, he does not have true clowning in him. Call him a stand-up comic, call him a showman, call him a buffoon. But please do not afford Mr Johnson the privilege of being called a clown.

 

 

De carteira falsa da USP para ‘pegar meninas’ a furto de TV: a ficha de ‘Vermelho’, alvo da operação que mira hackers

Conhecido como ‘Vermelho’, Walter Delgatti Neto, de Araraquara, interior de São Paulo, é um dos presos na Operação Spoofing, que mira supostos hackers que teriam invadido celulares do ministro da Justiça, Sérgio Moro, do coordenador da Lava Jato, Deltan Dallagnol, e outros procuradores e juízes. Aos 30 anos de idade, ele acumula processos por estelionato, falsificação de documentos e furto. Delgatti também já disse à Polícia estar sendo ‘caluniado’ por colegas de faculdade que o chamavam de ‘hacker’.
Em 2015, ele foi preso em flagrante e denunciado por portar remédios de uso controlado e receitas em nome de pacientes. A acusação também envolve falsificação de documentos, já que portava uma carteira falsa do curso de medicina da USP.
No dia de sua prisão, disse ‘que foi estudante de medicina da USP, porém, não é mais, e utilizava sua carteira a qual exibiu a policiais nesta data para entrar em cinemas e pagar meia entrada, bem como para engrandecer perante meninas para pegá-las’. Ele negou a venda de remédios, e disse ser usuário deles.
Em janeiro de 2018, foi sentenciado a 2 anos em semiaberto pelo juiz Roberto Raineri Simão, da 3ª Vara Criminal de Araraquara. O magistrado considerou a falsificação de documentos, e o absolveu pelo crime de tráfico.
Já em 2014, Delgatti teria se passado por ‘André’ ao alugar um imóvel de uma mulher. O apartamento estava mobiliado. Segundo a denúncia, ele teria contratado um serviço de mudança, que chegou a enviar um caminhão ao prédio. Então, teria tentado fugir com geladeira, sofá, mesas, cadeiras, e uma TV de 50 polegadas.
Para sorte da proprietária do imóvel, a administradora do prédio teria chamado a polícia. Delgatti fugiu, mas o transportador ficou no local, e os bens foram devolvidos. O alvo da Spoofing foi denunciado por furto qualificado, em junho de 2018.
Delgatti também responde por estelionato. De acordo com o Ministério Público, ele usou o cartão de crédito de um advogado de Araraquara para comprar uma poltrona giratória, uma cabeceira, um jogo de lençol, travesseiros, um conjunto de box. Ao ver sua fatura, na casa dos R$ 3 mil, o advogado chamou a polícia. Os itens foram apreendidos na casa de Delgatti.
Em outra ocasião, ‘Vermelho’, como é conhecido, foi parado pela Polícia Rodoviária Federal em São Carlos, com cheques e cartões de crédito, além de documentos falsificados. Ele chegou a se filiar ao DEM, em 2007. A última atualização de seu cadastro, em 2016, mostra que está ativo.
Além de passar pela polícia como indiciado, Delgatti também prestou boletins de ocorrência. Ele disse ao 2º DP de Araraquara, certa vez, em 2017, que estava sendo caluniado e difamado na faculdade de direito.
“Emerson e Gabriel estão me caluniando e difamando em sala de aula, cursamos direito na Universidade de Araraquara, devido algumas notícias no Google eles estão dizendo que eu sou hacker e que desvio dinheiro de contas de terceiros, inclusive estão alegando isso no grupo de WhatsApp da sala”, disse.
Ele disse que tinha as conversas, e que 50 alunos estavam dispostos a depor e corroborar com o que disse à Polícia.
 

ESTADÃO

The Lost Tomb of The Pharaohs' Cheaper Brazilian Cousin

Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette 

OK, where to start regarding yesterday’s shenanigans? Probably with Casa Nem.

As many of you know, Ana Paula da Silva, "Lupita Santos", Soraya Simões and I often work with a group of LGBTS activists loosely called "Casa Nem", who are rather more loosely led by Indianara "Indianare Alves Siqueira", a trans- substitute city councilwoman and leader of the NGO Transrevolução.

Casa Nem occupied a building in Lapa for several years, using it as a safe space and drop-in center for the local LGBTS and sex-working community in downtown Rio. They were cleared out of there, however, late last year. Since then, they've been occupying one abandoned building after another, hoping to create a squat that 'sticks' through a combination of brinksmanship, public pressure, clever lawyering and sheer courage.

Last week, as Nicola Mai can attest, they were kicked out of their most recent squat. So this week they went to another building on their list: a 112 year old apartment building in Copacabana that had a well preserved but abandoned penthouse apartment. Indianara and her krewe took it over and moved in.

So last night I was at home, painting a 3mm Seven Years War army and grading papers (as one does) while Ana Paula, ironically, was watching a Brazilian film about an urban occupation/squat. Ana gets a phone call from our lawyer pal, Vanessa Lima.

