Jair Bolsonaro já sofreu impeachment mental - Mario Sabino (Antagonista)

Jair Bolsonaro já sofreu impeachment mental

• 
  Mario Sabino
  O Antagonista, 26.07.21 11:47

A falta de inteligência explica por que o presidente da República acha ser possível enganar os brasileiros sobre a sua sociopatia no combate à Covid

https://www.oantagonista.com/opiniao/jair-bolsonaro-ja-sofreu-impeachment-mental/

No sábado, como publicamos, o virologista Jair Bolsonaro disse a seguinte gema: “Se eu estivesse coordenando a pandemia não teria morrido tanta gente. Você fala de tratamento inicial. A obrigação do médico, em algo que ele desconhece, é buscar amenizar o sofrimento da pessoa e o tratamento off label”. Ele também afirmou sobre as vacinas contra a Covid: “Agora, qual país do mundo faz acompanhamento de quem tomou vacina? Tem gente que está sofrendo efeito colateral, o que está acontecendo? A Coronavac ainda é experimental e tem gente que quer tornar obrigatória”.

As declarações do virologista Jair Bolsonaro foram feitas no mesmo dia em que a Crusoé publicou os vídeos das reuniões interministeriais do ano passado nas quais o Itamaraty alerta integrantes do governo sobre como seria desastroso para o Brasil não entrar no consórcio organizado pela Organização Mundial da Sáude para a aquisição de imunizantes. Os vídeos mostram que o general Eduardo Pazuello mentiu à CPI da Covid quando disse que as negociações com o consórcio eram “nebulosas” e que o preço inicial era de 40 dólares por dose. O único aspecto “nebuloso” era a falta de conhecimento de inglês dos advogados da União — foi preciso traduzir a minuta do contrato para eles — e o preço inicial era de 20 dólares, logo reduzido para pouco mais de 10 dólares. Mesmo assim, o governo brasileiro demorou a assinar e, quando o fez, comprou uma quantidade relativamente pequena de doses — ou seja, milhares de mortes teriam sido evitadas se o país tivesse adquirido o máximo de imunizantes que o consórcio oferecia.

Com exceção da Folha de S. Paulo, os jornais preferiram ignorar os vídeos. Mas os senadores da CPI da Covid, felizmente, não. Simone Tebet enxergou logo o crime de responsabilidade efetivamente cometido por Jair Bolsonaro. Numa das reuniões, a subchefe adjunta de política econômica da Casa Civil, Talita Saito, afirmou: “Eu bato sempre nessa tecla porque é importante deixar muito claro que essa decisão (a assinatura do contrato com o consórcio) ainda não foi tomada. O presidente da República ainda não se posicionou sobre a entrada do Brasil no instrumento”. Ou seja, Jair Bolsonaro era quem comandava diretamente o Ministério da Saúde e tomava as decisões que deveriam caber ao titular da pasta. Decisões que implicaram o sacrifício de vidas de cidadãos brasileiros.

O que Jair Bolsonaro coordenou, portanto, foi a morte premeditada de vítimas da Covid, não só deixando de comprar imunizantes (enquanto o Ministério da Saúde entabulava negociações sobre vacinas com gente suspeitíssima), como sabotando as medidas restritivas necessárias para impedir a propagação desenfreada do vírus. O que ele premeditava era que o Brasil alcançasse a imunidade de rebanho natural, ao custo de, quem sabe, um milhão de vidas. Que o presidente da República continue a sabotar o combate à pandemia depois de 550 mil mortes diz muito sobre a incapacidade institucional do parlamento de dar um basta a essa situação na qual a perversidade se traduz em tragédia. Ainda ocorre uma média de mil óbitos de doentes de Covid por dia no país, o que só não causa espanto numa sociedade que desvaloriza a vida.

