A visita d'O'Bama

Not eveyone is happy about Obama's visit to Rio de Janeiro
http://noticias.r7.com/rio-de-janeiro/fotos/manifestantes-protestam-conta-visita-de-obama-20110318.html

Mr. President woke most of the Zona Sul up this morning with his helicopters flying about. There has probably never been anyone in history that has a larger security footprint than Obama. The airports were shut down, the Brazilian Navy parked off of Copacabana, and more than 2000 Brazilian troops occupied the already occupied Cidade de Deus so that the big O could pay a visit. Where Obama goes, or plans on going, many thousands clear tens of thousands of others out of the way.  There has been a media frenzy, of course, with everyone wanting to get a USAmerican on record for something (this artilce has momentarily put me in front of Frank Gaffney, from the dark  side of the force in a google search for Gaffney Obama).

It’s a shame that NPR hasn’t made their more qualified reporters permanent staff in Brazil. That way those of you in North America could perhaps avoid the flaccid, banner waving drivel that came out before the Obamas descended on Brazil. On Friday, “Brazilians welcome Obama as their own” took on special meaning for football fans, organized labor, and people living in UPP favelas as protestors threw Molotov cocktails at the USA consulate downtown. The general reaction in the news was to ignore this massive protest, but the reaction amongst many Brazilians was that the protestors “estão de parabéns” – they should be congratulated. There were, on various listserves, calls for more protests of this sort, though I imagine that when faced with the FBI, Secret Service, BOPE, and the Brazilian Military, syndicalists, student organizers, and those with a memory that extends beyond 1985 figured that caution was the better part of valor.

After talking to Brazilian business interests and past presidents (with the exception of Lula who felt slighted because he was not asked to the official state dinner personally by Dilma and went to his son’s birthday churrasco instead), Obama gave a speech at the Teatro Municipal (full text here). I’ll pick on some easy things, because it’s Sunday and Obama woke me up this morning.

You play an important role in the global institutions that protect our common security and promote our common prosperity. And you will welcome the world to your shores when the World Cup and the Olympic games come to Rio de Janeiro.

We all know that the World Cup and Olympics have nothing to do with common prosperity, but the prosperity of big civil engineering firms, multi-national corporations, and corrupt sporting oligarchies. Our “common security” is one in which the banks get trillions from the government, R$33 billion gets poured into the World Cup, R$29 billion into the Olympics, and the minimum wage in Brazil is stuck at R$545 a month (US$328 x 12= US$3989 year).

We need world-class infrastructure -- which is why American companies want to help you build and prepare this city for Olympic success

Read: Brazilian money going to pay for USAmerican military and surveillance technology. The FBI has already been working with Brazilian police to install new modes of discipline in Brazilian stadiums.

Together we can also promote energy security and protect our beautiful planet. As two nations that are committed to greener economies, we know that the ultimate solution to our energy challenges lies in clean and renewable power. And that's why half the vehicles in this country can run on biofuels, and most of your electricity comes from hydropower. That's also why, in the United States, we've jumpstarted a new clean energy industry. And that's why the United States and Brazil are creating new energy partnerships -- to share technologies, create new jobs, and leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer than we found it.

There is nothing “clean” about biofuels. They require a massive, underpaid labor force and relegate unimaginably large swaths of  the Brazilian northeast to mono-cropping.  Brazil and the United States pollute, pollute, and pollute some more while eliminating environmental restrictions in the name of economic competition. The Brazilian Amazon has been re-territorialized so that it can be eviscerated (thanks Lula and Mangabeira Unger!). The “Brazilian dream” is to live in a condo, have at least two cars, and go to Orlando every year. (I’m only being slightly unfair here). Even if a car runs on biofuel, what about the resources needed to bring it into production? Does everyone have to have a car, Mr. President? In southeastern Brazil, the answer is yes, we can, and we bloody well will.

 And as two countries that have been greatly enriched by our African heritage, it's absolutely vital that we are working with the continent of Africa to help lift it up. 

When in Brasilia, Obama ordered an attack on Libya. Let’s keep the vapid paternalism flowing, that’ll make us feel good about what we’re doing while keeping Africa’s natural resources flowing in a Westerly 

direction (and not to China).

The millions in this country who have climbed from poverty into the middle class, they could not do so in a closed economy controlled by the state. You're prospering as a free people with open markets and a government that answers to its citizens. You're proving that the goal of social justice and social inclusion can be best achieved through freedom -- that democracy is the greatest partner of human progress.

“Freedom” is just another word for open markets. In this sense, this is basically the same speech that W. would have given. “Democracy” is the greatest partner of increased profits and ever-expanding economies. In the speech he gave to the bidness folk in Brasilia, Obama said “When we look South towards Brazil, we see 200 million consumers.”  

So hopefully once NPR gets some people who don’t just report about what they would like to believe to be true in that soft-spoken NPR world, those of you who are not living in Brazil will get a more complete picture of the perspectives and attitudes towards the USA here. There is massive ambivalence, admiration, disgust, mistrust, sympathy, and historically rooted perceptions that are not going to be overturned by Obama’s visit. People remember well the USA’s long-standing support of the military dictatorship here (and Chile, Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay). Lula’s leftish militancy against the imperium was about as hollow as is Chavez’s. They keep their popularity by talking a big game, but in the details they hand everything over to the capitalists, developers, and USA-trained economists.

Obama has disappointed and deceived in many of the same ways as Lula. After much hope for change, he has implemented even more of the neo-liberal tools of governance to further the class-project that received such a tremendous boost under w. No one here is asking Obama how Brazilians are treated in Immigration detention centers. No one here wants to know what has gone so wrong with the “American dream”, as Brazilians are embarking upon a “development project” that is leading to a continental-scale consumer society modeled on the USA . There is no way to be green about this, much in the same way that it is impossible to have a green World Cup or Olympics, principally because there are part and parcel of the same socio-historical trajectory. It will take many, many more Molotov cocktails to alter this path. 

Pos-Carnaval scattershot

Brazil is expensive. Everyone keeps saying it, we all keep paying it. Here’s an example from yesterday. I filled up a very small car with gas, R$104 (US$65, about six dollars a gallon in a country that doesn’t import oil and has its own refineries). Then, it was time to change the oil. The synthetic quarts, sucked out of the ground, processed, produced and sold in Brazil were R$39 each. That’s twenty dollars a quart of oil. The oil change set me back R$186. So, between filling up the car and getting the oil changed I spent R$290 or US$ 175. Not to even mention the cost of buying and maintaining cars here, nossa senhora.  If you can say carro caro five times quickly without having both words sound the same then you are probably used to such prices and don’t even think about it anymore.

Brazilians are getting more and more into debt as the consumer society expands. The front page of OGlobo’s Economia section from Sunday: Brazilians already commit 22% of their salaries to pay down debts. This is up from 13.9% in 2003. The banks in Brazil charge up to 180% per year for credit card debt, and for short term cash loans, the percentages can be even higher. The best possible business to have in Brazil is a bank. As people begin to borrow against the inflated values of their homes and apartments and buy more and more things that they didn’t even know they needed until they had someone offering just that very thing, then wow! When the bubble bursts in 2017(?), it will probably still be good to be in banking (as the recent experience in the USA has shown).

There is a direct correlation between occupying a foreign country and occupying Rio’s favelas. The Brazilian military has been leading the UN’s occupation of Haiti for many years and has used the strategies and tactics of that occupation in the military exercises in the Complexo do Alemão. Sensitive as ever to the cultural nuances of “indigenous people”, a Brazilian coronel was quoted as saying, “it doesn’t get to be an organized crime unit like in Rio. Violence happens here may times because it is a part of their culture.” (Não chega a ser uma organização criminosa como no Rio. A violência acontece aqui, muitas vezes, por fazer parte da cultura do povo.)  There are other comparisons to be made here between the USA and Brazil, but I will leave it to the reader to make those connections.

O’Bama is planning a visit to Rio for St. Patrick’s Day week. He’ll give a big public speech in Cinelândia. I’m trying to call this the “Visita d’Obama” but was told this is not grammatically correct. It’s the “Visita do Obama”, which for me is one too many O’s.

Dilma officially indicated Henrique Mirelles as the head of the APO (Autoridade Pública Olímpica). The former head of Brazil’s Central Bank will preside over an institution that was significantly reduced in size during the deliberations in the Senate. The APO went from 480 to 181 official posts. The Lula government was sparing no expense, for anything, but Dilma has had more fiscally responsible ideas in her head. Sergio Cabral and Eduardo Paes also wanted the APO to have reduced powers and they appear to have been successful in their negotiations with the federal government. I haven’t been able to find the revised text of the Medida Provisória 510, so if anyone out there has some time and inclination, I’ll update this post and give due credit!

Classes started this week. I’m teaching a course called “Producing the Olympic City” in the Master’s program of Architecture and Urbanism at UFF. If anyone wants to get on the blog, google group, or zotero send me an email and I’ll get you signed up. Falando nisso, se houver Brasileiros interessados em participar no curso, estou abrindo as portas para vocês! (BTW, for those of you not familiar with zotero.com, it’s perhaps the best thing ever invented for researchers, even though it only functions in Mozilla).