Festa Juninho (Pernambucano)

Here’s a big post to give everyone something to chew on for a couple of weeks.  I will be giving talks at:  Duke University in Durham, NC on June 22 (@ the Haiti Laboratory, Franklin Humanities Institute, Bay 4 Smith Warehouse, noon), The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism in São Paulo on July 2, and Intel in Santa Clara, CA on July 11. Details forthcoming.

Starting from the top down in classic mega-event style:

Leonardo Martins in Jornal do Brasil wrote,  “As UPPs são, antes de tudo, um projeto de poder, de controle de um espaço tradicionalmente submetido à opressão. Os novos Capitães, que comandam as UPPs são os novos “donos do pedaço”, em substituição aos traficantes que ali se encontravam. Autorizam bailes, mandam baixar o som dos moradores, escolhem as músicas que os moradores podem escutar, determinam horário e condutas pessoais, intimam e intimidam àqueles que tem uma opinião mais crítica acerca da função da polícia, como por exemplo o fechamento da rádio comunitária do Andaraí, pela Polícia Federal, sobre o pretexto de rádio pirata e atrapalhar o tráfego aéreo."

“The UPPs are, above all, a projection of Power, for control of a space that has traditionally been oppressed. The new Captains that command the UPPs are the “owners of the land”, substituting the drug traffickers that were there before. They authorize dances, tell the residents to turn their music down, choose the music that the residents can listen to, determine the coming and going and conduct of people, intimate and intimidate those who have a more critical opinion of the police function, as for example the closing of the closing of the community radio station in Andaraí by the Federal Police on the pretext that it was a pirate radio station and it interfered with air traffic.”

I haven’t been back to visit and UPPeed communities in awhile, so I don’t have much more to contribute to the debate than I had a few weeks ago. I hear adolescents around town say “UPP é o caralho” and have seen that succinct and poignant phrase scribbled on walls.

Mayor alert! EP twisted his ankle in a political minefield, but don’t worry, he’s going to be ok. O Principe’s attempts to manipulate the infrastructure of the Olympic machine didn’t sit too well with people more powerful and experienced than he. In trying to limit the powers of the APO, EP threw a few one-liners into the City’s Olympic act that he then had to beg some legislators to erase and pretend to everyone else that he wasn’t trying to maintain as much power for himself as possible. The story is much longer than that, of course, but takes a doctoral thesis to sort though. Fortunately, those are available.

Transoeste disaster

According to sources buried deep within the international press corps, The IOC has had all of their questions answered in regard to forced removals for Rio’s BRT lines. The Trans-Oeste BRT (Blown Right Through) is moving people out of the way faster than a turd in a hot tub. The results are shit.

Picture of housing demolitions carried
out by Rio's Housing Secretary along the Trans-Oeste BRT line, April 2011.
Nelma Gusmão de Oliveira foto.

Last one standing, Zona Oeste
Rio de Janeiro. Nelma Gusmão de Oliveira foto

Mayor alert! O Principe tried to stick the Olympic golf course in a closed condominium complex where the cheapest condo goes for R$2.1 million. Unfortunately, the land that he wanted to put the course on has been stuck in the judicial system. Apparently the news took the condo residents by surprise.  The is the kind of “planning” is happening on a metropolitan level, not just with the Olympic golf course.

According to the Union of Externally Controlled Federal Auditors (AUDITAR), “the new model of contracting banked by the base of Dilma Rousseff’s government in the house of deputies is going to make the public works for the World Cup and Olympics much more expensive.” This is not at all surprising given that the new laws are designed to “flexibilize” normal contracting processes.

Compounding the problem is that those who frequent stadiums end up paying for them three times. Once for construction. Twice for higher ticket prices. Third for world-class maintenance costs.  Even our illustrious Federal Deputy Romário is calling the stadium budgets into question.

The CBF brought their team back to Brazil for the first time in a long time to prepare for the Copa America in Argentina. The ticket prices were staggering and the games were seen as test venue for the CBF to employ private security guards (as will be the case during the World Cup). The Prossegur rent-a-cops did not take kindly to the unfurling of a banner by the ANT-GO crew and gave them some rough treatment for unfurling this lovely banner. Congrats to these brave formigas!!!

