Born in Glicério, in the state of São Paulo, president-elect Jair Bolsonaro (PSL), 63, spent his childhood and teenage years in Eldorado, 155 miles away from the capital, and from where he would leave at 18 to start his military career.

His hometown has the fourth-largest area in the state, but only a little over 15,000 residents. He grew up there with his father Perci Geraldo Bolsonaro (deceased in 1995), mother Olinda Bolsonaro, 92, and five siblings.

The name Jair was a homage from Perci, a soccer fan, to one of his favorite players, Jair Rosa Pinto (1921-2005).

The move to a smaller town was Perci Bolsonaro's idea, who learned that there were no dentists in Eldorado - he practiced dentistry without a license, for which he later was prosecuted for, and acquitted.

The president-elect described a turbulent relationship with his father, during interviews. "I didn't talk to him until I was 28. He drank too much and started many fights at home. But he never hit his children. One day I figured I wouldn't change him. I bought him a drink, we became great friends," he said to IstoÉ magazine in 2000.

In 1970, Army troops passed by Eldorado looking to capture Carlos Lamarca (1937-1971), a guerrilla leader that fought against the military dictatorship. The small town went through an upheaval, with ransacked houses, body searches, closed roads. And it left young Jair, at the time nicknamed Heart of Palm (for his fair looks and lean build), fascinated by military life.

In 1973, he joined the Army school for cadets, but didn't graduate; he applied for Agulhas Negras Military Academy, in Resende, Rio de Janeiro. The state would become his political base.

During his Army years, Bolsonaro cultivated his political vein and got in trouble with his commanders.

In September 1986, Bolsonaro was arrested for writing a magazine article without prior authorization from his superiors, in which he demanded a wage increase for the troops. He spent 15 days in jail, accused of "ethical infringement that created an environment of unrest within the organization."

In October 1987, another magazine reported that he had made a plan to detonate bombs in a few military units in Rio, in order to pressure his superiors.

In June 1988, he went into a trial in Military Court and was considered not guilty. Later that year, Bolsonaro entered the Army's reserve, with the title of captain. Then he started his political career.

Elected councilman for the Christian Democratic Party, he took office in 1989 but stayed only for two years. In the 1990 elections, he propelled himself to a seat in the House of Representatives. From then on, he would serve seven consecutive terms, for a string of different parties: PDC, PPR, PPB, PTB, PFL, PP, PSC, and currently PSL.

In 2014, he became Rio's best-voted Representative, with over 460,000 votes.

His work in the Legislative was defined, at first, for defending causes dear to the Military, as free urban bus passes for servicemen.

Later, he gained more visibility with broader -- and more controversial -- stances against human rights and minorities defenders and praises for the military dictatorship.

In his 27 years as a Representative, he presented more than 170 bills and approved two of them, as well as an amendment about the issue of receipts in electronic ballot boxes. The Brazilian Supreme Court barred the amendment because it could threaten both the ballots' secrecy and the voters' freedom of choice.

Bolsonaro also proposed a bill to authorize the sale of synthetic phosphoethanolamine (known in the US and Europe as the supplement Calcium EAP), a substance that in Brazil gained the reputation of a cancer cure, but ensuing scientific studies proved it to be ineffective.

At the Brazilian Congress plenary, he attacked left-wing opponents, PT, human rights groups and celebrated the dictatorship. In 2014, after a speech defending the regime, he said to fellow representative Maria do Rosario (PT-RS) that she "didn't deserve to be raped" because, according to him, she was "too ugly" and "not his type". It wasn't the first time he made such remarks, and he became a defendant in two criminal lawsuits in the Supreme Court, accused of incitement to rape.

A Folha review of his votes as a representative shows that Bolsonaro had a statist bias, having voted against the main attempts to reform the Brazilian Social Security and against the main privatizations, like the end of the oil and telecommunications monopoly in the 1990s.

At the same time, he supported bills giving more benefits to government employees, tax breaks to specific industries and measures that increased government spending, even in times of federal budget restrictions.
Currently, he says his economic advisor Paulo Guedes -- which he calls his know-it-all, his "convenience store", referencing to a popular TV spot -- converted him to economic liberalism.

Bolsonaro has married three times and has five children: Flávio, elected senator for Rio; Carlos, a councilman in Rio, Eduardo, elected representative for São Paulo; Jair Renan and Laura.

^{Translated by NATASHA MADOV}

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