The music from the soundtrack of The Ten Commandments swells to a crescendo, then fades as a clapping chant, “Za-rur—Za-rur,” fills the loudspeakers. “Brothers,” a soft voice intones, “Jesus Christ told me I should be President of Brazil. But Jesus is not my campaign manager. I am his. If I win, Jesus will govern. I will deliver Brazil into the hands of God. The people are waking up and saying, ‘I want Jesus to rule Brazil.’ ”
Every afternoon and evening, Alziro Zarur, 48, a squat, balding, onetime actor who now bills himself as Jesus’ latter-day apostle, speaks to millions of Brazilians from Rio to the pampas borders of Uruguay. “I am not from left, from right or from center but from above,” he says.
“I Knew Everything.” A screwball? Not in Brazil, which has always had an affinity for mystics. In these troubled days for Brazil of squabbling politicians, wild inflation and widespread cynicism, there is a longing for someone to save the country, and this longing makes Zarur a possible candidate for the 1965 presidential elections. A recent poll in Sao Paulo and Rio gave Zarur 6% of the vote and fourth place among presidential candidates—trailing only ex-President Juscelino Kubitschek, Governors Carlos Lacerda of Guanabara State and Adhemar de Barros of Sao Paulo State. Even before the poll, claim Zarur’s lieutenants, Kubitschek offered him second place on the Kubitschek ticket. Zarur stayed with Jesus.
A onetime student of voodoo, Zarur grew up memorizing the Bible and studying mysticism. In 1932 he drifted into radio as a writer and actor. In 1948, as the story goes, a medium brought him a message from St. Francis of Assisi: “The time for the mission has arrived.” “What mission?” asked Zarur. “Read the book about him,” said the medium, “and you will understand.” Zarur went back to a book by St. Francis, and suddenly “I knew everything. All I had to do was begin.”
Zarur first launched an inspirational radio program called The Hour of Good Will, two years later founded the Legion of Good Will, which now claims 600,000 members. With donations pouring in, he set up good-will orphanages, pharmacies, clinics, soup kitchens, and mobile units that offered food, clothing and medical aid. In 1962 Zarur founded the Party of Good Will with the motto “Power, Truth, Goodness,” and the cry “Zarur for President.”
The Party of Machos. Political GHQ for Zarur is Rio’s powerful (50 kw.) “Radio Mundial,” which he bought in 1956 for $187,500. On his office wall is a composite photo of “the holy family.” From left to right: Zarur, Jesus and Moses, with Zarur’s five-year-old son sitting beneath. On the air 24 hours a day, Mundial carries only a minimum of sports, newscasts and commercials. Most of the time it is Zarur. Zarur politicking: “Why do women like our party? Because we are the party of machos! We satisfy our women!” (Studio audience: “Viva Jesus!”). Zarur faith-healing, with “magnetized water”: “If you believe, put your glass beside the radio. Concentrate. Now take your medicine and be healed.”
Brazil’s newspapers hoot at Zarur. The Protestant churches deplore him, spiritualist sects repudiate him, and Rio’s Roman Catholic Auxiliary Archbishop Dom Helder Camara calls him a heretic. Says Zarur: “I don’t say I am comparable to Christ, but my followers do.” Then he pleads their case: “Look, my enemies call me a thief, a heretic, a sorcerer. Well, they called Jesus all those things as well. I was born on Dec. 25th, the same day as Jesus was, and I also received a message from St. Francis on my 33rd birthday, the same age as Christ when he was crucified.” Mere coincidence?
Says Zarur: “Destiny makes coincidences. Coincidences make destiny.”
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