A sad end

As I mentioned some months ago, I will be leaving Brazil for Switzerland in January of 2015, joining the Space and Organization Research Unit in the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich. As of January 1, I will be the editor of the Journal of Latin American Geography, so let´s got those manuscripts rolling in.

After spending six of the last ten years in Rio, I´m not encouraged by the direction the city has taken, nor indeed that of the country as a whole. The recently released homicide numbers are tragic and pathetic, but not surprising. One official said that Brazil could “celebrate the stabilization” of homicide rates. More than 50,000 people are murdered each year in Brazil, the vast majority poor, black men.

Elections may bring out the worst elements of a country´s character and the recent exercise in collective box ticking showed the real frailties in Brazil´s democratic system. The debates between the presidential candidates were spoofs, the questions typically irrelevant, and policy issues wholly ignored. The level of public discourse is pushed to the bottom by media conglomerates that use their platforms as blunt political instruments. The opposition candidate, a George W. Bush playboy type, ran on a law and order platform that would put the young black kids that didn´t get killed behind bars at an even earlier age. The wealthy coxinhas of the South got up their Reaganite hackles to attack the “undeserving poor” who have benefitted from the PT´s largesse. The moving of people from extreme poverty to absolute poverty is positive, but it does not and will not change the power structures in Brazil.

The PT is mired in corruption scandals that should touch the highest levels of power, but somehow always falls short. The emptying of moral authority has been exacerbated by the explicit use of state companies for personal enrichment and the consolidation of power. There may be a way back from the precipice but without electoral reform or a general revolt from the PT´s base, the gig is up. Pursue developmentalist consumerism based on automobiles, closed condominium residential landscapes, and mega-events at your own risk! Of course it is the powerful syndicates of the automobile industry that brought the PT to power in the first place, so this model should come as no surprise. Brazil has a fundamentally conservative, reactionary political class that is allergic to change. 

The World Cup was never talked about in the election cycle. Readers of HWE will know why, but the opposition couldn´t very well complain about privatization and the maddening profits of civil construction firms, banks, telecommunications, and media conglomerates, or the increased police presence, summary arrests, human rights violations, etc. If the PT can´t or won´t point to the positives of the World Cup as evidence of good governance, then who will?

Football in Brazil is more depressing than ever. And while Brazilians will always remember where they were for the 7-1, the day to day is equally traumatic.

OBobo has started an editorial line to convince people that  “Maracanã lotado” is less than the number of people murdered every year in Brazil. To me, this seems an attempt to install collective amnesia about public space and culture. Vasco put out some discounted tickets and had 42,000 paying fans last weekend and the babadores who write for Obobo clamored about how they had filled the stadium.  15 years ago, the capacity was 179,000. 10 years ago, the capacity was 129,000. Five years ago it was 89,000. Now, it´s around 55,000 because the police say that they can´t guarantee safety beyond that number. I have witnessed first hand the death of pubic and space and culture in the Maracanã. Not many Cariocas seem to care.

Years ago, I wrote about the Vasco Fiasco, where a youth trainee died from lack of medical attention and then tried to hide their other nefarious human trafficking practices. Yesterday, Vasco had another fiasco with the re-election of Eurico Miranda to the presidency (with senator Romário´s support). Miranda embodies the old school of the cartolas in a way that few others do. I met him ten years ago when he was president of Vasco and since then, nothing in Brazilian football institutions has changed. If anything, it is less transparent and more corrupt. Not many Brazilians seem to care.

Remember the Portuguesa-Fluminense debacle at the end of last season? To refresh: Portuguesa played an ineligible player with 15 minutes left in the last game of the season, were docked points and relegated, thereby ensuring Fluminense´s (and Flamengo´s) permanence in the first division. A police investigation has revealed that, as expected, Portuguesa sold their spot. Who paid? Who cares? This isn´t news, just business as usual.

