 |
| Now a UNESCO heritage site but always projected as a landscape frontier for capital accumulation |
Still believing
the Brazil hype? I´ll just touch on three issues in this post, and do not want
to be a haranguing voice of despair but until there is good evidence that urban
conditions are being materially improved by mega-events or that a meaningful
social change towards a more just society is evident, I´ll continue to point
out the gaping holes in the gold-framed 17th century landscape
painting hung on Brazil´s front door.
Dengue is still a major problem in Brazil,
particularly in 6 of the World Cup host cities (doubling
of deaths since 2010 and 217,885 declared cases in Brazil in 2013). Dengue
is not really that hard to eliminate if there is sufficient investment in
sanitation and a focuses public education program to eliminate stagnant pools
of fetid water. The chances of getting dengue are still pretty slim, unless you
are living in a poor area of town or in low lying areas, or at a job site…
For the World
Cup there is a thing called the Matrix
of Responsibilities that each city agrees to as part of its host city
contract. In Rio, for instance, the Matrix
includes the Maracanã and the
Transcarioca. Of course, the opportunity to include pet projects in all of this
in order to “maximize” (read: make as much money as possible) the benefit of
the mega-event is irresistible. In some cases, such as Brasilia, none of the
urban mobility projects made it off paper and have since been eliminated from
the matrix. In Cuiabá, all of the urban mobility projects began on the same
day, immobilizing the city for years. Not
even Neo could get to work on time in Cuiabá. In Rio, the re-organization of transport lines
in order to make more room for cars has made an impossibly bad system even
worse. The mayor first asked for residents to be patient and now has told them
to leave work early. Some have suggested that he take his own advice. I wonder
how this kind of brutal, arrogant indifference is measured by IBM´s smart city
machines. Want to find out the best place to get into gridlock? The new Iphone
5s will cost R$3,600 in Brazil and the promised G4 network likely won´t work.
At least there
has been some movement towards completing prison sentences for the corrupt
operators of the PT´s monthly kickback scheme. Of course, nothing will stick to
the former president even though his former chief of staff and the majority of
the PT´s inner circle have now been dragged off to prison. Of course it is good
that these convicted criminals have to submit to the law of the land (even
though prisons in and of themselves are good for no one). This may indicate
that something has indeed shifted positively in the Brazilian justice system.
We know that
Brazil already has the most expensive football tickets in the world (relative
to minimum wage), but what C.R. Flamengo has done to their fans is beyond the
pale. After reaching the final of the Copa do Brasil, the cheapest tickets for
the final at the Xaracanã were set at R$250. Minimum wage in Brazil, R$690 a
month. A judge intervened and set the cheapest tickets at R$120. The Brazilian
clubs are run by amateurs who are articulated politically with a closed and
cloistered national football federation that is mirrored by a 2014 Organizing
Committee that has no information about its organizing structure and that is
trying desperately to convince Brazilians that the World Cup is going to be the
best ever. Can we stop with the charade that football tournaments are adequate tools
for urban and social development? Mesmo sendo um sapo tamanho cristo redentor, stopping
the bombast would make the transfer of wealth program that is the World Cup a
little easier to swallow.
No comments:
Post a Comment