Five hours

People ask me why I am so involved in Brazil. Whether I forgot about Mexico. The answer starts on a beach in Rio de Janeiro, with a nineteen-year-old who refused to go to war.

There is a verse about Jerusalem: if I forget you, it is as if I forgot my right hand. I am left-handed. I write with my left, but not with the values of the narco-left. If I forgot Mexico, I would forget both hands. It is impossible.

That young man was a backpacker, between Italy and Israel. He rejected the war, he did not want to be a soldier, and he left. Where to? Brazil. Barra da Tijuca, in Rio de Janeiro. The same place where I lived many years later.

He lived in Florianópolis, in Brasília and in São Paulo, on Avenida Paulista. He did not have a single real to his name. He started working in clothing, made a lot of friends, and things went very well for him. One weekend, Uruguay. Another, Colombia. He was about twenty-one when his Brazilian friends told him: let's go make it in America. New York.

He had another idea. They tell me there are very beautiful women in Mexico. Let's spend a weekend in Mexico, go to Acapulco, and then on to the United States for the green card.

They arrived broke at a rooftop in Polanco, on Avenida Arquímedes. On that same avenue I opened my first office, at twenty-three. Someone told them about a party at a Lynis, one of those coffee shops that were like a Vips. There was a beautiful model there, whose family came from Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco. He said: here I go.

That young woman is my mother. That backpacker is my father.

My grandfather did not want him. What are you doing with that beggar? They dated for almost six years. The weekend in Mexico City became forty years. If my father had arrived at that party one hour later, he never meets my mother. I do not exist.

When I was born, the earth shook. When my brother was born, it shook again. My parents said that was enough, every birth was an earthquake.

I lived through the 1985 one in my father's arms. I was a baby, but believe it or not, I remember it perfectly. He carried me while he helped in the rubble. He had a factory on Regina Street, with about three hundred seamstresses who, thank God, had not come in to work yet. Memo, the man who drove his van, died. I saw my father lift the rubble. That same day, my brother was born.

It marked me for life. My father's story is one of struggle, of suffering, of falling down and getting up many times. So is mine. My whole life has been about building things.

My father never made it to the United States. He always wanted American citizenship. Since I was a little boy, he told me: at least you, get your residency there. I have it. Imagine what he feels today when he sees what I am doing in the United States.

That is why Brazil is not just another topic for me. It is the land where my father started from zero. And it is also the piece that decides Mexico's future: it is where we find out whether the São Paulo Forum, the narco-regime, stays standing on this continent.

On the Sunday of the runoff, I woke up feeling strange. My intuition rarely fails me, and that day it was talking from early on.

The first thing I saw was the vote of Brazilians in Japan. Flávio was winning. Good. Around eight or nine in the morning I started to see the turnaround, and I felt one of those chills that go right to the bone. I was in a bad mood all day without really knowing why. I got to work and waited for the count.

That Sunday, something unprecedented happened in Brazil: the Supreme Court extended voting by two hours across the whole country, until seven at night. The count was suspended.

When it started, what I saw on the screen did not add up. With a tiny fraction of the tallies in, Lula shot up ten, eleven points. In the first round, at that same stage, Flávio had been nine points ahead. I felt the chill again. I wrote it on Telegram and on all my networks: this is not right.

Then the gap closed. Flávio turned it around and got to almost two points ahead. I asked for the cuts: ten, twenty, thirty percent. My forecast was fifty-two. For a while it looked like we would get there.

With forty percent counted, I watched the lead shrink. One. Point nine. Point eight. Point seven. Don Jorge Armando Cisneros kept writing to me: hit like, Levy. I told him we had already lost, that they were going to steal the election. I do not talk about ballet or baking. Talk to me about numbers.

At around sixty percent I told the candidate's team: we lost. No, wait, they said. We lost. I got up from the table and went for a walk.

And I was wrong about one thing. I say it because I am not mediocre. My model had a margin for fraud, of one percent. Never of that size. I underestimated it.

My first instinct was to write nothing. Then I said no. Always the information. The same way I tell you quickly when the news is good, I told you quickly that it was irreversible.

A few hours later, the decision had been made to get Flávio out of Brazil. First, they were going to put him in prison. And what came after that was not encouraging at all.

Why so much fuss about Flávio? Because his story, with all due proportion, is mine.

I have worked across Latin America for years. With Keiko in Peru. With Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia. But this is something else. This is a human being they want to put in prison for running for president.

On Sunday night, Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered him to surrender his passports, the regular one and the diplomatic one. On Monday, the Federal Police served him the order. On Tuesday, they cancelled them.