Sociopatas são capazes de se conter quando a sociopatia se volta contra eles próprios. Mas Jair Bolsonaro não tem esse discernimento, como prova mais uma fez a fala de sábado, na qual tentou novamente enganar o distinto público com a  lorota de que o STF o impediu de coordenar os esforços contra a Covid. Na verdade, os ministros do Supremo reconheceram que governadores e prefeitos tinham autonomia para adotar as medidas que consideravam adequadas para impedir a disseminação da doença nos seus estados e municípios, respectivamente, o que jamais significou tirar a responsabilidade da União. Não contente com a lorota, ele voltou a atacar a Coronavac, comprada pelo seu inimigo João Doria, como se a vacina da AstraZeneca, adquirida pelo governo federal, não tivesse efeito colateral.

Parece estranho que o presidente da República ainda ache ser possível continuar a ludibriar tanta gente ao mesmo tempo. A maioria dos brasileiros, contudo, já está convicta de que Jair Bolsonaro não tem capacidade intelectual compatível com as necessidades exigidas para o cargo que ocupa — e talvez nem mesmo para gerir a sua própria imagem. De acordo com a pesquisa Datafolha divulgada no início do mês, 57% dos cidadãos consideram o presidente da República “pouco inteligente” e 62% o veem como “despreparado”.

Ser “pouco inteligente” significa ser burro. O presidente da Câmara pode engavetar os pedidos de abertura de processo de impeachment contra Jair Bolsonaro, mas os eleitores já votaram pelo seu impeachment mental.

Os EUA não conseguirão conter a ascensão irresistível da China -

 Isso parece evidente. Mas nem a grande potência hegemônica — que os EUA continuarão a ser no futuro previsível —, nem o mundo precisam ficar com medo de cair sob a dominação de uma potência “comunista”, por duas razões muito simples. A China não é um potência comunista expansionista, e mesmo que fosse não conseguiria nada. Os chineses só querem ficar ricos, como europeus e americanos. A segunda razão é que os chineses não querem mais ser humilhados pelas potências ocidentais, pela Rússia e pelo Japão, como o foram no século e meio até 1949, e ainda sofrendo o desprezo, pelos mesmos, depois disso.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

The New York Times – 26.7.2021

In Stinging Rebuke, China Tells U.S. Diplomat That Its Rise Can’t Be Stopped

Beijing accused Washington of a “thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China,” in remarks released before talks with a visiting U.S. diplomat had ended.

Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers

 

A senior Chinese diplomat on Monday bluntly warned the visiting American deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, that the Biden administration’s strategy of pursuing both confrontation and cooperation with Beijing was sure to fail.

China’s assistant foreign minister, Xie Feng, told Ms. Sherman that the United States’ “competitive, collaborative and adversarial rhetoric” was a “thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China,” according to a summary of Mr. Xie’s comments that the Chinese foreign ministry sent to reporters.

Ms. Sherman’s meetings offered the latest gauge of the Biden administration’s strategy of stepping up pressure against the Chinese government on several fronts, including human rights and internet hacking, while seeking to work together on global problems like climate change and international health threats. Mr. Xie’s remarks underscored the anger that has been building in China toward the United States, undermining the chances that the approach will work.

“It seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down,” Mr. Xie told Ms. Sherman, according to the summaries of his comments, which were also issued on the Chinese foreign ministry website. “Do bad things and get good results. How is that ever possible?”

The Chinese foreign ministry’s volley of combative comments, issued before and during Ms. Sherman’s talks in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, suggested that her visit was unlikely to ease the disputes that have festered between Beijing and Washington. The State Department said last week that she would discuss Washington’s “serious concerns” about Chinese actions, as well as “areas where our interests align.”

But Chinese people “feel that the real emphasis is on the adversarial aspect; the collaborative aspect is just an expediency,” Mr. Xie told Ms. Sherman, according to the summary.

The acrimony echoed the opening of high-level talks between senior Chinese and Biden administration officials in March, when Beijing’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, delivered a 16-minute lecture, accusing them of arrogance and hypocrisy.

Ms. Sherman rose to prominence during the Obama administration as a leading negotiator of a nuclear agreement with Iran reached in 2015 after years of contentious talks. Now as the No. 2 in the State Department, she is focused on managing tense relations with China.

While President Biden has largely avoided the heated ideological sparring with the Chinese Communist Party that the Trump administration pursued in its final year, relations remain strained.

