Nikolas Ferreira turns Brasília march into online spectacle

A six-day walk is not, in itself, a legislative agenda. Yet it became one of the country’s most-watched political events over a particularly slow news week, with Congress and Brazil’s high courts still on their end-of-year recess. Nikolas Ferreira, a 29-year-old first-term congressman, set out on foot from Paracatu, a city in northwestern Minas Gerais, toward Brasília, roughly 240 kilometers away. 

The stated aim, in his own words, was symbolic: “I decided to walk to Brasília in a symbolic act to be able to bring light to all the facts that are happening.” He tied the gesture to what he called the “unjust arrests of January 8” and to the arrest of former President Jair Bolsonaro. 

The spectacle found its audience. Combined, his posts during the march have attracted more than 200 million views, driven by videos narrating what it called Ferreira’s “self-inflicted physical effort.”