People dance to music on Olympic Boulevard in Rio’s old port district during the night of the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday, August 5, 2016.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
Nicholas Maranhao went with some friends to his favourite bar, in a gritty inner-city patch of Rio, on Friday night, as he always does on a Friday night, and discovered that instead of the usual soccer match, the TV was playing the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
Mr. Maranhao, a retired bureaucrat of 68 with a strong skeptical streak, was not pleased with this development.
There is so much wrong in Brazil at the moment that he strongly suspected the event would not go well, playing out on the screen above him as he munched fried shrimp.
"It's got a very strong Carnival influence, this performance," he said dourly, as on the screen hundreds of dancers sambaed in intricate patterns and fluorescent wigs.
But as the evening unfolded, Mr. Maranhao relaxed into grudging approval.
"At this moment in the country, with all that we're going through, it's good to know we're still able to celebrate some of our culture," he said.
Another half-hour, another half-dozen shrimp, and he softened further. "It's good to see my country represented."
The ceremony went off without disaster (which was the first fear of many Brazilians) and seemed to provide an acceptable level of glamour and fun. To a pulsing soundtrack, performers whisked through the country's story, from the rain forest to the indigenous people to colonization, and then into big-city life (with a brief detour into some statistics on carbon emissions, which left the bar crowd puzzled).
Mr. Maranhao wished to make clear he did not feel fooled. "It's a sedative – the government gives people a little anesthetic and maybe a moment of joy in their suffering," he said. He went on to list the travails that currently face Brazil, from a fierce recession and skyrocketing unemployment to the political battle under way in Brasilia, and rapidly deteriorating public security. "We've got other priorities – security, health, education – and the whole world knows this."
There was widespread expectation that many Brazilians in the stadium crowd would boo interim president Michel Temer, who polls at under 15 per cent in popularity surveys. He is viewed by many as having orchestrated a bloodless seizure of power from suspended President Dilma Rousseff, who is on trial for impeachment and did not attend the event. Organizers minimized that possibility by breaking with protocol and having Mr. Temer speak with no introduction – he was suddenly thrust before the crowd to declare the Games open, and then lights and music came up. And it was back to dancing.
When legendary singers Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso appeared, there was a murmur of approval; and when the dancers of Rio's fiercely competitive samba clubs sashayed in, Carnival-style, there was another: this was familiar, and well-loved, territory.
The event was in many ways a made-for-TV spectacle, with the on-screen highlight an eruption of orange fireworks around Maracana Stadium. But in the favelas that climb the hills nearby, many people simply weren't watching.
"My friend is drumming for Bosnia, so I guess maybe I'll go inside to the TV when they get to Bosnia," said Viviane de Cavalho, 40, who was having a beer on the sidewalk with friends in Morro da Conceicao.
Down the hill, at Pedra do Sal, a hillside rock with steps cut into it by slaves who hauled salt off ships by day and invented samba at night, a full blown roda de samba was under way, with dancing and singing and not a TV screen in sight.
"This is our place, and this is where we belong," said Antonia Amoda, 60, a retired social worker who journeyed two hours from a slum on the edge of the city to dance there, like she does every Friday night.
"I've never watched the Olympics and I don't know why I'd watch this one," she added gently.
This part of Rio has long been plagued by violent crime and confrontations involving traffickers and police. Just blocks from where Mr. Maranhao and his friends were gathered, a woman died on her way to work that morning, shot by would-be thieves. Like much of the city, this area teeters on a cusp, poised to go one way, or a much darker other.
Nearby, taxi driver Mauricio Soares, 42, watched the show unfold on the small TV he, like many drivers, keeps on the dashboard, to ensure they miss neither telenovelas nor football games. "Well, it's pretty, all right – but it's a pretty maquiagem," he said, using a word Brazilians use to describe a masking of problems. "They're showing you one thing. Look at this place, it's so civilized. Organized. It's so beautiful and well set-up. That's not what's normally here – it's corruption and thieves and dysfunction." Mr. Soares did muster a grunt of approval when the marathon runner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima – who missed out at a gold medal at the Athens Games in 2004 because he was tackled by a protester near the end of the race – emerged to light the torch.
A few blocks away, there was a giant public party in Praca Maua, a square in the old port that was the site of a $3.3-billion (Canadian) renovation as part of the Olympic overhaul. It's one of the more successful projects from the Games, drawing visitors to public performances from across the city, although many people in the neighbourhood are angry that no effort has been made to acknowledge that it stands on top of a mass grave of slaves transported from Africa to be sold on the docks nearby.
The slavery era was glossed over quickly in the opening ceremony, with a nod to capoeira, a dance-infused martial art first practised by slaves hiding their intent to revolt, and some dancers in cages, others with heavy blocks on their feet to symbolize their lack of liberty.
But there was little discontent on show last night – just Brazilians of all colours and all income levels, all of whom knew all the words to all the Carnival standards that blasted from the stage.
"This is a special moment: I'm proud," said Silene Macial, a 40-year-old home maker who lives nearby but had never ventured into the square before tonight.
"It's a privilege for us – and despite all the problems we are going through, we have to be proud of it."