Washington has drawn in allies to press Beijing over mass detentions and forced labor in Xinjiang and the rollback of freedom in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government has also bristled at calls from the United States, the World Health Organization and others for a fresh examination of whether the coronavirus may have slipped out of a lab in China, igniting the pandemic.

Last week, Chinese officials said they were “extremely shocked” by a W.H.O. proposal to take a fresh look at the lab leak theory. A report in March from an initial W.H.O. inquiry stated that it was “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus had jumped into 

The Biden administration and a coalition of other governments, including the member states of NATO, last week also asserted that Chinese security services and their contract hackers were behind widespread breaches of Microsoft email systems.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has expressed impatience with criticism and demands from Washington, especially over what Beijing deems internal issues like Hong Kong, Xinjiang and human rights.

“We’ll never accept insufferably arrogant lecturing from those ‘master teachers!’” Mr. Xi said in a speech on July 1 marking 100 years since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. He also warned that foes would “crack their heads and spill blood” against a wall of Chinese resolve.

Beijing has repeatedly retaliated against sanctions over Hong Kong and Xinjiang with its own bans on Western politicians, human rights groups and academics.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who was also scheduled to meet Ms. Sherman in Tianjin, said over the weekend that the United States needed to be taught some humility.

“If the United States still hasn’t learned how to get along with other countries in an equal manner, then we have a responsibility to work with the international community to give it a good catch-up lesson,” Mr. Wang said in talks on Saturday with his Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

 

A ditadura chinesa e a arrogância imperial americana - Paulo Roberto de Almeida, CGTN

 Não sou um apoiador da ditadura chinesa, ao contrário: espero que o povo chinês conquiste sua liberdade numa democracia de mercado o quanto antes possível. A existência de um partido totalitário na condução da grande nação e civilização chinesa é o resultado de dois séculos de história mundial marcados pelo triunfo do capitalismo e a ascensão provisória de ideias coletivistas e autoritárias, neste caso embasadas no marxismo. Trata-se de um superestrutura política de apenas cem anos numa história milenar, que também é de regimes opressivos. Um dia tudo isso passará.

Mas na questão atual dessa disputa hegemônica ARTIFICIAL criada pelo imperialismo americano, acredito que as elites americanas — políticas, militares, inclusive acadêmicas — estejam profundamente erradas, ao elegerem a China como adversária, como se ela fosse a reencarnação da União Soviética. Não é!

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Matéria da CGTN:

Opinion 16:14, 26-Jul-2021

China can work with the U.S., not the paranoid hegemon

First Voice

Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events. 

On July 26, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng talked with Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in the city of Tianjin. Xie described the relationship between the two powers as a "stalemate" that faces serious difficulties, and condemned America's rendering of China as an "imagined enemy" as the fundamental problem. He also presented two lists to the U.S. which includes asking the U.S. to remove sanctions on Chinese officials and expressing concerns over visa restrictions on Chinese students.

The United States is a paranoid hegemon. Xie discussed the phenomenon of the "Sputnik moment" in America's foreign policy, the tendency that the U.S. politicians are easily led to feel insecure by the achievements or actions of a foreign country. That insecurity goes so far as to waging a militantly adversarial foreign policy to secure U.S. global dominance. America is a country that is looking for and always seeking an enemy of some kind, and frequently elicits mass hysteria through its media channels, demonizing the "opponent" in order to justify and win support for its aggressive policies, proclaiming threats to the world that do not exist.

This kind of zero-sum thinking and binary view of world affairs which dictates that there can never be long-lasting peace nor substantial compromises as the world, in U.S.' view, has to accommodate America's vision. It is etched into America's DNA, and most recently demonstrated by the Biden administration's seamless inheritance and wholehearted embrace of the confrontational approach of the previous Trump administration. It has continued the smear campaign against Chinese companies to meet protectionist ends, proliferated lies of genocide and forced labor, attempted to block China's advances in technology, sought to try and build coalitions of allies to isolate China and undermine business in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. /Reuters

Talk of collaboration and cooperation is quickly turning into window dressing for the more abrasive and erratic nature of U.S. foreign policy. While Sherman wanted to talk about the "rules" of competition between the two powers, actions speak louder than words and the United States had shown little willingness to respect China's interests. Instead, it continued to preach a one-sided mantra.

