President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) and Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Italian Northern League party, met this Tuesday (2) to participate in a solemn act in honor of the more than 450 small squares killed in combat during Monday World War.
As it happens annually, the ceremony was held at the San Rocco cemetery, in front of the monument to the Unknown Soldier, erected in memory of the Brazilian military. In total, more than 20,000 soldiers from the country were in Italy fighting fascism.
After the performance of the national anthems, Bolsonaro laid flowers on the monument, and an evangelical pastor made a brief address. Father Dom Piero Sabadini, in turn, celebrated an ecumenical service and blessed the memorial. The religious replaced Dom Tardelli, who every year conducts the ceremony, but this time he canceled his participation because he was “totally opposed to the instrumentalization of the celebration”.
A member of the parish of San Rocco, on condition of anonymity, told the sheet that religious leaders do not agree with Salvini and Bolsonaro, whom he called a dictator, meeting at the ceremony. The day before, on Monday (1st), on a visit to the Basilica of St. Anthony, in Padua, Bolsonaro was also not received by any of the Catholic authorities.
During a speech at the event, Salvini apologized to the Brazilian president “due to the confusion of recent days”, referring to the protests against Bolsonaro, in which the police even used water cannons to disperse protesters. “Sorry for the controversy of some who manage to make divisions even on a day of remembrance, of honor, like today. The friendship of our peoples is stronger than the controversy of some who do not represent the Italian people,” said the senator.
Both the Italian politician and the Brazilian Defense Minister, General Walter Souza Braga Netto, who is accompanying Bolsonaro on the trip to Italy, mentioned in their speeches the expression “the snake will smoke”, one of the slogans of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (FEB).
Bolsonaro already said he was moved. “For the first time I am on Italian soil, sacred ground for us. We are commemorating those who fell in the struggle for what is most sacred in us, freedom.”
The president also recalled that around 30 million Brazilians are of Italian origin — the justification given by the mayor of Anguillara Vêneta for granting the title of honorary citizen to the Brazilian leader.
Bolsonaro and Salvini have a lot in common. On the one hand, Covid’s final CPI report called for the president to be indicted for crimes of responsibility and crimes against humanity. On the other hand, the Italian ally has a history of xenophobic speeches and is facing a criminal case for kidnapping.
In 2019, Salvini, then minister of the interior, denied access to Italian ports to a boat belonging to the NGO Open Arms that had rescued 147 immigrants in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya. During the stalemate, several desperate migrants threw themselves into the sea in an attempt to swim ashore.
The vessel was only allowed to dock 19 days later, but not by Salvini’s decision.
It required the intervention of the Public Ministry of Agrigento, Sicily, which ordered the disembarkation of the migrants. If convicted of the crime he is accused of, Salvini faces up to 15 years in prison.
Also in 2019, the ultra-right leader refused to participate in Italy’s Liberation Day, which commemorates the country’s triumph over Nazi occupation during World War II. At the time, he was accused of cooperating with the “normalization of fascism”.
Questioned by journalists on Tuesday, Salvini relativized the accusations against Bolsonaro and said that trying him is an attribution of the Brazilian justice system. The president, similarly to what he has done in all the events he took part in on his trip to Italy, left the place without speaking to the press.
According to members of the Northern League, the meeting should have taken place in Rome, as Bolsonaro participated in the G20 summit, held in the Italian capital. But strategically, Salvini chose to meet him in Pistoia, taking the opportunity to open his party’s headquarters in the city.
The senator’s move is clear. Four years under the control of center-right leaders, Pistoia will go to the polls next year, and a victory could have high strategic value for the Northern League.
The Italian politician’s tactics, however, did not go unnoticed by the city’s residents. Local leaders, already unhappy with Bolsonaro’s visit to Pistoia, scheduled two protests for this Tuesday.
An act in the morning took place simultaneously with the ceremony in memory of the soldiers and gathered around 300 people; another, in the afternoon (around 11 am, BrasÃlia time), had around 900 demonstrators.
Both acts took place peacefully and with much criticism of the president. One of the posters displayed by activists showed an image of an area in Manaus used by the city to open hundreds of graves for Covid victims. “That’s what the Amazon is for, according to Bolsonaro,” it read.
Internationally isolated, the Brazilian leader had a lean schedule during his time in Italy. Besides Salvini, the president only officially met Alessandra Buoso, mayor of Anguillara Vêneta, who received him on Monday for the controversial award of the title of honorary citizen.
.
