The 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were officially opened with a flamboyant ceremony celebrating Brazil’s history and cultural diversity, all to the pulsating beat of samba, bossa nova and funk.
The country’s interim President Michel Temer declared open the first Games ever in South America on Friday.
Marathon runner Vanderlei Cordeiro, who was denied victory at the 2004 Athens Games when he was attacked by a spectator, lit the cauldron on Friday.
But in a display of the deep political divisions plaguing Brazil, Temer was jeered by some in the crowd at the famed Maracana football stadium.
Home to the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, Brazil used the ceremony to call on the three billion people watching the opening of the world’s premiere sporting event to take care of the planet, plant seeds and protect the verdant land that Europeans found here five centuries ago.