Vanessa is down at the Copa squat. The night before, some mysterious agent or agents had locked all the women INTO the building. Then, all day, strange-looking people were circulating in the neighborhood: people Vanessa and Indianara qualified as "looking very militia-like". Understandably, this freaked the women out. They are old hands when it comes to squatting and, in today's Brazil, it's a dice toss every time one does something like this. But generally it takes weeks to months before the sinister, mafia-looking dudes start showing up and making veiled threats. This time, it was happening almost immediately.

The women stayed indoors, called Vanessa and other lawyers for reinforcements and continued to expand their holdings. Most importantly, they opened up the attic above the penthouse... and they found what appeared to be the Forgotten Tomb of Tutankamen's Cheaper Brazilian Cousin.

The loft was full of... of... well, crap. Literally and figuratively. But the most eclectic and interesting crap you can imagine. Marble, bronze, and plaster busts of famous historical figures. What appeared to be a collection of shell whistles, a full alligator hide, a stuffed emperor penguin, bits of ivory, stone tools that looked like they could be neolithic in origin (or maybe Native American?... or maybe just replicas?), tons of pottery both broken and whole, decaying paintings in rotting frames. Oh, and some human skulls and a box or two of what seemed to be other human remains.

The ladies, to put it bluntly, shit a collective brick.

Given what had happened to them the night before, they (not unreasonably) felt that they had stumbled upon a stash of stolen museum goods. No one could make heads or tails of the collection, but it looked old and expensive. This, they felt, was the reason they had suddenly attracted so much unwanted attention from Copacabana's Shady Character Brigade.

So this is when Ana's phone rings with a call from Vanessa.

We get the story and are told to mobilize all the media we can and get them down to Copa, because it's getting dark and the women in the squat feared that the owners of what looked to be rare and precious stuff could come in under the cover of darkness and kill them.

I called my friend and mentor Antônio Carlos de Souza Lima, from the National Museum and asked him if he knew any museumologist who could go down to Copa and take a gander at the stuff. Antonio and I both agree that it is going to be hard to mobilize people on a Friday evening and that, probably, the squatters were vastly over-rating what they had found.

Then the pictures of the hoard start coming into Ana's phone. I shit a brick and forward them to Antonio. Antonio agrees that this looks like srs bzns. He puts me in touch with Dr. Mario Chagas, head of the National Historical Museum. Meanwhile, Ana is mobilizing the self-same Dr. Chagas via Soraya, who is his friend.

Dr. Chagas doesn't know me from Adam, but to his eternal credit, listens to my story and, when it is confirmed via Soraya, mobilizes the 19th Police District, the Federal Police, and the Federal Council of Museums.

Meanwhile, it's getting darker down at the squat and no one knows shit about what's been found or what may happen late at night. All we have are the photos Vanessa sent us. It looks serious, but who can tell?

Ana and I thus divide up our labor: she will sit at home and act as switchboard central, trying to mobilize media and coordinating people as the news of the find spreads slowly throughout the carioca museum community. I will put on my leather jacket and boots (it's "cold" in Rio right now) and head on down to the squat and try to get some first hand information as to what is going on.

When I get to Copacabana, I'm confronted with a blacked-out apartment building and a locked gate. The media has arrived, but is being kept at bay by two dead-serious punks on the ground floor. They let me in and I shout up seven floors through the courtyard to Indianara, who tells me to come up.

We walk up seven flights of pitch-black stairs, illuminated only by cellphones. The T.V. crew from Globo follows. I immediately start giggling, because this is EXACTLY what's NEVER supposed to happen in anthropology/archeology. It's like an over-the-top adventure movie, being directed and produced by John Waters, José Padilha, and Penelope Spheeris: Indianara Jones and the Temple of the Lost Punk Travesti Treasure of Copacabana, or some such thing.

The penthouse apartment is beautiful, but has obviously been abandoned for a hound's age. It has amazing stained glass windows everywhere. The bathroom is covered in black and green marble and art deco tiles. This is literally a ruin from the Roaring '20s or Great Depression (hello, Indiana Jones motif again). Indianara greets me with a hug and a kiss, resplendent in her dark sunglasses and rainbow-colored "today-we-go-a-occupyin'" sundress. Everybody starts chatting with me and letting me know what has been happening. Meanwhile, Ana's infosphere is catching up to me via cellphone.

Ana lets me know that the federal police are on their way and, indeed, they show up just after I do, led by Delegado Thales, the man who is investigating last year's destruction of Brazil's National Museum. Mario has confirmed with other museum heads that nothing corresponding to the stuff we see in the photos has gone missing from any of Rio's Museums. One of the squatters points out, however, that in the chaos of the Museum conflagration last year, it would have been easy for someone to go in and "rescue" material from the flames, only to hide it away for later resale in a forgotten apartment Copacabana.

So the police, media, and an anthropologist have shown up. The time has come to ascend the stairs into the attic and take a look-see at what has been found with our own eyes.

