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.

Post-prandial teeth picking

The hunt for Brazilian White Elephants continues, albeit at a slower pace than before the World Cup. The hunters have gorged on their catch for a month and have started to take on the physical characteristics of their prey. Though the appetite has dulled through repetitive ingestion of the same delicious meat, the knives are still sharp.

FIFA released its technical report last week, finally revealing their official count of stadium capacities and attendances. While FIFA will not reveal the number of tickets available for each category, nor the number of VIP, VVIP and hospitality tickets, or make their general figures for attendance and costs at their tournaments public information. Yet from the information they do provide we can glean some insight into the generalized trouble with measuring the costs of the tournament.

As I was picking my teeth with a piece of tusk, I found the following information regarding stadium capacities for the World Cup:

	FIFA	Copa2014	Portal	DW	FA	EC	WS
BH	58170	62160	64500	62547	64000	62000	62170
BRA	69439	72800	71000	68009	71412	68000	70064
CUI	41112	41390	43600	42968	43000	43000	44336
CUR	39631	43000	42000	41456	41456	44000	43981
FOR	60342	63900	67037	64846	63903	65000	67037
MAN	40549	44500	44310	42374	44000	41000	42374
NAT	39971	42000	45000	42086	43000	42000	42086
POA	43394	50000	60800	48849	47100	43000	51300
REC	42610	46000	46000	42849	46000	46000	46154
RIO	74738	78838	76000	73531	78838	71000	78838
SAL	51900	55000	50223	48747	53700	50000	56500
SAO	62601	68000	65000	65807	68000	60000	65807

(DW=Deutsche Welle, FA=English FA, EC=Engenharia Civil, WS=World Stadiums)

Incredibly, all of these sources have different seating capacity numbers for the stadiums. As I have pointed out before, none of the four Brazilian government transparency sites for the World Cup agree on how much the stadiums cost. Given that there isn't agreement about how many people can fit in the stadiums themselves, this shouldn't be surprising.

The Bull Dies

Watching Spain in this World Cup was like going to a bullfight without knowing that the bull always dies. Early 21st century Spanish football revolutionized the game in the most functional sense of the word, moving the game forward into an unexplored dimension. Before opposing tactical systems were designed to cope with and in that dimension, the elegant, lethal force of the bull was irresistible. But once Spain had won everything several times over, their competitive edge was blunted even further by age and the counter-revolution (conjured, perhaps, by the dark arts of Mourinho). This is not to say football has regressed, but the Spanish revolution in football is now in the dustbin of history. This was as inevitable as it was retroactively predictable.

As many other more qualified commentators have noted, the continual evolution of football tactics is accompanied by an across the globe leap in technical quality (just look at all the freestylers out there) and a quantitative surge in player fitness. The spatial science of player positioning and movement must combine with the potential for long term energy output, resilience to physiological damage and intense psychological conditioning. It seems nearly impossible for a side to manage this combination for seven games, yet one team will have to do just that.  

This raises the inevitable question of what is going to happen in the Holland  x Chile match that will decide who goes through to meet Brazil in the round of 16. With both on six points a draw will put Holland top on goal differential. If Chile can put together another performance like today´s they might very well win but could have nothing in the tank for Croatia or Mexico. If they rest and play for a draw, or not be too upset by losing, there is Brazil to play. I don´t know if this is Occam´s Razor, a Nicomachean conundrum, or a Nerudian sonnet.

This is the first World Cup in Latin America since 1986. That is a long time ago. International travel has expanded dramatically and the middle classes have grown. There were at least 70,000 Argentines in Rio for their match against Bosnia. Dozens of them jumped over the walls of the Maracanã. Some of the 40,000 Chileans did the same thing tonight. South of the Rio Bravo del Norte, we are used to this kind of thing and the police reaction it brings. When I see the excessive amount of military police lining the approaches to the Maracanã, it doesn´t seem that out of place because that is how every game is. It´s absurd but normal.

What isn´t normal is the kind of atmosphere that has been produced inside and outside the stadiums.