Ricardo Ali Baba Teixeira, OUT! For decades Brazilian football has been in the hands of incompetent and corrupt
officials, we demand the democratization of decisions related to Brazilian football with the participation of fans!
Neither FIFA, or the CBF, or Football is of the People!
National Fans Association

Here are the attendances and financial details from those matches:

Game	Paying Public	Gate Receipts	Average Ticket	Free tickets
BRA (0) x HOL (0)	36.449	R$3.120.625	R$85.81	7.000?
BRA (1) x ROM (0)	30.059	R$4.357.705	R$144.90	9.000?
	66.508	R$7.478.330	R$112.44	pqp

It’s impossible to tell how many tickets the CBF gave away to itself and to its sponsors. Interestingly and stupidly, the first match in Goiânia, resulted in Ricardo Teixeira (Mr. Jowls) promising a Copa America 2015 match to that city, even though they are not hosting any World Cup matches.  In Rio, tickets for Copa Libertadores matches in 2010-2011 started at R$75. In three hours of football,  the CBF made off with R$7.5 million and scored one goal. How expensive will tickets to the World Cup be? How expensive will the stadiums be?  This is a link to a professor from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas who is criticizing the Maracanã budgeting process. We have seen a 170% increase in construction costs since 2009. This is without multiple labor shifts, without increased raw material and labor costs, without counting the subsidy for imports, without counting the no-bid conracts, without the time crunch, etc.

But, this will give Brazil (and Rio in particular) the MOST MODERN STADIUMS IN THE WORLD!!!!!!

maracá mais moderno do mundo

What does it mean to have the most  “modern “ stadium in the world? The continual search for and production of the modern in Brazil has had very mixed urban, social, and environmental results. When the Maracanã was constructed, it was the most modern stadium in the world, was it not? Will not the host of the 2016 European Championships have the most modern football stadiums in the world? Why bother calling it the most modern stadium in the world?  It’s a stupid and completely relative question.

Modern could mean functional but certainly means secure and comfortable and bougie, but in the context of Brazil’s mega-events “modern” has become more associated with overspending on monumental mistakes that are guaranteed to bring diminishing economic returns in an attempt to appear modern for and to foreigners. The stadium, as such, does not have to be submitted exclusively to economic metrics as a measure of its value. In addition to agreeing to build economic black holes, the cultural costs have not been calculated in the production of the twelve stadiums for the World Cup. The Mané Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia had bleachers so well-made that it took three attempts to demolish them with explosives. They are installing an expensive house of cards in his place.

FIFA has chosen Rio de Janeiro as the host of the International Broadcast Center for the World Cup. It will, of course, be in Barra de Tijuca at the Rio Centro complex. This is interesting (though not surprising) for a couple of reasons. One is that it will develop further Barra’s emergent position as the high-tech and media production center of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. Why? Because in order to install something as sophisticated and grandiose as an IBC millions if not billions of fiber optic cables need to be stuck into the region, creating an information infrastructure that augments already profound structural inequalities within the city.

Secondly, the increasing and repetitive investment in communications infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro (and São Paulo) is consolidating the position of those cities in the hugely unbalanced urban hierarchy of Brazil. The choice of Rio will guarantee that it grows its media and communications industry at the expense of Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Porto Alegre, etc. Of course, wherever this kind of investment happens there are knock on geographic effects. However, the overwhelming Federal investment in Rio de Janeiro (at least R$100 billion between 2010-2016) is going to have long term consequences for a more balanced urban system. The FIFA media release is worth a read.

The Secretary of the Fazenda of Rio de Janeiro is trying to find ways to raise R$4 billion to finance public works for mega-events. His primary obstacle, according to Oh, Globo is the Law of Fiscal Responsibility (LRF), which prevents cities from emitting bonds while they are in debt. O Principe is still waiting for his R$ 2.5 billion loan to come in from the World Bank and until that happens, Rio is prohibited from borrowing more money. The strategy therefore is to wait until Henrique Mirelles (O Neo-Libertador) finally gets into power and then they’ll talk about how much debt they can saddle Rio with. This quote I found rather touching: Do ponto de vista político é muito delicado (mexer na LRF), mas do ponto de vista econômico, faria sentido", ressaltou a secretária. (From the political point of view it’s very delicate [to mess with the LRF) but from the economic point of view it makes sense). Head, shoulders, knees, and toes! Get flexible people!

Dilma and the PT get to work on the law

Did you know that trees are as flexible as stadia? Well, the revisions to the Forest Code that are getting crammed though the senate is going to surprise you, or not. The Amazon is being picked apart by agri-business, timber, and mining interests and the Worker’s Party is doing everything it can to hand the country over to capitalists. The passing of the mutilated Forest Code and the mega-event flex-laws are the priority of the new Minister of Institutional Relations. If Dilma’s government were any more flexible they’d call the county Shavasana.