I have lived almost ten years of persecution against me and my family. More than two hundred fifty-seven audits in Mexico City. More than sixteen when I was undersecretary. More than fifteen in every campaign I ran. The only thing they can accuse me of is hitting a door to defend my son. How could I not feel empathy for a man they want to destroy?

So I put all my intelligence and all my capacity, and thank God the possibility to collaborate, at the service of the only thing that mattered: rescuing him and keeping him alive. With the man who for me is the best president, the one removing this plague from the hemisphere, President Trump. And with the mastermind of all this, Secretary Marco Rubio.

And my plan? Do you want to see God laugh? Make plans. On Monday I was going to announce the victory. On Tuesday night I was going to tell you: look what I made for you.

On Tuesday morning I published it: Flávio Bolsonaro was no longer in Brazil and was on his way to the United States. That same day, a U.S. government official confirmed it.

That Tuesday, Argentina's immigration authority said it had no record of his entry. It was true. He had not crossed yet.

Then I said what no one had said: that Javier Milei had everything to do with Flávio being alive. Argentina exploded. Fifteen minutes later, my friend Ghaleb sent me what an influencer with half a million followers was saying: that I am crazy, a liar, that the embassy had already denied it. That Simón Levy does not exist. Answer him, he said. No. I was in the middle of keeping a man alive.

At eight at night, Buenos Aires time, Eduardo Feinmann, one of the best journalists in Argentina, asked me live on air what had happened. I told him: I can tell you in advance that President Javier Milei had absolutely everything to do with Flávio Bolsonaro being alive and free.

Are you sure? Because this is a bomb. Completely, Eduardo. How sure are you? Sure enough to have this information. You will see. Not even five hours will pass before this is confirmed.

At 10:50 p.m., Flávio, his wife and his two daughters crossed the Tancredo Neves international bridge into Misiones, with valid documents and no legal impediment. At 11:30 p.m. they boarded a private flight by Baires Fly. The flight plan said Guayaquil. Argentina's National Immigration Directorate reported it.

Between my words on air and the crossing of the bridge: two hours and fifty minutes.

Before dawn, Eduardo called me. I cannot believe what you told me turned out to be true. Tell me who you work with. I gave him the only answer that mattered: I am not the news. The news is that Mr. Bolsonaro is alive. Che, you killed me, he said. Then he recorded a reel.

I have many flaws. Many. A liar, I am not.

And let me make my position clear. You will never see me post a photo with Secretary Rubio or President Trump. I have plenty. To me it is very low class, something insecure people do. That journalist said, without me hinting at anything, that I am one of the people closest to Marco Rubio. I would never boast about a relationship. He is a journalist. He investigates. That is all I can say.

For the narco-left, what happened with Evo was a rescue.

The government of Mexico sent an Air Force plane, paid for by every Mexican, to take Evo Morales out of Bolivia. That one was a rescue. Flávio, they call a fugitive. They wanted to put him in prison. That is Andrés's doctrine: hypocrisy.

And every day it is the same. Do not listen to that madman. Get three or four influencers, pay them, and have them hit him with everything. They eat, dream and sleep thinking about me. If they want to keep giving me money on social media, even if it is just for my chewing gum, go ahead. My team keeps it. They deserve it.

I believe millions of Brazilians are happy. I am, because Flávio is alive. And I tell Mexico something: Lula won Brazil. He did not win the continent. We are more than forty-five million votes. There is no other option.

How did they win in Brazil? They poured money onto people and spread a lot of fear. That is how populism wins everywhere.

First it makes you dependent. Then it scares you with losing the little it gives you. And in between, it leaves you without the tools to defend yourself: without knowing your rights, without understanding your money, without being able to check who you are paying, without a plan for your business.

My father arrived in Brazil without a real and in Mexico without a peso. He started out in clothing and ended up with a factory of three hundred seamstresses. He built it by working. I watched him lift rubble in 1985. And I have spent almost ten years defending myself from persecution. If I learned anything, it is that freedom starts when you know how to do things for yourself.

That is why I am democratizing skills. What used to cost a lawyer, an accountant, a consultant or years of experience, I am putting in your hands. In Mexico, in Brazil, in Argentina and in the United States. In Spanish and in English.

That is how Posible was born. It is all my experience and knowledge in one single, integrated app, so you never get lost. People kept telling me: Escudo is incredible, the courses, the accounting tool, Cónsul, but there are so many things that I get confused. They were right. Now it is all in one place.

You type or dictate what you need, the way you would tell a friend. Your pension. An immigration question or a criminal law one. How to defend yourself. A business plan for your chocolate shop or your corner store. Who you are about to pay. We measured it: it saves you between eight and ten hours a month.

The same episode, in my voice, in both languages. Six chapters: why Brazil, election night, why Flávio, the app, Milei and the interview, and your questions.