There are few
media conglomerates that wield the kind of influence over society, culture and
popular perception as the Globo Network in Brazil. This is particularly true in
the media-government-business nexus of the World Cup. Globo is the de-facto
owner of Brazilian football, paid dearly for the rights to transmit the 2014
World Cup (though no one knows how much) and is shaping the discourse around
the tournament to suit the needs of those who seek to maintain their grip on
power, namely the Globo network itself.
One of the
biggest advertisers in the Globo newspaper is the state government. Their
contributions are rivalled by the big civil construction firms whose
subsidiaries in the closed-condominium housing industry take out full page ads
everyday to extoll the virtues of living in stylized off-worlds with names like
Miami Gardens, Pure Island, or Reserva Golfe. The condo ads are inevitably
flanked by car and truck ads, extolling the virtues of escape into the
wilderness, or alternatively, into a morass of congestion. As ever, Rio de
Janeiro is the most beautiful city in the world to be stuck in traffic. This is
not a counter-cultural moment in Brazil. People are pulling their hair out, not letting it flow naturally to prove a point. Brazil is in the midst of an ideological project driven
by elites in government, media and industry that want Brazilians to charge full speed
ahead into a debt-ridden world of consumerism, hostility towards the public sphere and fear of the underclasses.
One of the most
perverse ways in which Globo tries to twist the realities of
fantastically unequal wealth distribution, militarization, privatization and
commodification into a Hallmark moment of Brazil´s arrival on the international
stage is in their presentation of the Maracanã. As we know, the Maracanã was
ripped from public hands with some violence over the past few years. One of the
particularly charming displays was the removal of the Aldeia
Maracanã indigenous community with shock troops. The ever-mindful president of
the state agency responsible for the Maracanã complex said at the time, “the
place for Indians is in the forest, that´s why we´re preserving the Amazon.” This is what it
looked like:
Warning: do not eat while looking at this photo. |
Now, according
to Globo, this is what the Aldeia Maracanã has become.
In the article,
we are informed that weddings can now be held in the stadium for a rent as low
as R$30,000. The new Aldeia Maracanã according to Globo, has no indigenous, no
poor, not even the middle class. This Aldeia is only for those who can afford
it.
They´re cute while young, best to declaw in early adolescence. |
To prove the
point, this is the way that the ideologues at Globo are presenting Brazilian´s
indigenous communities as the World Cup approaches.
The title here should be, “Brasil, através da bala.” If you are indigenous, you had better be young, because as soon as you start to demand rights or dare to appear in places where you don´t “belong” then likelihood of extirpation by FBI-trained shock troops is pretty good.
While the criminal and unconstitutional treatment of the indigenous communities across Brazil gets almost no play in the media, it is important to remember that the oldest center of indigenous culture in Brazil has been forcibly removed for the realization of the World Cup. In its place we have a sterile urban environment that tens of thousands will pass by without noticing on their way to drink Budweiser and eat McDonalds inside of the privatized, sanitized and hollow (not hallowed) Maracanã.
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