Sawt Falasteen - Brazil town aspires to be champion of Bolsonaro vote

Smiling in a denim shirt, the 39-year-old head of the local business owners' association is a man on a mission: "On election day, the town of Nova Santa Rosa will cast more votes for Bolsonaro than anywhere else in Brazil," he says.

The small town in the southern state of Parana already voted massively for the incumbent in Brazil's first-round election on October 2, casting 82 percent of its ballots for Bolsonaro -- the second-highest percentage in the country.

Now, as the president heads for a runoff Sunday against veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro backers are pushing for an even bigger win.

But this small community of trim little houses surrounded by endless expanses of soy and corn fields has some tough competition, in one of Brazil's most conservative regions.

The neighboring towns of Quatro Pontes and Mercedes finished third and fifth in the Bolsonaro love fest, voting 80 percent and 78 percent for the former army captain, respectively.

And the town of Nova Padua, in neighboring Rio Grande do Sul state, cast the highest percentage for him with 84 percent.

"Bolsonaro lit our flame for Brazil," says Klais, who owns a local bakery.

Visitors don't have to look far for proof: a sea of yellow-and-green Brazilian flags hangs from buildings -- a symbol Bolsonaro has adopted as his own -- and his smiling face beams from campaign posters all over town.

Opponents' criticisms of the president -- Brazil's 687,000 deaths from Covid-19, increasing hunger, destruction of the Amazon rainforest -- are mute here.

Finding a Lula campaign sign is an impossible task.

Farming is king in these parts, and Bolsonaro, a close ally of Brazil's powerful agribusiness sector, "has given us security to invest," promotes "a strong economy," and upholds God and family "as the supreme good," says Klais.

"He's just like us."

- Battle for Brazil's soul -

On his father's farm, where a feed truck has been turned into a makeshift billboard with Bolsonaro's slogan -- "Brazil above everything, God above everyone" -- Ricardo Lorenzatto is on a mission, too: convince at least 200 of the 800 residents who voted for Lula to switch sides in the runoff.

Bolsonaro "promised to visit the city that casts the highest percentage of votes for him," says the 35-year-old agricultural engineer, his blue eyes alight.

"My heart leaps just thinking about it."

He is active on WhatsApp message groups rallying the faithful for pro-Bolsonaro events, such as an Independence Day motorcade on September 7, which, he proudly boasts, stretched four kilometers (2.5 miles).

Lorenzatto says ex-president Lula (2003-2010), who the far-right labels a "communist," is a threat to his children's future.

If Lula wins, "indigenous tribes could invade our land, force us to share our cattle," he says.

Holding her one-year-old grandson on her porch, Clarice Radoll agrees.

"I would feel very insecure if Lula won," says the 60-year-old Evangelical Christian, who has Bolsonaro's picture proudly displayed on the front of her house.

In this town of a dozen churches and around 6,000 inhabitants, Radoll repeats a line often used by conservative pastors: that Lula represents "moral perversion."

"It's every Brazilian mother and father's fear," she says.

- Agribusiness hero -

In Mercedes, just up the road, farmer Andre Fiedler admits Lula's government also took care of the agribusiness industry during the economic boom of the 2000s.

"I don't want to be a hypocrite," he says.

But Bolsonaro's administration has backed farming and agricultural exports like no other, "opening new markets for our products," he says.

He brushes off international criticism over surging Amazon deforestation under Bolsonaro, which experts say is driven by agriculture.

"People say Bolsonaro is damaging Brazil's image overseas... but that's just a trade game -- protectionism by France, Germany, the United States," Fiedler says.

"Who's the biggest soy producer in the world? The biggest poultry exporter? Brazil," he says.

"There are vested interests trying to hold us back."

Bolsonaro, who took 43 percent of the vote in the first round to 48 percent for Lula, trails his leftist rival heading into the runoff -- but by a narrowing margin, according to opinion polls.

U.AlSharif--SF-PST