The CBF just received 100 million dollars in “legacy” money from FIFA. This is the money that Blatter dropped out of the plane as he fled the Confederations´ Cup protests – but it was an already programmed cash transfer. If someone out there still believes that the CBF doesn´t know how to get around the independent auditor, or that this money is going to be used to benefit Brazilian society in a meaningful way, or that we should continue to listen to the never-ending stream of half-assed bromides coursing from the mouths of …eh – deixa para lá – I can´t even get upset anymore.

The day to day of living in a pre-Olympic city I am going to leave to other commentators. Following and commentating on the contortions of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil in this highly turbulent time has been very rewarding and frustrating. I may not have survived without the blog and the great feedback from readers, so thank you. If you want to find the non-blog pieces I´ve been writing over the past few years, please go to my academia.edu site. I will keep HWE up as an archive and have some spin off projects that I will announce in due time. For now, I´ve got to get a move on. Tchau.

The state of the protests

The protests are small and I hope the rest of the world is not disappointed. There are many contradictory forces that have kept the middle class protesters of 2013 off the streets. I’ll try to put a bit of perspective on them here before trying to get a plane to the waterpark of Natal for USA x Ghana.

Police violence. The police are under very clear instructions to tolerate nothing and to react with maximum force. We saw this on the opening day in São Paulo and it was repeated again last night in Rio. A group of 200+ protesters was met with twice as many police, helicopters, dogs, mounted police and live ammunition. The videos are frightening. There is nothing more likely to keep disenchanted middle-class people off the street (and to keep their kids at home) than the imminent threat of injury.

It´s the World Cup. We´re all on holiday, there is a party raging and Brazilians are very hospitable. As with everyone else, Brazilians have been waiting for the World Cup for four years and despite the corporate sabotage of FIFA and the Brazilian elites, it´s still the World Cup. Brazilians want to enjoy what will certainly be the last World Cup in South America for many years. While the distance between the World Cup as culture and World Cup as corporate spectacle has never been greater, it is important to reclaim the former and to being the process of re-appropriating football as the people´s game.

The media. OBobo controls the tv, internet, and print media to such a degree that the counter-narratives to the World Cup are very difficult to find. Brazil is still very much a visual and oral culture and the critical media presence is limited to a few programs and newspapers. When such a powerful media force drives the discursive framing of the event, it keeps public opinion moving in the direction they want.

There is a lot of protesting to come. The social movements behind the protests in 2013 have a long road ahead. When the police are out in such force and with such a mandate to repress, it doesn´t make too much sense to go out with the same message. The politicians won´t be listening until after the Cup, if then. The years of protest have had some positive results, but there are times to get the message out louder and more forcefully and it doesn´t make sense to try to compete with the circus.

Tiredness and the existential condition of the left. Combined with all of the above, it would appear that a certain organizational fatigue has set in amongst some of the social movements. The big gatherings end up being organized by a handful of people, time after time, and that gets quite tiring. In the face of the Cup, the typical organizational practices yield less and it appears that everything is more difficult than normal. Added to this is the slight ridiculousness of saying “Não Vai Ter Copa!” when the ball is rolling. Add the traditional fragmentation of leftist movements and the difficult of putting together a unified front and a clear message and the protests are smaller and smaller.

While it is dispiriting to see that the protests are so small, it is important to check one´s disappointment against the perspective one is bringing. Just because there were massive protests last year and smaller ones this year does not diminish the value of what happened or signify that Brazilians are no longer furious with the state of the country.

We are seeing that the fires of discontent are still very much alive but that the forces of the state, capital and the pull of the circus are keeping the flame on a lower burn. Those who are out on the streets are further to the left or right of the political spectrum than those who were out last year and are risking their lives for the right to confront the spectacle.

