We’re Big in Brazil

Today’s issue of Brazilian daily A Gazeta features the following political cartoon, by Dejamil. The man pictured is Blairo Maggi, Mato Grasso’s governor and the world’s largest soybean producer.

Pat Joseph’s “Soy in the Amazon,” found in our current issue, is surely the source of Maggi’s consternation. Joseph takes a hard look at Maggi, and finds little to like about the man:

As villains go, he is made-to-order. A picture in the report shows him striding imperiously, flanked by sycophants, beady eyes darting from a round, fleshy face, the head bursting from the collar of his oxford without benefit of a neck. More than his swinish aspect, however, it is Governor Maggi’s statements to the foreign press that have made him the personification of ecological depravity. In the New York Times story by Larry Rohter, Maggi is quoted as saying: “To me, a 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn’t mean anything at all, and I don’t feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here … . We’re talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about.”

The feeling, I trust, is mutual.

(Via Blog do Antero)