Hello, today I come to propose a villain from Brazilian television drama to be a villain of pure evil.
What's the Work[]
Avenida Brasil is a Brazilian soap opera from 2012. The main plot tells the story of Nina / Rita, a girl who had her childhood ruined by her stepmother, Carminha , who stole her family, caused her father's death, abused and mistreated her and abandoned her in a garbage dump, where she was abused by an old scavenger man named Nilo and assisted by an old scavenger woman named Lucinda, who were once married. Rita grew up with a vengeance and justice, was adopted by a family of Argentines with good financial conditions and can return to Brazil 12 years later to put into practice her plans for revenge against Carminha. This in turn, after becoming a widow and getting rid of her stepdaughter, managed to marry a famous and rich football player, Tufão, changing her life and marrying her lover, Max, with the player's sister. Throughout the plot, Carminha was the main antagonist, cheating and extorting money from the football player's family. Rita, who was named Nina by her Argentine family, returns with her new identity to be employed at the player's home, with Carminha as her employer. She hid her identity in such a way as to befriend her archenemy.
However, behind all Carminha's villainy, there was the much more heinous villainy of her diabolical father, Santiago.
Who is he and what has he done[]
Santiago is the Carminha's father, the main antagonist of the plot. When he appears in the plot, even before he is revealed as Carminha's father, Santiago is apparently a kindly old man who works as a doll repairer. However, despite looking like a good man, Santiago turns out to be not only a thug (disguised as a doll repairer, Santiago is actually a jewelry dealer) and a villain, as well as the person responsible for the main plot plot and of the villainy of its main villains, including Carminha, Nilo and Max.
When Carminha was a child, Santiago became involved in an extramarital relationship with a neighbor, Lucinda. One day, Lucinda's then husband, Nilo, discovered her affair with Santiago and told his wife, Carminha's mother. Upset, Santiago's wife went to Lucinda's house to kill her because of her husband's betrayal and accidentally kills Lucinda and Nilo's daughter, which led Lucinda to also invade her home to kill her in order to avenge your daughter's death. Lucinda fires a shot, but does not kill Carminha's mother. However, as soon as she leaves, leaving the gun behind, Santiago himself takes the gun and shoots his wife, killing her. Lucinda, who was upset when the shot went off, believed that she killed Carminha's mother and carried that guilt throughout her life, in addition to being arrested on charges of murder. In fact, all of this was set up and designed by Santiago. He got involved with Lucinda, not out of love, but for her and his wife to conflict and some tragedy to happen, like Carminha's mother killing Lucinda and being arrested. Having almost the opposite occurred, Santiago took the opportunity to murder his wife and let his lover take the blame and be arrested, showing that he only used her and felt nothing for her. Santiago wanted to get rid of his wife in some way to keep his inheritance. After having his wife dead, Santiago took his own daughter, 5 years old, and abandoned her at the dump, getting rid of her too. Furthermore, it is implied that he raped his own daughter as a child.
At present, when Carminha is kicked out of the mansion by her husband, football player Tufão, after he finds out about his betrayal with his brother-in-law, Max, she moves in with her father, Santiago, who returns to be a highly abusive father for her, while promising to make her turn around after her fall, planning to steal the entire fortune of the Tufão family. Afterwards, we will know that this is not part of a genuine feeling of consideration for his daughter, because, in fact, Santiago intended only to use her to take the fortune out of the ex-player's family. When Lucinda was arrested again when she was found guilty of murdering her son, Max, Santiago rejoiced over his arrest, showing that any feeling of love he felt for her was false, which caused his daughter's disgust, which height was already redeeming itself. Santiago accuses his daughter of having the cripple. He tells Tufão that Lucinda murdered his wife and also endorses the woman's own thought that he was responsible for the murder.
He uses Carminha and her genuine desire to get close to her daughter, so that she can get closer to Tufão's family and make it easier to take all the money from the family, which he calls the "mole family". To that end, he plans to kidnap the former player. Then flee with the daughter to southern Italy with the money. With her daughter redeemed, Santiago tries to convince her to participate in the scheme that aims to rob her ex-husband's family and thus prevent her redemption, which is met with resistance by Carminha. He uses Carminha's mistakes, such as the betrayal and later robberies done to the family, as well as the fame she would have in the city where she lived and even the possible removal of her daughter because of that, as a way of bribing her and psychologically abuses her to accept his offer, threatening to throw it in the trash too, in case she doesn't become the “good daughter” he wants her to be (agree with him in his criminal plans). He also refers to Carminha's daughter, that is, her own granddaughter, as "obese".
