Pornographic Brazilian Pornography

There was yet more death and mayhem on the streets of Rio as another cyclist was killed. This time (as opposed to the triathlete killed in Leblon) there will be no solidarity cycle and no collective gnashing of teeth  as the cyclist was working, delivering water and gas canisters along impossibly crowded streets in the Zona Norte. The second paragraph in the ever-sensitive O Bobo was dedicated to the traffic problems caused by the accident. An excellent mapping initiative that will register crimes committed against cyclists has come of these recent deaths, but Rio remains an insanely dangerous place to ride a bike.

Following the death in Leblon, O Bobo revealed that on average, Rio’s buses accumulate traffic fines like the Guarda Municipal collects crack addicts. One bus on the line that killed the triathlete had 136 infractions in four years.  There have been innumerable fawning media reports about Rio’s intelligent city project and the mayor has used his technological initiatives to hobnob with the global elite (really looking forward to that Clinton visit in December!). But what’s the point of having an expensive IBM monitoring system when all you can do is watch in HD the streets flood and people get killed by buses? A “smart city” doesn’t willfully place its citizens at risk and then spend millions to watch them suffer.

Way back in 2007 when no one outside of Rio knew the name Eduardo Paes, he was plugging away as Rio’s state secretary of sport and leisure as the city prepared for the Pan American Games. The Olympic Stadium was over budget, poorly placed, behind schedule and, surprise surprise, poorly constructed. It also took on the name of a corrupt and disgraced former FIFA president. The stadium, like its declining namesake, has been closed for business because the roof is about to fall down. It has likely been in this condition for some time and the public has been at risk for years. Paes explained the other day that the stadium was constructed in a hurry  and that he was not at the head of the city government at the time so, hey, what can you do about the past? What exactly was Paes doing in his position of the state’s most important sporting institution when the stadium was constructed? If it is anything like the current secretary of Sport and Leisure, he likely gave nonsensical and offensive interviews with the intention of using the position as a political springboard. (Amber Alert: Marcia Lins).

Oh yes, because of old João’s peccadilloes with the ISL case and FIFA bribery he has not only had to resign from his honorary position at the IOC, but also at FIFA. The mayor-king has also given a green light for the changing of the Engenhão stadium name saying, “I’ve changed the name of a lot of things in Rio. I’ve changed them because I waned to. Botafogo has the naming rights and can call the stadium whatever it wants.” A little known fact is that Botafogo F.R. (who has the concessionary rights for a song) changed the name of the stadium years ago to Stadium Rio. Maybe we should change the name to Joana Havelange, João’s granddaughter who is one of the top people on the 2014 WC organizing committee, just to keep the black box clamped shut. More reasonably, there is a movement by several of Rio’s council people to put the name Nilton Santos on the Engenhão. Personally, I think the name Milton Santos would elevate geo-political consciousness a bit more (if you’re into geography porn).

In case all of this news didn’t excite you, here’s the money shot: After 63 years in the public domain, more than 750 million dollars of deforms in the last six years and a total dis-characterization of one of the world’s greatest sporting venues,  the Maracanã  has been privatized by the State of Rio de Janeiro. The winning consortium is comprised of IMX (Eike Batista’s main holding company that was contracted by the government to do the economic viability study), Odebrecht (Lula’s favorite civil construction firm), and AEG (a US based entertainment group that owns MLS teams and administers 120 stadiums around the world). The details of the concession are too painful to write down, but the rub is that over the next 35 years the state will receive less than 20% of its investment. I will be looking through this particular slice of this futuristic porn in the coming months but might not have the courage (or falta de vegonha) to write it down.

Audiência não pública

As anticipated, the government showed up to complete its obligation of realizing at least one audiência pública. Because at no stage of the project had it been discussed with the public, and because it is so clearly wrong in so many ways, an intense resistance to this autocratic schema developed. Yesterday, the idea of those opposed to the privatization of the Maracanã (and to the lack of democratic process) was to impede the audiência from being realized on legal and moral grounds. If the government could not demonstrate that it had performed (or staged) a public hearing then the contracting process for privatization could not begin. Hundreds of people comprised a very loud, unified chorus and tried to bring a halt to the Potempkinish proceedings.

