RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Faced with the growing number of cases and hospitalizations after end-of-year parties, the Mayor of the capital of Minas Gerais state maintains only essential services open. Bars, restaurants, malls and gyms are forbidden to open their doors, but a new lockdown is prompting protests.
In 2012, when he was president of popular soccer club Atlético-MG, the now mayor of Belo Horizonte, Alexandre Kalil (PSD), saw his team do the best first round campaign of the Brazilian Championship and lead the competition for 15 rounds.
However, in the end, Atletico lost the title to Fluminense. He has used this example to prevent the dictum “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” from being repeated, this time in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, after the capital of Minas Gerais withstood the health crisis with the lowest mortality rate among cities with over one million inhabitants in Brazil.
To this end, the Mayor kept his promise to close down trade again should the population fail to comply with the social isolation measures during the end-of-year festivities. On Monday, January 11th, the decree that keeps only essential services, such as supermarkets and pharmacies open came into force. Bars, restaurants, shopping malls, leisure clubs and gyms are prevented from opening their doors.
The hardening of quarantine in Belo Horizonte, however, prompted outrage from trade associations and entrepreneurs, who organized protests outside the City Hall.
On Friday, January 8th, about 100 professionals from the physical education and fitness sector had already protested against the closure of gyms. On Monday, hundreds of traders, vendors, union leaders and representatives of associations marched to demand the decree be revoked.
Demonstrators, many of them dressed in green and yellow shirts, displayed posters criticizing Kalil and calling for civil disobedience, shouting in chorus that most entrepreneurs intend to keep their stores open, in defiance of the decree. Despite the threat of a boycott, traders who disobeyed the municipal order were the exception, at least in the central region.
With leaders present at the rally, the Belo Horizonte Storeowners Union (SINDILOJAS) reported that the city government’s measure leads to the closure of 30,000 stores and impacts over 90,000 workers. The Minas Gerais Bar and Restaurant Association (ABRASEL), which is engaged in an injunction battle in Court in opposition to the measures restricting the operation of the sector it represents, released a note explaining that it did not summon or enlarge the demonstration.
However, the organization continues to demand that Kalil end impositions on bar and restaurant owners, who have been banned from selling alcoholic beverages since December 7th. “The number of beds in Belo Horizonte has decreased. The Mayor had nine months to prepare the city, but he believed that the disease was over and now he wants to charge the bill to those who are not to blame,” says Matheus Daniel, president of ABRASEL.
The protests, which rely on the backing of Bolsonarist representatives in the city, like city councilor Nikolas Ferreira (PRTB) who spoke at the rally, are inspired by the protest that took place in Búzios late last year, when traders refused to comply with the lockdown ordered by the courts.
The decision was revoked following street rallies led by storeowners and entrepreneurs. At the time, the TV host Stanley Gusman, who died for Covid-19 last Sunday, was one of the prominent figures from Minas Gerais who endorsed the idea of reproducing the protests in Belo Horizonte should the Mayor close down the city’s businesses again.
In a note, the City Hall says it “deeply regrets the impacts that have been caused by the pandemic on the various economic activities,” and argues that it based itself on scientific data to issue the decree. The ICU bed occupancy rate in the capital reached 86%. In all, Belo Horizonte records over 70,000 confirmed cases of the disease and almost 2,000 deaths, with 75 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
“The closure of non-essential activities does not have any punitive nature for trade,” emphasizes the City Hall, which plans the measure to be in force for at least two weeks. “The goal is to reduce the amount of people in circulation to contain the spread of the infection. As soon as indicators allow, the process of flexibilization will be restarted”. Belo Horizonte is the sixth most populous city in Brazil, with 2.5 million residents.
Before determining the closure, Kalil delivered an emotional speech and apologized when he announced the new decree. “We have reached the limit of Covid-19. We tried to alert and keep the city open for another ten days, when the numbers were risky, but we at least expected people to be responsible. Now we have cases in private hospitals in Belo Horizonte of whole families who spent Christmas together, infected and hospitalized. I apologize, but I had no other choice. To govern is not just to please,” said the Mayor, who is planning to open an additional 40 ICU beds this week for treatment of the disease in the public health system.
Owner of construction companies, Kalil is seen as an enemy by commercial businesses and entrepreneurs who have been protesting for the city’s economic reopening since the start of the health crisis. “If a family loses a loved one in Belo Horizonte because I thought of myself or of reelection, I will never be able to sleep again. I’d rather die by a gunshot than remorse for being a coward,” said the Mayor in an interview with EL PAÍS in May 2020, after a protest outside his home. He also reported receiving death threats for closing the city. “I was president of Atletico, lost 6 to 1 from my biggest rival … Who has experienced the pressure of soccer, I am not afraid of half a dozen honks,” joked Kalil in ironizing the protests.
As in its capital, the rest of Minas Gerais is experiencing a critical surge of the pandemic. The ICU occupancy rate in the state exceeds 70%, a level that represents a “red alert”, according to the parameters established by the Health Secretariat. On Monday, the rolling average of new cases reached its highest level (6,129) throughout the pandemic, the third consecutive daily record. The state has recorded almost 600,000 cases and 13,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
As there is a concentration of ICU beds in the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area, the capital is again concerned about a potential overload of its hospital system, due to more serious cases transferred from elsewhere in the state, as observed at the start of the pandemic.