'I Really Killed It’: The Most Anti-Environmental Lawmaker in Pará Seeks Reelection With a Bolsonarist Cliché (Portuguese)

This story excerpt was translated from Portuguese. To read the original story in full, visit Repórter Brasil. You may also view the original story on the Rainforest Journalism Fund website here. Our website is available in English, Spanish, bahasa Indonesia, French, and Portuguese.

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Ex-deputy Éder Mauro (PL-PA) assumes to have executed several people and camouflages performance contrary to rural peoples and the environment with moralistic speech; candidate is the target of 101 complaints to the ombudsman for his performance as a police officer

After praying and singing the national anthem, federal deputy Éder Mauro (PL-PA), candidate for reelection, begins his speech saying that, if the left comes back to power, incest will be legalized, "so that the father can marry the daughter". It is a lie used by the former delegate throughout the campaign and that was repeated again in Belém (PA), during an act of celebration of September 7th. But the moralistic tone, along with the performance as a policeman with pretension of justice, serves to camouflage another facet of the politician: that of a ruralist who systematically acts against the environment and the people of the countryside.

Éder Mauro, 61, was a Civil Police delegate in Pará for 30 years, between 1984 and 2014, when he was elected federal deputy for the first time. He has said that he "killed many people," but made one caveat: "they were all bandits". For his actions as a police officer, he was the target of at least 101 complaints in the Ombudsman's Office of the Integrated System of Public Security and Social Defense (Sieds) of Pará, which include accusations of murder, torture, and home invasions, according to a survey obtained by Repórter Brasil. The former deputy was cited in the final report of the Pará Legislative Assembly's 'CPI of Militias' in 2015, but ended up not being indicted.

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The politician uses a skull emoticon on Instagram to boast about his position as leader of the bullet caucus in the Amazon. But the analysis of his performance in the House suggests that he could exchange the image for an ox: the deputy is the third worst placed in Ruralômetro 2022, a tool developed by Repórter Brasil that evaluates the performance of the House on issues such as environment, Indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and rural workers. The ranking, which is in its second edition, makes it possible to know the "ruralist fever" of each congressman. In it, Éder Mauro is burning hot with a temperature of 40.9°C.