Jair Renan Balerio Camboriu left to visit his father in prison in Brasilia. After leaving the Federal Police, he announced: “I tried to raise my old father’s morale.” Zero Four said he took “some books” for the captain. The phrase aroused the curiosity of reporters who wanted to know the selected titles. “I brought him a word search,” the counselor said.
The clan leader was never known for his reading habit. Despite this, he has always had strong opinions about the publishing scene. In Planalto, he tried to intervene in the formatting of textbooks. “Books nowadays, as a rule, are a pile, a pile of a lot of written things. You have to dilute that,” he ordered in January 2020.
Jair Bolsonaro added that books distributed in public schools will begin displaying the lyrics of the national anthem and the Brazilian flag. Fortunately for Brazilian students, patriotism has been forgotten. However, the captain did significant damage to the sector.
In the last year of his term, while raising money for his re-election bid, the former president withheld nearly R$800 million from the National Program for Books and Educational Materials. This measure delayed the purchase of 70 million books for primary school students and teachers.
Obscurantism has characterized the Bolsonaro government’s relationship with culture in general and literature in particular. In a fit of ideological rage, the captain refused to sign the papers needed to present the Camões award to Chico Buarque. “I am happy to remember that the former president had the rare skill of not sullying my award,” the author of “Estorvo” replied, receiving the award four years later.
Contempt for books is not merely a product of Cavallo’s stupidity. Anti-intellectualism has always been a valuable electoral weapon for the far right. It helps stigmatize writers, teachers and artists who insist on criticizing autocratic rulers.
Despite his aversion to the letters, Bolsonaro can still count on them to get out of prison early. Brazilian law guarantees that prisoners who read are exempt from their sentences. The problem for the former president is that the rules of the National Council of Justice require reading “literary works” and submitting handwritten reviews. There is no expected benefit for those who choose to spend their time solving chess crosswords.