RIO DE JANEIRO (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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.” “That’s a fiction,” he said in a New Year’s Eve live address on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“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?” 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.<\/p>\n
Police broke up large parties in several cities, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“And it’s not for 500 people, ok?” he added with a laugh.<\/p>\n
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