David Harvey Reads This Blog

In case you were wondering where one of the most well known academic geographers gets his information, this is what David Harvey had to say at the opening of the Urban Social Forum in Rio de Janeiro today:

"...the only profit made off of any Olympic Games was Los Angeles, and in many instances cities and governments take a huge loss.  I think it is no accident that Greece is now close to defaulting, is seriously in debt and has serious financial problems in part because of all of the money they had to borrow and had to utilize to get the Olympic Games which produced empty places which nobody knows now what to do with."

You heard it here first. This is not the whole of the story however. The real thrust of Harvey's argument, which is also something that I have drawn attention to in other posts, is that capitalist expansion requires ever growing markets, ideally somewhere around 3% annual growth. When the opportunities for physical expansion contract, or the imbalance of wealth prevents the majority from entering the market, ficticious markets emerge, and when those markets collapse, crisis ensues: USA junk bonds 1987, Japan 1990, Mexico 1995, Thailand 1997, South Asian Tigers late 1990s, dot com bust 2001, USA real-estate crash 2007, etc. Now, Harvey suggested, the emerging fictions of carbon trading are finding their spatial and market equivalents in the production of hollow spectacles like the Olympics and World Cup. These events are ideal from the perspective of capital accumulation in that they are in continual motion, needing to be in a constant state of production, consumption, and decline, and offer a spectacle that once consumed is placed into the dustbin of history. They also create some handy bubbles, like rampant real-estate speculation, that allow some economies to sustain higher than 3% growth while others lag behind. Natrually, this growth is unequal both spatially and socially throughout the city, and we can read within the Olympic Map,  where these gross inequalities and fictious markets are going to take physical form.

Campeonato Carioca

Today’s lesson in the geography of the obvious deals with the phenomenon of state soccer tournaments in Brazil. Each of the 26 Brazilian states holds multi-division tournaments between January and April, with the winner of the first division tournament gaining direct qualification for the Copa do Brasil (Brazil’s version of the FA Cup or US Open Cup). It is only after the end of the state tournaments that the four divisions of the Brazilian National Championship begin.

Why the state tournaments endure as a central feature of the Brazilian football calendar is something that I talk about in chapter two of Temples of the Earthbound Gods. The state tournaments are remnants of an era of the relative geographic isolation of Brazilian urban centers. Brazil is the same size as the continental United States, but the lack of efficient road, rail, and air transportation between the coastal cities and the interior has the effect of increasing geographic distance (as long as we consider time and space to be mutually constitutive). Because it was prohibitively expensive and time consuming to travel between Brazil’s major urban centers for most of the 20^th century, state tournaments made much more sense than a national tournament. Even today, the lower divisions of Brazilian football are organized on a regional basis because it is simply not possible for smaller teams to afford weekly air travel.

The advent of the Brazilian national championship (Brasilerão) in 1971 was as much a political project as a sporting one: the military government wanted a way to integrate the country through the popularity of football, using the Selecão’s third World Cup victory in 1970 to obtain political ends. That the Brasilerão changed its rules 31 times between 1971 and 2003 didn’t endear it to the general population and the state tournaments continued to hold more cultural importance for fans well into the 1990s.

The traditional state powers from the main urban centers were able to use the Brasilerão and television contracts to get bigger, while the teams that only competed in the state tournaments became relatively smaller, sending their best players up the food chain. So the situation we have today in Rio de Janeiro is that no team outside of the big four (Vasco, Botafogo, Fluminese, Flamengo) has won a state title since 1966, and only Americano, Volta Redonda and Madureira have managed to finish second in the last 40 years. Yesterday, Olaria managed to beat Vasco for the first time since 1971. This is front page news in Rio.

