brazil 2009

 

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, has a Jewish population of about 100,000, out of a total population of over 185 million. Most Jews live in Brazil’s major cities – São Paulo, Río de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre.

            As in other Latin American countries during and in the aftermath of the Gaza operation, in Brazil, too, there was a considerable increase in antisemitic manifestations (see ASW 2008/9). Thereafter, the wave decreased.

            An official visit of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil in November provoked some opposition from Brazilian politicians. Ahmadinejad met with president Luis da Silva, and during his participation in a session of the Senate, congressman Alvaro Dias, from the opposition Socialist Democratic Brazilian Party (PSDB-PR), said: “It is a great mistake to receive with honor dictators such as the president of Iran… there is no pragmatism that can justify receiving a man who denies the Holocaust and wants to destroy the State of Israel.” Congressman Marcelo Itagiba from the same party held a placard saying: “Holocaust never again.” With him was Ben Abraham, president of survivors of the Nazis association in Brazil.

            While the activities of the radical anti-Zionist left diminished somewhat after the end of the Gaza operation, as in Argentina, the extreme right remained active. On May 18, the police confiscated more than 300 items of Nazi paraphenalia during a raid in five cities of the state of Rio Grande do Sul aimed at arresting members of neo-Nazi groups. The material included photos, DVDs, books, knives, clothes with swastikas, and three homemade bombs which were to have been set off at least two synagogues in the city of Porto Alegre, according to police inspector Paulo Cesar Jardim. The extremists were planning to attack Jews and gays.