For example, despite the U.S. placing an ever-growing number of sanctions on China, to receive reciprocal counter-sanctions is deemed an outrage and contrary to the rule of law. The United States complains about "China's economic practices" while blacklisting hundreds of companies, putting pressure on foreign countries to do the same and yet dictating it has a divine right to more market access within China.

Likewise, it hypocritically yields the rhetoric of human rights to smear China while committing grotesque human rights abuses both at home and abroad itself. It is turning a blind eye on atrocities in many allied countries. Thus, when it talks of "cooperation" there is no good faith, and there is no credibility, it's only about making more demands and about how the U.S. can advance its interests at China's expense.

China won't have any of this. The relationship between the two powers must be that of equals, and based on mutual respect for common interests and a shared future. China will never cave to American bullying and will never tolerate attempts to undermine its national sovereignty or its economic interests. China doesn't endeavor to be an enemy of the United States, but will not stand idly by if it is treated like one. China welcomes good faith and genuine partnership, not lectures, preaching and subordinations. 

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)

A democracia morre no fim deste enredo - Míriam Leitão, O Globo

 Crônica de uma morte anunciada, a da democracia brasileira. Autores do crime: os milicos e o PR, mais algumas forças de PMs e eventuais lumpen-SS do bolsonarismo. 

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

A democracia morre no fim deste enredo

Míriam Leitão, O Globo (25/07/2021)

O agressor da democracia não vai parar. É como o agressor da mulher que, após perdoado, volta a atacar e muitas vezes o fim é a morte da vítima. Quem me fez esse raciocínio foi uma autoridade da República. Todos os dias a democracia apanha do presidente Jair Bolsonaro. Os generais e os civis que o cercam reforçam suas atitudes ou tentam justificá-lo. Essa violência só vai parar no fim deste governo, mas deixará cicatrizes. Quando as instituições estão funcionando, ninguém precisa dizer em notas e declarações.

— O presidente fala uma coisa e na hora que aperta ele recua, igualzinho ao homem que agride mulher. O agressor recua, garante que a ama, algumas pessoas asseguram que ele vai mudar e a violência cresce. Um dia ele chegará com um revólver e vai matar a mulher. É dessa certeza que surgiu a Lei Maria da Penha — explicou a pessoa com quem eu conversei sobre as crescentes ameaças do presidente e dos generais que o seguem, da reserva ou da ativa, nessa mesma lógica de agredir e negar que agrediu, prenunciando outro ato que seja ainda mais forte.

Nesse último episódio, revelado pelo “Estadão”, o ministro da Defesa, Braga Netto, enviou um recado ao presidente da Câmara, Arthur Lira, com o seguinte teor: “a quem interessar, se não tiver eleição auditável não terá eleição.” Foi dentro de uma escalada de agressões. Tudo se passou entre os dias 7 e 8 de julho. A nota do ministro da Defesa e dos comandantes militares tentando coagir a CPI do Senado foi no dia 7. No dia 8, Bolsonaro afirmou que ou vai ter o voto impresso ou não vai ter eleição, o general Braga Netto mandou o mesmo recado golpista, e o comandante da Força Aérea deu uma entrevista ao GLOBO elevando o tom da ameaça contida na nota, sendo em seguida apoiado pelo comandante da Marinha. O atentado foi combinado. Eram instituições funcionando. Com o objetivo de destruir a democracia.

O roteiro que se seguiu era previsível. Vieram os desmentidos com palavras ambíguas, as afirmações de que a democracia vai bem, e novo ataque do presidente. A nota de Braga Netto repetiu a ingerência em assuntos sobre os quais as Forças Armadas não têm que se pronunciar, ao defender o voto impresso que eles apelidaram de “auditável”. A quem disse que o ministro da Defesa estava invadindo a esfera política, Bolsonaro respondeu. “Quando vejo algumas autoridades tuitarem que isso é uma questão política, que certas pessoas não devem se meter nisso, quero dizer a vocês que isso é uma questão de segurança nacional. Eleições são uma questão de segurança nacional”, disse o presidente fechando aquele dia de debate sobre o recado do general. Isso autoriza as intervenções militares no tema que o presidente elegeu como pretexto. Todo golpe autoritário inventa seu pretexto. Esse é o de Bolsonaro. O de Donald Trump foram as acusações mentirosas de fraude. Ao fim, os trumpistas invadiram o Capitólio.