The state tournaments have turned into a training ground for the bigger clubs throughout Brazil. Attendances are abysmal, games are lopsided, and the influence of the OGlobo network on game times ensures that this situation will continue as mid week games can only begin after the novelas have ended at 10pm. Worse, the Rio State Football Federation can’t even make the Maracanã ticketing system work. They no longer sell tickets on the day of the game, and the stadium can no longer host clasicos because no one will take responsibility for managing the turnstiles. It’s a joke. The recent developments have highlighted the staggering amount of institutional change that is going to be necessary before Brazil is ready to host the World Cup in 2014.

After talking with Juca Kufuri about the insane state of affairs in Brazilan football, he suggested that the CBF and its corrupt puppet master Ricardo Teixeira intentionally keep Brazilian football in a state of chaos in order to valorize the Brazilian National Team at the expense of the clubs. If you go to any football store in the world, you will find jerseys of club and national teams from England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Argentina. You will rarely if ever see a Brazilian club team jersey, but will always be able to find the CBF jersey. This is obvious but not accidental. The Brazilian football calendar is grossly out of synch with the International calendar, allowing European teams to poach Brazilian players in the middle of the Campeonato Brasileiro, further weakening the club game in Brazil.

Tonight there is a classico between Flamengo and Botafogo at the Fechadão. There won’t be many people in the stands, because the stadium accesses are terrible and potentially dangerous when two rival torcidas are arriving via the same transportation lines at the same time. The lack of planning on the part of the state and national federations is aggravated by the lack of concern shown by the city government and the absurd influence of the major television networks. All of these factors, plus the increasingly rapid decline of the smaller teams relative to the big teams in Rio has made for one of the worst Cariocas in recent memory – a situation produced by history, geography, politics, and economics that can only be relieved by the raw potential of football to transform the mundane into sublime.

The Panthers of Santarém

In the first two rounds of the Pará state championship, the Pará Football Federation (FPF) declared the stadium of São Raimundo E.C. unfit for competition without explainations. Two weeks later, without modifying the stadium at all, the FPF declared that the Colossus of the Tapajos fit to host a second round match of the Copa do Brasil between "A Pantera" and Botafogo F.C. of Rio de Janeiro. The 1 - 0 score line in favor of the team from Amazonia made the Santaremenses happy, for a few days. Following a protest lodged by Botafogo with the Brasilian Football Federation (CBF), it was revealed that the FPF delayed more than a week in registering three São Raimundo players. The decision was made to dock São Raimundo six points, annulling their home victory and ensuring that in the return leg in Rio de Janeiro, Botafogo would only need to tie to progress. The return leg was played on March 11 in the newst stadium in Brasil, the Stadium Rio (formerly known as the Estadio Olimpico João Havelange, Engenhão, or Fechadão). With three points to make up entering the game, The Panthers needed to win in regulation time and then win in penalties. 


The game ended 4-3 in favor of Botafogo, including a clear goal anulled for São Raimundo anulled by the referee with no foul or any sign of offside. People at the bars in Santarém were ripping their hair out in frustration. The global score was 4-4, with the 2009 Brazilian Serie D champions scoring 3 away goals, more than enough to see them advance under normal circumstances. In this game, which will register in the annals of football history as a mere curiostiy for only the most dedicated journalists to pour over, we can read the multiple forms of corruption and prejudice that pervade Brazilian football. 


The first form is the discrimination against teams from the interior of Pará originating in the capital Belém. The PFP is dominated by representatives of Paissandu and Remo, the traditional powerhouses (relatively) of the region. A few years ago, Paissandu was playing in the Brazilian Serie A, but has since fallen into the Serie D, which a small team from Santarém just won. Remo is unherard of inthe national scene and only disputes the Cameponato Paranense, and does so relatively poorly. So it's really no surprise that São Raimundo suffers at the hands of the big (relatively) boys from the capital. 


The second form is the prejudice stemming from the CBF, based in Rio and heavily influenced by the presidets of the 13 biggest clubs (known as the G-13), against teams from the north and north east of Brasil. The draws are favorable to the higher seeded teams, which are always from the south and south east. The cost of traveling is not subisdized, so São Raimundo, with a limited budget probably broke the bank in order to make a trip to Rio that they were very clearly going to lose, even if they won. 