Shocking Normalcy

I wish that I were so creative as to make up the stories unfolding in Rio and Brazil for the World Cup. I was criticized a couple of weeks ago for failing to see the humor in the Visa advertisements that featured Imperial Stormtroopers on the beach with the slogan “Everyone is welcome at the World Cup”. Two days ago, OBobo, South America´s biggest waste of cellulose and the paper of record for Rio´s Zona Sul, pinched off this gem above the fold. This is the new uniform of Rio´s Mega-event Shock brigade. There were, as often happens in USAmerican papers when invading Oil/Banana Republics, fawning descriptions of the weaponry, training and mandate of the stormtroopers. It would be comical if it weren´t so terrifying. Please, if you are going to the World Cup, do not wear black, don´t bring anything to cover your head and bring your running shoes. As long as you consume in the right way, in the right places, and with Visa, everything will be just fine.

Speaking of consumption, there was a national furor this week about the “poor taste” that Adidas demonstrated in producing t-shirts for the USAmericans that highlighted the desire of foreigners to ravage Brazilian women. Tudo bem, agreed, the t-shirts were horrendous and heads should be rolling at Adidas (which it should be remembered has been FIFA´s principal partner since the 1980s). But if we look at the way that Brazilians represent Brazilian women to themselves and to others, it would appear that Adidas was only following the disgusting lead of classic machistas like OBobo´s Ancelmo Gois. In his daily column, Gois always publishes, every day, hundreds of days per year, photos of women that he finds attractive. His comments might as well be accompanied by an icon of a drooling mouth. One slobber for pretty, three slobbers for gostosa.  Every year this middle aged white man has a competition to see who will be the “Mulata do Gois” . Beyond the idea of a black woman as a sexualized possession of those with more power and privilege, the general sterotypes propagated by Gois, OBobo, and Carioca society in general towards women make it completely normal for a multi-national corporation to market the place of Rio and the people of Brazil as objects of consumption. If Brazilians are shocked by the marketing of the “natural beauty” of Brazil to foreigners, they should take a step back and consider how they represent themselves to themselves (with a tip of the hat to Andrew Downie).

The Utopia of Rio in 2014

As if to confirm my infinite posts about how Rio is a city that needs a smart system to watch it fall apart, the heavy hand of the mayor has again fallen on the resident population. The genie of urban planning has been let out of the bottle yet again, reorganizing all of the vehicular traffic in downtown while eliminating second and third options at the time of greatest road closures because of Carnaval. The mayor is trying to make things so bad in Rio that if and when any of his hare-brained transportation projects get done, they will seem like improvements on  the hideous conditions the projects themselves have imposed.

Put this on repeat: Rio does not have the conditions to host its own population, much less mega-events. When urban systems are stressed out, they break. When one breaks, others are compromised. The metro broke yesterday. There was a two hour traffic jam on the bridge. The BRT Transoeste is a disaster. A broken sewage line in Copacabana closed traffic. Murders, thefts and petty crime are on the rise. Is it any wonder that the federal government is investing R$2 billion in the World Cup security apparatus? The closer we get to the Cup the more local populations will be treated as insurgents / rebels. Rio de Janeiro might be turning into a Death Star that holds its own people in tortured poses while it reconfigures urban space to maximize the flow of capital into private hands. 

The Cup of Cups

The Brazilian executive branch has launched an ad campaign to convince Brazilians that this will be the Best World Cup ever. Using the hashtag #copadascopas, the attempt to put a positive spin on negative news, exorbitant spending and unfinished projects is the latest sign of the creaking Brazilian governmental apparatus. The new marketing campaign replaced “Patria das Chuteiras” (poorly translated as Country of Football Boots), which carried with it a cultural memory of the use of football to prop up the military dictatorship during the 1970 World Cup. Most of the marketing campaigns for the 2014 World Cup are in poor taste. The Visa commercials that are spreading across the country like foot fungus are particularly terrible. These are taking up ad space at bus stops, public transportation and other public spaces.

Mr. Burns= Blatter or Marin?

