In southern Brazil in July, Laureano Toscani and João Guilherme Correa were smoking cigarettes along a busy road in their prison-issued garb, shorts and sandals, waiting for a ride after seven months in jail.
Mr. Toscani was once convicted of stabbing a group of Jewish men, and Mr. Correa has been accused of murdering a couple leaving a party.
But this time, they were behind bars for attending what they said was a harmless barbecue.
The Brazilian authorities, however, say it was something far more sinister: a meeting of the Hammerskins, a neo-Nazi group founded in Dallas in 1988 that they say has recently found its way thousands of miles south, to Brazil’s most starkly conservative region, reflecting a surge in far-right extremists in Latin America’s largest nation.
In September 2022, the state police in Santa Catarina began trailing the Hammerskins as members strategized on how to attract new recruits.
Persons:
Laureano, João Guilherme Correa, Toscani, Correa, strategized
Organizations:
Nazi, Santa Catarina
Locations:
Brazil, Dallas, Santa