The third form of corruption came in the form of the referee, who clearly annuled a legal goal. A São Raimundo vitory would have caused signficant problems for the CBF, the refereee and the general image of the Copa do Brasil in general. Not that there aren't enough insane things happening with Brasilian footy in the run up to the World Cup. 
  

At any rate, there was some major injustive served up to a national audience, but no one seemed to notice much.  I was so impressed with São Raimundo that I went out to buy a jersey, but, perhaps predictably, there are none to be had anywhere in the city. (for links, check the Portuguese version of this post). 

A Pantera de Santarém

Nas primeiras duas rodadas do Campeonato Paraense, a Federação Paraense de Futebol (FPF) interditou o estádio de São Raimundo F.C. de Santarém sem explicações. Duas semanas depois, sem modificar o estádio de jeito nenhum, o FPF liberou o Colosso do Tapajós para sedear um jogo da Copa do Brasil entre ‘A Pantera’ e Botafogo F.C. de Rio de Janeiro. O placar de 1 a zero à favor do time Amazônico deu uma alegria aos Santarémenses, até a semana seguiente. Devido a um protesto de Botafogo com a Confederação Brasileiro de Futebol (CBF), foi revelado que a FPF demorou mais que uma semana em registrar três novos jogadores de São Raimundo e decidiu anular o resultado insólito de São Raimundo. Mas não só isso. O time pequeno de interior do Pará que não mostrou respeito suficiente ao time famoso do Rio de Janeiro sofreu uma perda de seis (6) pontos! A partida de volta foi marcado pelo dia 11 de Março no Stadium Rio o estádio mais novo do Brasil (também conhecido como Estádio Olímpico, Estádio João Havelange, Engenhão, e o Fechadão). Com três pontos à menos entrando o campo, A Pantera precisava de ganhar no tempo regulamentário e depois ganhar os penalites.

Botafogo saiu na frente, a Pantera empatou. Botafogo de novo, dois a um. Logo depois um gol de São Raimundo anulado sem explicações. O juiz ficou com cara de pão, deixou tudo o mundo saber que a justiça futebolística não é cega. Botafogo marcou seu terceiro, e tudo o mundo anticipou a porrada, mais São Raimundo marcou de novo, três a dois, antes de Botafogo meteu seu quarto gol. São Raimundo, time lutador, fechou o placar 4-3. A Pantera não morreu de nem mostrou inferioridade ou provincialidade, só umas falhas graves na defesa revelavam a distância entre o campeão de Campeonato Brasileiro Serie D 2009 e o Botafogo de Garrincha que só salvou sua posição na Serie A na última rodada do ano passado.

No marcador global, os times empatavam 4-4, com três gols fora de casa para a Pantera. Se o PFP tivesse submetido os papeis dos jogadores o São Raimundo ia-ter eliminado a Estrela Solitária, por conta de gols marcados fora de casa.

Vemos aqui dois, talvez, três tipos de discriminação. O primeiro é a discriminação contra times do interior de Pará vendo de Belém. O PFP é controlado por dirigentes dos dois grandes times do capital, Remo e Paissandu. O Remo não está disputando nenhum campeonato nacional, enquanto o São Raimundo subiu a Brasilleirão Serie C. O Paissandu, há poucos anos, estava disputando a Brasileirão Serie A, mas caiu até o D. Historicamente o Remo e o Paissandu tenham sido os grandes representantes de futebol Amazônica em Brasil, porque Manaus (que receberá um estádio novo pelo Mundial 2014) não tem tradição futebolística nenhuma. O sucesso dos Santarémenses tanto na ultimo edição de Campeonato Paraense (vice-campeão), sua conquista de Brasileirão D e progresso inesperado na Copa do Brasil, deveria ter provocado um sabor amargo em Belém.

