Hawking his goods by the roadside in the northeast town of Salgueiro, traveling salesman Matheus Silva has a new line in this election year in Brazil.
Alongside the windshield wipers, car seat covers and hammocks that are his mainstay, on a recent weekday Silva was selling towels at 35 reais ($7) apiece featuring the two main candidates for the presidency. By late afternoon he’d sold four showing President Jair Bolsonaro, and six of his likely challenger, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — but, he added, he’d shifted more Bolsonaros earlier in the neighboring town of Cabrobo.
"It’s a draw,” Silva concluded.