The impossibility of everything

The impossibility of keeping up with EVERYTHING that is happening in Rio de Janeiro is increasingly clear. Today I drove with Fabricia Herdy as my grad-student co-pilota along the trajectory of the Trans-Carioca BRT line (also known as the T5) that will supposedly link the international airport (Galeão) with the Autódromo. This is the link to the official and brutally crisp video. http://oglobo.globo.com/rio/video/2011/22724/

I have many impressions after driving these streets. In sum: Nooooosssssaahhhh Senhora. The project appears to be moving, or rather, the city government has started putting up big blue signs. There are mergulhões to be sunk, houses and businesses to be bulldozed, viaducts to be shot into the air, voids to be bridged, tunnels to be dug and an unimaginably complex project to be carried off in four and a half years. Officially mid-wifed this week by O Principe do Rio, the Trans-Carioca is budgeted at R$1,5 billion and will consume at least 3,200 buildings. It is a massive urban transportation project and will DEFINITELY change things along its 39km trajectory. (In the Grandes Projetos Urbanos (GPDU) laboratory in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universiade Federal Fluminense, we are working on a project that will analyse these transformations. We’ll present our preliminary results at LASA 2012 in San Fransisco. If you want abstract, send me an email). 

But wait, there are three more BRT lines planned. One is blasting its way across swamplands and through mountains to connect Barra da Tijuca and Santa Cruz, and another is headed, lock-step from Barra to the military compound in Deodoro. The third, and least likely to leap off paper is the Trans-Brasil that will link Santa-Cruz and Caju. These are all supposed physically manifest before the 2016 Olympics? The T-5 alone is going to demand an incredible amount of equipment. Are there enough qualified laborers in Greater Rio to build all of these things? What about all of the other things under construction? If I were a skilled road-man, fore-man, or oil-man with a mouthful of Portuguese, I would get myself to Rio asap.

Eduardo Paes calls the T-5 “An urban revolution”. He’s right. There’s a half a billion set aside to pay people for the homes the project will destroy. The Minha Casa Minha Vida housing program for the whole country is only R$7,6 billion (just cut back from R$12,7). So, to build one BRT line, one in every 15 reales of public housing money will go to destroy housing stock. If they manage to connect all of these segments before the opening day of the Olympics, I will be well and truly impressed. It will take years to untangle what is being rolled into these BRT projects. Caution and three sheets to the wind boys!

Politically, the bicho esta pegando também. For Portuguese readers, the following is a link to a great description by Nelma Gusmão de Oliveira of the lack of change in the basic form, function, and force of the APO (Public Olympic Authority). There was some shuffling of papers and a few hundred public functionaries fell into the dustbin of the future, reducing the budget of the APO by a few million a year. In a budget that begins at R$29 billion, that’s nothing. But never fear! The former head of Brazil’s Central Bank (all 8 years under Lula), is taking charge, damnit. Bankers are honest and know how to manage many billions of your money! There's not too much noise coming from opposition, but there are a few snarky figures lingering about. Don’t tremble because the Rio Military Police is there too…

Rio police spray little kids in Niteroi, nice work fellas. Oglobo foto.

Let’s hope that the MP doesn’t start turning its attention to the Social Movements mobilizing to fight the World Cup and Olympic Project the way they’ve been treating the Obama protestors and the people from Morro da Bumba in Niterói that have yet to move into permanent housing following last April’s mudslides.

Oh, FIFA. Oh, CBF. Oh, the Copa.  You know it has to be bad if a headline in OGlobo about the 2014 World Cup is: White Elephant of the Forest. This refers to the absolute and complete lack of utility for the Arena Amanônia after the World Cup. It’s a pity that they destroyed a functional and elegant stadium in the process. Much like the HSBC Arena in Rio (built for the 2007 Pan-Am. Games), the 47,000 seat R$593 million stadium will probably only be used for shows. Air Supply in Manaus anyone? Get your tickets now. We knew this was going to happen. It was planned this way. There was never any doubt about the result. But it didn’t have to happen this way, and no one is going to do a thing to prevent it from happening again or hold officials responsible for their pig-hgeaded, short-sightedness. Or are they? 

In a refreshing switch on its coverage of favelas being the main source of pollution for the lakes of the Olympic Development Region, OGlobo has finally started reporting on the saw sewage and waste that condominiums are pouring into the waterways. There have also been occasional reports about the pollution caused by the various chemical and pharmaceutical plants in the region. Nothing, of course, about how the changes to the city’s master plan which will allow for more and denser condominium development, more cars, more consumption, more sewage, and more waste will affect the regions already stressed water system. That’s for IBAMA and Imanjá to deal with.