O segundo preguiço vem da CBF, que sempre programa as partidas de volta no estádio do time maior, onde só precisam de empate para passar. Essa situação favorece os grandes times de sul.

O terceiro tipo de discriminação é no futebol mesmo, onde o pito de juiz dirige tudo. Vemos na Copa de 2002 que Itália e Espanha foram eliminados de uma maneira exageradamente preguiçosa quando jogavam contra Coréia do Sul. Os Coreanos sobreviveram com pênaltis fracos, cartões vermelhos inventados, e foram deixados atuar numa maneira violenta em campo. O juiz em campo pode mandar tudo passar, ou não, como foi o caso de segundo gol de São Raimundo. Anular-o porque? Porque não dá por um time pequeno, de Serie C, do interior do interior, ganhar uma disputa contra o poderoso e histórico Botafogo, com seu estádio novo, com os seus dirigentes almoçando com os da CBF em Barra de Tijuca? O porque se o resultado tivesse sido 4-4, o juiz não queira trabalhar uma meia hora mais pelas cobranças dos pênaltis?

De qualquer jeito, esse comentarista tem um novo time de coração, apesar de que é impossível encontrar uma camisa oficial em Santarém.

The ironic and tragic walls of Rio de Janeiro

Major newspaper editors generally lack a sense of irony. This is especially true in Rio de Janeiro, where the largest daily paper, OGlobo, is a hegemonic behemoth that controls the tone and content of most public discussion. OGlobo is much more than a paper, it is a huge media network that makes no secret of its admiration for the increased state control of Rio’s public spaces under the current government and the concordant installation of a neo-liberal economic regime (at the Federal, State, and City levels). I’m not sure if they have a slogan as irony-free as “all the news that’s fit to print” of the New York Times, in the case that they don’t I suggest something more truthful like: “making the city safe for capital” or "construindo a cidade de consumo".

Perhaps it is my own over-developed sense of irony that attracts my attention to the lack of it in the media. However, when I read the following in the November 29, 2009 edition of the OGlobo Magazine, I ran for the computer:

 - Derrubar muros é um assunto muito atual. O de Berlim caiu há 20 anos, o de Ipanema faz poucos dias. Espaços mais felizes tornam as pessoas mais felizes e propensas a melhor convivênica cidadã. Boa parte da acalmada alegria do carioca, que se sobrepõe a todos os problemas e maazelas da cidade, vem da experiência de habitar um local privilegiado pelas praias, florestas urbanas e outras belezas que cercam essa nossa Cidade Maravilhosa. Rui Campos, "Calçadão do Jardim Botânico", p. 21

    - Tearing down walls is something that is actually happening. The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago, the wall in Ipanema just a few days ago. Happier spaces make people happier and more likely to live better together. A good part of the calmer happiness of Rio’s residents, that puts itself above all of the problems of the city, comes from the experience of living in a privileged place of beaches, urban forests and other natural beauties that surround our Marvelous City.

The article, subtitled "Fewer Walls, More Pedestrians", describes with a slate of urban reforms for the Jardim Botânico neighborhood, one of the wealthiest in Rio. The reforms will apparently open up space for people to live a happier, more convivial life, with access to better transport, beaches, and urban forests. This is a good thing and marks some major progress in the planning and organization of public space in Rio. However, while some walls are coming down in Rio, many others are going up - in inverse proportion to the socio-economic and geographic profile of residents. 

Last week, as I was headed to the campus of UFRJ, traffic was delayed due to the construction of a wall that will separate the Red Line highway from the favelas that flank it. The title of the article in OGlobo describing the project was “Menos Barulho” (Less noise). But the content of the article made very clear that this was not about noise reduction: A Linha Vermelha, principal acesso ao Aeroporto Internacional Tom Jobim, registra um movimento de cerca de 140 mil veículos por dia. Já na Linha Amarela, o volume de tráfego chega a 380 mil. Ao longo das duas vias, existem 37 favelas, a maioria dominada pelo tráfico. Da lista, fazem parte, por exemplo, o Complexo da Maré e a Cidade Deus, que receberão barreiras acústicas.

