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Two feuding Amazonian politicians settled their differences with an ultimate fighting-style rumble in the jungle that has fuelled fears over the increasingly antagonistic nature of Brazilian democracy.
Simão Peixoto, the mayor of Borba, a town 90 miles south of Manaus, was publicly challenged to the fistfight in September by a former councillor called Erineu da Silva.
Silva, who uses the nickname Mirico, was reportedly livid at the mayor’s alleged failure to conserve a water park near the Madeira river and demanded a showdown with a politician he called a 'rotter' and a 'crook'.
Peixoto accepted the challenge, publishing an online video in which he indicated his readiness to thrash his antagonist by pummelling his palm with his fist. “Show your face!” the mayor told Mirico.
Peixoto softened his tone after some voters suggested that was conduct unbecoming of the man elected to govern their Amazon outpost. The mayor assured citizens he would only take part in an organised altercation inside a ring.
“I’m not a street fighter … I’m the mayor of the municipality of Borba,” the politician said on his official Facebook page in early November. “[But] if he really wants to fight … we’re ready to fight … I’ve always been a winner.”
Soon the fighting commenced, with hundreds of paying spectators packing the gymnasium of a local school.
Peixoto swaggered into the ring at about 2.30am, surrounded by aides and carrying a black towel stamped with the name 'Jesus'. The mayor appeared in a bellicose mood as he stamped on the platform and squared up to his rival. “Twice he went over to his opponent’s corner and ran his finger across his throat – the sign of a reaper,” reported the website BNC Amazonas.
Witnesses to the 13-minute skirmish – which Peixoto’s team live streamed – said Borba’s conservative mayor landed several painful blows. In the opening seconds, the 39-year-old briefly knocked Mirico on to the ground.
But Mirico, 45, battled back. After three shambolic rounds, “the mayor of Borba was almost unable to walk because of the number of low kicks he received from his adversary,” reported BNC Amazonas.
“The mayor took such a beating his jaw dropped,” another regional website, Fato Amazônico, reported.
Even so, Peixoto prevailed. “Strangely, Mirico lost on points,” Fato Amazônico said. “‘A stitch-up,’ spectators shouted, disgusted with the result.”
The brawl in Borba was not the only episode of political violence reported in Brazil this weekend. On Sunday December 12th, security guards and supporters of the country’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, were accused of assaulting journalists as they covered a presidential visit. “What we are seeing is the reflex of a climate of hostility towards the press created by the president,” tweeted Andréia Sadi, a prominent political journalist.
Some Brazilians saw the Amazonian dust-up as further evidence of the truculent political atmosphere that has gripped their country since Bolsonaro’s 2018 election.
“This is what politics in Brazil has become of late. It’s frightening,” one critic tweeted, alongside footage of the fisticuffs in Borba. “We’ve become the wild west.”