A characteristic of good politics is to question old certainties, to change demands, sometimes even entire election programs. Brazil’s Vice President Hamilton Mourão goes even further: He not only changes the faction or the party, but the color of the skin.
Mourão, a retired general, is 68 years old. D., who ran alongside Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. At that time, Mourão declared to the Supreme Electoral Court that he was “indigenous”. Now, four years later, the registration form suddenly says “white” in the “race/skin color” category.
Hamilton Mourão, 69, became vice president in 2019. He is now running for a seat in the Senate.
(Photo: Lucio Tavora/Xinhua/Imago)
Astonishing? Certainly. At the same time, this is not unusual in Brazil, because like the vice president, several dozen MPs have also changed their ethnic information in recent years. And in the 2020 local elections there were even several thousand candidates who were suddenly blacker or whiter than in previous votes.
Skin color and origin are basically a question of self-assessment in Brazil. Descendants of indigenous peoples, African slaves and European and Asian immigrants live in the South American country. There was never an official racial segregation; on the contrary, a thorough mix was desired. The aim was to sort of wash away African and indigenous heritage, but the end result was an image of Brazil as a happy melting pot – a cliché that masks widespread racism.
There can be several reasons why politicians change the information about their skin color. Fear of discrimination makes some “white”, while the rise of the Afro-Brazilian movement makes others “black”. However, experts fear that there are often completely different and unfair motives: Two years ago, Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court decided on new regulations to promote non-white candidates. It’s possible that the prospect of extra money and longer election commercials has led some politicians to be surprisingly flexible about their skin color.
And finally, of course, there are also tactical reasons for the election: Critics believe that the fact that Hamilton Mourão stated “indigenous” as his race in 2018 could have less to do with his self-image than with his racist comments. During a performance at the time, Mourão said that Brazil had inherited the “crookedness” of the Africans and the “slowness” of the natives. A storm of indignation followed, and to calm the situation, Mourão dug out his indigenous heritage, so the theory goes.
Many see this confirmed since it became known that he intends to run as a “white” candidate in the upcoming elections. In the meantime, however, Mourão has also spoken out himself: It was all an unfortunate mistake, he says. Of course he is proud of his indigenous heritage! With this he now occurs in the elections in Rio Grande do Sul. Incidentally, three quarters of the people in the southern Brazilian state stated in the last census that they were white. Indigenous roots, such as Mourão, have less than one percent.