The ad says “todos são bem-vindos na Copa” – everyone is welcome a the World Cup. The Simpsons ad is disturbing for a number of reasons. There are no women in the lineup. The “workers” are all in radioactive suits with the nuclear plant steaming away in the background, while Mr. Burns is in his suit and tie. Here, we could surmise that Mr. Burns is CBF president Marin and that the workers are the LOC employees protected from the poisonous effects of the work they are carrying off? Or we could assume that Brazilian cities are so toxic, that only tough working class men in protective suits ( or those who have the wealth for quick escapes) can survive? Or it could mean that to come to the World Cup, middle class visitors should have their gas masks ready to confront the other group presented on the Visa commercials.

This second ad is as horrifying as it is ill considered. It is doubtful that anyone using this kind of propaganda could not know what the word “stormtrooper” means in the context of sports mega-events and the control of urban space. This is especially true given the events of the Copa das Manifestações. Stormtroopers are everywhere in Brazilian cities these days. Of course, public security is a

Drones and Shock troops!

necessary component of these events but putting an ad like this all over Brazilian World Cup host cities is basically saying to the Brazilian public that they should prepare themselves for the arrival of Imperial Forces who will act with extreme prejudice against "rebels". 

This is all happening in a context where the federal senate is debating a bill that would create terrorism as a crime in Brazil, criminalize protesters and create jail terms of up to thirty years, and in which the media cannot figure out the connections between vigilante justice, military police brutality and persecution of poor and black kids as a systemic element of Brazilian society. When the Corinthians fans lit a flare that killed a young fan in Bolivia two years back, the media was clamoring that the Bolivians had no right to hold these guys in jail because it had been an accident. When a cameraman was killed in Rio this week with a similar flare (supposedly not a bomb launched by the police), there was no investigation into the conditions of his labor (where he was sent out alone and unprotected into a violent protest) but rather a national man hunt to find the person who supposedly lit the flare. The flares, of course, are readily available to anyone who wants to buy them. In short, the stormtroopers are welcome, those who are prepared to survive in a toxic environment are welcome, their bosses can circulate unimpeded in the city and if you don’t agree to the terms set by Visa, stay at home or suffer the consequences. 

Reloading for 2014

2013 will hopefully be remembered as a year of positive change in Brazilian history. As we have gone through a series of urban and social transformations for huge sporting events, the real fragilities of Brazil came into sharp focus. To host the World Cup and Olympics, special legislation weakened already tenuous institutions. Tens of billions of public funds have been directed to projects that were never discussed with the

public. These privatized projects are justified with the word legacy, but there is no guarantee. The spoken word means almost nothing in Brazil and the very structure of the World Cup and Olympic Games allows for the circus to move on while the locals are left to clean up the elephant droppings. Forever.

The protests of 2013 were partly a reaction to the opaque, exorbitant and authoritarian megas. They also responded to the deteriorating conditions of urban life in Brazilian cities. I see this every day when I walk out of my apartment: bubbling sewage, abandoned buildings, precarious infrastructure, military police sitting on the corner. The protests were not spontaneous expressions of rage, but a big blip of concentrated indignation that is always kept alive by Brazilian social movements such as the Comitês Popluares da Copa.

The violent police responses to peaceful protest exposed the contradictions and brutalities that underlie most facets of Brazilian life. The police do not do policing, they treat the population as a threat to order and have no capacity to work for the public good. They serve at the behest of a very thin slice of Brazilian society – those benefitting from the very projects and conditions that the protesters were on about. There may have been real material gains in Brazil over the past generation, but this does not indicate meaningful social, political, infrastructural or economic reform has been accomplished. Rio is a perfect example of this – a place where issues of inequality and violence are solved through a counter-insurgency pacification program. The knock-on effects of pacification were never thought through or adequately prepared for, exposing Rio´s most vulnerable citizens ever more to conditions of bare life.

2014, without question, will be the shortest year in modern Brazilian history. A late Carnaval, World Cup and Elections will ensure that none of the necessary, difficult work of building a more just society will occur. The events will limit social agency at the same time that the politicians will be handing out crumbs to gather votes. If Brazil wins the World Cup, we will lose even more of our lives to the false delirium of a hollow promise.  