In the Maracanã, Minerão, Castelão, Verdão, etc, of old there was no clock just a crappy scoreboard with broken lightbulbs. Everyone knew to look at their watches or listen to the radio or ask someone with either one. Many of the best known, most loved stadiums in Latin America are minimalist structures designed to hold tens of thousands of people for two hours as they jump up and down, light fireworks and tumble over each other. Sure, they may not be the most comfortable places but they are actual places. Stands are for standing, if they weren´t they would be called something else. The new stadiums are more comfortable, but they are non-places.

After the Spain Chile match, I walked over and sat in the same place that I sat when the last game was played at the old Maracanã. In 2010, the lights went off within 30 minutes after the game and the cleaning crew came in. There was a profound, rattling silence. There was no television screen and no security guards came by to move me along.

After the game tonight I was assaulted by piercingly loud advertisements. The televisions screamed “BUY THIS SHIT NOW!” while Chileans tried to celebrate their historic moment. The sound was so deafening that it made me want to leave as soon as possible. I resisted. Twenty minutes later, most of the fans had left and the advertisements stopped. In their place some decent Brazilian music wafted about as the stewards kept angry eyes on the partying Chileans and the all-black cleaning crews readied their brooms.

On the way out, the Chileans were in good voice and I sat to give an interview on a metal bench at the Coca-Cola stand. Describing the scene around me was pretty sad as I saw no beer vendors, nowhere for people to congregate and thousands of police. Looking past an Itaú bank stand where I could have gotten instant credit, my eye was caught by a fancy new Hyundai, the official FIFA fan shop and a Johnson and Johnson stand which advertised a “Caring Stadium”.

All of this global corporatism was placed directly in front of the Museu do Indio, Brazil´s oldest indigenous museum. The indigenous community that occupied the building between 2006 and 2013 was violently removed to prepare the city for the World Cup. The justification was that the building would have to be destroyed so that fans could more easily exit the stadium. Now, fans have to walk through an obstacle course where Fuleco and Brazuca block the path to the metro. Expelled from the stadium, we are ushered into a sanitized zone of corporate feudalism where the violence of dispossession is hidden behind the shields of riot police and dulled by the happy buzz of a spectacle well-consumed.  This is what is out of place at the Brazilian World Cup.

Last week at FIFA

The FIFA Congress in São Paulo was incredible. The pampered pomp of FIFActors was matched by the pantomime and platitudes of the delegations. This was high theatre played out with the military precision of a clown show and a Potemkinite dedication to reality.

I came away from the FIFA congress knowing that there is almost no chance for reform of FIFA from the inside or outside. Here´s why:

The roll call of every FIFA affiliate took half an hour. Everyone was present. As shifting crosshairs zipped across the jumbo high definition screen zipped crosshairs to each of the 209 delgations, I was reminded of the global reach of football and the instrumental politics of FIFA conjured up by João Havelange. Blatter learnt from the master and has managed to keep control of global football through his political performance as a doddering grandfather. He is a man that inspires underestimation and continues to use this to his advantage.

Following roll call, the voting machines were tested but did not work. Delegates were instructed to use cards to would be held up for voting: green, white, red. A group of eight “scrutineers” which included footballing powerhouses Guinea, Vanuatu, Honuras and Jamaica was instructed to head to a corner of the conference hall. When votes happened they leapt to their feet to scrutinize the votes. As it turned out, being a scrutineer is akin to being a buccaneer.

FIFA is fantastically rich. It has 350 staff members and cash reserves of more than 1.4 billion. 2013 was the most lucrative year ever. It will bring in 4.5 billion from the World Cup of which 1.5 is profit. Every year, FIFA hands a check for 250,000 dollars to its member associations. This goes a long way in St. Kitts and Nevis, but not so far in Japan. These two countries have the same voting power in FIFA. Because there is so much money and FIFA is a non-profit of some kind, the money has to be re-invested. In a stroke of pre-lunch genius, the financial officer (of Julio Grondona´s financial committee) announced that each federation would now receive 750,000 a year and that the confederations would receive 4.5 million each per year. Time for lunch!

After lunch Blatter put a vote to the congress. Should there be an age limit for FIFA officers? Claro que não. Scrutineers? Claro que não.

Second vote. Should there be term limits for FIFA officer? Claro que não. Scrutineers? Claro que não.

