Digital art by GlobalVoices created using CanvaPro with screenshots from CNN Brasil/YouTube and Agostina Paez/Instagram. Fair use.

On February 6, a 29-year-old Argentine lawyer was arrested in Rio de Janeiro. A few days earlier, on January 14, Agostina Paez was recorded on video leaving a bar with two other women, yelling “mono” (monkey in Spanish) at staff members while making gestures and sounds mimicking the animal. Paez, who was visiting the city as a tourist, was later released with an ankle monitor, but is still being prosecuted for her actions and cannot leave Brazil while awaiting trial.

As told in the report registered by one of the workers at a police station, the actions indicating a racial slur came after a disagreement about the bill. He was also the person who recorded the video, reports Agência Brasil.

Paez posted a video on her Instagram account on February 5, after learning an arrest order had been issued, saying her rights were being violated and that she was desperate and afraid. To the Argentine TV channel El Trece, she said she never meant to be racist. “I'm an Argentinian. It was an emotional reaction, but I could never imagine the seriousness of it and of all that came afterwards,” she declared. She also told the news outlet she had been receiving threats.

The story surprised people online with how strictly Brazilian law treats racism as a criminal offense. It is written in the country’s 1988 Federal Constitution.

brasileiros is this real there is no community note https://t.co/iUWnNEddBl

— Lesbian Shadow (@shadowesbian) February 16, 2026

Since 1989, under Brazilian law, racism has been a non-bailable and imprescriptible crime. If found guilty, a person could be sentenced to two to five years in prison. Since 2023, a racial insult — when the offense is directed to a specific individual rather than a collective — also had its penalty increased and equated to racism in the legislation. Paez was arraigned for the latter.

The country had its first law making racial discrimination an offense in the 1950s, prior to the advances that only developed after the military dictatorship (1964–1985). The law was named after Afonso Arinos, a Congressman who introduced the proposal in the parliament when his Black driver suffered discrimination at a bakery in Rio. The bill gained momentum in public opinion after an African-American dancer and activist, Katherine Dunham, publicly denounced a hotel for denying her a room. The penalties, however, were lighter than those under the current legislation.

The myth of racial democracy

For decades, Brazilians sustained the myth of their country as a racial democracy, despite its history of miscegenation, violence and the ongoing discrimination after centuries of colonization and slavery.

The country received the largest number of enslaved people in the Americas and has the largest African-descendant population outside the African continent. According to the 2022 census, the latest one published, out of its 213 million population, 45.3 per cent of Brazilians self-identify as mixed-ethnicity (“pardo”), 10.2 percent as Black and 0.8 per cent as Indigenous.

Even with laws against racism and affirmative action policies in place, structural racism is still ingrained in Brazilian society, and this was acknowledged by a unanimous vote by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) in December 2025. “We say Brazilian racism is structural because our entire society is seated on a racist basis. Here, it’s such a normalized phenomenon that constitutes the normal functioning of our society,” explains an article by Brasil de Direitos.

Yet, social movements and the growing impact of news stories have brought progress in learning about and discussing the issue among Brazilians over the last decades, as Aline Miklos, an activist and advocacy director at Vladimir Herzog Institute, told the Argentinian news outlet Página 12.

Tanto Brasil como Argentina fueron países construidos sobre la explotación sistemática de la mano de obra indígena y africana, lo que dio lugar a procesos de genocidio y etnocidio contra estas poblaciones. En Brasil, un factor histórico que contribuye a que los delitos de carácter racial sean tratados con mayor seriedad, es que los grupos racializados se encuentran cada vez más organizados y, proporcionalmente, representan un número mayor de personas que en Argentina. Esta organización les permite ejercer presión sobre el Estado.

Both Brazil and Argentina were countries built upon the systematic exploitation of Indigenous and African labor, which took place amid processes of genocide and ethnocide against these people. In Brazil, a historical factor that contributes to crimes of a racial character being treated with greater seriousness is that racial groups are more organized and, proportionally, represent a greater number of people than in Argentina. This organization allows them to put pressure on the State.

Pagina12 also compares the case faced by Paez in Brazil with what it would have been in her native country. Journalist Dolores Curia writes that it’s likely “it wouldn’t have caused her any trouble” there. “The difference with Argentinian legislation is that, here, racism is not recognized either as a legal figure, or as a structural phenomenon,” she stated.

Red card

Brazilians with a sign saying: ‘Red card to racism,’ after attacks against football player Vinicius Jr. in 2023. Photo by Rafa Neddermeyer/Agência Brasil. Fair use.

The difference in how each country in South America acknowledges and deals with racism has been more evident in the past few years, especially on football pitches.
There have been a number of recent cases involving clubs from Conmebol (the South American Football Confederation). In March 2025, for example, fans from Paraguay’s Cerro Porteño made monkey gestures and spat towards Luighi, a footballer from Brazilian club Palmeiras. In 2024, the women’s team of Grêmio, another Brazilian club, left the pitch in protest after an athlete from Argentina’s River Plate team made racist gestures towards a ball boy during the Brasil Ladies Cup. Four River players were arrested for racial insult afterwards.

The latest case, also involving “monkey” as a racial slur in a sports context, took place in a Champions League match between Real Madrid and Benfica football clubs on February 17 in Lisbon, after Vinicius Junior, a Brazilian and one of Real Madrid’s star players, scored a game-winning goal. He went to the referee to activate FIFA’s anti-racism protocol after saying he heard the word from Argentinian player Gianluca Prestianni. The Benfica athlete, who covered his mouth with the jersey while saying something to Vinicius Junior, avoiding lipreading, claimed he was misinterpreted and denied using racial slurs. The Portuguese club backed his version.

Because of other racist attacks he has suffered in his career in Spain, “Vini Jr” has become one of the main voices fighting racism in football — since arriving in Madrid, eight years ago, he reported 20 cases of alleged racist abuse against him. His critics often point him out as someone who plays a victim, blaming his provocative style for it.

A couple of years ago, another video went viral among South Americans. A boy wearing the Argentina national team’s jersey sees a monkey walking on the electric wires in his backyard, while a woman records him. The child proceeds to say: “Vinicius! Vinicius Jr.! You're going to be electrocuted,” and imitates a monkey. He also grunts and corrects himself: “No, this is how pigs do, which is Mbappé,” referring to the French player, Kylian Mbappé, who also suffered racist abuse throughout his career. 

According to CNN Brasil, following Agostina Paez’s arrest, Argentine newspapers published guides warning travelers about Brazil’s racism laws, and offering tips on gestures and words to avoid while visiting the country.