Did Jair Bolsonaro’s cannibal rhetoric, I’d eat an Indian remark, lose him Brazil polls?

A video of Jair Bolsonaro saying he would eat an indigenous person went viral in the final days of his presidential campaign for the Brazil elections leading to ridicule and mudslinging from his opponents.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former leftist Brazilian president won the 2022 presidential elections, beating far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in what is probably the thinnest margin of an electoral victory in the South American nation. 

But back in 2016, Bolsonaro wasn’t always the rhetoric-spewing far-right firebrand he has become. At the time, he polled in single digits, unsurprising for someone who sang praises of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the chief of Brazil’s secret service who allegedly contributed towards the disappearance of upwards of 500 people. 

At around the same time, a New York Times reporter interviewed Bolsonaro for over an hour, leading to the far-right leader to make the claim that he would eat an indigenous person in the Amazon rainforest. Predictably, the clip of him saying that became a hot button issue on Election Day on Sunday. 

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Silva’s supporters jumped at the chance to attacking the leader, calling him a cannibal ranging from the fictional Hannibal Lecter to the very real Jeffrey Dahmer. 

At the time, Bolsonaro had told Simon Romero of the New York Times, “I wanted to see the Indian being cooked. I’d eat an Indian, no problem at all.”

Of course, social media picked up on it pretty quickly and came up with Canibalsonaro, a portmanteau of cannibal and the far-right leader. The politician’s comment and the subsequent aftermath just went on to show how the presidential race had descended into mudslinging in the final days of the two politicians’ campaigns. 

Accusations included being Free Masons, devil worship and pedophilia. Silva, for his part, has had to publicly denounce any links or to making any pacts with the Devil.

Since the clip went viral, Bolsonaro in a TV interview said that he was being labelled a cannibal unfairly in what he claims was a video from “30 years ago.”