Brazils

The former president is taken in the capital Brasilia days before starting his prison time for leading coup attempt.

Brazil’s federal police have arrested former President Jair Bolsonaro, days before he was set to begin his 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup attempt, according to his lawyer and a close aide.

Bolsonaro, who has been under house arrest since August, was transferred to detention on Saturday, his lawyer said.

“He has been imprisoned, but I don’t know why,” Celso Vilardi, one of his lawyers, told the AFP news agency.

A close aide told The Associated Press news agency that the embattled former leader was taken to the police headquarters in the capital, Brasilia.

Bolsonaro’s aide Andriely Cirino confirmed to AP that the arrest took place at about 6am (03:00 GMT) on Saturday.

The force said in a short statement, which did not name Bolsonaro, that it acted on the request of Brazil’s Supreme Court.

Neither Brazil’s federal police nor the Supreme Court provided more details at the time of publication.

Sentenced for coup attempt

The 70-year-old former president was taken from his house in a gated community in the upscale Jardim Botanico neighbourhood to the federal police headquarters, Cirino said.

Local media reported that Bolsonaro, who was Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022, was expected to begin serving his sentence sometime next week after the far-right leader exhausted all appeals of his conviction for leading a coup attempt.

The 70-year-old Bolsonaro’s legal team had previously argued that he should serve his 27-year sentence for a botched coup bid in 2022 at home, arguing imprisonment would pose a risk to his health.

Bolsonaro was convicted in September over his bid to prevent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking power following the 2022 election, which he lost.

The effort saw crowds of rioters storm government buildings a week after Lula’s inauguration, evoking comparisons with the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol after his close ally, President Donald Trump, lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Trump has branded the prosecution of his far-right ally a “witch-hunt” and made it a major issue in US relations with Brazil, imposing stiff tariffs on the country as a form of retribution.

Trump and Lula held what Brazil described as a constructive meeting on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Kuala Lumpur last month, raising hope for improved relations after stinging US tariffs.

Lula said the meeting with Trump was “great” and added that their countries’ negotiating teams would get to work “immediately” to tackle tariffs and other issues.

In an open-air market in the Brazilian city of Belém, I had a problem. It was breakfast time and I wanted a drink, but the long menu of fruit juices was baffling. Apart from pineapple (abacaxi) and mango (manga), I’d never heard of any of the drinks. What are bacuri, buriti and muruci? And what about mangaba, tucumã and uxi? Even my phone was confused. Uxi, it informed me, is a Zulu word meaning “you are”.

But then I started to recognise names that I’d heard on my six-week voyage from the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon. There was cucuaçu. I’d picked one of those cacao-like pods in a Colombian village about 1,900 miles (3,000km) back upriver. And even further away, in Peru, there was açai: a purple berry growing high up on a wild palm. The Amazon, it seems, is vast and varied, but also remarkably similar along its astonishing length.

My six-week Amazon adventure had begun with a conference on sustainable tourism in Peru. It was 2023 and Belém, on the other side of South America, had been declared the location for the Cop30 conference. Determined to cut down on air miles, I set off downriver, heading towards Belém, using public river boats, all the time seeking out people who were working to preserve this incredible environment. I did night walks with guides who blasted powdered concoctions up my nose to make me “alert” (not that kind of concoction – herbal stuff). I swam across the river (then enjoyed lots of electric eel stories) and repeatedly had the disorienting experience of not knowing which country I was in. Until I reached Manaus, I met only a handful of visitors, but I was always wondering about tourism and its potential role in the Amazonian future.

The idea that tourism might help in the battles against the climate crisis and biodiversity loss is one fraught with problems. Flying is the most CO₂-intensive way of travelling. Tourism is a luxury. Surely the only way to save the planet is to stop privileged outsiders flying around the globe, especially for self-indulgent rainforest tours?

On the Mamori, a tributary of the great river in central Brazil, surrounded by the smoke from forest fires, I was given a salutary answer to this by a schoolboy. “My father is a rancher,” he told me. “We burn the forest to get grass to feed our cattle. In emergencies we can also sell the cleared land, but not the jungle. That’s worthless. But I don’t want to be a rancher, I want to be a tour guide.”

When I later met his school teacher, he confirmed that other local teenagers felt the same. “To be honest, this generation don’t want the hard physical work of clearing land; they’d prefer tourism jobs. The problem is we don’t get many visitors and never see any NGOs or nature projects.” The ranching life for these people is brutally hard and unrewarding. They want a way out, but are trapped in a cycle of deforestation.

Back in Belém, having downed my juice, I moved on through the market, looking for food. My local guide was Junior who recommended the local favourite: fried fish and açai berry sauce. “Açai is making good money for small farmers,” he told me. “They can grow it around their houses mixed in with other trees.”

In the Peruvian village where I had first come across açai, the people explained that the fruit had only ever been an “emergency” wild food for them, but they were happy to find that it now commanded good prices. Their old way of life, hunting river turtles, had ended because of declining numbers and a government ban. Poaching inside the national park had been the only alternative until açai saved them.

Junior and I went off to explore the various river islands beyond the Belém waterfront, heading for the tiny green atoll of Ilha do Combu. The little wooden ferry took us up a narrow creek lined with abundant vegetation and watchful kingfishers where we met Charles, who runs a small handicraft shop and sells his own açai. “It goes with anything,” he told me. “We can eat it with fish or make ice-cream.”

We walked through mixed groves of palms, cacao and dozens of other tree varieties. Up above, scarlet macaws clattered around and a family of giant fruit bats complained about the noise. This productive mosaic is a way to provide income and benefit nature. I picked up a beautiful seed the size of an egg. “Rubber,” said Charles, “We do collect it, but not in commercial quantities.”

In the second half of the 19th century, the discovery of rubber triggered a catastrophic series of events that still haunt the Amazon. Hailed as a wonder product, it started an exploitation stampede. Fortunes were made. At Iquitos, 2,700 miles upriver from Belém, merchants imported bottled drinking water from Belfast and sent their laundry to Lisbon.

For most Amazonian people, however, rubber was a disaster. Forced into ever harsher labour conditions, tribes became dispersed and broken, their languages and cultures mangled. After seeds were smuggled out to Asia in 1876 – via Kew Gardens, where they were germinated – the boom ended, but the aftermath was bitter resentment and suspicion.

Açai has not had the same impact, but is not without controversies. Overblown hyperbole about superfoods has dented its reputation. On Ilha do Combu, however, Charles wasn’t worried. Local demand was strong and prices good.

Next day, I took the ferry out to Ilha Cotijuba near the mouth of the river. The Amazon had one last novelty to impress me with. On the far side of the island I found a small cafe on a beach. The owner, Lena, served a delicious lunch: river fish baked in banana leaves, a pineapple ceviche and a dessert with some pale green berries that I’ve never seen before.

“Like açai,” she told me. “But different.”

Hidden away on those islands, the Amazon still holds secrets.

The trip was provided by sustainable tourism specialist Sumak Travel, which offers tailor-made trips to Brazil and the rest of Latin America