The amount of debris that rained down on the heads of the government officials was enough that security forces used an umbrella as a raised shield. Someone threw a bag of $hite towards the table, signaling the general degree of indignation. As the 500+ crowd hollered down the government, the microphone went to a very long line of individuals, who harangued the government even more. There was then a mass exodus that toppled dozens of rows of plastic chairs, and left the government calling the names of those who had just abandoned their show. At the end of the hall, people lit flares and chanted: “Puta que pariu, é a maior robaleira do Brasil”. (Son of a Whore, it’s the biggest theft in Brazil!)

After the confusão, the head of Rio de Janeiro’s state construction authority, Regis Fichtner said that he “refused to cancel the audiencia publica because there is nothing less democratic that restricting people’s right to speak.” Unfortunately, he wasn't prepared to listen which is why the crowd had resulted to throwing trash on his head in the first place. 

I could no longer tolerate the scene when Fichtner began to repeat the litany of reasons why the Maracanã had to be reformed, why it had to be privatized, why this was all for the good of the people. He arrived at this final point by rejecting the legitimacy of those who spoke, at the event that he convened, by intoning: “they do not speak for the people.”

This was a keenly important moment in the history of the Maracanã. An unresponsive government sat and took abuse from the people whose interests they purportedly represent. There was no one at the table taking notes about what was being said, no indication that they heard anything at all. A mood of tyrannical boredom and indifference radiated from the head table. When the waves of abuse passed, they went about completing their legal obligation, and the audiência foi realizada. O Globo called it “one more step towards the realization of the concession.”

Good news for World Cup Researchers!

I ran across Marcia Lins, the Rio State Secretary for Tourism, Sport, and Leisure at Soccerex this week and was able to get in some questions regarding the Novo Maracanã project. The following is a transcript of my interview with her that was actually quite encouraging for researchers (if SUDERJ agrees to folow through). Also encouraging is that the Brazilian public can look forward to yet another website to follow the money trail. Though it cannot possibly be worse than the www.trasparensciaolimpica.com.br site, it will definitely be more fun!

Geostadia: What are the mechanisms for the public to monitor the public spending on the Maracanã?

Lins: At the end of this month (November) we are launching a site that will accompany the reforms of the Maracanã. This site will have the whole project with time tables, details, costs, photos, so people will be able to accompany the work being done, give suggestions, etc. It will be totally interactive with a virtual model that will show how our Maracanã will be. We will also have a model with historical photos from the archives. This site will show how the Maracanã will be for the World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Geostadia: Will there be space for people to interact with the site?

Lins: Yes. There will be a part for people to leave a message if they like what they see, the emotions they feel, what they think about the direction the work is taking.

Geostadia: When will the site be launched?

Lins: We’re finalizing it now and the idea is to have it ready before the end of the year.

Geostadia: Where will the site be accessible from?

Lins: It will be linked to the webpages of SUDERJ, the Secretary of Sport and Leisure, and the State Government, we’ll also link it to various other sites that have been created in relation to the World Cup such as the Local Organizing Committee. We will also continue to have an overlook within the stadium so people can watch the Maracanã being prepared and this overlook will allow people to have a view of the work in progress…the Maracanã model will be on display as well as the historical display that is currently there.

Geostadia: During the time that the Maracanã is under construction will the SUDERJ archives be open for researchers and journalists?

Lins: The archives will continue to be open and will be accessible via the glass tower which will not undergo reforms [note: the glass tower was constructed in 2000 and was intended to host the FIFA Soccer Hall of Fame, but the money disappeared and the project was never completed]. Everything is accessible there, the blueprints, the photos, the newspapers. The whole archive will not be open but there will be more than one thousand items on display.

Geostadia: And this is open today?

Lins: All you have to do is ask us. It is not open to the pubic but it will be open for research

note: I have repeatedly sent emails to Carmen Dittz, the curator of the SUDERJ archives since September of 2009, have gone to the Maracanã on numerous occassions to try to get access to the archives and have never had any success, despite having met personally with Mrs. Dittz on one occassion (August 2009). The Memory Center currently in place is best and easily forgotten. I must compliment SUDERJ on reducing the price for entry to the Maracana from R$20 to R$10 and for eliminating the R$8 extra that one had to pay to enter the Memory Center. Now that the reforms are underway the field and dressing rooms cannot be visited and so the price was dropped. However, the Memory Center is an embarassment. 

Here is the model of the Novo Maracanã  revealed at Soccerex:

 I am not sure how this differs from the model the released in July: 

But it is very different from the original project:

Missing from all of the mock-ups are the advertising boards that will surround the field. These advertising boards were the source of a 6 week delay in the project because those of FIFA are 30 cm higher than those typically used in Brasil. Thus,the sightlines were all wrong and FIFA sent the architects back to the drawing board. 

