CLEANING HOUSE
Back at the Imperial Hotel, two other members of the Brasilia Group - Ferreira and Alessio Ribeiro Souto, who is likely to be the next minister of education - agreed to speak with Reuters outside their War Room.
Dressed in ironed jeans and crisp shirts, the men were courteous and formal, a marked contrast to Bolsonaro's folksy and often offensive slang. They and other group members have worked to temper the firebrand candidate, advising him to speak calmly during press interviews.
Ferreira and Souto emphasized that they were mere technicians working under the orders of Bolsonaro. They said they were not involved in the day-to-day operations of the campaign, rather in figuring out how to execute the strategic vision they were shaping if he is elected.
Ferreira, who retired in 2017, spent his career building roads and bridges for the Army, mainly through the Amazon rainforest to open it to development. He says a priority of a Bolsonaro government would be to finish hundreds of projects that civilian governments have failed to complete.
Souto is a retired three-star general who oversaw the Army's technology center. He said he would urge that creationism be taught in Brazil's schools alongside evolution, part of Bolsonaro's plan to remake schools to please his large base of religious conservatives.
Souto also shares Bolsonaro's view that the nation's school history books should call the 1964-85 period a movement to battle communism, rather than a dictatorship.
This time, change will come through votes, not a military takeover, Souto vowed.
"The only instrument that we know we can now use to obtain peace and harmony is democracy," he said. "And its pillars are liberty, truth, courage and morality."