Thus a pre-lunch delivery of money to federations and confederations paved the way for Blatter to run for a fifteenth term as president even though the most powerful confederation, UEFA, is calling for him to resign. Following these “votes” the honorable members from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Togo(?) took to the floor to sing Blatter´s name to the heavens. Blatter is a hero to the small guys, reviled by some of the big powers but that doesn´t matter. In Blatter´s democracy the kletptocrats and small tyrants rule the world.

30 Daze

With one month to go until kickoff all the talk is about infrastructure projects delivered or not delivered, costs, stadiums, legacy, protests, who will win, etc. There are a few talking points being left out of the debate.

Which projects are (not) being completed and why?

More than half of the WC infrastructure projects that were part of the Matrix of Responsibilities that each city signed as part of the “host-city agreement” with FIFA have not happened. This includes a monorail in Manaus, a light rail in Cuiabá, the 1.5 km extension of the metro in Salvador, reforms to Rio´s port, airport projects, 4G communications and numerous Bus Rapid Transit lines. There are two things to consider: a) why were these projects chosen, by whom and how and b) why didn´t they get done and what are the consequences?

In the case of Rio, a major bus line that was projected in the 1960s was finally brought into being. It connects the international airport with Barra da Tijuca in the southwest part of the city. It cuts through dense neighborhood fabric, has removed tens of thousands of people and will not attend the tourist or commuter demands of the city. Why a bus line from the 1960s to a distant suburb where no residents use public transportation? Why not an expansion of the metro to the international airport? Why not new ferry lines? In short, the lingering questions about “legacy” are going to be answered in a few years, as Jerome Valcke recently said. The implication is that Brazilians shouldn´t protest now because we don´t know how things are going to turn out. Already, the evidence points to a legacy fail of historic proportions.

But if we take Valcke´s advice and wait to see what happens, surely we can look at what has happened with the projects that have been delivered.

The projects that have been delivered, such as stadiums, have not functioned to attract “families back to football”, as the event organizers have suggested. FIFA suggests that these “better facilities” will “welcome more fans, because the structure is nicer and have a higher standard of international football.” Please.

The quality of the Brazilian league may be at its lowest point in fifty years. The data show that attendances are lower and ticket prices higher than all of the major football leagues in the world. Indeed, Brazil has the highest ticket prices in the world relative to minimum wage. The new stadiums have been privatized and the teams prefer to have fewer, wealthier fans in the stadium. Why? For every fan, the teams pay insurance and security costs. Therefore 10,000 fans at R$50 generates more money than 20,000 at R$25. 

Year	Total Public	Average  Public		Total gate receipts (R$)	Average ticket price (R$)
2007	6,582,976	17,461	80,040,848		12.2
2008	6,439,854	16,992	101,241,490		15.7
2009	6,766,471	17,807	125,764,391		18.6
2010	5,638,806	14,839	112,873,893		20.0
2011	5,660,987	14,976	117,665,714		20.8
2012	4,928,827	12,970	119,100,000		22.92
2013	5,681,355	14,951	176,500,000		31.06

Data taken from the CBF website and compiled by me.

If we take out the novelty of visiting new stadiums, and the fact that the big teams are playing outside of their home cities and attracting bigger crowds through novelty, the 2013 Brasilierão would have been worse than the numbers here show. If we take into account items such as transportation, food and parking then average costs are much higher. In short, the promise that families would flock back to the stadiums because of increased comfort and security did not and will not materialize as long as the level of play is so bad and the prices are so exorbitant.

Yesterday, I returned to the Favela do Metrô-Mangueira. The city has removed the majority of the favela to make way for undefined and uncompleted projects. We were warned of all the cracudos lingering in the trash and sewage filled alleyways.  The scene was one of utter destruction and desperation.

Passing by the Maracanã metrô station, I was astounded to see that a huge construction project had gotten underway in the three weeks since I had last been there. It seems impossible that the integration of the train and metro stations will happen in a month.

Inside the Maracanã, the press handlers were frantically trying to keep us from touching the grass at the edge of the technical area. “Only players” was the mantra, as security guards stomped around the edge of the pitch. The gaggle of neurotic pr flacks was desperately trying to create some kind of religious iconography out of a patch of grass in a historic place that has been sanitized and deracinated. Not 500 meters from that very spot, people are struggling for their lives amidst scenes of destruction and ruin.

One month from the Cup, the questions should be about infrastructure and preparedness, but we must first consider what has Brazil (not) prepared, how and for whom.