Moldy bread, chicken feet, fishbone and transgenic tomatoes are on the menu at “Ristorante da Bolsonaro”, a protest organized by Brazilian activists in Rome, where the Brazilian president arrives this Friday (29).
The menu, printed in green and yellow, with a gun-shaped hand over the Brazilian flag and the slogan “since 2018”, will be distributed in restaurants in the Italian capital and in places where there will be a concentration of visitors due to the G20 summit, which starts on Saturday.
“A selection of dishes born out of the despair of unemployed Brazilians”, says the menu, which also mentions environmental problems and the situation of the pandemic in Brazil.
The first course, for example, is leftover pasta heated with “charcoal from forests destroyed in arson by landowners who support Bolsonaro”; the veal bone, served as a second course, is accompanied by a “genetically modified tomato peel paste containing 421 pesticides”.
There are also dishes referring to what activists describe as racism and machismo in the president’s statements — for example, “the lightest Afro-descendant there weighed seven arrobas”, said during a lecture in Rio, in 2017, in reference to quilombola populations.
“The Ristorante da Bolsonaro in Rome is a work of fantasy. The despair of the Brazilian people, on the other hand, is real,” says the menu, which says the country cannot be considered a member of the G20.
Anti-Bolsonaro activists planned to stage a demonstration in piazza Navona, where the Brazilian embassy is located, where the president is going to stay. The security reinforced by the Italian government, however, led organizations, including the Free Lula Committee, to opt for the new strategy.
On Thursday night, there was still the expectation that groups against and in favor of the president would demonstrate in Rome during his stay in Italy. When consulted, the Department of Communication had not commented until 4 pm (Brazil time).
Bolsonaro arrives in Rome at noon this Friday (local time, 7 am in Brazil) and meets the president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, in the early evening.
On Saturday and Sunday, he participates in the G20 summit and has bilateral meetings. On the second, he travels to the city of Anguillara Vêneta, where he receives the title of honorary citizen.
This is the Brazilian president’s first trip to Europe since the beginning of the pandemic. As he declares himself not vaccinated, he must undergo frequent tests to detect the coronavirus.
At the G20, the Brazilian delegation should defend the reduction of subsidies in sectors that interest the country, such as agriculture, according to Sarquis José Sarquis, secretary of Foreign Trade and Economic Affairs at the Itamaraty.
The ambassador says that some domestic support programs of large economies in the European Union, the United States, China and India “end up distorting market conditions and artificially reducing prices, which makes countries very competitive in food, like Brazil and Argentina, do not benefit from these markets”.
On Tuesday, before returning to Brazil, the president attends a ceremony in Pistoia in honor of the Brazilian soldiers who died in World War II.
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