My first reaction to the attic is yet another camp throwback to 1920s Egyptology, most particularly Lord Carnavon and Howard Carter: "I see things! Things covered in pigeon shit!"

It's a debris field. A fractal mass covered in dust, grime, and a metric fuck-ton of the aforementioned bird feces. In the cellphone light, my eyes struggle to make sense of it all. I look down at the floor, trying to recompose my field of vision. There, at the tip of my left Doc Marten's, is what appears to be an ivory incisor taken from some big cat. Laid out to the right of that are a collection of shell and turtle-shaped pottery whistles -- the sort of thing one might buy in cheap souvenir stores in Mexico City or, alternatively, might be hundreds of years old.

I lift my head up. In front of me is an old cabinet. On top of it is a decaying box of what look to be disintegrating human femurs. Strewn next to them are a mass of pottery fragments. The Globo camera crew comes in and turns on their portable klieg lights. This makes things much brighter, but no more sensible. I look to the back of the loft. There are a bunch of bronze and marble bust. Or maybe they are made out plaster...? One of them is of Santos Dumont, at any rate: the Brazilian who invented the airplane back in 1906 while the Wright Brothers were still farting around with powered gliders.

It’s too much. The mind boggles. I take some snapshots. Then the police sergeant from the 19th Precinct, who is acting as den mother for this excursion into post-modern amateur urban archeology, says "OK, everyone who needs to has taken all the photos they can possibly want. Time to get out. This is a police investigation now".

We all troop back down to the squat. I, predictably, am babbling. Because of my training at the Museum, I have a solid base in the four fields of classic anthropology, but as a social anthropologist, all I can say is that this gives me enough knowledge to know how much I don’t know. One thing seems certain to me, however: the stuff in the attic has been there since Jesus was a cowboy. If any of it was originally stolen, that happened a long time ago. Decades, probably. It certainly isn’t likely that any of it came from the Museum, before, during, or after the fire.

The ladies tell me that they found a library full of books on histology, piled on the floor of the apartment when they moved in. Slowly, we begin to form a collective picture of what seems to have happened here. A rich old eccentric surgeon dies, leaving no clear heirs. The family either didn’t know or didn’t care about what is in the attic of their penthouse and, in the ensuing battles over his will, the stuff was just left there to rot. I reflect how sadly ironic it would be if the owner of this stuff was a homosexual, more or less cut off from his or her family and leaving no children: a rich old outcast whose legacy is rediscovered by today’s pennyless trans-, prostitute, and gutterpunk outcasts. Maybe that’s what has happened here, but there’s no way of telling at this point.

One of the legal support personnel receives a phone call. It’s Dr. Nadine. She has Alexander Kellner, the director of the National Museum and a paleontologist, on the phone. Alexander lives a few blocks away and Nadine wants to know if she should send him down to take a look at the find. I respond that I can’t make heads nor tails of it and that, yes, it would be a good idea to have someone higher up on the academic/scientific food chain take a long, hard look at it.

Dr. Kellner quickly makes an appearance while I update Drs. Chagas and Lima via Whatsapp. Kellner and the federal agents go up into the loft and back down again. They converse quietly for a half hour or so and the loft is finally blocked off as a police investigation site. Dr. Kellner seems only slightly less befuddled than I. We agree that some of the stuff looks quite valuable, indeed, much of it is probably trash, and that probably none of it is stolen. The eccentric collector hypothesis looks stronger and stronger.

We all troop down the stairs again and leave the building. Before heading home to Santa Teresa, I buy the punk “nightwatchmen” a carton of smokes and 12 liters of spring water. On Monday, specialists from IPHAN, Brazil’s national patrimony institute, will begin sifting through the wreckage to see if there’s anything of value in it.

That’s it. That’s the story. Except for two things.

First of all, I am telling it in first person and that makes it sound like I was a major protagonist in the events, which I was not. Vanessa Lima, Ana Paula da Silva, Soraya Simões, and Mario Chagas were the people coordinating everything and everybody. I was just the scientific flunky designated to go down there and make an initial assessment, mainly because the Casa Nem people know Ana and I and Ana was already in her jammies when Vanessa called.

The second and most important thing is this: the people who discovered this and phoned it in to the proper authorities are a motley band of trans-travesti-punk-queer-street people-activists who have been wandering Rio, gypsy-like, looking for a new home for months now. They are exactly the type of people who our new President would say deserve to die or be imprisoned -- supposedly “scum” and “bandits”. They know that their lives aren’t worth two wet farts in windstorm and that if they are murdered – or simply are beaten and left to die – no one will investigate their deaths. Their leader, Indianara, was a substitute city council woman for the martyred Marielle Franco. “Indy” gets death threats on a daily basis and was on Bolsonaro’s wall of “people who need to be killed” back when our now-president was a state representative, 10 months ago.

