Colour and song return to climate talks in Brazil

BELEM(BRAZIL): The gypsies invariably brought colour and magic to the grey city of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Belém is no Macondo living in isolation and innocence, neither are the indigenous people and climate activists who joined the “Great People’s March”on Saturday at halfway point of the UN climate summit the wandering Roma.

But the tens of thousands marching through the streets of the Amazonian host city demanding climate action did splash a vibrant palette of colours and added song and dance to the otherwise grey proceedings at the conference venue of Parque da Cidade.

Through the late morning hours, the procession stretched for kilometres—a river of red, white, yellow and green flags flowing past watching crowds leaning from balconies to capture the spectacle on their phones. The streets pulsed with drumbeats and chants as protest transformed into celebration, grief into performance.

In the most gothic part of the procession, demonstrators carried enormous coffins marked for oil, coal and gas. A 30-metre inflatable serpent wound through the marchers, an enormous anaconda symbolising the sacred and iconic Amazonian creature. A giant balloon painted as Earth bobbed on the streets while sound systems on trucks blared everything from Brazilian samba to socialist anthems.

The joy was deliberate, the defiance unmistakable. This was the first major protest outside UN climate talks since Glasgow four years ago. The last three summits —held in autocratic Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan—offered no such freedom.