Jair Bolsonaro Fast Facts
Jair Bolsonaro, 35th president of Brazil, is now the world’s youngest head of state. At 38 years old, he is three years younger than Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro is only the second non-European head of state born in the European colonies to be elected into office in the last century. The first was his predecessor Dilma Rousseff who was elected in 2014 after winning the 2014 presidential election by a landslide (74 percent of the vote).
Bolsonaro was born in 1976, one year after the end of the military dictatorship which had ruled Brazil since 1964. Bolsonaro, the son of a state governor and his secretary, is the second of three sons. He is the only one of his four children who is alive, having died in a car accident at the age of 36 in 2009.
His father Carlos, a military officer, is still active in Brazilian politics, as a member of the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources. The Bolsonaro family moved to Rio de Janeiro when he was just a baby. He was raised in the favela of a public housing project. His childhood was an unhappy one; he was bullied by other kids.
Education
Bolsonaro attended grammar school in Rio, where he played on the football team. He was also an excellent soccer player and won a few awards for his team in the national division 1. He attended public school until the age of 15, when he transferred to a private school, Liceu Escola de Medicina, founded in Rio.
Upon graduation, he studied law at the University of Santa Cruz in Rio, where he met his future wife, Francisca. A year later, they were married. Together they had two children, Maria da Glória (born 2005) and Júnio.
Bolsonaro