O agressor da democracia brasileira instalou cúmplices em postos estratégicos. Braga Netto é da reserva, mas a carreira militar é usada para ele sempre falar escudado nas Forças Armadas. Os atuais comandantes assumiram com o mandato de mostrar que os militares defendem o projeto político de Bolsonaro. Foram escolhidos para apoiar o agressor. O general Luiz Eduardo Ramos quando foi para o governo era da ativa e estava no comando do II Exército. Ele fez parte do canal dessa bolsonarização dos militares. O Almirante Flavio Rocha, da SAE, está ainda na ativa. O projeto é deixar sempre a impressão de que as Forças Armadas vão agir para proteger Bolsonaro.

O procurador-geral da República, Augusto Aras, e seus auxiliares diretos agiram várias vezes de forma contrária ao papel constitucional da PGR. O ministro André Mendonça teve atitudes e defendeu teses que feriam a Constituição. A Polícia Federal colocou seus documentos sob sigilo quando a publicidade tem que ser a regra numa República. Aras foi reconduzido, Mendonça foi indicado para a corte constitucional, um delegado da Polícia Federal é o ministro da Justiça. As agressões à democracia deixam cicatrizes. Algumas delas podem ser permanentes.

A democracia está sendo agredida. O agressor é o presidente da República. Ele tem ajudantes militares e civis. O maior risco é não ver o perigo, porque, como nos casos de violência contra a mulher, o fim pode ser a morte.

Emiliano Mundrucu: como um Brasileiro Negro desafiou a segregação nos EUA, 190 anos atrás - Mariana Schreiber (BBC News Brasil)

 

The black immigrant who challenged US segregation - nearly 190 years ago

Mariana Schreiber
BBC News Brasil, in Brasília, 24/07/2021

In 1832, the Mundrucu family refused to be barred from an area exclusively for white people on the steamboat Telegraph

It was a cold, rainy day in November 1832 when Brazilian immigrant Emiliano Mundrucu boarded a steamboat - the Telegraph - with his wife Harriet and their one-year-old daughter Emiliana.

They were taking a business trip from the Massachusetts coast to Nantucket Island, in the northeast of the United States.

During the crossing, Harriett, who wasn't feeling well, tried to seek shelter with her daughter in an area of the ship exclusively for women, but their path was blocked. The reason? They were black, and only white women were allowed in the ladies' cabin, comfortable accommodation with private berths.

At that time, slavery was no longer allowed in northern states (it persisted until the Civil War in the US south), but segregationist practices separating whites from "coloured" people were growing. 

However, the Mundrucu family did not accept their exclusion and the episode led to a pioneering lawsuit against racial segregation in the United States - proceedings that were big news at the time, but were later forgotten and have only recently been rediscovered by historians.

The case went to court after Harriett insisted on entering the ladies' cabin with her child, while the captain of the boat, Edward Barker, argued with Mundrucu - a Brazilian revolutionary who fled to Boston after being sentenced to death for his role in an attempt to create a republic in northeastern Brazil in 1824.

"Your wife a'n't a lady. She is a n---er," Barker told Mundrucu.

This 1833 report announces Mundrucu's victory in the first court case

The impasse was momentarily interrupted because a storm forced the boat to return to the coast. The next day, however, the couple once again tried to ensure Harriett and Emiliana travelled safely, instead of using the inferior cabin, where there were no berths and men and women had to sleep on mattresses on the wet floor.

Mundrucu argued that he had paid the most expensive fare for the trip, but the captain ordered the family to get off the vessel. The Brazilian declared that he would sue, promising to "go and get a writ out immediately".

This was the start of the lawsuit filed by Emiliano Mundrucu against Captain Edward Barker for breach of contract, in a case that received coverage on the front page of newspapers across the US, and which even made waves in Europe.

The little-known story is detailed in an article published in December by South African historian Lloyd Belton in the academic journal Slavery & Abolition. 

