Jair Bolsonaro

Biography

Jair Messias Bolsonaro was born in 1955 in Glicério, São Paulo state. He entered the Brazilian Army's cadet preparatory school in 1973 and graduated from the Agulhas Negras Military Academy in 1977, going on to serve in artillery and parachute artillery units. In 1986 he was detained for fifteen days after writing a magazine article complaining about low pay for officers, and he left the army as a captain in 1988.

He won a seat on Rio de Janeiro's municipal council in 1988 and two years later was elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies, where he represented Rio de Janeiro from 1991 to 2019 and passed through a series of parties. In Congress he became known for national-conservative views and provocative statements. Running for president in 2018 as the Social Liberal Party candidate, he survived a stabbing at a campaign rally in September and beat Fernando Haddad in the October run-off.

As president from 2019 to 2022 he concentrated on recovery from the economic crisis, rolled back protections for Indigenous lands in the Amazon and was widely criticised for playing down the COVID-19 pandemic. He lost the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and made unfounded claims of fraud; on 8 January 2023 his supporters stormed federal government buildings in Brasília.

In 2023 the Superior Electoral Court barred him from office until 2030. Charged over a plan to keep himself in power by a coup, he was convicted by the Supreme Federal Court in September 2025, sentenced to 27 years and 3 months, and taken into custody that November; in 2026 he was moved to house arrest on health grounds.