Accumulating Brazil

In a normal month of June, Rio de Janeiro hosts at least 16 professional soccer matches. São Paulo will typically see the same number. Salvador typically has around 8 first division matches; ditto Recife, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Curitiba. None of these cities will host more than 7 during the World Cup.

Compared to this time last year, Brazilian airlines transported 15 % more passengers per day than they are doing during the World Cup. The airports seem empty because they have fewer passengers. Planes are on time because they have fewer problems getting out of the gate. This is not to say that the Brazilians aren´t doing a good job with airline transport, but that the predicted problems have not emerged because Brazilians were so afraid of the problems that they aren´t traveling the way they normally do.

In a normal month of June, Brazil receives around 600,000 foreign visitors. That is the expected number of tourists that the country will receive for the World Cup. “Normal” tourists have been replaced by World Cup tourists, who are being bilked by hoteliers and tour operators.

In every host city, for every game, there is some kind of holiday. This means that during the World Cup there will be 64 holidays. Bank and government holidays mean fewer people on the streets, freeing up space for the circus acts. Schools schedules have also been altered to keep kids, parents and teachers at home. If kids are not getting to school, parents have to find a way to stay home too.

The holidays, fears of logistical headaches and general party atmosphere have been disastrous for Brazilian productivity – a decline in as much as 30% during the first round of the tournament. These costs are never factored into the general budget for the event. This is in addition to the deficit spending of cities. A little known fact about the World Cup is that all of the host cities were granted an exception to the Law of Fiscal Responsibility (LFR). The LFR prohibits urban administrations from deficit spending. Once released from fiscal responsibility, urban administrations started borrowing heavily and will have to start repaying as soon as the Cup has run dry.

The FIFA-standard stadiums have worked for FIFA, but they are antiseptic containers of global corporatism that negate the history and football culture of the cities in which they sit. We know about the elephantitis and the opportunity costs, we know that the vast majority of people cannot afford to go to football matches, but not many people are talking about the anti-urbanism of these stadiums. In the majority, they are completely isolated buildings, surrounded by a sea of parking and “zones of exclusion”. They may have LEED certification (a form of greenwashing) but they are DUMB in terms of weaving together the urban fabric. 

The party is rolling on and there have not been any major horrors, so the international media parachuters are doing a kind of mea culpa, saying “oh, it´s not as bad as I thought it would be, sorry Brazil, we were unkind.” This is a position that ignores the extent to which the entire country has been retooled to host 64 games of football. The repressive and reactive police mechanism is there to guarantee that this event happens. The upper middle and middle classes from Latin America and elsewhere are enjoying the Brazilian festival while the elites of the world jet into and out of wherever they please, however they please, whenever they please. Yet those excluded from the party are suffering with even more repression than normal, or are hurting from a lack of police coverage because the “normal” coverage has been moved to the World Cup.

The media is underreporting the continuous protests that are unfolding in Brazilian cities. There continue to be strong undercurrents of dissatisfaction with the realization of the World Cup. For the government and FIFA, the amazing football and smooth logistical operations for the tournament have been a blessing. However, in the peripheries, the same repressive and violent police force continues to kill poor black people. While there is more conversation about these kinds of things than there was even two years ago, the World Cup has doubled down on the military model of policing the Brazilian population.

Geographer David Harvey´s concept of accumulation by dispossession is a useful framework to understand all of the processes I have outlined above. The city governments dispossess residents of their streets by declaring holidays, keeping people at home. Public culture and public space are taken from the public realm as stadiums are sanitized, corporatized and privatized. The right to free circulation and protest is limited by the police. Tax burdens for multi-national corporations and FIFA are annulled though special legislation (while the Ghanaian players have to pay taxes on their bonuses received in Brazil and Suarez is deprived of his right to exist as a person while Ricardo Texeira is back in the fold). In short, the entire weight and power of the Brazilian state has collaborated with global financial and political interests to ensure that the World Cup happens in the smoothest manner possible.

More of the same, as usual

As usual, it is difficult to know where to begin, so let’s take it from the top.