Belton studied Mundrucu's life for his master's degree at Columbia University in New York and is currently continuing his research studying for a PhD at the University of Leeds.

He says this lawsuit is the oldest known legal action against racial segregation in the United States. Before the discovery of this case, historians thought similar lawsuits had only begun a decade later.

"It is incredible that a black Brazilian immigrant was the first person in US history to challenge segregation in a courtroom." 

"And it is even more incredible that no-one knows who he is. In the 1830s in Boston, people knew who he was. In Brazil, in the 1830s, people knew who he was," Belton told BBC News Brasil.

image copyrightLibrary of Congress

image captionSegregation policies were common in northern states before the Civil War - in this 1856 engraving a black man is expelled from a railway carriage

Also a researcher of the life of Emiliano Mundrucu, American historian Caitlin Fitz, a professor at Northwestern University, says that it was not just the Mundrucu lawsuit which was pioneering, so were the couple's actions on the boat. 

The well-known episode in which ex-slave Frederick Douglass, one of the most important black activists in American history, entered a whites-only wagon on a train in Massachusetts (he was forcibly removed) occurred in 1841, almost a decade later.

"It's not just the first known lawsuit against segregated transportation, it's also just a really bold radical step to put your body on the line, on board a ship," she points out.

A well-connected revolutionary in Boston

But how did a Brazilian and his African-American wife become pioneers in the struggle against segregation in the US? 

For the historians, the answer can be found in Mundrucu's unusual life story - he was a soldier and revolutionary who had spent time in Haiti and Gran Colombia (modern-day Venezuela) before settling in Boston, where he forged important links with abolitionist leaders.

For Belton, the fact that Mundrucu came from a country where he had more rights than free African Americans in the US, such as the right to vote or join the army, fuelled his indignation against the segregation that his family suffered.

In addition, his past as an international revolutionary was important in opening the doors in Boston to a network of important contacts, such as the abolitionist community and Freemasons.

Prominent lawyers represented him against Barker: renowned abolitionist David Lee Child and Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster.

According to Prof Fitz, Mundrucu's case proved useful to anti-segregation activists because it reinforced their argument that racial oppression in the US was worse than anywhere else, although this statement was "very debatable", she finds. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. 

Prof Fitz believes Mundrucu's connections in Boston and the way the clash unfolded on board the Telegraph indicate that the action may have been premeditated.

"We sometimes assume that these acts of resistance were spontaneous, that Emiliano and Harriet just got angry. Maybe they were angry, but they were also strategic political thinkers who were thinking very carefully about the best way to bring about change," she says. 

Emiliano was the one who filed the lawsuit against the captain, but Prof Fitz highlights Harriet's role in the story.

"We don't know much about Harriet. She was an educated coloured woman born in Boston. We can infer that she was quite adventurous, because she married a Brazilian Catholic revolutionary who was still learning English. She was also incredibly brave and committed to fighting for racial equality, since she tried repeatedly to enter the ladies' cabin, putting her body on the line," she notes.

The impact of the lawsuit

image copyrightEwen Collection

image captionThe boat in question, the Telegraph, can be seen in this 1832 engraving

The central argument of the case was "breach of contract", since Mundrucu had bought the most expensive ticket, but the Brazilian's lawyers "also wanted to expose the inhumanity of segregationist practices," writes Belton. 

"No lady on God's earth, no educated white person, would have been subject to such treatment. The Mundrucus' colour was their only distinction," said Webster, according to the lawsuit records.

Barker's lawyers countered by saying that segregation on steamboats was common practice on the North American coast, an argument reinforced with testimony from captains from New York and Rhode Island.

The jury found Barker guilty of breach of contract and awarded Mundrucu $125 in damages in October 1833. But the captain managed to overturn the decision in January 1834 in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which found there was no evidence that Barker had explicitly agreed that the family would travel in the best cabins. 

After that, Belton notes, the Telegraph wrote racial segregation into its ticket policy, so that black people could only buy the cheapest tickets, to travel in the common cabin, while white people could only buy the most expensive ones. But this did not end the protests.

