One of them, Marcos, refuses to wear clothes or shoes. He also cannot tolerate being touched or interacting with others. He is unable to speak. Such are the consequences of decades of neglect and inhuman treatment at an asylum where he was sent at age 10, the most infamous one in Brazil’s history. On Monday the Hospital-Colônia de Barbacena, where some 60,000 Brazilians died of hunger, cold and diarrhea up through the 1980s, closed its doors for good, and with it the cruellest chapter in Brazilian psychiatry. The last surviving patients — 14 elderly, ill people with no families and severe aftereffects, including Marcos — have been given a new home: a house in the rural area of Barbacena, still known as the city of the madmen.

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While waiting to complete paperwork at a notary’s office, Ms. Ivone Souza Silva, 64, who has deep-set circles under her eyes and shoulder-length hair, smiles as she recalls a childhood anecdote: “At school, the surname of half the class or almost half was Silva, like me… And like Ayrton Senna.” And so, unexpectedly, this housewife mentions a fact many of her fellow Brazilians do not know about the Formula 1 champion whose death behind the wheel at the peak of his career in 1994 shocked the sporting world. On Wednesday morning she learned that his full name was Ayrton Senna da Silva.

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U.S. President Donald Trump gave a boost on Tuesday to the presidential bid of Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, by receiving him in the Oval Office, 19 days after meeting there with Brazil’s president, former union leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Barring a surprise, Lula and Bolsonaro’s son are expected to face each other at the ballot box in October. Flávio Bolsonaro’s team hopes the photo with Trump will help him overcome a popularity crisis and consolidate his candidacy.

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The “total endorsement” that Donald Trump recently gave to Abelardo de la Espriella — who, in addition to being a far-right presidential hopeful in Colombia, has been a U.S. citizen since 2023 — was denounced by his left-wing rival, Iván Cepeda, as “the intervention of a foreign government” in an election campaign that will be decided on June 21.

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Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Brazil’s relationship with the United States has swung up and down like a roller coaster. It has been improving slowly and only through intense Brazilian diplomacy, but at any moment it can deteriorate rapidly again with a new blow from Washington. “We cannot accept the way the United States has treated Brazil this week,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared on Wednesday at a cabinet meeting in Brasília. Lula was referring to the Trump administration’s threat to impose new tariffs days after the U.S. designated two Brazilian criminal gangs as terrorist organizations. The left-wing president has again wrapped himself in the national flag and accused the Bolsonaros — former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro and his son, the senator Flávio Bolsonaro — of being traitors to the homeland for encouraging Trump’s interference.

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Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and a hopeful presidential contender in a few months, fired his marketing chief last week. He has been maneuvering for days to desperately obtain a photograph that, he believes, could pull him out of the crisis that has shaken his campaign.

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