In other words, these are people who literally do not have a pot to piss in and who had everything to lose and plenty to gain by keeping their mouths shut. They could’ve mined the ruin for whatever was saleable and walked away with at least several thousand dollars of survival money.

Instead, they did the right thing: they called the museum authorities and lawyers, then called the police, and reported what they found. They gave testimony to the cops. Indianara went off to the precinct house with Vanessa and officers who, in other circumstances, would probably happily arrest her or worse. She spent the night there filling out forms and answering questions. Meanwhile, Casa Nem’s squatters are functioning as on-site guardians for whatever the Forgotten Tomb of Tutankamen's Cheaper Brazilian Cousin might reveal to experts.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to the people of Casa Nem on behalf of Brazil’s scientific community. Once again, the whores, fags, trannies and other “people who deserve to die” have shown themselves to be ethically heads and shoulders above the “gente du bem” who currently govern us.

But that tends to happen when you walk around in high heels.

Prêmio Eisner 2019 divulga premiados, com brasileira entre os vencedores

Adriana Melo participou de coletânea que ganhou o 'Oscar' das HQs, a mais importante premiação relacionada ao gênero no mundo

Gustavo Cunha

A notícia chegou no dia seguinte ao anúncio do Prêmio Eisner 2019 , o Oscar das histórias em quadrinhos. Na manhã deste sábado (20), enquanto se debruçava, concentrada, sobre um trabalho, a ilustradora Adriana Melo se distraiu com o toque do celular: um amigo avisava que a coletânea de histórias em quadrinhos "Puerto Rico strong" , da qual ela havia participado, se consagrara, na véspera, como a Melhor Antologia da mais importante premiação relacionada ao gênero no mundo. Outros cinco brasileiros também concorriam a troféus em diferentes categorias.

— Não tinha tanta expectativa, mas estava torcendo... Foi, sim, uma surpresa muito grande. Não tenho como não dizer que estou muito, muito, muito feliz — comemora a desenhista de 42 anos, moradora de São Paulo (SP).

Uma das páginas de "Puerto Rico strong" ilustradas por Adriana Melo Foto: Divulgação

Sem previsão de lançamento no mercado editorial brasileiro (a obra segue à venda em plataformas estrangeiras), "Puerto Rico strong" reúne dezenas de histórias que tem o país caribenho como cenário. Publicado com o objetivo de levantar fundos para vítimas do furacão Maria, que devastou Porto Rico em 2017, o livro foi produzido por mais de 60 artistas, entre roteiristas e ilustradores de diversas nacionalidades.

Nas páginas com a assinatura de Adriana — e do roteirista Jeff Gomez , que imprimiu um tom autobiográfico à trama —, a narrativa acompanha um menino de 12 anos, filho de porto-riquenhos e morador dos Estados Unidos, durante as férias de verão na nação de origem dos pais. É ali que ele entra, pela primeira vez, numa loja de HQs, e encontra, de certa forma, a própria vocação.

— A ideia da antologia é contar pontos diferentes da história de Porto Rico através de memórias afetivas, trazendo esse país para perto de pessoas que não o conheciam — explica. — Esse projeto precisava mesmo ser reconhecido! Desde que o resultado foi anunciado, tenho recebido muito carinho. O prêmio joga um holofote sobre os vencedores.

Uma das páginas de "Puerto Rico strong" ilustradas por Adriana Melo Foto: Divulgação

Se o Oscar ainda é um tabu para o cinema brasileiro, no Eisner, prêmio equivalente dos quadrinhos, os artistas nacionais têm se superado. Em 2008, quadrinistas brasileiros levaram o troféu na mesma categoria, pela publicação "5", com participação de Rafael Grampá e dos gêmeos Fábio Moon e Gabriel Bá . Em 2018, Marcelo D'Salete venceu o Eisner com a graphic novel "Cumbe" , considerada, na ocasião, como Melhor Edição Americana de Material Estrangeiro.

'Sensação de coração quente'

É a primeira vez que Adriana Melo vê uma produção própria ser nominada — e laureada — a um prêmio. Artista vinculada aos estúdios DC Comics, responsável por franquias como "Batman", "Superman" e "Mulher maravilha", ela mantém uma rotina rígida no ambiente de trabalho montado dentro de casa, na capital paulista, onde mora com a filha e o pai.

— Na verdade, tendo internet e wi-fi, o meu estúdio já está levantado — brinca. — Daí, quando o prazo aperta, tenho que colocar todo mundo para fora de casa: gato, passarinho... Dentro do possível, tento ter uma disciplina para conseguir manter o trampo.

Diariamente, ela dedica mais de dez horas aos traços de personagens e séries como "Fúrias femininas", "Homem-borracha", "Arlequina" e "Hera venenosa". Mas não reclama. Semanalmente, precisa enviar uma média de oito páginas para a sede da empresa, na Califórnia, nos Estados Unidos.

