Brazil certainly did not keep its economy open

Writes Carlos Ramalhete:

Dear Mr. Rockwell:

I have been reading your page first thing in the morning for quite a long time, but it is the first time I write to you.

As I wrote in a comment on Linh Dinh’s text on how people were living under Covid-19 in different countries:

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I am a retired police officer in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

As I live on a small farm in the countryside, there was not that much change in my life. Even more so because it’s Lent, so I’m not eating meat – which I’d have to buy in town, unlike eggs, which my chickens produce here, and vegetables, which we also grow. The only thing I miss is going to Mass and having my cup of joe in the bakery in the next town.

They literally closed the town down. Only drugstores and supermarkets are open. Besides, there are guards stopping everybody who tries to cross in, in the most important entrances, and the smaller ones have been physically closed with huge piles of stone by the crazy mayor. If you try to enter the town for, let’s say, going to the doctor, the guards will first call the doctor and ask him if he is expecting you. If your car plates are from another town, you cannot go in unless you prove you live there. And so on. If they had a drawbridge it would be closed.

The small farmers around are having quite a bad time, because the crazy mayor also closed down the vegetable open market where they would sell their wares every Saturday. They are resorting to selling from their trucks on small side roads.

In other parts of my huge country, things are different. The (also certifiable) São Paulo State Governor, for instance, is talking about sending the cops to order inside anybody over sixty. On the other hand, the President – who’s also mad as a hatter; who else would enter Brazilian politics, after all?! – has the opposite discourse, saying things need to go back to “normalcy” ASAP.

Your reader.

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