Universal Church Pastors Launch Court Crusade Against Brazilian Author Over His Tweet

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – J. P. Cuenca feels like a “Kafka of the tropics”. This is not the first time, because a few years ago this Brazilian author was involved in a surreal situation when he learned that he had been dead to the authorities for some time. He converted that bureaucratic imbroglio into material for his novel ‘Descobri que estava morto’ (I Found Out I Was Dead), from 2016.

Now the issue transcends him and what is at stake is more important. Cuenca is the target of a broad legal offensive because of a June tweet. Over one hundred pastors of the Universal Church, one of the most powerful evangelical denominations in Brazil, are demanding compensation in the courts because of this sentence: “The Brazilian will only be free when the last Bolsonaro is hanged from the guts of the last pastor of the Universal Church.”

For João Paulo Cuenca, what is at stake is the right to freedom of expression, and the right to offense, in a country polarized to the extreme under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, considered “a fascist and a genocide” by the author. Cuenca recounted the details of the case last week in a café in São Paulo. He pointed out, right at the start, that the tweet is “a paraphrase of a metaphor almost 300 years old,” written by Frenchman Jean Meslier, about the elite and the Catholic Church. Although he explained this on the very same night of his Twitter, he still suffered attacks and threats.

In Brazil, these are auspicious times for visceral controversies and painful discussions. In two days, the novelist lost his opinion column on the Deutsche Welle’s Brazilian news website. The German public channel dismissed him when it considered the tweet’s content contrary to its values. In its note, the DW also repudiated “any hate speech and incitement to violence”. The novelist is annoyed by this reference, considering it defamatory because, he insists, the sentence should not be interpreted literally. To this end, he placed it within quotation marks and added the elucidation.

Federal Deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, the President’s son, joined the controversy on Twitter, announced a lawsuit and, from then on, cyber-pandemonium ensued. The author says that his mailboxes on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were filled with insults and death threats.

Several weeks passed and when the social media storm subsided, came the next surprise. Cuenca learned that pastors of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God – founded and led by Bishop Edir Macedo, now one of Bolsonaro’s most valuable allies – filed legal proceedings against him for moral damages in scattered and remote cities. First there were ten, then dozens, and by last Thursday the complaints had reached 111. The most peculiar aspect is that these are individual lawsuits brought in courts in municipalities scattered across most of Brazil, small towns, far from any airport. Each pastor is claiming between R$10,000 and R$20,000 in damages. Together they are asking for between R$1.1 million (US$200,000) and R$2.2 million.

The tweet-triggering factor, explains the author, was a news story he read that day. It reported that the Brazilian government would subsidize evangelical churches’ channels and broadcasting networks, despite their being heavily in debt to the government. The Pentecostal evangelicals were the crucial electoral support for Bolsonaro, as no other community supported his rise to power as unanimously.

“The plaintiffs’ goal is to create an indefensible case, a case that will drive me crazy because I have no financial or logistical capacity to defend myself in all these small towns,” explains the novelist, who spoke with EL PAÍS in the Spanish he learned from his father, an Argentine immigrant. This flood of lawsuits scattered across a continental territory is a huge challenge for anyone.

Attorney Fernando Hideo Lacerda, who took over Cuenca’s defense pro bono, points out: “The complaints are not identical, but I see a pattern, which makes us think that this is a nationally orchestrated move. Although each one bears the signature of a different Universal Church pastor, the wording suggests that they were written by attorneys. With similar texts, they claim compensation in similar amounts.”

In some cases, the lawsuits are virtually identical, such as those signed by Pastors Lucio Furtado, in Unaí, and Rogério da Silva, in Ariquemes. The first city is located in Minas Gerais and the second in Rondônia – over 2,500 kilometers separate them. The fact that no lawsuit has been brought in the largest city in the country, São Paulo, where Cuenca has lived since he left Rio de Janeiro, is rather striking to the accused and his defense. Lacerda adds a detail to reinforce his theory. The pastors have resorted to a method that exempts them from paying the court fees should they lose.

Asked about its pastors’ lawsuits, the Universal Church emphasizes that they are independent to decide if they should seek the courts. It adds that “freedom of expression is not an absolute right. In Brazil, a ‘satire’ or ‘metaphor’ is not allowed to promote despicable ideas such as Nazism, racism or prejudice of any kind, including religious prejudice.” Coincidentally, Cuenca shares the same publishing house in Brazil as Edir Macedo, the leader of the Universal Church who built a multinational religious empire with 10,000 temples in dozens of countries, totaling millions of faithful. Both publish on ‘Planeta’.

The author says that with that tweet, which he subsequently deleted by advice of his attorneys, he seized the initiative for an instant in a political scenario marked by an opposition that is constantly on the defensive. Since his inauguration, Bolsonaro and his allies have decided the political agenda and public debate. “The mechanics is as follows: they do or say things, we react, we advertise for them. By paraphrasing an almost 300-year-old metaphor, for an instant I reversed the game. I made them react because they felt offended. They believe they have a monopoly on offense.” The author is concerned about the normalization of threats and coarseness uttered by Bolsonaro and his allies against the Workers’ Party, homosexuals, transsexuals, and followers of African-origin religions…

Cuenca, author of four books translated into eight languages, is not the first Brazilian involved in such a case. In 2007 the protagonist was Folha de S. Paulo reporter Elvira Lobato, who wrote about the dealings of the Universal Church. About one hundred pastors took her to Court. She won all of the cases after the newspaper sent attorneys and journalists to each city. It cost a fortune.

The novelist claims that in addition to defending himself with his limited means, he intends to fight back in Court. “If this is normalized by the legal system and by Brazilian society, tomorrow it could happen to anyone else who offends them,” he warns. His strategy is to try to demonstrate that the pastors are not seeking justice. “If I can demonstrate that they are attacking me using the legal system to intimidate me in a coordinated fashion, if I manage to win, secure compensation and they lose, this case will become paradigmatic.” He is aware of the challenge. “The climate is not the same as in 2007. It’s a different Brazil. Now we are governed by a fascist, we are heading toward a far-right evangelical theocracy.”

Cuenca intends to make the most of this experience. Just as he did with his previous novel after finding out about his official death, he is incorporating material from this new odyssey into his next work. He began to write it during a stay in Madrid and it already has a working title: ‘Nada é mais antigo que o passado recente’ (Nothing is older than the recent past).

Source: El País

More: Brazil news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error