— Trabalhar com quadrinhos é trabalhar com muitoz prazos. E eu trabalho em função do horário de lá, né? São quatro horas de diferença para a Califórnia, com o fuso. Então acontece de às 23h precisar estar com o celular na mão para responder determinadas demandas, por exemplo. — conta. — Virei a tia que dificilmente vai aos aniversários de família, a prima que sempre fura os eventos (risos)...

Desde a infância, Adriana demonstrava talento com os lápis, apesar de nunca ter feito qualquer curso para se especializar na área ("Na minha época, não havia essas coisas", pondera).

Através de amigos e colegas, trilhou um caminho no universo de quadrinhos, e há 15 anos trabalha para o mercado americano — na agência em que seu nome está vinculado, outros 50 brasileiros possuem contratos com editoras estrangeiras, como a DC e Marvel. Animada, ela diz que realiza um sonho.

— É muito duro e puxado, mas eu trabalho em algo que sempre desejei desde muito nova. Sempre fico cansada, mas quando respiro e olho pra trás, tenho a sensação de que o coração está quente, sabe? — ressalta. — Hoje (sábado) vou até encerrar as atividades no estúdio mais cedo para celebrar o prêmio.

Vencedores do Prêmio Eisner 2019

Melhor história curta:

The Talk of the Saints por Tom King e Jason Fabok, em Swamp Thing Winter Special (DC Comics)

Melhor história em edição única:

Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #310, de Chip Zdarsky (Marvel)

Melhor série:

Dias Gigantes, de John Allison, Max Sarin, e Julaa Madrigal (BOOM! Box)

Melhor minissérie:

Senhor Milagre, de Tom King e Mitch Gerads (DC Comics)

Melhor série estreante:

Gideon Falls, de Jeff Lemire e Andrea Sorrentino (Image)

Melhor publicação infantil (até 8 anos):

Johnny Boo and the Ice Cream Computer, de James Kochalka (Top Shelf/IDW)

Melhor publicação infantil (de 9 a 12 anos):

The Divided Earth, de Faith Erin Hicks (First Second)

Melhor publicação juvenil (de 13 a 17 anos):

The Prince and the Dressmaker, de Jen Wang (First Second)

Melhor publicação de humor:

Dias Gigantes, de John Allison, Max Sarin, e Julia Madrigal (BOOM! Box)

Melhor antologia:

Puerto Rico Strong, editado por Marco Lopez, Desiree Rodriguez, Hazel Newlevant, Derek Ruiz, e Neil Schwartz (Lion Forge)

Melhor não-ficção:

Is This Guy For Real? The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman, de Box Brown (First Second)

Melhor álbum gráfico (inédito):

My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies, de Ed Brubaker e Sean Phillips (Image)

Melhor álbum gráfico (republicação):

Visão, de Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, e Michael Walsh (Marvel)

Melhor adaptação de outra mídia:

Frankenstein de Mary Shelley, em Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection, adaptado por Junji Ito (VIZ Media)

Melhor edição americana de material estrangeiro:

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, de Pénélope Bagieu (First Second)

Melhor edição americana de material estrangeiro (asiático):

Tokyo Tarareba Girls, de Akiko Higashimura (Kodansha)

Melhor coleção de arquivos (tiras):

Star Wars: Classic Newspaper Strips, vol. 3, de Archie Goodwin e Al Williamson, editado por Dean Mullaney (Library of American Comics/IDW)

Melhor coleção de arquivo (quadrinhos):

Bill Sienkiewicz’s Mutants and Moon Knights… And Assassins... Artifact Edition, editado por Scott Dunbier (IDW)

Melhor roteirista:

Tom King por Batman, Senhor Milagre, Heroes in Crisis e Swamp Thing Winter Special (DC Comics)

Melhor roteirista/desenhista:

Jen Wang por The Prince and the Dressmaker (First Second)

Melhor arte-final ou time de arte-finalistas:

Mitch Gerads por Senhor Milagre (DC Comics)

Melhor desenhista/artista multimídia (páginas internas):

Dustin Nguyen por Descender (Image)

Melhor capista:

Jen Bartel por Blackbird (Image); Submerged (Vault)

Melhor colorista:

Matt Wilson por Black Cloud, Paper Girls, The Wicked + The Divine (Image); O Poderoso Thor, Fugitivos (Marvel)

Melhor letrista:

Todd Klein por Black Hammer: Age of Doom e Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald (Dark Horse); Batman: Cavaleiro Branco (DC Comics); Eternity Girl e Livros da Magia (Vertigo/DC Comics); The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest (Top Shelf/IDW)

Melhor quadrinho relacionado a jornalismo:

Back Issue editado por Michael Eury (TwoMorrows)

PanelxPanel magazine, editado por Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, panelxpanel.com

Melhor livro sobre quadrinhos:

Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists, de Martha H. Kennedy (University Press of Mississippi)

Melhor trabalho acadêmico:

Sweet Little C*nt: The Graphic Work of Julie Doucet, de Anne Elizabeth Moore (Uncivilized Books)

Melhor design de publicação:

Will Eisner’s A Contract with God: Curator’s Collection, design de John Lind (Kitchen Sink/Dark Horse)

Melhor quadrinho digital:

Melhor webcomic:

The Contradictions, de Sophie Yanow

Trump Is Racist to the Bone

By Nicholas Kristof

After instructing four women of color in the House of Representatives to “go back” where they came from, President Trump now claims, “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!”