When we finally get some access to the detailed plans they will be discussed at length and depth (unlike the field of the Novo Maracanã which is losing 7 meters in length and 5 in width - pode dizer campo de society?)!!!

And finally, for today, the concrete teardrop:

The Rio State Goverment, as part of their display at Soccerex, gave away pieces of the Maracanã stands as souvenirs. I find it so ironic as to be laughable and so absurd as to be sad that the government, in the name of the people, is using the very concrete worn down to smoothness to sell a new space of consumption for the global marketplace. The budget for the Novo Maracana is R$709 million. This price will double, easily. Combining the 2005-2007 reforms with the 2010-2013 reforms, the stadium will have been closed for 5 years (losing revenue), and will have undergone approximately R$2 billion in reforms while reducing the capacity from 129,000 to 75,000. Will the current reforms be sufficient for the Olympic Games? Why were the R$430 million reforms undertaken for the PanAmerican Games just destroyed? How does one establish a budget for a project without first knowing what the project will entail? How many foreign contractors will need to be hired to complete the technical details of the Maracana? How many millions of reales will the maintenance costs of the Novo Maracanã be over the current stadium? Why is SUDERJ so hard to communicate with? Why is it that three years after Brazil's selection as WC host, is there no mechanism in place for evaluating the way public money is spent? What are the qualifications of the LOC members to organize a World Cup? Who are these people and what are their interests and connections?

It's all, of course, much more serious and complicated than this.

 

2014, General Silence.

There's not much to report on Brazil's preparations for the 2014 World Cup.

Marcia Lins, the Rio State Secretary of Sport, Tourism and Leisure has delayed the closing of the Maracanã until December, the third such delay this year. She continues to guarantee that the R$720 million reform will be completed by December 31, 2012. There has been no public debate regarding the project, no explanation of what the money will go to, no reason given for the poorly executed reforms of 2005-2007.

The best case scenario (if best case involves hundreds of millions of public R$ combined with private investment towards a stadium that will be too expensive to maintain and too big for the crowds it attracts) appears to be Belo Horizonte, which has closed the Minerão and actually begun work on the stadium reforms. The cost estimates vary, but appear to be in the range of R$650-R$800 million. In the meantime, no one is going to the games of Atletico or Cruzeiro (BH's big local sides) because the games are happening in stadiums at least 70km away.

The situation in São Paulo has not changed. Brazil's largest city is without a stadium for the World Cup. I don't think this is so bad,  as the WC would have a minimal impact on SP's economy, the city is a terrible place to move around, there isn't much in the way of tourist infrasturcture, the airports are in total chaos, and there is no functional public transportation to the Morumbi (not there shouldn't be, but it's not even in the plans). The hidden story here is the political clash between the president of São Paulo F.C. Juvenal Juvêncio and Ricardo Teixeira of the CBF. Juvêncio is the president of the Group of 13 which represents the financial interests of the 13 largest Brazilian clubs. There are in a constant battle with the CBF over the (dis)organization of Brazilian footy, television contracts, etc. The party line, and the one most often repeated in the media, is that São Paulo has not put together a package that meets FIFA's requirements. The reality is much more complicated. My guess is that the Morumbi project will start late, cost 5x the initial budget, and will host the opening game.

In a sign of radical awakening ahead of the announcement for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, two prominent Belgium politicians had the audacity to question whether or not FIFA should be granted tax-exempt status and be allowed to completely privatize the public space around public stadiums that have been privatized for FIFA's event. There was no such outrage here in Brazil when Lula signed into law a tax-free exemption for EVERYTHING that has to do with hosting the 2014 WC and 2016 Olympics. Open the doors boys, we're hosting a party for the super rich (but don't do anything until after the elections and then let the gringos through will all of their tax exempt goods). Meanwhile the USA jacket my mom sent me for my birthday, in June, is being held for a R$275 ransom by the Brazilian post office. I tried to go challenge the estimate...

The tabulations, results, balance, and rap sheets from South Africa are beginning to trickle in. There won't be much need for journalists four years from now as we will be able to copy and paste what our South African colleagues are finding. We will also be able to save our collective words by repeating what a few intrepid souls have been saying about the 2007 Pan American Games. Que vergonha! Fala seh:rio! Não dah para acreditar! Pô! Você está brincando!  Tá bobo? Vai tomar banho meu filho tu fede demais!