The knocked down crosses in Rio: when a pandemic is more about politics than (only) a health issue
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Last weekend, Brazil surpassed the intolerable mark of 50 thousand deaths by COVID-19, this set of letters and numbers that have kept us at home, prohibited hugs and encounters, added face masks as our mandatory clothing. Words like “quarantine”, “isolation”, “live”, “alcohol gel”, “virtual” have become a part of our day-to-day vocabulary. We sometimes forget how to call the days while they pass as in Groundhog Day and we only differentiate day from night because the light changes.
Fifty-one thousand people are dead. I dare saying we no longer even know what those numbers mean.
I think it is utterly necessary to put this data in perspective. In just over 3 months since the pandemic arrived in Brazil, COVID-19 has killed more than traffic accidents, one of our most cruel serial killers — over the past year 40,721 people, according to the DPVAT. The new disease has also killed in the country more than another of our ghosts, intentional homicides, which claimed 39,776 lives in 2019, according to the Brazilian Ministry of Justice.
It has been just over a month since we broke another sad record: a thousand deaths in just one day. Remember recent Brazilian tragedies: the rupture of a Vale dam in Brumadinho (2019), the fire at the Kiss Nightclub (2013), the accident with Air France 447 (2009) and TAM 3054 (2007) flights. Together, victims of all these gruesome events — that left a lump in the throat of many people and made so many of us cry — all together, they were 939 people. It would be as if there were, every day, 2 full planes falling from the sky, a crowded nightclub burning and an avalanche of mud over Brazil. Every day.
And that was not even the highest number of deaths recorded over a 24-hour period. On June 24, the day with the highest death toll so far, 1,473 people died of COVID-19 in Brazil.
Since March 17, when the first casualty by Covid-19 was recorded in Brazil, until today (June 23), 98 days have passed. On average, during this period, 523 people died of the disease per day. In 1992, the Military Police of São Paulo killed 111 prisoners during riots, in what became known as the Carandiru massacre. The number of deaths by COVID-19 in this period almost equals 5 of those. Every single day, for almost 100 days.
Twitter user @rodrigol_fc wrote on May 19 that on that day 1,179 people died of COVID-19 in Brazil, stating that the daily toll has become only statistics. He than lists some of the tragedies that shocked Brazil. His calculations are all correct, but he failed to mention that all six tragedies he listed, combined, killed even less than COVID-19 on that day alone: 1,056 against 1,179.
A cross for 410
A lot is happening while many feel nothing is happening at all. For those who write as a job — at least that is the case for me — it’s often been overwhelming to have to deal with this avalanche of monothematic events. About 10 days ago something small in the effects but giant in the symbology occurred. On the sands of the most Brazilian beach, Copacabana, in Rio, activists from local NGO Rio de Paz paid tribute to those killed by COVID-19: one hundred crosses, some decorated with the country’s flag, and one hundred shallow ‘graves’.
It was supposed to be a simple tribute to the thousands killed. I believe that there would not be enough sand for the abominable numbers we’ve seen day after day on the news — in a grisly calculation, considering the numbers up to that day, about 41,000, in order to line up 10 graves side by side, the length of almost two entire Copacabana beaches would be necessary).
So 100 crosses and 100 graves symbolized the many dead — one for every 410 people. And it could’ve been the end of it, like a bitter reminder — on a beach that should be deserted —, that Brazil is doing badly, that we should keep protecting ourselves and others (especially those most vulnerable), that those numbers shouldn’t be just statistics. And that, after all, we are mourning, because the pain of these families is the pain of all 210 million Brazilians.
In countries hit by the novel coronavirus, the pain of all the families who have lost their 469,587 relatives is everyone’s pain. That is the number of deaths by Covid-19 in the world as of today, according to the WHO — almost half a million people. About 11% of them are here in Brazil, only second to the United States with 25.8%.
It is fair to say that Rio de Paz’s tribute was also an expression of displeasure. Unsurprisingly: a very large and growing portion of Brazilians feel exhausted. We are frightened and incredulous with the inaction, ineptitude, disengagement, contemptuous declarations in series, lack of leadership and of respect and the usual dalliance with authoritarianism at a time that is not being easy for absolutely anyone, even less so for those most vulnerable.
Knocked down crosses
Brazil has reached such a low point, as a society, that we are unable to tell apart what was supposed to be a tribute to the dead — whether left or right, it doesn’t really matter — from the nasty politics and the growing (as if there should be no limit whatsoever) polarization the country witnesses. We should all be united around bereaved families and taking care of our “at-risk” loved ones, willing and clinging to the efforts to contain the virus spread. However, we choose to celebrate, some even with sparkling wine, the early and irresponsible “reopening” while the facing up trace of cases and of deaths fails to bend down.
Everything is a symbol. Back in Copacabana, a man in a dark-blue T-shirt, in silence but motivated, started walking without wearing a mask (which only in Brazil denotes ideology) among the crosses in the sand, knocking them down one by one, with no saying and unstopping. Even after all my efforts, I cannot understand the coldness of a person who walks among graves, even symbolic ones, destroying a tribute he could be paying too…
And the worst was yet to come. While the destructive endeavour took place, an effusive horde applauded dumbly and shouted obscenities that are unworthy of the moment we all experience. A fool, who is not seen but can be heard in one of the videos on social networks, simply repeats, with no further message: “Brazil, Brazil, Brazil …”, as if celebrating something she didn’t notice of having been a conceded goal. And she continues, foolishly, only then to appear on screen, wearing sports clothes and, of course, also without a mask:
Send those lefties away… to China!
Who are “lefties”, darling? Are them Rio da Paz’s activists asking for an answer up to the challenge instead of a shrugging or a “So what?” from the President, or are them the 40,000 dead, or perhaps their families, maybe those in quarantine or those who choose to wear masks and use gel alcohol? Who are the “lefties” who deserve your deleterious comments? Are them those honoring the dead, asking its spread to stop? What was there about “lefties”, you petty Brazilian? Is it having the ability to critically observe and with some disgust the current occupant of the Presidential chair instead of backslapping whoever sits in it, intoxicated with a blind and stupid passion?
As everything in Brazil now seems to be followed by a swift reaction, another man, yellow T-shirt around his neck and wearing a mask, followed the path of the previous one and put the fallen crosses back to place, desperating the enthusiastic crowd. Asking for “respect for others”, under protests from the rude beach walkers, while sticking the crosses back into the soft sand, the man, 55-year-old taxi driver Marcio Antonio do Nascimento, vented:
My son died of that s*. Twenty-five years-old!
Do Nascimento is the father of Hugo Dutra do Nascimento Silva, who died of Covid-19 on April 18. Silva was himself a father to a 4-year-old. Nonetheless, not even the painful confession of a bereaved father, raising crosses as if they were his son’s, drove the scoundrels’ noisy spirits to subside. It’s so sad, Brazil! It is “upsetting”, as Twitter user @disangermano wrote. It is unfortunate. It is an astonishing sign of a time in which, if the virus won’t kill us, a wrapped-in-a-yellow-green-flag neighbour will.
In Brazil today, it is no longer enough for us to wish for good health. We need to shout out loud: “Peace!”