That appears incorrect. I have identified the following racist bones in Trump’s body:

Phalanges and metacarpals: These are bones of the fingers and hands that Trump has used to tweet tirades against black and brown people and to retweet Nazi sympathizers, including, twice, an account called @WhiteGenocideTM with a photo of the founder of the American Nazi Party.

Mandible and maxilla: These are the jawbones that Trump has used to denounce Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers, rapists,” not to mention to refuse to criticize the Ku Klux Klan.

Femurs, fibulas, tibias, metatarsals: These foot and leg bones carried Trump into his casinos, where black staff members would be rushed off the floor so he couldn’t see them, according to a former employee, Kip Brown.

Virtually every remaining bone was implicated in Trump’s early refusal to rent apartments in his buildings to blacks, leading the Nixon administration Justice Department (not exactly a pillar of liberalism) to sue him for housing discrimination in the 1970s. A former building superintendent working for Trump explained that any rent application from a black person was coded “C,” for “colored,” apparently so that the office would know to reject it.

“Racist” is an explosive term that should never be lightly flung as an epithet, and it is more likely to end a conversation than clarify it. For a single tweet or action there is a possibility of misunderstanding or ambiguity.

Yet for more than 45 years, since that housing discrimination, Trump has engaged in a consistent pattern of racist behavior and speech. His latest controversial tweets are not an aberration but a culmination. This isn’t a matter of a single tweet; it’s a lifetime with a narrative arc of bigotry.

America’s history is a tapestry of innumerable threads, many of them triumphant and inspiring that we should be deeply proud of, but Trump goes out of his way to weave together two of the most shameful strands.

One is the racism and nativism that go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, to the Philadelphia speaker who in 1844 denounced Irish immigrants as “scum unloaded on American wharves” and helped provoke anti-Catholic riots, to the waves of hysteria against African-Americans, Italians, Chinese, Jews, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and other immigrants. There is another strain of American hospitality highlighted by the Statue of Liberty and the admission of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees beginning in the 1970s, but the nativism is real — it’s why Trump’s family, alarmed by anti-German bigotry, pretended to be Swedish.

The other thread that Trump pulls is more political: what we now call McCarthyism, although it, too, goes back to our nation’s earliest days. It vilifies opponents as enemies of the state.

More than two centuries ago, opponents of Thomas Jefferson warned that he was a Jacobin who if elected would unleash a French-style reign of terror upon America. As one commentator put it, “The Bible would be cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed into a dance of Jacobin phrensy, our wives and daughters dishonored.” Senator Joseph McCarthy updated that in the 20th century with reckless accusations that leftists were Communists — and now Trump picks up that mantle by suggesting that his four progressive targets in Congress “might be” Communists, not to mention that they “hate our Country” and are “pro Al-Qaeda.”

I’m not sure whether this new McCarthyism is instinctive and unthinking, or these bilious rants represent a shrewd effort to manipulate voters into seeing the 2020 presidential campaign through the prism not of issues but of racial identity, in hopes of winning Trump an edge with white voters.

I do know that Trump has taken two of the most ignominious threads in American history — nativism and McCarthyism — and woven them together in an outburst that is an affront to democratic norms.

If anyone doubts that Trump’s statements were despicable, note that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission specifically bars employers from using “ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, ‘Go back to where you came from.’”

Frankly, I’m even more troubled by Trump’s policies than by his tweets, and I wish the reaction to Trump focused more on practical initiatives to reduce child poverty, treat drug addiction or end mass incarceration. But the question put to Congress this week was a resolution properly condemning the presidential tirade. It was grotesque to see Republicans who had been mute at presidential bigotry suddenly protest that the backers of the resolution violated rules of decorum.

Really? We’re left again with the question: How can members of the party of Lincoln today protest the label of racism, but not the racism itself — in a man who for 45 years has shown himself to be a racist from his mandible to his metatarsals?

Review: ‘Edge of Democracy’ Looks at Brazil With Outrage and Heartbreak

 

Petra Costa’s documentary chronicles the impeachment of one president, the imprisonment of another and the triumph of authoritarian politics.

