Flávio Bolsonaro follows a well-worn right-wing path: Exile in Florida

I had this fantasy as a kid that started with me giving an impressive performance on “Wheel of Fortune.” I’d smoke the other contestants under the watchful eye of a suitably wowed Pat Sajak, crucially solving the prize puzzle and winning the grand prize of seemingly every game show: a vacation package built around “a trip to sunny Florida.”

I’d ride the free plane ticket home and spend a few days with my family in Orlando, just a few hours away from where we actually lived, on a vacation that for once wasn’t spent in relatives’ living rooms. We’d hang out in the Goldilocks Zone, far enough away from home to avoid nagging responsibilities but close enough to sell to my overworked parents. Home was not far away when we needed to return, but why not take a few days off to lounge by the pool?

I never shared that half-baked dream with anyone, especially not with any Latin American authoritarians, but my strategy for stealing some time for poolside lounging seems to be the preferred second act for failed right-wing leaders from Central and South America. When defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Miami earlier this week, he was taking part in a long tradition of conservative losers hopping a jet to the land of gun shows and foam parties. 

Thanks to its proximity to the Caribbean and South America, its significant immigrant population and Miami International Airport’s status as a hub for flights to and from points south, many a deposed leader has followed a route familiar to Super Bowl champions and snowbirds. When the rabble in the street gets too close to the presidential palace for comfort, they keep half an eye on Florida real estate, much like Northeast Corridor retirees. 

It isn’t surprising that the first notable leader to make the leap in modern memory came from Cuba, an island you can reach from Florida with a suitably kitted-out lawn chair. Facing the collapse of his government amid anti-democratic crackdowns and widespread labor unrest, Cuban President Gerardo Machado hightailed it to Florida in 1933. He would die in Miami just six years later. 

Cuban military dictator Fulgencio Batista spent the next several decades seemingly readying himself to follow Machado to the Sunshine State if and when he needed to make a quick exit. In fact, Batista purchased a home in Daytona Beach and lived there for several years following his initial ouster in the mid-1940s. He returned to power via a military coup in 1952, which in some ways lit the spark for Fidel Castro’s toppling of the Cuban government at the end of the decade. Forced out for the last time, Batista flew to Jacksonville and unsuccessfully requested asylum in the U.S. (He’d have done a lot better under our current president, no doubt.) He wound up fleeing to Spain, then in the grip of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, and spent the rest of his life in Iberian exile.

Anastasio Somoza was similarly denied safe harbor in the U.S. in 1979, after fleeing Nicaragua in a cargo plane headed for Miami. President Jimmy Carter declined to play host to the last member of a family dynasty that had ruled Nicaragua for 40 years. Somoza made it to Miami as his regime collapsed during the Sandinista revolution, then moved on to the Bahamas and ultimately to Paraguay, then under the rule of military dictator Alfredo Stroessner. It was no safe refuge: He was assassinated there by a Sandinista strike team just a year later.

The pitter-patter of Florsheim-shod feet heading for the Northern Caribbean hasn’t slowed in the 2000s. Deposed dictators, embezzlers and dissent-crushers have flooded into South Florida like the regular king tides. The Miami New Times published a morbid map of the stars in 2010, pointing out the addresses of various subtropical Mussolinis and disgraced generals and boasting that Miami makes “Casablanca look like a Daffy Duck cartoon.”

Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada ran to South Florida following revolts over his plans to export Bolivian natural gas to the U.S.. Notoriously corrupt Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli scarpered in similar fashion, though he was ultimately arrested by U.S. authorities in 2017 and sent back to serve a prison term.

With our own fash-flavored president making his official residence in Palm Beach, and his kids nearby in Jupiter, his Brazilian buddies were obvious candidates for taking their talents to South Beach. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro left for the southernmost red state after his defeat in the 2022 election, though he’s now back in Brazil serving a lengthy prison sentence on house arrest. His son Eduardo, also a former Brazilian elected official, landed Florida around the same time, but has now moved to Texas. Flávio Bolsonaro’s whereabouts since he deplaned at Opa Locka Executive Airport a few days ago are not entirely clear.  

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Florida has long had a significant right-wing Latin American population, thanks in large part to the many Cuban refugees who fled there in the wake of Castro’s 1959 revolution. And for the Bolsonaros, Florida is likely to feel more like home than anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. The state is home to more than a fifth of the Brazilian population in the U.S.

Though Flávio Bolsonaro initially boasted of being Brazil’s rightful president after landing in Florida, he seems to have ditched that line subsequently. Recent events have proven that we can never count out Brazil’s first family of fascism, but it isn’t likely they can use Florida as a base of operation for launching a reactionary coup. Outside of Batista’s complicated story, which didn’t end well for him, history has not been kind to those who hope to use an enforced vacation in the House of Mouse as a path back to the presidential palace.