Despite the constant difficulties of living in a city governed by decree and in a state that acts on the behest of the invisible hand, 2013 was a year that demonstrated that there is real potential for collective social action to have an effect. The work of building consensus to create a collective future based on an atomized and self-referential past is tiring, frustrating and slow. The events of 2013 demonstrated that this work, undertaken by millions on a daily basis, can spring to life to challenge those in power with legitimate, articulate and diverse messages. These messages were heard and seen around the world linking Brazilians with Turks, Egyptians, and Circassians in their struggle against authoritarianism. Hopefully 2014 will bring even more people to the streets to raise their fists and voices.

That´s it for another year of Hunting White Elephants. Thanks to the tens of thousands who have visited the site this year and be sure to follow my twitter @geostadia. I´ll be putting up links to journalistic and academic pieces in January and updating the media page. Feliz ano!

Passando dos Limites / Going too far

The monthly salary for a public school teacher is around R$1600. I do not know people who work harder with fewer resources to do society`s most important and least valorized work. I can only imagine the complete indignation and revolt of public school professionals when the announcement came that the city government spent more than a million reais (US$500,000) to buy 20,000 copies of a board game to be distributed to the city`s schools. The game, presumably, will become an obligatory element of the curriculum. The game is called Banco Imobiliário Cidade Olimpica, or Olympic City Monopoly.

What are the UPPs about again?

It is difficult to know where to begin criticizing the idea that schoolchildren be indoctrinated with the ideology that the public places and spaces of the city be treated as mere commodities used to accrue personal wealth and power. We could begin with the fact that only the current administration`s projects are highlighted in the game, giving the impression that the mayor, governor and their cronies have produced the urban landscape since taking office. We could also highlight the fact that arbitrary monetary values are assigned to public places, eliminating any and all conception of use value for those that have paid for these things (the public) and transforming every element of the urban into something that can be traded on the open, deregulated market. How about the “sorte” (luck) card that says: “the value of your home increases after the favela in your neighborhood was pacified, receive R$75,000”. Paulo Freire is turning like a rotisserie chicken in his grave.

Just when I was starting to lose the hard edge of permanent pessimism, the perverse pedagogy and poor taste of the mayor took physical form in the public space of Copacabana Fort. In the fort, which is a federal property, a private club has opened to attend to the beautiful people [sic] of Rio`s Zona Sul who can no longer tolerate the hoi polloi and undifferentiated tourist mass of Ipanema and established a clubby off world inside the fort. Veja`s coverage was nauseatingly apologetic: “Club attracts high class clients in search of vip treatment and the experience of sharing the beach with people of the same profile”. A mere R$250 gets you into the club that has a pool, discreet waiters, blaring electronica, hot tub, R$5000 bottles of campaign, R$80 face towels and a lax security force that ignores the clouds of pot smoke drifting off the dance floor. If you are surprised that rich, white Brazilians are able to smoke weed bought in favelas inside a military fort while the favelas themselves are occupied by the military, then you clearly haven`t spent enough time playing Banco Imobiliário.

A few weeks ago I reported on the judicial victory of the Aldeia Maracanã. During the negotiations the government had offered to work with the Aldeia in some regard in order to maintain the site as a part of Brazil`s indigenous heritage. Incredibly, but unsurprisingly (another of Rio`s characteristics is that you are not surprised at being shocked), the brain trust of Rio 2106 and the State Government announced that the indigenous people would be expelled and the site transformed into an Olympic museum with all profits acruing to the IOC! Huh? This is the same set of intellectual heroes that have programmed the destruction of an Olympic swimming pool and an Olympic training center in order to prepare the city for the Olympics. It is a sadly transparent attempt to turn a judicial defeat into a victory. 

These paradigms of competency in public planning have also determined that the facilities constructed for the 2007 Pan American Games are almost completely inadequate. You know the situation is dire when OGlobo starts criticizing the R$1.6 billion that will have to be spent on the 2007 facilities to make them viable for 2016. To wit: the velodrome is being destroyed, the aquatics center will only host water polo while a temporary diving center will be built at the Copacabana Fort (someone better get rid of the rich potheads first), the basketball arena will only be used for gymnastics and every other installation will have to undergo massive upgrades. Of course, there is still no budget for the 2016 Games, and even if there were why should the public pay any more attention to it than the Games organizers themselves? 