By

A.O. SCOTT

nytimes.com

 

During his eight years as president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — a former steelworker and union organizer known as Lula — was often referred to as one of the most popular politicians in the world. According to one poll, his approval rating among Brazilians when he left office in 2011 was 87 percent. He was succeeded by his ally in the Workers’ Party (PT), Dilma Rousseff, an economist who had been imprisoned and tortured by the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

 

“The Edge of Democracy,” Petra Costa’s searing and enlightening new documentary, tells this story of left-wing political triumph from the perspective of its aftermath. Rousseff was impeached in 2017 and Lula is serving a prison sentence. Both were implicated in the complicated and divisive Car Wash corruption investigation. Brazil’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro, is an admirer of the old dictatorship and part of a global trend toward authoritarian, anti-liberal populism currently flourishing in the Philippines, Hungary and many other countries.
What happened? The question haunts this film and will likely haunt many of its viewers, wherever they happen to be watching. Though she is a scrupulous and dogged digger-up of hidden facts and a thoughtful interpreter of public events, Costa hasn’t produced a work of objective journalism or detached historical scholarship so much as a personal reckoning with her nation’s past and present. “The Edge of Democracy” is narrated in the first person, by the filmmaker herself (in English in the version under review, which is streaming on Netflix) in a voice that is by turns incredulous, indignant and self-questioning. It’s a chronicle of civic betrayal and the abuse of power, and also of heartbreak.

Costa doesn’t hide her political allegiances, and her candor enhances rather than undermines the credibility of her report. Her parents were left-wing activists, persecuted and driven underground in the 1960s and ’70s. Her mother and Rousseff spent time in the same prison, and Costa’s access to and comfort with the upper echelons of the Workers’ Party is evident. But her family history also connects her with the business interests — the construction industry in particular — that she argues have warped Brazilian politics and undermined its democratic, egalitarian potential.
Lula is depicted as the flawed but nonetheless authentic embodiment of that potential, a leader whose down-to-earth charisma remains consistent whether he is addressing striking workers or presiding over affairs of state. But while Costa’s portrait of him, and of Rousseff, is admiring, it is hardly uncritical. What energizes her story is the fight to achieve a measure of analytical clarity in the midst of catastrophe. Rather than cloud her vision, her sympathies sharpen it.
What she sees — what she shows — is both a thriller and epic, a tale of conspiratorial, self-interested scheming that is at the same time a saga of large historical forces and epochal shifts in power and ideology. The charges brought against Rousseff and Lula are explained as a result of betrayals that feel almost Shakespearean, a judicial and legislative coup d’état accomplished through the weaponization of laws and institutions that were supposed to be neutral.
Costa’s villains are wealthy industrialists and members of Brazil’s centrist and right-of-center parties. But her heroes had collaborated with those same parties, and Lula’s success in the mid- and late-2000s — a period of economic growth and ambitious social reform — was to some degree enabled by his accommodation of business interests and cross-partisan cooperation. One of the implications of “The Edge of Democracy” is that as Lula and the Workers' Party lost touch with the mass movement that brought them to power and mastered the levers of the political system, they made themselves vulnerable to popular anger on the right. Corruption and back room dealing were longstanding norms of Brazilian governance that the party didn’t do much to challenge. Public frustration with government as a whole could thus be mobilized against Lula and Rousseff, whose effigies were paraded, dressed in prison stripes, at street rallies.
Footage of those rallies, and of counterdemonstrations against Rousseff’s impeachment and Lula’s arrest, suggest a ferociously polarized society, one in which the fundamental terms of national identity, collective history and truth itself are in dispute. “Order and Progress,” the idealistic slogan on the Brazilian flag, is so thoroughly mocked by this spectacle of chaos and regression that Costa finds herself wondering if the words have always been a joke.

The facts and arguments she communicates should be studied by anyone interested in the fate of democracy, in Brazil or anywhere else. The feeling her film imparts will be familiar to anyone who has experienced the politics of the past few years as a series of shocks and reversals that call into question basic assumptions about the shape of reality. “The Edge of Democracy” is a declaration of faith in the reality principle, in the idea that it’s both important and possible to understand what happened. Even if — or precisely because — none of us knows what happens next.

 

Entre caos e rojões, eu faria tudo de novo para noticiar a vinda de Glenn Greenwald

Marcella Franco

PARATY (RJ)

Entre artistas múltiplos e autores a quem era tarefa noticiar na Flip 2019, a mesa de Glenn Greenwald parecia instigante, sem dúvida, mas representava, a princípio, na agenda de uma jornalista escalada para cobertura de festival, apenas mais um item a ser cumprido em meio à pressa. Foi só depois de apanhar, correr e chorar —tanto de medo, quanto de emoção— que finalmente me dei conta: aquela seria a pauta da festa, quiçá a pauta da vida.

Cheguei a Paraty na segunda-feira (8), dois dias antes da abertura. Queria me ambientar com calma e reduzir ao máximo a possibilidade de fazer besteira por conhecer mal a cidade. Sou péssima com mapas e me perco em shopping centers, de modo que Paraty seria um prato cheio para comidas de bola no cronograma do jornal.

Repórter é repórter até quando dorme. Ao ouvir de soslaio que moradores poderiam estar organizando uma manifestação para o dia da palestra de Greenwald, decidi que aquela seria minha primeira missão: saber se era verdade e, caso fosse, descobrir quem eram aquelas pessoas.