‘The Red Line, the principal access to the Tom Jobim International Airport, records about 140 thousand vehicles a day. The Yellow Line receives about 380 thousand cars. Along both of these lines exist 37 favelas, the majority dominated by drug traffickers. The Maré Complex and City of God are part of this list and they will also receive acoustic barriers.

The article continued with this quote from a coronel of the highway patrol: Os casos de violência se concentram principalmente nos acessos. Os bandidos podem abordar motoristas e fugir de carro ou a pé. É claro que, para a polícia, é muito mais fácil montar um cerco e tentar prender bandidos que estejam em algum veículo numa via mais movimentada do que localizá-los se estiverem a pé, podendo se esconder em qualquer beco.

"The cases of violence are concentrated in the points of access. Bandits can attack motorists and flee by car or on foot. It's clear that for the police, it's much easier to put up a wall and try to catch bandits that are in a car on a flowing highway rather than if they were on foot, hiding in some alley [in a favela]."

The short article concludes by noting that "all of the walls will be painted by artists from the communities as part of the social projects that will be brought to the neighboring favelas." 

The walls along Rio's principal highways will accomplish a couple of things and will not accomplish some others:

1) the barriers will block the favelas from plain view along the major routes of access between the International Airport and the Olympic Zone in Barra de Tijuca as well as to the Center and Zona Sul.

2) the barriers will further separate communites that are already divided by the highway. There are no pedestrian over or under passes. 

3) once installed, the walls will generate temporary employment for a few atrists who can decorate the cage within which their community has been contained.

4) the symbolic economy of the wall will serve as a futher reminder that people living in favelas are better unseen and unheard, augmenting the stigma of living in a favela.

5) will probably reduce the chances of motorists being hit by stray bullets, but will also reduce the escape routes for motorists in the case of a arrrastão, which is a generalized mob assault on gridlocked cars. 

6) eliminate or reduce the access to the highways for community residents  whose primary employment is selling food and water to motorists stuck in traffic.

7) will make it less likely that bandidos who rob a car can escape into a favela, but because the walls are so low, stopping the car next to the wall will make for a very effective ladder. 

These walls will not:1) significantly reduce noise levels because they are too low (bottom at right). Similar walls in the United States (top photo at right), specifically designed to reduce noise from interstate traffic are typically 7-10 meters high.

 2) reduce the access of bandidos to the highways, as they can stroll up the access ramps

3) generate long-term employment or contribute to solving the problems of Rio de Janeiro. 

The Problem with Walls

These are not the only walls under construction in Rio. In Rocinha, the largest informal settlement in Latin America, walls are going up in order to stop the spread of the community into the Tijuca Forest. In the favela Dona Marta in Botafogo, the city erected a wall around the community to "protect the environment" from the unwanted expansion  of the community. (Photo montage at left: Rocinha contained by wall)

Rio de Janeiro is one of the few places in the world where the construction of walls is understaood as a viable solution to environmental, social, economic, and security problems. The other locations are: United States - Mexico Southwest Border Wall; Israel - Palestine Security Wall  (at right, errily similar to the shape of Rocinha); Belfast, Northern Ireland; India - Pakistan Line of Control: Morocco - Western Sahara; Cyprus; Saudi Arabia. 

Are there similarities and differences between these projects and what is happening in Rio de Janeiro? I think that though the circumstances are different, the motivations for building walls are based in an economy of fear that seeks to stigmatize and isolate unwanted social groups (Mexicans, Palestinians, West African Migrants, Catholics, favelados), or to separate people forcibly while providing a security mechanism that augments the power of the state to control and monitor movement across geographic frontiers. In this way, the absurd travail of getting a visa to travel to the USA is augmented by the byzantine banality of the TSA who erect a virtual, global wall that is all too easy to get around (to wit: the underwear and shoe bombers). 