A series of fires have occured in the Autodromo de Jacarepagua, site of the future Olympic Park. These are not ordinary fires but massive conflagrations of discarded tires. The toxic smoke has infiltrated the Vila Autodromo over the past weeks, creating a health and environmental hazard. This could be another manifestation of the pressure tactics used by the government to encourage people to leave their homes or at least to reconsider their negotiating position. When there is not grave incompetence in public administration there is likely malice and vice versa. Somtimes it is both. 

Evidence to support this last statement came from the Largo do Tanque this week where a series of forced removals occurred as the municipal government races to complete the Transcarioca BRT before the World Cup. The reports from Tanque are as disturbing as they are tragic. There is evidence that agents of the municipal government are negotiating the price of homes with the residents as the bulldozers circle the house. This is not the “key for key” policy dictated by Brazilian law and international statutes but rather an underhanded and divisive approach to eliminating social resistance to the invented needs of massive urban interventions. A few years ago there were a series of signs along Flamengo Beach that spelled out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those signs, along with the rights, have disappeared in the Cidade Maravilhosamente Especulativa.

The involuntary interment of crack addicts and homeless people continues throughout the eastern and southern parts of Rio. Rio`s program of forced interment is widely criticized by health care professionals as doing nothing to solve problems of mental health, physical addiction or the social conditions that produce such large numbers of homeless in Rio. There have been few investigations into the conditions of the internment centers, no data released on how long people are kept, what happens to them upon release or the efficacy of the program in decreasing crack use. Though it might be a stretch, the BRTs are no more a solution to Rio`s mobility problems than is the involuntary internment program a solution to drug addiction and homeless. In both cases human rights are violated while being sold as necessary for the betterment of the city.

The General Osorio metro station opened in 2010, bringing the Metro to Ipanema 35 years after its inauguration. Last week the General closed his doors for 10 months so the extension to the one and only metro line in the state can start. Just to be clear, two years ago the line was extended to Ipanema with the full knowledge that it would have to be further extended for the Olympic transportation project. Instead of planning for that extension without needing to close the station the top-notch intellects at Rio Metro closed the tunnel system and therefore have to pick up where they left off in 2010. In addition to the inconvenience of the closure, the astronomical sums of money and urban disruptions of the Linha 4 [sic] are causing protests and revolt among even the stodgy lovers of the status quo in Leblon.

And finally, the call for proposals for the privatization of the Maracanã was launched on Monday. The companies that are bidding for the 35 year “concession”, IMX and LusoArenas, will have one month to submit their proposals and then a committee comprised of ONE PERSON will rule in favor of one or the other. As IMX was the external consultant that devised the economic feasibility study it looks as if Eike Batista will be able to add another of Rio de Janeiro`s iconic spaces to his Banco Imobiliário. The billionaire with the ten dollar toupee has not been having much luck financially lately, but was recently granted his long-time wish to build a nine-story convention center in the Marina da Glória. The agency responsible for protecting Rio de Janeiro`s architectural and cultural heritage, IPHAN, has once again surfed the wave of privatization. There are likely no cards in the Banco Imobiliário game that represent IPHAN or IBAMA or INEA (environmental regulatory agencies), much less something that would make one pay for an impact study or have to spend money and time consulting the public about the future use of public space.