"One of the other broader impacts was that Mundrucu's defiance in 1833 directly inspired other black activists. There was another very famous African-American activist, David Ruggles, who did the exact same thing as Mundrucu on the same boat a few years later, in 1841," he notes.

According to Prof Fitz, the case led to a fundamental shift for campaigners.

"The lawsuit ends up being an important moment in the development of activists' legal tactics. It broadens their horizons and sort of opens the way for these more expansive legal arguments that attack the very legal basis of segregation itself," she says.

image copyrightBrazilian National Library/1822

image caption

A watercolour painting showing the racial hierarchy of 19th Century Brazilian society

Mundrucu gave up on taking the case to the US Supreme Court when he was pardoned by the Brazilian government for his participation in the failed uprising and he was able to resume his military career in Brazil in 1835.

In 1841, however, he returned to Boston, when he was prevented from taking up a military command post in the northeastern city of Recife, which Mundrucu also attributed to racial prejudice in a newspaper article in 1837.

Mundrucu had many influential opponents in this area because he had allegedly led a failed attack on the white population of Recife in 1824, inspired by the Haitian Revolution - the rebellion of slaves and free blacks that made Haiti independent from France in 1791.

A leader in Boston's cosmopolitan abolitionist community

image copyrightMoisés Patrício/Companhia das Letras

A painting in honour of Mundrucu made in 2020 by the artist Moisés Patrício for the book Black Encyclopedia

In the final two decades of his life in Boston, the Brazilian continued campaigning against slavery and for civil rights.

Mundrucu died in 1863 after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Act, which freed slaves from the southern US states.

According to Belton, Mundrucu celebrated this announcement alongside Frederick Douglass, at a meeting of the Union Progressive Association, a predominantly black abolitionist group of which Mundrucu was vice-president.

"By 1863, Mundrucu and his wife were well-respected by their fellow Bostonians, black and white. Both were honoured in their respective obituaries, in which they were remembered as generous, public-spirited and unusually well-travelled," the historian writes. 

"Mundrucu's story shows us just how connected the Americas were at that time. Brazil was connected to Venezuela, Venezuela to Haiti, Haiti to the USA. These black activists were very mobile. They could travel, they could speak various languages," he notes.

"And he was not the only one. There were other black immigrants from South America, the Caribbean, who were in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, and they were involved in these activist communities which were very cosmopolitan." 

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  Published

  19 February 2018

O Afeganistão derrotou o Império Britânico, a União Soviética e agora o Império Americano - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy, July 24, 2021 

Leaving Afghanistan    What happens to the country after the forever war ends?   Read More

“America’s greatest strategic disaster,” is how FP’s Michael Hirsh describes the United States’ war in Afghanistan, which after two decades is coming to an end with the withdrawal of US troops by Aug. 31. It didn’t have to be this way, Hirsh writes, quoting some military historians who believe the war was winnable. But as is, and even as Afghan forces regain some ground in a searing summer offensive, the Taliban is winning the propaganda war, affecting the morale of a “fearful population waiting for reassurance,” writes Lynne O’Donnell from Kabul. Now you can find all of FP’s coverage on the war and what comes after—a refugee crisis, a new strategic corridor for China, a broader reshuffling of geopolitical alliances—in one place, with our “Leaving Afghanistan” portal. There you’ll find our latest reporting, as well as thematic analysis around important topics like peace negotiations, Afghanistan’s neighbors, women in Afghanistan and the prospect of a Taliban takeover. There are few stories more complex, and heartbreaking, than this one, and FP is committed to bringing you insights into all aspects of it. Read selected highlights below:

Why Afghanistan Is America’s Greatest Strategic Disaster   Pompeo's plan to make peace with the resurgent Taliban is a sad reminder of all that went wrong in Afghanistan—and how it could have been otherwise.   READ MORE ›

China and the Taliban Begin Their Romance   Beijing has its eyes set on using Afghanistan as a strategic corridor once U.S. troops are out of the way.   READ MORE ›

‘It Will Not Be Just a Civil War’   Afghanistan’s foreign minister on what may await his country after the U.S. withdrawal.   READ MORE ›

Empire of Graveyards   Nineteen years ago, the United States began its war in Afghanistan. What is it leaving behind?   READ MORE ›