I started off this column by reflecting on how it was difficult to keep up with everything that is going on in Rio. This is true everywhere, but at times, Rio de Janeiro seems to be moving so quickly and in so many directions that it’s difficult to know where to sit and watch it. This is part of the challenge of finding an apartment in Rio: to find a place that is quiet but close to transportation, on a side street but with a view, close to entertainment, restaurants, parks, plazas. Someplace to work, play, eat, study, sleep, feel comfortable. Too much to ask? There are great streets in crappy neighborhoods and crappy apartments on great streets. Some are too far, some are too low, the buildings from the 60s and 70s and 80s are cramped, the new buildings without personality and the roomy apartments in older, elegant buildings from the 30s, 40s, and 50s are too expensive. There is a general sense of urgency and scarcity that is clapped on the ear with the open palm of bureaucracy. Most of the apartments I have seen have had between 4 and 12 other people looking at them at the same time. Looking to rent an apartment in Rio? Here’s a word you need to know: fiador.

Your fiador will be someone who owns at least one property in the city of Rio de Janeiro and who is willing to provide you with all of their original personal documents, including the value of their apartment, how much money they make, etc. This person will act as the guarantor of your rent for your 30 month contract. You flee the country, or move to the interior of the interior, the rent is on them. The problem, in addition to what I feel is a tremendous invasion of privacy and the commensurate need for a long-standing friendship (or family relation) to even ask someone to be a fiador, is that it takes a lot of running back and forth, here and there, copies, orginals, stamps, signatures, proof of residence, bank accounts, getting everything together, and the first person (of the 10 of you standing in line to see the over-priced apartment where you will never speak to or meet the person who owns it), the first person to deliver all of their documentation will be the one who gets the apartment. So, get your fiadores lined up now, or be prepared to pay Porto Seguro the equivalent of one month’s rent per year for two and a half years. You will never see this money again. This word you already know and it needs no italics: mafia.

A Greek Tragedy of Olympic Proportions

The organizers of the 2004 Athens Olympics should have included rioting as a demonstration sport. This way, the Greek population could have been rioting before the Games in anticipation of the huge debt that they were going to assume and thus would have been better prepared to battle the police to protest the generalized economic crisis the most expensive Games ever helped to foment. The riots of the past ten days are in response to the “austerity measures” passed by the Greek parliament. The Greeks are desperately trying to cut their deficit from 19% of GDP to the 3% required by the EU. Of course, the easiest way to do this is to slash social services, pensions, public salaries, and to raise taxes. 

The 2004 Olympics cost somewhere between 9 and 12 billion Euros (Games initially budgeted at 1 billion), with about 15% of this money going to a one-time security outlay that also had the effect of violating Greek territorial sovereignty. There is some evidence to suggest that the Greek government and Organizing Committee deliberately inflated the cost of the Games so that it would be relatively easy to reduce the national debt in 2005 and 2006. Oops. 

Unfotunately for the Greeks, the public borrowing stimulated by the Olympics was €43billion in 2004 alone! Constructing a tourism-based economy on the verge of a global crisis of consumption might have improved urban mobility, but if the tourists aren't coming to spend money no one is. Oops. The Geran foreign minister suggested that Greece sell some of its unoccupied islands (presumably to Germany) to releive some debt. The debt servicing on the unused stadiums continues to be a crushing burden on the city government and the vast majority of Olympic facilities go unused as the world watches the streets of Athens go up in flames. As Greek police moblize against student protesters (killing one so far), the protests are spreading across Europe and the government is sending its message through a shock doctrine vis a vis the passing of emergency legislation, it is good to remember the words of the former Economy and Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis who promised that the Olympics were "a major investment, which will yield in the coming period". 

2010 Gold medal for riots in response to unfulfilled Olympic development: Greece

Let’s see if the Canadians can match their performance in Vancouver: 

p.s. Yesterday, during an interview with Brazil's Minister for Strategic Relations, Samuel Pinheiro Guimarães, I asked whether or not the debt crisis of post-Olympic Greece might cause the Brazilian Federal Government to reconsider the strategic risk involved in R$30 billion outlay for the 2016 Games or the R$ 4.5 billion earmarked for World Cup stadium construction. Guimarães focused his response on the development of transportation infrastructure, a question that I have repeatedly drawn attention to as being criminally limited to small sections of the city. Oddly enough, the minister danced around the question until arriving at the point where he retorically asked, "Why would President Obama have gone to Copenhagen to fight for the Games if they weren't a good thing? Why was Spain so interested in hosting the Games?"