This Thursday, 28.2.13, the Comitê Popular da Copa e das Olimpiadas is sponsoring a seminar that will treat the Maracanã in all of its symbolic, historical, political and cultural complexity. The seminar will begin at 2pm in the auditorium of the the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa, on Rua Araujo Porto Alegre, 71. More details can be found on the Comite`s site: www.comitepopularrio.wordpress.com

Host and Parasite

I would like to have a party at your house. This is a great opportunity for you. I won’t pay you anything, but really, your house is inadequate, unseemly even, so please reform it and beautify the streets. When I get there, no one else can come within two kilometers, a condition you will guarantee by force of arms. You are responsible for the music, drink, getting me and my friends there, telling others about it, and providing everything that I can think of, whether or not I have told you about it. Make sure there is a recycling bin because I am very concerned about sustainability. I would like you to close down all the roads so I can get there more quickly in the limousine that you will provide. If I break everything, too bad. If I decide not to show up, well, that’s up to me. Everything good that happens at this party, I will take credit for. In fact, I’ll sell the video and party favors around the globe to my exclusive profit, and you’ll get nothing in return but the world will see how pretty your house is. In the case that one of my friends urinates on your couch or puts a hole in the roof you can’t ask for compensation. Don’t even think about complaining, it’s not his fault that she has a bit of a heavy wrist and loses control. Once you’ve prepared everything and gone into debt to do so, I guarantee, semi-absolutely, that it is going to be an amazing party but remember that we have different interests here. If you do everything I say and give me everything I want at your own expense, then I will tell people what a good host you were. I need to make enough money at this party to tide me over for years and it’s your obligation to make this happen. If things aren’t just right or if I am in any way inconvenienced by what I perceive to be a lack of preparation, or if the path between my five star hotel and your house is not plastered with my image, I will simply cancel without prior warning and leave you holding a very empty bag. Sound good? Sign here.

A federal judge ordered the publication of the host city agreement between São Paulo and FIFA. The documents defines the “opportunities and obligations” of the city. The obligations are onerous, offering very little for the host other than financial risk, liability and the surrendering of urban space for the “good of the game”. The links to the agreement in English and Portuguese are above, but I have compiled a list of gems that will give you some idea of what the contract involves.

“The LOC (Local Organizing Committee, headed by the 80 year old kleptomaniac and president of the CBF, José Marin) and Host City accept that FIFA is entitled to amend, delete or supplement the terms of any guidelines and other directions and to add FIFA requirements at any time at its sole discretion.” 

Section 9.5, regarding World Cup poster and artistic materials: “The Host City irrevocably waives in favor of FIFA, to the fullest extent permitted by any applicable laws, all moral rights and other rights of a similar nature.”

Section 12.6, “…any and all goodwill arising from the use by the Host City of Competition Marks will inure to the benefit of FIFA.”

Section 14, “…Costs related to the infrastructure, management and operation of public viewing events shall be borne by the Host City.” However, within any of the public viewing areas that a city wishes to establish, all FIFA guidelines regarding branding and sale of merchandise, food, etc. 

Section 16 prohibits the Host City from hosting any competing sporting events and during the day before, day of and day after a match, all cultural events that happen in a city have to be approved by FIFA. (Good luck with this in Rio).

Section 18 reminds the host that they have to provide all stadia and training grounds free of charge. One of the brutalities of the privatization schemes is that the public will have invested hundreds of millions in stadia, privatized them, and then will have to lease them back from the new owners in order to give them over to FIFA. If there is an M.B.A. or sport management student out there that would like to explain how this improves the economic prospects of the host, I’m listening.

Sections 21 and 22 deal with transportation and are worrying in the extreme. The host city shall pass “all necessary ordinances and bylaws” (that is, install an extra-legal regime) to provide special access lanes and transportation schemes for FIFA. In case this does not liberate enough space, “The Host City shall, upon FIFA or the LOC’s reasonable request, at any period of the competition, shut down public access to roads within the Host City.” This is a complete surrendering of territorial sovereignty.

In the “exclusion zones” around the stadiums, FIFA can “cover any and all commercial signage and advertising”. Who will do this covering you ask? Your local, state and federal police forces that will be trained by FIFA in “Rights Protection” (at public expense) and then will be put at FIFA’s disposal for six weeks. You did not read incorrectly. Public police forces will be taken off the job, trained to protect FIFA’s interests, then will be relieved from normal duties for six weeks to enforce what FIFA has taught them. This will be made possible by the passing of “laws that enable FIFA agents to act to confiscate ‘ambush’ materials” (Section 28.2).