A Presidenta da República, Dilma is planning on calling a meeting with the twelve governors of the states that will host the World Cup. The federal government is beginning to realize that someone has to take the lead in organizing things, now, or there are going to be some major problems in 2014. INFRAERO, the Brazilian air transport authority, has already assured everyone that 9 or the 12 airport projects will not be ready in time. Dilma is trying to find ways to avoid an international embarrassment and so is taking steps to have “preventative auditing measures” put in place so that the major projects won’t be unnecessarily delayed by pesky accountants once they are actually under way. The generalized lack of planning is hopefully no longer going to be acceptable as both Plan A and Plan B. However, as we know, the stadium projects have doubled in price since 2009, with three of them already scheduled to cost well over R$1 billion. So much for preventative measures.

But really, the problem is not with spending public money on stadia. It’s in the almost complete lack of return on investment, not spending it on other projects and ruining lives to make the stadiums happen. The following are reports that will be seen again, and again, and again as Brazil “gets ready” to host the mega-events.

This one, in Portuguese, is about the people who are being forcibly removed from their homes around the Sambódromo:

This one, in English, is about the total lack of humanity shown by the Prefeitura in removing people from around the Maracanã to make way for a parking lot. The text that accompanies the video is here.

This week, Amnesty International and the United Nations are in town to 1) deliver condemnations of the Brazilian government for violating human rights agreements that Brazil has signed onto 2) interview activists and residents about the ongoing disappropriations 3) call international attention to the problems of mega-events and their urban and social impacts. The author of the United Nations report is Raquel Rolink, professor of Urbanism at the University of São Paulo. Her report can be found though this excellent website on the human right to dignified housing. Other information regarding the forced removals in Rio can be found here.  

It’s doubtful that anyone in the City Government will be listening or if they are, they will hear only what they want to hear. My evidence for this presumption comes from a talk entitled O Plano do Legado para Cidade do Rio de Janeiro that the Secretário Extraordinário de Desenvolvimento [sic] Felipe Goes gave last week at the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (IAB, where despite their insistence on smart urban design, they don’t have a bicycle rack).

Goes opened his talk by reflecting upon the “Olympic Legacy” in Athens. He told the crowd that in his conversations with Greek government officials, the principal Olympic legacy was an improvement in the social comportment of the Athenians. In the lead up to the Olympics there was much less graffiti and tagging. Of course, once the economy collapsed and students and government workers took to the streets in violent protest, graffiti becomes a much less subtle weapon that a Molotov cocktail (as I described in this post from 2010). Come on Felipe! Comportamento Social? Fala Sério. But then, to give you an idea of how the government can turn a turd into a flower, this really very Extraordinary Secretary said that a BRT system slashing through neighborhoods is actually much better than a Metro because you get to see the landscape and not be trapped underground. In Rio de Janeiro, you either drink the Olympic Kool-aid ©® TM or get your house knocked over.

It’s not just that mega-event development projects are ill-considered, poorly planned, attend the demands of international capital at the expense of the population, install extra-legal authorities, privatize and militarize public space, throw public money at Pharanoic projects, and allow for the installation of neo-liberal tactics of governance. 

What really irks is that even with all this, nothing gets done properly. The announcement for the opening of bidding for the Olympic Park project had two different dates. In Portuguese it was 25.4.11, in English 25.5.11. Naturally, this generated some confusion and the pdf was re-released. This was the same bidding process that was cancelled earlier in the year because the IAB was screaming about Rio 2016’s lack of transparency. Today’s O Globo informed that the Velódromo built for the 2007 Pan American Games for R$14,1 million does not meet IOC or international cycling federation regulations and will have to be completely rebuilt. The same holds true for the Pan swimming center which will only be capable of hosting synchronized swimming and water polo for the Olympics. Is it incompetence? Ignorance? Corruption?  Can it all be going so wrong?

There are many discouraging signs as Rio de Janeiro and Brazil prepare to host a series of mega-events over the next five years. The city has a difficult time handling rain, much less interminable and poorly planned urban interventions. On the bright side, the soccer stadiums are not as violent as those in Buenos Aires. Of course, when at the Engenhão, one can’t even see the goal line. Nice legacy.

