Public Relations Blunder of the Month: José Serra

“Time to pick up the gun (off the pig!)”: Governor José Serra of São Paulo at a press event this week with a Belgian FAL .762 rifle. The man very nearly faced a firing squad at the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile in 1973. The Chilean officer who let him go did face a firing squad for doing it. Mr. Governor, your media handlers have just produced the top 2010 campaign poster — for the other candidates.

Cover photo from the Folha de S. Paulo, May 7. Rubber bullets, again, are being fired in what appear to be aimed shots at head level by São Paulo shock troops. Proper procedure: fire in generalized volleys, ricochet projectiles from ground. Not used as instructed, the round no longer qualifies as nonlethal.

The USP students have taken over the dean’s office, protesting Serra’s higher education policies.

Folks who were at the Racionais MCs show at the Praça da Sé say the official version of events was a lie.

Work on the Line 4 subway project — which produced the Great Smoking Hole of Pinheiros back in January — has resumed, with oversight by the ITA.

Causes of the Smoking Hole will not be clarified until October, however.

Metrô workers are about to strike again.

I have actually set myself the task of trying to play devil’s advocate in favor of Gov. Serra — just to keep the bar conversation lively.

And I still insist that on those rare occasions when I do read coverage Gov. Serra’s remarks in the press — this latest Os Racionais incident excepted — the man usually seems to be perfectly lucid, diplomatic, and exercising his legitimate mandate without resorting to gabbling nonsense.

Such as the notion promoted by the last governor that the federal government conspired with criminal gangs tied to the Colombian FARC to murder policemen in order to undermine his candidacy for the presidency.

Alckmin.

He said that.

Could he prove it? No.

Can he prove he got no funny money in the last campaign? Reportedly not. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop on that one.

Another “pointing a gun straight at the news photographer” photo from recent months. According to the Netroots, “Oaxaca paramilitaries were merely firing into the air” on the day Brad Will of Indymedia was killed. 

So I personally continue to think that Toucan on Toucan violence explains a lot of what you read and don’t read about what the latest bald Toucan is up to. Warring noise machines, skeevy elements in the local press, that kind of thing.

If the guy really could bring some of the more grotesque pharaonic traffic projects of Maluf to a succesful finish, put the finances in order, and at least not stand in the way of cleaning up corruption, São Paulo could conceivably be better off for it, Toucan or no Toucan. I don’t vote there, mind you, but I do pay taxes.

But it is getting harder and harder to figure out what the hell the guy’s handlers are up to, despite his Eliot Spitzer political stylings.

Opposition critics often credit the man with having Machiavellian Mad Ave. supermen manipulating the press for him.

And indeed, some Brazilian press outlets are manipulated for partisan ends — and valuable consideration, and often some combination of the two — every single day.

It’s the normal order of business.

See Abril Dissident: Cooking Up Libel at Veja Magazine.

But you look at photo op like the one shown above and you wonder whether or not the political marketing geniuses are not a little overrated — and overpaid. Or simply off-message and off the reservation.

Who is responsible for this PR disaster? And why do they still have a job?

The problem of police violence, and violence generally, hits close to home for us, of course.

My wife was inside a bank by the Vila Madalena Metrô station last year when it was robbed at gunpoint. Got out before the PMs came in blasting.

We have been seeing quite a few arrastões in the area recently. We live on a very modest street, in a “popular dwelling,” not in a high-rise apartment building. But still: There’s a gringo in the house. People might get the wrong idea.

Look, put it this way: Our neighborhood used to have very little crime.

Then it got a heavier, more ostensive PM presence.

Now it has more crime. Just ask the neighbors.

Not even mentioning, notionally, the value of “on the arm” free lunches and on-duty beers. If that sort of thing were taking place.

I have been reading A Ditadura Encurralada recently, as I mentioned — Historian Elio Gaspari’s look at the internal dynamic of the military regime, particularly as it moved toward the “transition back to democracy.”

A process that is ongoing, mind you.

An exemplary narrative recounted by Gaspari comes to mind here.

I may garble this somewhat in the retelling from memory, but you will grok the gist of what I am driving at.

A former secretary to one of the former president-generals complains to Gen. Golbery — Gen. Geisel’s right-hand man and Minister of Civil Affairs and architect of the national intelligence service, the SNI.

The SNI, which Golbery would later describe as his Frankenstein’s monster.

The doorman of the secretary’s apartment building, on the job for 11 years, supporting a wife and 4 kids, has been arrested. Some cars in the building’s garage have been broken into and their radios stolen.

The doorman, taken in for questioning by the military police, shows up several days later with signs of having been heavily beaten and tortured.

He confides to the former member of the president-general’s inner circle that he has been beaten and tortured by Rio PMs.

Hooking the old hand-cranked field telephone up to the old scrotal sack — and where did you learn that one? The pau de arara. The bastinado and palmatória. The usual pleasantries.

President-General Geisel tends to fly off the handle at reports like this. He believes torture, corruption and anarchy in the ranks are a plot to undermine his authority as president-general.

The hard men believe that punishing the hard men for swinish acts committed in their hog heaven would only give ammunition to the vast international Communist conspiracy.

So Geisel sends Golbery to investigate.

The PMs suggest a “confrontation” between the Castello Branco confidante who brought the complaint and the doorman himself.

In this “confrontation” session, the doorman explains that the personal friend of the president-general must have simply misunderstood him.

He was merely conveying rumors that he had heard about police torture, in order to express his surprise upon discovering that, in fact, he was not going to be tortured at all.

The “signs of torture” were actually an allergic reaction he suffered when nervous.

Case closed.

The president-general of Brazil takes a personal interest in a police brutality case and gets stonewalled for his troubles.

Mexican human rights officials, and the Mexican president, conduct a media blitz designed to cast a smokescreen over a rape and murder allegedly committed by Mexican soldiers.

Rio’s reform governor pledges to remove the caveirão armored vehicle from use in police patrolling.

He calls the local PM on the carpet for a security failure at a public press conference early in his term.

“I told you to guard the airport highway. German tourists got hijacked. What the hell is up with that?” He looks like a take-charge kind of guy.

The caveirão is still in service.

See Bala Perdida: A Letter from Olaria.

You get the picture?

Look, don’t make me come out and say it, okay?

If you come out and say it, you can find yourself on an enemies list.

Consider the case of Mr. Gomide of the Estadão.

Moral of the story: You are not in Kansas anymore.

The Neil Cavuto of TV Record Rio: The Colonel is a personal friend of mine! Anyone who questions the integrity of the police is a Communist! See NMM(-TV)SNBCNNBS: TV Record on the Incident at Vila Joazina.