Quando algum veículo publica um material exclusivo e antes de todo mundo, chamamos isso de “furo”. O furo está para o jornalista assim como o solo de guitarra está para o astro de rock: é uma chance para brilhar e de ser lembrado. Encontrar quatro organizadores do protesto depois de rodar as comunidades e o centro inteiro atrás de um nome foi meu primeiro solo em Paraty.

A matéria com a entrevista saiu na quarta (10), dia de abertura da Flip. Foram 40 minutos de conversa em off nos fundos de uma pousada, com quatro homens que não quiseram se identificar. Eles tiravam fotos de mim e erguiam a voz. Revelaram apenas ser dois empresários locais e um ex-bombeiro. Do outro, só sei que ele temia “a implantação da sede do comunismo em Paraty”.

O texto foi replicado por dezenas de sites e blogs. E, como com grandes furos vêm também grandes responsabilidades, fui escalada para acompanhar o protesto na sexta (12), com concentração às 17h na praça do Chafariz. Portando crachá e bloco timbrado, perguntei ao primeiro manifestante se ele se incomodaria, enquanto tomava sua cerveja, de me conceder uma breve entrevista.

“Folha de S.Paulo? Vocês distorcem tudo que a gente fala!”, ralhou um amigo do homem que abordei. Perguntei se ele lia jornal. “Vocês são uns bandidos!”. Eu só queria entrevistar o senhor de camiseta com foto do Bolsonaro e chapéu de vaqueiro. Pedi ao amigo que, caso não tivesse nada a acrescentar, que por favor permanecesse calado.

“Pode botar aí que eu vou matar esse americano. Eu, cidadão paratiense, vou meter uma bala nesse cara. Eu sei que você está gravando." Eu não estava. Senti medo.

Pedi ajuda aos policiais que acompanhavam tudo a um metro e meio de distância. Perguntei se a PM garantiria a segurança dos jornalistas que acompanhariam a manifestação. “Que manifestação?”, questionou a oficial, enquanto o agressor ia embora na multidão. Uma fotógrafa de um estande do outro lado da rua se aproximou para oferecer ajuda, “eu vi tudo, me chamo Antônia”. Chorei abraçada a uma estranha.

Demorou uma hora e meia até começar a passeata em direção à praia de Terra Nova –a ideia original dos manifestantes de chegar à praia do Pontal, onde ocorreria a palestra, foi abortada. Pela polícia, dizem. Acompanhei a caminhada através do centro histórico, vendo e filmando pessoas que saíam dos estabelecimentos para vaiar.

Abandonei a procissão a 500 metros do destino. Queria ver de perto a reação dos espectadores da mesa de Greenwald à chegada das bandeiras verdes e amarelas e dos carros de som à outra margem do rio, então corri aos tropeções pelo chão de pedras, laptop na mochila, na tentativa de chegar à beira do barco o mais rápido possível.

Mais de 2.000 pessoas esperavam pelo jornalista americano. Não sei se pisoteei alguém até alcançar a beirada da ponte de acesso ao pesqueiro da Flipei –se pisei em você, que me lê, perdão, de verdade. Ao som de “Bella Ciao”, surgiu a lancha. Do outro lado, o hino nacional remixado. A atmosfera era caótica, restavam 12% de bateria no computador, mas era hora de escrever.

Organizadores do evento ofereceram uma tomada. No primeiro andar do barco, próximo à escada do porão. Sentada no chão, agora de costas para os manifestantes e de frente para o público, digitei as falas dos palestrantes, enquanto corria para redigir um texto fiel e minimamente inteligente.

"Tomara que eles não cheguem até aqui”. grita alguém. O protesto talvez se aproximasse pelo rio, pensei, mas eram os fogos de artifício que, do céu, passaram a ser disparados em nossa direção. Começam boatos de faíscas em meio à plateia, supostamente uma bandeira queimada. Princípio de corre-corre. O balanço do mar dá enjoo, a lembrança da praça embrulha ainda mais a barriga. Choro de novo.

Penso no meu avô jornalista, nos meus pais jornalistas, nos tantos amigos bravos de profissão. Ali, na entrada do barco, meu teto era o chão do convés em que pisavam Glenn Greenwald, meu ex-professor na faculdade e mais dois colegas de redação na Folha. Estávamos, portanto, reunidos na força invencível que move aqueles que buscam não apenas boas histórias, mas também a verdade que sustenta todas elas.

Um momento histórico. Um privilégio. De uma pauta corriqueira em meio a tantas previstas na cobertura de um festival de literatura, surgiu aquela que se tornou um dos fatos mais marcantes de meus 21 anos de carreira.

E o mesmo crachá que, na praça do Chafariz, em meio ao protesto, me rendeu agressões, no barco me trouxe um presente. “Parabéns”, cumprimentou Glenn Greenwald, estendendo a mão ao ler meu nome na etiqueta. O jornalismo, em mim, agora está mais vivo do que nunca. Ninguém vai poder nos parar.