A discussion between two customers in a supermarket queue in Rio de Janeiro’s most upscale and touristy area led to the arrest for racial insult of one of those involved early Monday. Argentine José Luis Haile, 67, was detained on the spot after calling the Brazilian woman ahead of him in the queue a “black whore,” the newspaper O Globo reported this Tuesday. A second Argentine witnessed the scene and called the Municipal Guard. This is the second racist incident involving Argentines in the neighboring country to emerge in recent weeks. The accused was remanded in pre-trial detention. Brazil registered some 8,500 complaints of racist insults in 2025.
Read more Barcelona — Celta live, the LaLiga match live
The incident occurred early in the morning at a supermarket near the tourist beach of Copacabana. The detainee is an Argentine who has resided in Brazil for a couple of years. The victim, a Brazilian woman who works doing shopping for third parties through an application. She and Haile got into an argument due to the cashier’s delay in starting to charge.
The Brazilian customer, Samara de Lima, explained that he started complaining, told her to shut up, and that angered her, according to what she told the aforementioned Rio newspaper. “I called him a coward because he whispered when uttering the racist insult,” she explained, at which point she felt “very nervous and angry.” The customer complained about the passivity of the supermarket employees.
A second Argentine present did come to her aid. “At first I thought it was nonsense,” he told the newspaper. “But when I saw that the racist guy told her to shut up and insulted her, I saw that it was serious. I decided to intervene (…) I am mestizo, and there, in Argentina, we also suffer racism. But there is no law [to punish it]. (…) Unfortunately, this type of people still exists, but we have to react with a firm hand. Otherwise, this will not end,” declared this witness, who called the police.
Last January, an Argentine tourist, lawyer Agostina Páez, uttered racist insults against three waiters and mimicked monkey gestures in a bar after an argument over the bill. The scene, which occurred at dawn, was recorded and went viral. Páez was arrested and spent two months under house arrest with an ankle monitor, which gave the case enormous repercussions in Argentina, especially, but also in Brazil.
Read more Ali Smith, writer: “Books are so powerful they enrage tyrants!”
At the trial, the Public Prosecutor’s Office reduced the requested sentence from 15 years to 5. After the hearing concluded and a bail of 20,000 dollars was deposited, the judge authorized her to return to her country. Days later, her father mimicked his daughter’s racist gestures in a bar… a new viral video that outraged Brazil.
Racist insults are a serious matter in this country, a crime punishable under the Penal Code. And society is increasingly aware of the gravity of offenses that in other countries are treated as mere bad taste comments. This was the last country in America to abolish slavery, in 1888. Its population is one of the most diverse in the world, in contrast to Argentina’s, for example, which is predominantly white.
In 2021, then-Argentine president Alberto Fernández irritated the entire region by saying in a public act that “Mexicans came from Indians, Brazilians from the jungle, but Argentines from boats, from boats that came from Europe.” He took the quote from a song.
Although racism persists in Brazil, racist insults against footballer Vinicius Júnior strike a nerve and have mobilized President Lula and his ministers. Banco do Brasil, a public bank, apologized a few years ago to the black people for its involvement in the trafficking of Africans.
Read more The FBI claims to have rescued a child in Cuba who had been abducted by one of their parents