Section 31 – all city services will be provided free of charge

Section 32 – City Beautification: “The Host City shall not authorize or grant any permits for any private or public construction works to be undertaken for the duration of the World Cup…any construction which is in progress at the start of the Competition shall be temporarily suspended.” Good luck getting those wages back, or in getting those Olympic projects completed on time.

Section 33.8 – No Partnership. “The Host City shall not act nor purport to act as a partner or agency of FIFA or the LOC…The parties are in all respects independent contractors and have separate financial interests under this agreement.” Indeed.

Section 33.18 – What me worry? “The Host City waives any and all claims of liability against the LOC, FIFA and their officers, members, agents or employees for any loss or damage to the city whether or not such loss or damage may have been caused by or resulted from the negligence of the LOC, FIFA, [etc]…The Host City further indemnifies and hold harmless FIFA, LOC, broadcasters, commercial affiliates, external advisors and agents, [etc.]…from any and all obligations and liabilities, including, without limitation any and all claims, losses, damage, injuries, liabilities, objections, demands, recoveries deficiencies, costs, expenses which they may suffer or incur arising out of or in any way connected with this agreement, or any acts or omissions of the Host City hereunder. The obligations of the Host City set forth in this clause survive the termination of the agreement.”

Texeria Fora! E Daí?

Yesterday, an axe fell on the head of the serpent. Ricardo Texeira, the president of the Brazilian Footbal Confederation (CBF) for 26 years resigned less than a week after he was given a unanimous vote of confidence by Brazil’s 27 state football federations. Texeira came to power by virtue of his marriage to the daughter of João Havelange, president of FIFA from 1974-1998. The old man was probably controlling most of the big decisions of little Ricky but then he too came up against corruption charges and was forced to resign his position at the IOC a few months ago. Two of the biggest names in Brazilian sport have fallen in the past three months. What this means is unclear as João H. is still held in absurdly high esteem and R.T. is bound for the land of fugitive Latin American criminals, Florida.

We have Andrew Jennings to thank for much of these developments. Andrew has been tireless in his investigations into FIFA corruption. Once he started pulling on some threads it wasn’t long before he found the Havelange-Texeira clan knee-deep in merda. We can also point to petitions circulated by the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores e Torcedoras (ANT, www.torcedores.org.br), which called for the head of Texeira throughout 2010, collecting thousands of signatures. The combination of rigorous investigative journalism and civil society activism is powerful – let’s hope that the documents being released by the Comitês Populares in Brazil will have similar effects on the abusive and opaque reign of Carlos Nuzman at Rio 2016 and the Brazilian Olympic Committee.

The loss of Texeira will not, unfortunately, change much about the fundamental structure of the World Cup. His daughter, Joanna Havelange, is the Secretary General of Brazil 2014. Her qualifications for this job were the same as her dad's, none. The rest of the executives for the World Cup are the same people that helped stuff the workings of the CBF inside a black box for so many years. It is important to remember that just last week Sickly Ricky received a unanimous vote of confidence. This allowed him the chance to maintain the power structure through the next CBF election. The acting president of the CBF is 78 years old and recently stole a winner’s medal at a juniors' tournament. The Brazil 2014 Local Organizing Committee has no president yet, but Ronaldo Fenômeno will likely step into that role as a figurehead.

This is a chance to start pulling on even more threads, unraveling the Indonesian-stitched fabric of Brazil’s canary-yellow shirt. I do not have much confidence that the Brazilian media will do this as they are focused on the serpent’s head lying on the ground as the rest of the snake slithers back into its hole to shake off the hangover. This saga has long felt like something out of The Open Veins of Latin America: occasionally a coronel gets shot in his office, but the power structure remains the same. As the Minister of Sport showed the other day, even when the Communists get into positions of power, nothing much changes.