Weiny Machado is the father of Ana Clara Benevides Machado, the young girl who passed away at the Taylor Swift concert in Rio. He is speaking out for the first time since his beloved daughter’s unexpected and tragic passing.
“I lost my only daughter, a happy intelligent girl,” Weiny told local outlet Folha de S.Paulo in an interview that was translated from Portuguese to English. “She was about to graduate in psychology next April, saving money. I have no words to express my pain. She left home to fulfill a dream and came back dead.”
“I want it to be determined whether they were in fact prohibited from bringing water, whether there was negligence in providing assistance. I know that the singer was handing out water to her fans, and that is absurd for an event of this size. Nothing will bring my daughter back, but I hope that, if negligence is confirmed, someone will be punished, so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
Just two days after the Taylor Swift fan passed away, Swift took the stage again in Rio. Swift postponed the show immediately following Ana’s death due to the extreme heat.
During every one of her shows, Taylor performs two or three surprise songs. They are usually songs from her discography that she never performed live before.
The surprise songs she played during Night 2 were particularly poignant given the circumstances. The second surprise song of the night was Bigger Than the Whole Sky and fans in attendance took notice of Swift’s demeanor and the subtle lyric change.
The song, which many took as Swift’s way of saying goodbye to Ana, goes, in part:
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye You were bigger than the whole sky You were more than just a short time And I’ve got a lot to pine about I’ve got a lot to live without I’m never gonna meet What could’ve been, would’ve been What should’ve been you What could’ve been, would’ve been you.”
Later in the song, the original lyrics read,
“Every single thing to come has turned into ashes ‘Cause it’s all over, it’s not meant to be So I’ll say words I don’t believe.”
However, during the show, Taylor sang, “Every single thing I touch has turned into ashes.”
As Mamas Uncut previously reported, Taylor Swift is heartbroken over the passing of Ana. In a statement shared by the singer herself, one of her Brazilian fans passed away shortly before her show started due to heat stroke.
“I can’t believe I’m writing these words but it is with a shattered heart that I saw we lost a fan earlier tonight before my show. I can’t even tell you how devastated I am by this,” Swift began.
“There’s very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young. I’m not going to be able to speak about this from stage because I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it,” Swift continued.
“I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends. This is the last thing I ever thought would happen when we decided to bring this tour to Brazil.”
The fan identified by the AP as Ana Clara Benevides Machado, began feeling unwell while at the stadium and sought the help of paramedics. She was brought to the stadium’s first aid center before being rushed to the hospital.
At the hospital, she died an hour after arriving.
While performing in Brazil, the country is enduring a dangerous heat wave. As a result, people were put in place during the first night of her Eras Tour to hand out waters to those in the audience in an attempt to keep everyone safe.
In fact, during several of her songs, Swift was captured tossing water into the crowd when she saw someone in distress or calling out for those in charge to help as she continued to sing.
According to the Associated Press, it’s so incredibly hot in Brazil that temperatures reached nearly 60 degrees Celsius; that’s 137 degrees Fahrenheit inside the venue. Videos from Brazil Night 1 also captured how red Taylor became while performing the nearly 4-hour show.
Reports at the time suggested that the concertgoers weren’t allowed to bring their own water into the stadium for other safety reasons. Stadium vents were also reportedly closed to prevent outsiders from seeing the show. The decisions originally made by the event organizers were criticized harshly.
Following the tragedy, on Twitter, Justice Minister Flávio Dino claimed that the ministry will implement “emergency rules” regarding access to water at shows and other public events,” the AP reports.
As the AP reports, temperatures this high are rare considering it’s still only spring and not yet summer in that part of the world. According to hydrologist Javier Tomasella, the rise in global temperatures, “We have never seen anything like it.”
Our thoughts and prayers are with Machado’s family and friends as they mourn this devastating loss.