He filled up a plastic soda bottle with the rainwater and took a picture, which later went viral on Twitter.
Satellite images from the European Space Agency would reveal a river of smoke from forest fires burning across the Amazon rainforest.
There have been 39,601 fires so far this year, a 77 percent increase over 2018, according to INPE, Brazil’s space research center.
Bolsonaro is often called the Trump of the Tropics, and he has the same authoritarian streak, penchant for racist rhetoric, and disdain for science.
His chief of staff said European nations lie about deforestation in Brazil and that he had no plans to visit the burning swaths of forest.
Emboldened by the election of Bolsonaro, farmers were already burning forest to clear more land for soy farms and cattle ranches.
“The people in the big cities of Sao Paulo and Rio, they want us to live on picking Brazil nuts,” Menezes told me. »