Alexandre Padilha’s father fled dictatorship for the US – now the health chief’s family is a target of Trump’s bully tactics
When Alexandre Padilha’s father most needed help, the United States took him in.
It was 1971, the height of Brazil’s brutal two-decade dictatorship, and Anivaldo Padilha, a young Methodist activist, had been forced to flee his homeland after spending 11 months in one of São Paulo’s most notorious torture centres.
Smuggled out of the country by a church group to avoid being killed, he made for Uruguay and Chile before finally escaping to the US. “There, he was able to live the freedom he wasn’t able to live in Brazil,” said his son, Alexandre Padilha, who was born after his father’s departure and only met him eight years later when the political climate in Brazil began to improve.
So more than five decades later, it came as a nasty surprise when Padilha’s 10-year-old daughter – Anivaldo’s granddaughter – became the youngest victim of Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Brazilian authorities.
