MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“I can take him as a slave”: Argentine tourist arrested in Brazil over messages about 7-year-old

Passengers and train security personnel held the suspect in a compartment until the arrival of the Minas Gerais Military Police

A 63-year-old Argentine tourist, identified as Eduardo Ignacio, was arrested on Sunday in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais on racial discrimination charges after photographing and filming a 7-year-old Black boy aboard a tourist train, and sharing the images in a messaging group with racist comments that included the phrase: “I can take him as a slave.” The case, recorded on the steam train that connects the municipality of São João del-Rei with the historic city of the same name, raises to three the racism episodes involving South American tourists in Brazil over the past five months.

The minor was traveling with his mother, grandmother, aunt, the mother's stepfather, and a cousin, on a journey that had begun at ten in the morning on Sunday to celebrate his mother's birthday. Another passenger alerted the mother that the man, seated next to the boy's grandmother, was taking photographs and videos of the child. When confronted, the tourist initially denied the recordings and refused to show his phone, although he eventually agreed to unlock it. The boy's mother then identified the messages with the referenced phrase and another exchange in which the man reportedly stated his intention to “bring a slave” to take care of the granddaughters of his interlocutor.

Passengers and train security personnel held the suspect in a compartment until the arrival of the Minas Gerais Military Police. The detainee and the boy's mother were transferred to the 3rd Regional Police Station of São João del-Rei. The tourist's mobile phone was seized for forensic analysis. The case was registered under Article 20 of Brazilian Law 7.716/1989, which criminalizes the practice, instigation, or incitement of discrimination on grounds of race, colour, ethnicity, or national origin. The police treated as an aggravating factor the fact that the discriminatory content was circulated in digital groups, which increases the potential sanction available under the statute.

VLI, the company that operates the steam train service on the Minas Gerais tourist stretch, issued a statement in which it condemned “racism and any form of discrimination” and stated that its local team immediately contacted the police authorities upon learning of the incident. The company said it remains at the disposal of the authorities to cooperate with the investigation.

The episode is part of a sequence of similar cases recorded in Brazil in recent months. In January, Argentine lawyer Agostina Páez was held for two months in Rio de Janeiro after being filmed making racist gestures at waiters in an Ipanema bar; in May, Chilean executive Germán Naranjo Maldini was arrested in São Paulo for racist and homophobic insults directed at a flight attendant on a Latam aircraft. Brazilian authorities have in all three cases applied the existing criminal legislation, which provides for sentences that may reach five years' imprisonment for the offense of racial slur.