In the mid-eighties, after two decades of military government, Tancredo Neves was elected president of Brazil. Major political changes were expected to come of the election, probably out of mere naïveté. However, on the eve of his inauguration, 14 March 1985, Neves was taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. Diagnosis: benign infectious bowel tumor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancredo_Neves
The following day, vice-president (and big-time mafioso) José Sarney was inaugurated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Sarney
For the next five weeks, the population was entertained with constant news flashes about Neves' oscillating health due to post-surgical complications. Many people voiced suspicions that he was already dead. To strengthen their credibility, the media released a couple of photographs of Neves, accompanied by five physicians and/or his wife, some days before he was declared dead on 21 April 1985 (a holiday dedicated to a national hero and revolutionary martyr). The pictures were shown ad nauseam on TV, but no video was ever shown.
The pictures from the hospital are credited to one Gervásio Baptista, "official photographer of Tancredo Neves", a sly-looking cross of a gecko and a homunculus. In a TV interview from 2012, Baptista was asked about the polemic elicited by the photo back in 1985. According to some, the picture was "mounted". According to others, a nurse holding a drip stand had been erased from the picture.
Baptista answered that those who claim the picture was forged know nothing about photography. Who has ever heard of someone receiving IV drip from under a chair? Liquid, he said, does not flow upwards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LpMFoP22SM @ 3:18
In other words, the pictures must be legit!
These are apparently the only images of the hospitalized president the media ever produced. Lovely hair and shadows, by the way.
URL: http://www.duniverso.com.br/wp-content/ ... -Neves.jpg
URL: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yPMFX0Jcy4U/T ... spital.jpg
URL: http://n.i.uol.com.br/noticia/2010/07/2 ... 60x273.jpg
That didn't take long to fake!
In 2008, Dr. Hélcio Miziara, the physician who is said to have established the president's diagnosis, was asked if the "famous picture of the president and the smiling medical staff" was a forgery. His answer: "No. The picture, as it were, was born out of a necessity."
http://www.iesb.br/moduloonline/naprati ... teria=4199
Is your intelligence insulted yet?
[edited to fix image source problem]
Death/murder of Brazilian president Neves in 1985
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Death/murder of Brazilian president Neves in 1985
Last edited by Flabbergasted on Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Death/murder of Brazilian president Neves in 1985
Could be confirmation bias, but these pics seem are a bit "Weekend at Bernie's"...