The reader is from Boa Vista and has written to the ombudsman to complain about the editorial "Espinheiro Amazônico" ( Amazonian thorns). Folha criticized the paving of the BR-319, which connects Porto Velho to Manaus, built in the 1970s to soon become impassable, according to its brief but illuminating description. "As an alternative, a ferry transport system was created, going down the Madeira River and up the Amazon, to the city of Manaus. Such a journey takes a long time and greatly burdens the freight of goods."

He does not doubt the denouncements published by the newspaper, regarding the lack of environmental licensing, the strong probability of the region being invaded by land grabbers, the failure on the part of controlling entities, Incra, Ibama, state entities, and those who should take care of indigenous people, a fact strongly underlined in the Folha article. "You can see it in the media, problems all over the Amazon."

"The journalistic article", however, " has a political and aggressive tone towards the federal government, and brushes past the Amazonian populations, who depend on communication with the rest of the country, not only for the supply of food but also for personal and health issues". In other words, the reader complained about Folha offering their opinion from a distance, both literally and figuratively.

With little emphasis, the newspaper reported on Wednesday (10), the day before the reading of the Letters in defense of democracy in the arcades of the university of São Paulo Law School, that the National Confederation of Agriculture had signaled its vote for Jair Bolsonaro during an event promoted by the Presidency. The headline in the politics section chose to focus on the president's coup-oriented chanting: "Bolsonaro attacks the Electoral Superior Court and makes new unfocused threats: 'May this cost my life'". The column Vaivém das Commodities, on the other hand, went straight to the point, of what was at stake at the event: "CNA ( Brazilian confederation of agriculture and livestock) sets goals for presidential candidates, but has already sided with Bolsonaro".

The column by Mauro Zafalon, a specialist in agribusiness, describes the ambition of the confederation, which has outlined guidelines not only for the sector but also for the economic and social policy of a country with no room "for the return of a candidate who has been prosecuted and imprisoned as a thief". Despite this burden, the text deserved a modest headline on the newspaper's Home Page and a brief note, at the foot of the page, in the Thursday (11th) print edition.

On that day, and in fact, for the entire last week, Folha's priority was to read the manifestos organized by civil society. With a series of articles, interviews, and a special section in the print edition, the newspaper was clearly more focused of the size and importance of the event at the USP Law School.

From this diverse Brazil, with a voice for women, black people and so many other social movements, where "capital and work come together to defend the Democratic State of Law", Folha was close, it had weight, and it swam easily in familiar waters. At the end of the day, it was the newspaper's own opinion that occupied the headline on its website, with the editorial "As Cartas e a Carta" (The letters and the Charter), about the civic movements throughout the country that "made it clear to the would-be autocrat in the Planalto the non-negotiable limits of Brazilian democracy".

It would be good to find out what the people from those other Brazils, those from the Amazon and the Midwest, to stick with the examples already mentioned, thought of such a movement. Perhaps the reader of Boa Vista and the representative of agribusiness have seen São Paulo the same way Folha sometimes perceives the country they inhabit: as something distant.

SATANIC VERSES

Another challenging universe for Folha in these elections is the evangelical one, even though its coverage in this area is quite superior to that of its main competitors. Michelle Bolsonaro was the protagonist of the week in her husband's reelection campaign, with just five minutes at the microphone in a Baptist church. Last Sunday (7), in Belo Horizonte, she brought up memories of a "Planalto consecrated to demons" and, the following day, reposted a video in which Lula participates in a Candomblé ceremony in Salvador; she also found time to get herself attacked, on social media, when she appeared in a photo next to the current wife of Guilherme de Pádua, the murderer of the actress Daniella Perez and today a pastor in the same Minas Gerais denomination.

It would be easy to place this mixed salad under celebrity journalism, as Folha has come to do with part of the news. A visit to the Evangelical Observatory, however, quite changes this perception. On the site, which has among its curators the anthropologist and Folha's columnist Juliano Spyer, Michelle becomes "the cult in itself", in a proportion never before seen in politics or in the country's neo-Pentecostal temples. According to one of the analysts, "the political language of the institutional power struggle, in this way, has given way to the religious one. In it, there is a spiritual battle between good and evil, not an election."

Between salvation and democracy, what would be the option chosen by this group? Folha seems very far from this Brazil as well.

_{Translated by Cassy Dias}