Sao Paulo councilor loses his mandate due to racist comments

The city council of the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo has revoked the mandate of a councilor for the first time in its long history due to racism.

The mandate of Camilo Cristofaro, elected by the Avante party, was revoked by 47 votes in favor and five abstentions on Tuesday evening.

The controversial council member, who held public office in Brazil’s largest city for more than 40 years and was implicated in several other episodes of prejudice against women and Asians, lost his mandate following a verdict announced last May during a virtual council meeting. Town Hall.

Not realizing that the microphone through which he was participating remotely in the meeting was still on, the councilor told someone next to him: “This is a black thing,” and the racist comment was heard by his colleagues in the municipal parliament and recorded on the city’s monitoring system .

Cristofaro made an unfortunate comment when he told the man next to him that he had gone to a friend’s house and that when he arrived he found him hosing down the sidewalk of the house. And he said with a laugh: “Washing sidewalks is a dirty job, yes.”

After the barrage of criticism he received back then for that comment, Camilo Cristofaro began a series of attempts to explain himself, first saying that he meant black cars, not people, then adding that he actually meant goes to ” to a very dear friend who is black and whom, because of such many years of friendship, he calls black and so on.

The more he tried to explain himself, the more difficult his situation became, and the result was the loss of his mandate on Tuesday, after more than a year of internal proceedings during which he appealed to the general justice system to try to avoid losing his mandate, but in vain, since the decision in In this case, it is political, and not just legal.