Brazil's
super-rich and the exclusive club at the heart of a coronavirus hotspot
At least 60
of the exclusive Rio de Janeiro Country Club’s 850 members have reportedly been
struck down with Covid-19.
Connection
between Covid-19 and country’s globe-trotting elite highlights gulf between
rich and poor in one of world’s most unequal societies
Tom
Phillips and Caio Barretto Briso in Rio de Janeiro
Sat 4 Apr
2020 10.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 4 Apr 2020 10.55 BST
It is
Brazil’s most exclusive club – a beachside sanctuary of privilege and power to
which just 0.00041% of the country’s citizens have the keys.
But the Rio
de Janeiro Country Club – founded by British executives in 1916 and frequented
since by the crème de la crème of carioca society – has been thrown into
mourning by the coronavirus pandemic, sparking a nationwide debate about class
and inequality in one of the most economically lopsided societies on earth.
At least 60
of the club’s 850 globe-trotting members have reportedly been struck down with
Covid-19, while one – the septuagenarian businesswoman Mirna Bandeira de Mello
– has died and been laid to rest during a funeral attended by no one but her
son.
“In normal times there would have been
millions at her burial,” Christiano Bandeira de Mello lamented in an interview
with the Brazilian magazine Época.
Anna Maria
Ramalho, a society columnist who had known the victim since school, said she
had been forced to say goodbye by logging on to an online mass. “I’ve lost a
life-long friend,” she said. “She was such a special person, so very
down-to-earth.”
Coronavirus
appears to have breached the country club’s white wooden gates – just metres
from Ipanema beach – on the afternoon of 7 March – although exactly how is now
a topic of bitter dispute.
Hours
earlier, descendants of Brazil’s former royal family had gathered at a nearby
mansion to toast the engagement of 31-year-old Pedro Alberto de Orléans e
Bragança – the great-great-great grandson of Brazil’s last emperor, Pedro II –
and his 26-year-old partner, Alessandra Fragoso Pires.
Guests
included Pires’ mother and stepfather, who had jetted in from their home in
London, and others from Belgium, Italy and the United States.
More than
half of the 70-or-so people at the lunch have since tested positive for
Covid-19 including the bride’s father and grandfather and the groom’s aunt.
Three remain in hospital, in serious condition. “It’s just horrible,” said one
family member who attended the celebration and asked not to be named. “Nobody
could have imagined the virus would strike with such devastating force.”
After
lunch, several guests spent the afternoon at the “country” – sparking
speculation they had caused its coronavirus cluster – something strenuously
denied by one friend of Brazil’s former monarchy. “One thing has nothing to do
with the other,” they insisted. “Nobody knows what happened – who brought it
[the virus] and who didn’t. They were surprised by this.”
Whatever
the truth, two days later on 9 March, coronavirus continued to contaminate the
club’s illustrious membership. At a packed assembly – reportedly convened to
thrash out a dispute between its old guard and a new generation of associates
who lack the traditional surnames of past members, but not their deep pockets –
cross words, and then kisses and hugs were exchanged.
“Lots of
people lost their fortunes in the financial crisis – people who were stinking
rich and ended up with nothing – so they had to sell their membership,” one
prominent Rio socialite said of the generational tug-of-war at the club where
members are chosen by secret ballot and it costs around £70,000 to join.
The
270-strong audience also included people who were at the imperial family’s
commemoration – further fueling suspicions they were to blame for the outbreak.
“It was a
tense meeting, big names in business were there,” the high-society source said.
“Several people left the meeting infected.”
The country
club is not the only oasis of Brazilian prosperity and influence touched by
coronavirus. A pop star, an actress and the daughter of a top government
official were infected during a celebrity wedding at a beach resort that boasts
of being “conceived with the philosophy of exclusiveness”. Some affluent guests
had reportedly flown in from holidays in Europe and Aspen, Colorado.
Brazil’s
presidential palace has also been hit, with more than 20 members of a
delegation that flew to meet Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate testing
positive for Covid-19. The president, Jair Bolsonaro, claims he tested negative
but has refused to make those results public.
The
connection between the spread of coronavirus and Brazil’s super-rich has
sparked discussion over their role in introducing the ailment to Brazil – and
the gulf between rich and poor in one of the most unequal societies on earth.
Many fear
that while the first coronavirus wave has crashed over Brazil’s largely white
political and economic elite, it is the poor and mostly black masses who will
eventually suffer the most – without the luxury of being able to self-isolate
at home or resort to expensive private hospitals.
One of the
first deaths recorded in Brazil was that of Cleonice Gonçalves, a 63-year-old
domestic helper who was reportedly infected by her wealthy employer when she
returned from holiday in Italy. “It goes without saying that the most
vulnerable will always be the most affected, irrespective of whether there is a
pandemic or not,” the black feminist intellectual Djamila Ribeiro wrote in the
Folha de São Paulo newspaper recently. “These are structural issues.”
Others,
including some country club members, wonder whether some of Brazil’s
mega-moneyed coronavirus patients exposed others to the illness by failing to
properly isolate or quarantine themselves – perhaps believing their economic status
meant they were above such mundane measures.
One
Brazilian tycoon is reportedly being investigated by police for allegedly
flying his private jet to the beach last month despite having tested positive
for Covid-19. The man – an investment banker who denies the charges – is
accused of infecting at least two locals in Trancoso, a glamorous seaside town
in Bahia state.
Rio de
Janeiro – which has so far suffered 1074 coronavirus cases and 47 deaths – has
been in lockdown since late March, forcing a succession of high-society soirées
to be scrapped.
Among the
aborted events was a bash for 1,000 people at the beachfront Copacabana Palace
hotel to celebrate the marriage of Alexandre Birman, a multi-millionaire
footwear designer who makes crocodile and snakeskin shoes for Hollywood stars.
A confidant
of the Orléans e Bragança family said they had more pressing concerns with two
relatives still in intensive care. “They feel sad, apprehensive and worried …
They are frightened with all this repercussion,” they said.
Some have
pointed an accusing finger at Brazil’s jet-setting elites for importing the
illness after eye-wateringly expensive overseas adventures, with one left-wing
website last week announcing: “The rich and famous have spread coronavirus
around Brazil.”
Another
blog declared: “The rich have contaminated Brazil.”
But a guest
at the royal family’s fateful lunch said it was wrong to scapegoat the wealthy
for a sickness uninterested in social class. “Both poor and rich are dying all
around the world,” they said. “People who travel more might have caught it
first but the virus doesn’t choose its victims. It can attack anyone.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário