What happens when the Cup of Cups runneth over?

The Cup of Cups is limited to the field of play and even then there are massive problems with the governance of the game. We see innumerable possibilities of concussed players staying on the field after getting dinged. There is no doping lab in Brazil capable of analyzing anything but belly button lint and FIFA is threatening to sanction the Mexican fans for saying “Puto” while tens of thousands of Brazilians call Diego Costa a “viado” with impunity. While we have seen amazing football, been on emotional roller coasters and exposed to the furious athleticism of the male body as consumer spectacle (thank you Puma) this continues to come at a heavy cost.

Scalpers, ticket touts and cambistas who are operating freely around the Maracanã are exploiting the desperation of fans to get into matches. Outside the Spain x Chile match a dodgy looking Englishman tried to get US$ 2500 for three tickets. That is maddeningly expensive and exploitative and theoretically illegal. There were dozens of these transactions happening on a newly constructed overpass that linked the stadium to the hospitality center on the other side of the tracks.  The hastily constructed overpasses and lack of organization may eventually create some nasty problems. Combine this with a military police that is not there to help but to hit, and there is an explosive combination waiting for the fuse to be lit.

Continuing north from the Maracanã and into the Manguinhos favela, at the same time that tiki-taka was dying, the Military Police assassinated Jonathan, a 19 year old, by shooting him in the back. As geographer Carolyn Prouse has pointed out on her blog, the protests that occur far from the eyes of the national and international media are not necessarily against the World Cup but for basic human rights: “There is less circling of the cops with cameras when people are running for their lives. And because favelas are typically depicted as being run by drug traffickers, it is very easy for the state and the media to accuse protestors of being paid by the traffickers, as ridiculous a claim as it may be. This is a form of criminalization of protest activity that rarely sees any media coverage in World Cup reports. And it’s done to silence activists.”

In short, the military model of dealing with insurgent populations has been amplified with the World Cup. While the ostensive policing of areas around the stadiums may be a normal aspect of football culture in Brazil that does not mean that it is acceptable. The cordons sanitaires that are part of the fan experience have their inverse in the cordons du terroire of a repressive police apparatus.

If we think of the stadium as a city in miniature then by looking at what is going on there we can better understand the dynamics of the city. If fans are renting their spaces in the stadium, and those prices are too high for them to pay, then they look for a cheaper seat (in a bar), spend their savings or try to invade. If ticket prices are comparable to housing costs, we see the same thing happening in the mega-event city. The middle and lower classes can no longer afford to live near places of work and leisure, get pushed to the periphery and are forced to cede space to the international tourist class (however defined). Those who try to invade (squat) are treated as criminals and expelled from their occupations. In this sense the deportation of the Chileans who tried to squat  in the Maracanã is the equivalent of the violent repression that Cariocas have faced when they try to occupy vacant buildings. 

The invasions of the Maracanã undertaken by the Argentines and Chileans during the first two games are getting all of the media attention and the security will be reinforced in all stadia. However, this does not go beyond a mere re-entrenchment of the hyper-territorialization of FIFA-space. The continuation of this process by more repressive means is happening throughout the World Cup host cities.

Discursive framing and other one-offs

There are few media conglomerates that wield the kind of influence over society, culture and popular perception as the Globo Network in Brazil. This is particularly true in the media-government-business nexus of the World Cup. Globo is the de-facto owner of Brazilian football, paid dearly for the rights to transmit the 2014 World Cup (though no one knows how much) and is shaping the discourse around the tournament to suit the needs of those who seek to maintain their grip on power, namely the Globo network itself. 

One of the biggest advertisers in the Globo newspaper is the state government. Their contributions are rivalled by the big civil construction firms whose subsidiaries in the closed-condominium housing industry take out full page ads everyday to extoll the virtues of living in stylized off-worlds with names like Miami Gardens, Pure Island, or Reserva Golfe. The condo ads are inevitably flanked by car and truck ads, extolling the virtues of escape into the wilderness, or alternatively, into a morass of congestion. As ever, Rio de Janeiro is the most beautiful city in the world to be stuck in traffic. This is not a counter-cultural moment in Brazil. People are pulling their hair out, not letting it flow naturally to prove a point. Brazil is in the midst of an ideological project driven by elites in government, media and industry that want Brazilians to charge full speed ahead into a debt-ridden world of consumerism, hostility towards the public sphere and fear of the underclasses.

One of the most perverse ways in which Globo tries to twist the realities of fantastically unequal wealth distribution, militarization, privatization and commodification into a Hallmark moment of Brazil´s arrival on the international stage is in their presentation of the Maracanã. As we know, the Maracanã was ripped from public hands with some violence over the past few years. One of the particularly charming displays was the removal of the Aldeia Maracanã indigenous community with shock troops. The ever-mindful president of the state agency responsible for the Maracanã complex said at the time, “the place for Indians is in the forest, that´s why we´re preserving the Amazon.” This is what it looked like:

Warning: do not eat while looking at this photo. 

Now, according to Globo, this is what the Aldeia Maracanã has become.

In the article, we are informed that weddings can now be held in the stadium for a rent as low as R$30,000. The new Aldeia Maracanã according to Globo, has no indigenous, no poor, not even the middle class. This Aldeia is only for those who can afford it. 

They´re cute while young, best to declaw in early adolescence.

To prove the point, this is the way that the ideologues at Globo are presenting Brazilian´s indigenous communities as the World Cup approaches.

The title here should be, “Brasil, através da bala.” If you are indigenous, you had better be young, because as soon as you start to demand rights or dare to appear in places where you don´t “belong” then likelihood of extirpation by FBI-trained shock troops is pretty good.

While the criminal and unconstitutional treatment of the indigenous communities across Brazil gets almost no play in the media, it is important to remember that the oldest center of indigenous culture in Brazil has been forcibly removed for the realization of the World Cup. In its place we have a sterile urban environment that tens of thousands will pass by without noticing on their way to drink Budweiser and eat McDonalds inside of the privatized, sanitized and hollow (not hallowed) Maracanã.

Everything is going great

The violence that permeates daily life in Brazil is becoming more visible as if the stresses of preparing for the World Cup are making people, infrastructure and institutions crack. In the past few weeks we have had a series of horrors that I refuse to ignore. A woman (Cláudia Ferreira) was shot in the chest while going to get bread for her four kids. The police that shot her, who between them were responsible for scores of deaths, threw her into the back of their SUV and as they drove away the door opened and she was dragged hundreds of meters down the street in front of her friends and neighbors. There may have been more scandal about O Bobo´s terrible coverage of the incident than the incident itself. 

In another act of daily horror a BRT Transoeste feeder bus came too fast around a corner, lost control, jumped the road divider and killed three children and woman that were waiting to cross. The lack of urban planning and the general insanity of the bus system are responsible for this daily violence that people have to face in Rio. These people died because there are no over or underpasses and there had been no intervention by public authorities to reduce the public risk on what locals called “the corner of death” . When the Brazilian media reports on these accidents they are mostly interested in how long it takes for the traffic to start flowing again. 

Today is the anniversary of the 1964 CIA-backed Military Coup. The violence is getting to the point where I have heard numerous people declare that the only way “to bring order back” to society is to have a dictatorship. It would seem that many are getting their wish as the expansion of military counter-insurgencies continues in Rio.  The saudade for the military dictatorship always comes from the very people who benefitted from it the last time around and who are also benefitting the most from Brazil´s spiraling ascension (or decline) into a well-behaved global economic player. There are, of course, millions and millions and millions of Brazilians that have fought long and hard to bring about democratic conditions and the rule of law, but they are fighting an uphill battle against a rising tide of neo-liberalism. This rising tide has all of the delightful aromas and flavors of Rio´s barely functioning sewage system where when we spoon through the fetid stew we find that there are pervasive notions about the rights of individuals that would be more appropriate under the Talban than the PT. 

Haven´t heard about this one? A study by IPEA showed that 65.1% of Brazilian respondents, men and women, agreed partially or in full that women who dressed provocatively “were asking to be raped.” An anti-rape campaign emerged with the hashtag “I don´t deserve to be raped.” This is a necessary, logical and correct response. However, in a machista, violent, and conservative society the reaction was not long in coming: death threats, rape threats and intimidation forced the organizers of the campaign off social media sites. This was the same week in which reports came out about the daily sexual violence that women experience on overcrowded buses and trains in Brazilian cities. To confirm the general acceptance of this in Brazil, advertisements on the metro are promoting a drink called SYN whose mascot is an alien (read: gringo) that “abducts” Rio´s provocatively dressed, tipsy, black and mulata women. The message: rape away boys, most people think it´s ok. 

The World Cup would be a welcome distraction from the daily violence except that yet another worker has died in São Paulo and work on the stadium has again stopped (gasp!). There will probably be a few more deaths as the time pressures grow. No one is to blame as the World Cup functions like an extensive shell game of interests that leaves vacuums of responsibility, exposing the least protected to the greatest risk. Of course, the “real risk” is to the World Cup which is why the government puts on massive security performances to show foreigners that they are getting tough on crime and that critical infrastructures will be protected. The occupation of Maré this week was nothing more than that. The media in Brazil crowed about how the military were able to occupy the whole complex in 15 minutes without firing a shot. Never mind the year´s long notice that the occupation was going to happen. This triumphalist discourse ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of shots have been fired in and at Maré over the years and that last year during the Confederations Cup, this same “pacifying” force massacred eleven people (some with bayonets). So while the World Cup will have little or no impact on Brazil´s economy (according to Moody´s), in a country where black kids are three times as likely to be shot as all other groups, it is extremely disturbing that we are spending R$1.9 billion on security measures that will increase the likelihood of their deaths. 

Brazil has come a long way since the end of the dictatorship in 1985, but there are many generations of work to be done to make this a more just and democratic society. Facing the legacy of the dictatorship on its 50^th anniversary has to be more than just remembering how bad things were. The national leadership has only taken tentative steps towards truth commissions and is repeating some of the same tactics with their pursuit of draconian laws against social movements and protests during mega-events (including new “terrorist” laws). Part of the reason for the continuity of ideologies between the dictatorship and neo-liberal democracy is that the economic and political agents that dictate public policy in Brazil accumulated their wealth and power under the military regime. Granted, the PT has to work within the given structure but they don´t seem keen to change things as long as they can keep their hands on the tiller and in the till. With the World Cup hurtling at us like an unavoidable meteor it is important to remember that “the political use of football by dictatorships, military regimes and authoritarian governments dos not neutralize the spaces and practice of football for acts of resistance.”

Fim do ano, fim do mundo

The end of another year of football in Brazil exposed the putrid state of every element of the game. This video explains some of it:

The Vasco x Atletico Paranaense match was held in the city of Joinville in Santa Catarina State because Altético´s stadium is under construction, and massively delayed, for the World Cup. Vasco needed to win in order to avoid relegation, but their team is so devoid of talent that staying in the first division another year would have been a sporting injustice. Why are Vasco so bad? Anyone out there remember Phillipe Coutinho, now starring in midfield for Liverpool? Ex-Vasco, he was sold to A.C. Milan on the day he turned 18. Vasco´s youth system has been condemned in the courts and the few times they do manage to produce talent, the boys are sold off to the highest bidder. This is same reason for which Fluminense was relegated. They decided to sell their two best players, Wellinton Nem and Thiago Neves, in mid season and brought no one in to replace them. The political-economy of Brazilian football continues to benefit agents and directors at the expense of clubs and fans.

However, the causes for the scenes above have much deeper roots than just the emptying of talent pools and managerial incompetence (read: Vanderlei Luxemburgo). The torcidas organizadas have long standing relationships with club directors. This is not new or surprising in Latin America. However, the fact that there had been violence between the torcidas of Vasco and Atletico PR and that the Military Police decided not to patrol inside the stadium, leaving it up to a private security force, on a day when the Torcida Jovem of Vasco was likely to be at its most aggressive because of the impending relegation…that is another kind of violence in and of itself. The inability of the state to anticipate pre-announced conflicts or of the responsible football authorities to ensure the safe realization of a game is exactly the kind of violence through absence that has as its inevitable counterpoint a boot in the face and a nail-tipped club in the head. Violence permeates Brazilian football at all levels so why are we so surprised when it breaks out in the stands?

Naturally, in Brazil, no one is going to assume responsibility for any of this. The clubs cannot be held responsible for their permissive relationships with the torcidas, the PM´s hands off attitude may be criticized but not investigated, the CBF is tone deaf, blind and unmoving. The only thing that will happen is that both Vasco and Atletico will receive punishments of short duration that will not significantly alter the status quo.

A number of important Brazilian footballers have started a movement to reform Brazilian football from the inside. Good Sense F.C. is calling for a reorganization of the football calendar and for a declaration of labor rights for football players. They issued a note regarding yesterday´s violence saying all culpable parties should be found out. This includes the CBF, the Military Police, the private security firm in charge of the internal policing, the emergency personnel, the board of directors of both clubs and the torcidas organizadas.