Eve at Copacabana beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on December 31,
2020. (Photo by CARL DE SOUZA / AFP)
Brazil rang in the New Year with Rio de Janeiro’s famed
Copacabana beach nearly empty — the usual swarms of revelers kept
away by police because of the pandemic — and pot-banging protests
against far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Rio usually hosts one of the world’s biggest New Year’s Eve
parties, but authorities canceled the festivities this year as
Covid-19 racked the country.
“It was a complicated year, with this pandemic that has
devastated the entire world,” said Claudio Miranda, a 29-year-old
salesman who was part of the relatively tiny crowd gathered on
Copacabana.
“But we have to celebrate life — our lives, our families’ lives,
everyone who’s still here. Even if our hearts are aching for those
who have left us,” he told AFP.
Covid-19 has killed nearly 195,000 people in Brazil, the
second-highest death toll worldwide after the United States. The
South American country of 212 million people is currently in the
grips of a nasty second wave.
The cancelation of the official festivities did not stop
revelers across Rio from lighting up the city’s iconic skyline with
fireworks of their own at midnight.
The loud booms blended with the sound of pot- and pan-clanging
demonstrators shouting “Get out, Bolsonaro!” from their windows in
Rio and Sao Paulo, Brazil’s two biggest cities, in protest against
a leader they accuse of disastrous handling of the pandemic.
Bolsonaro, the politician dubbed the “Tropical Trump,” has
downplayed the gravity of the virus from the start and consistently
defied health experts’ advice on containing it.
He ended the year on the same note, saying that face masks
— which global health officials call a vital tool in preventing
transmission of the virus — “don’t protect against anything.”
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“That’s a fiction,” he said in a New Year’s Eve live address on
Facebook.
“When are we going to get some people with the courage — because
I’m not a specialist on this, OK? — to speak up and say that the
protection provided by masks is a tiny percentage?”
beach is seen on New Year’s Eve, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on December
31, 2020. – Brazil rang in the New Year with Rio de Janeiro’s famed
Copacabana beach nearly empty — the usual swarms of revelers kept
away by police because of the pandemic — and pot-banging protests
against far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Rio usually hosts one of the world’s biggest New Year’s Eve
parties, but authorities canceled the festivities this year as
Covid-19 racked the country. (Photo by CARL DE SOUZA /
AFP)
New Year’s celebrations were largely muted affairs across
Brazil, though huge crowds of mask-less revelers could be seen at
beaches and clubs in some areas.
Police broke up large parties in several cities, according to
media reports.
Football superstar Neymar meanwhile tried to douse a firestorm
of controversy over reports he organized a week-long party for 500
revelers at his mansion outside Rio.
The 28-year-old Paris Saint-Germain striker posted a video on
Instagram of his preparations for what he called a “low-key little
dinner at home” for friends and family on New Year’s Eve.
“And it’s not for 500 people, ok?” he added with a laugh.
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