Brazil reels from riots while Bolsonaro is in Florida

KISSIMMEE, Fla. • As Brazil reels from mobs of rioters swarming its seats of power, its former leader has decamped to a Florida resort, where droves of supporters flocked to cheer on their ousted president.

Devotees have traveled in recent days to the temporary home of Jair Bolsonaro, a gated community with towering waterslides, for a chance to see him. He signed autographs, hugged children and took selfies with adoring masses, some sporting “Make Brazil Great Again” shirts.

“I will always support him,” said 31-year-old Rafael Silva, who left Brazil eight years ago and now installs flooring in central Florida, where he stood outside Bolsonaro’s rental home Monday. “He was the best for the country.”

By early afternoon, the handful of supporters in yellow jerseys dissipated as word spread that Bolsonaro was hospitalized with abdominal pain. His wife, Michelle, said on social media that he had been hospitalized for observation due to abdominal discomfort related to a 2018 stabbing that has led to multiple hospitalizations in the past. A photo published by Brazilian newspaper O Globo showed him smiling from his hospital bed. A hospital spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a phone call and text message.

–

Award-winning poet Simic dies at 84

NEW YORK • Charles Simic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who awed critics and readers with his singular art of lyricism and economy, tragic insight and disruptive humor, has died at age 84.

The death of Simic, the country’s poet laureate from 2007-2008, was confirmed Monday by executive editor Dan Halpern at Alfred A. Knopf. He did not immediately provide additional details.

Author of dozens of books, Simic was ranked by many as among the greatest and most original poets of his time, one who didn’t write in English until well into his 20s. His bleak, but comic perspective was shaped in part by his years growing up in wartime Yugoslavia, leading him to observe that “The world is old, it was always old.” His poems were usually short and pointed, with surprising and sometimes jarring shifts in mood and imagery, as if to mirror the cruelty and randomness he had learned early on.

NEWS SERVICES