Santiago poisons Nilo to prevent him from revealing his secrets, since he was the only one who knew of Lucinda's innocence in relation to the murder of his wife; hires henchmen to beat, almost to death, Carminha's youngest lover, Lúcio, when the two would run away from him; finally, he kidnaps the protagonist Nina and Carminha's ex-husband, Tufão, intending to kill both of them, putting them in the sights of the revolver and still asking the daughter to choose who will die first. Redeemed, Carminha refuses to choose, disarms her father, who tries to convince her to surrender to him, but she shoots at the villainous father's feet, who, furiously, says that he should finish off his daughter's race, just like him he got rid of his wife, confessing not only his wife's murder, but also that he would be willing to kill his own daughter.
Mitigating Factors/Freudian Excuse[]
Santiago does not present any mitigating factor, Freudian excuse, remorse for his actions or tragic passage. Their villainy is due simply to greed. If he shows any feeling for someone it is purely false. He never loved Lucinda and makes it evident, not only at the end of the novel, when he scoffs at her naivety by being arrested again, calling her an “old muggle” and rejoices at her arrest, as well as making Lucinda blamed for murder of his wife for the first time she was in jail. Regarding daughter to wife, it is clear that Santiago felt nothing for any of them: he killed his own wife in cold blood in front of his daughter and abandoned Carminha, still a child in the dump, since he loved money more than she did. family. No husband and father who loves his wife and children would do what Santiago did. He shows no sympathy for anyone, no redeeming characteristics. His gentle way of being at the beginning was just false. In short, Santiago is a pure evil sociopath, who feels love for no one and commits horrible acts simply for money.
Heinous Standards[]
Of all the villains in the soap opera, Santiago was the one that stood out the most with his villainy. The other villains (Carminha, Max and Nilo), even though they crossed the moral horizon line a few times, usually less than 3 times (Carminha when she buried Nina alive or abandoned her child in the dump; Nilo when she burned Lucinda's house with children Max, when he kidnapped Carminha, Nina and freaked out at the dump before his death), none can be as hideous as Santiago, who killed his own wife, abused his daughter (even raping her as a child), threw her in dump, inspiring her to do the same with Rita as an adult, it was the life of Lucinda and Nilo's family that was ruined by him. Of all the villains mentioned, Santiago is the only one who did not have any retentive characteristics.
Everything Santiago did, as well as all the lives he ruined and the villains that the characters became because of his actions, was due to the love of money and greed. Because of this, Santiago murdered his own wife in front of his daughter, abandoned her as a child in a landfill, ruining her life and still regretted for not having done with his daughter the same thing he did with his wife, that is, he regretted for not killing her too (remembering that she was a 5 year old child); Not to mention the raping of his own daughter during childhood. He got involved with Lucinda, ruining her life and that of his family too, being responsible for the death of his daughter Clarinha (another child), just so that she was incriminated for the murder of his wife and spent years in jail paying for a crime that didn't committed, in addition to feeling guilty for this crime, and also, of all the times he deceived her, making her think he loved her, when in fact, he just used it. Santiago proved to be responsible for the villainy of the main antagonists of the novel:
- Abandoning his own daughter in the landfill and murdering his mother, Santiago was responsible for making Carminha bad and the main antagonist of Avenida Brasil, being indirectly responsible for all his evil and hideous actions.
- Lucinda's betrayal and imprisonment, as well as the death of her daughter, led Nilo to become an alcoholic, resentful, abusive (who mainly abused children) and the bad man he was throughout the novel, in addition to being extremely poverty, in addition to an abusive father, feeding him badly and physically abusing his own son, Max, who also became one of the main antagonists.
Finally, there are all the acts he committed at the end of the novel, from abusing and manipulating his daughter to be complicit in his plans to his attempt to ruin the life of Tufão and his family, killing him and the protagonist Nina.
Final Verdict[]
A definite YES for him. He is one of the greatest examples of Brazilian television drama to be a strong candidate for the category.