Only 3 of 12 Brazilian World Cup Stadium Projects underway, already 40% over budget

While the rest of the world is counting down to the start of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, in Brazil we have begun the process of blowing as much public money as possible while leaving the stadium projects to take care of themselves at the last minute.

May 3 marked the final day (according to FIFA, which gave a two month grace period) that the host cities had to begin the 2014 stadium construction projects. Only 3 of the 12 projects have begun (Manaus, Belo Horizonte, Cuiabà)  - and those are demolitions of existing stadia that will be replaced by new, shiny FIFA toys. For the remaining 9 stadiums, not much happened in those two months, except for a reevaluation of the costs: According to one report, since the 12 World Cup cities were announced in May of 2009 the average cost of the stadiums has increased 20%. My own research indicates that the situation is much, much worse:

2014 World Cup Stadium Projects

City	Stadium	Situation	Construction?	cost 5/2009	cost 5/2010	% increase
Public Stadiums				xR$100000	xR$100000
Belo Horizonte	Mineirão	Work Begun (demolition)	January 2010	427	609	42
Brasília	Estádio Nacional	Waiting for contract decision	June 2010	520	740	42
Cuiabá	Verdão	Work Begun (demolition)	26 April 2010	400	342	-15
Fortaleza	Castelão	Waiting for contract decision	June 2010	300	452	51
Manaus	Arena Amazônia	Work Begun (demolition)	15 April 2010	300	500	40
Natal	Arena das Dunas	Waiting for publication of call for contracts	June 2010	309	400	30
Recife	Arena Capibaribe	Legally contested contract decision	June 2010	300	452	51
Rio de Janeiro	Maracanã	Awaiting FIFA approval of architecture	uncertain	500	800	60
Salvador	Fonte Nova	Secondary projects underway (tree planting)	3 May 2010	400	605	51
Private Stadiums
Curitiba	Arena da Baixada	In search of funding	Claim that work has begun	138	138
Porto Alegre	Beira-Rio	In search of funding	Claim that work has begun	378	378
São Paulo	Morumbi	Awaiting FIFA approval	Claim that work has begun	136	240	76,5
				4108	5656	43,6 / 37,6

                                                                                                                                            

The story is clear. Of the projects for which I have information, the average increase in price during a year when almost no construction happenend was 43.6%. If we optomistically assume that the budgets for the stadiums in Curitiba and Porto Alegre will remain the same, the average increase IN ONE YEAR is 37.6%, jumping from R$ 4,108,000,000 to R$ 5,656,000,000 (US$3.26 billion). If this continues until 2014, the total cost will be R$ 14,543,000,000 – more than a billion R$ per stadium! This is all public money for stadiums. The city of Manaus, for example, is planing on spending more than R$ 6 billion on the World Cup.

FIFA is not happy with the delays in building their toys. They are not ignorant of the situation on the ground either, noting that in an election year, it is impossible to get anything done (because if you lose the election the benefits of your work accrue to your successor) and following the November elections we’re into summer, the December holidays, New Year, and Carnaval – all of which will push construction projects back until March 2011.The CBF (which cannot be distinguished from the Organizing Committee of the World Cup) has announced that they will begin a round of visits to the stadia to see what, if anything, is actually happening.  

FIFA is a corrupt and increasingly brutal institution that uses the World Cup as both a carrot and a stick to suck the marrow out of local, national, and global economies in order to enrich itself. The fatuous, obsequious complicity of national football federations mixes with the spinelessness and greed of local, state and national politicians to ruin what could otherwise be a tremendous opportunity for cities to upgrade infrastructure and provide lasting social and economic benefits for the population at large.

What we are seeing in Brazil and South Africa is a smash and grab campaign (akin to Shock and Awe) that will leave cities with a new breed of White Elephant  (with transportation tethers that lash them  to luxury hotels, providing nothing in functional transport for locals) that eats public money until communities can no longer abide by their presence and decide to put them down.

Gente, os atrazos abrem espaço e tempo para a gente resistir. Fazemos bandeiras, faixas, cartões vermelhos, se lá, e protestamos nos estádios do Brasil dizendo que queremos algo diferente e que FIFA pode ter uma  Copa aqui sem nós dizer como, quando, e porque.