The International Court of Justice condemned the Israeli wall as a violation of international and humanitarian law, and Mexico has considered taking the United States to the IOJ over the Border Wall (though the USA does not belong to the organization, thanks Obama). Belfast was, until recently, a torrid war zone. India and Pakistan have undefined and contested frontiers. Saudi Arabia built a wall following the deteriorating security conditions in Paul Bremer's Iraq. Morocco built the "Wall of Shame" to control the mineral resources of Western Sahara. Cyprus is in a perpetual civil war. Rio de Janeiro is building walls to hide poverty from plain view. Soon, the highways of Rio de Janeiro will resemble the final scene in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" in which an endless series of billboards isolates the road. 

The idea that "good fences make good neighbors" does not apply in a geo-political context nor within the complex political and residential economy of a city as sharply divided along class and geographic lines as Rio de Janeiro.

To return to the article that brought me to this discussion it is sufficient to note that in some parts of Rio de Janeiro, walls are coming down in order to enhance the quality of life. In other parts of the city, walls are going up for very different reasons. The generalized rationale and effects of Rio's walls are the same as those in every other society that erects physical barriers in order to accent and re-enforce difference. The government's claim that these walls are meant to protect the environment or reduce noise pollution is an absurdity matched only by the lack of irony in the Brazilian media.

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?" 

Invictus - a film that loses

Playing the Enemy

Yesterday as I was looking for a way to escape the Biblical rain of Rio de Janeiro, I ducked into the Odeon Theatre to see Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s latest machopiece. Invictus is based on the relationship between Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman), the South African Rugby team and its captain (Matt Damon), and the complicated political, social, and cultural realties of post-Apartheid South Africa. While the film is successful in bringing a few tears to the eye, in my opinion it does much more harm than good in demonstrating the power of sport to transform social relations.

In the opening scene of the film, Eastwood adequately demonstrates the highly racialized nature of sport in South Africa. Mandela’s caravan passes between two distinct groups. On one side of the street, large, well-fed whites play rugby on immaculate grass. On the other, skinny blacks play soccer with a homemade ball in the dirt. The blacks cheer Mandela’s passing, the white rugby coach says, “Remember this as the day our country went to the dogs.”

Mandela, as the newly elected president, is looking for ways to reconcile the country and hits upon the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a way to reach out to the Afrikaners. Mandela leverages the historical association of the Springboks with the Apartheid regime to construct a new image of South Africa as a rainbow nation. This, of course, angers and alienates black South Africans who are not as willing as Mandela to forgive and forget centuries of oppression by the Afrikaners.

Mandela will not be dissuaded from his project to leverage the racial identity of sport with his political project. He calls the Springbok captain (Pienaar) to the presidential palace, talks about leadership characteristics and performance, charms his shorts off, visits the team, learns their names, intervenes in a decision by the national sports federation to ban the Springbok colors and symbols, and has some horribly stilted conversations about how an international rugby tournament functions. South Africa performs beyond expectations, the team visits Robben Island before their semi-final match, Mandela delivers a hand-written copy of the poem “Invictus” to the captain (which he had read to himself in prison), dresses in the Springbok jersey, strides onto the field to shake hands with the teams in front of 60,000 South Africans who start chanting his name, and the ‘Boks beat the fancied Kiwis to win the world Cup and South Africa enters into a golden era of racial and class harmony not seen since…ever.

The heavy-handed implication of Invictus (based on the book, Playing the Enemy) is that the 1995 Rugby World Cup united a nation and set South Africa on a path towards reconciling the horrors of Apartheid. Here are the major problems that I had with the film:

Eastwood portrays the only black Springbok, Chester, as someone who “doesn’t like to think” about race. Why make Chester such a dull patsy? True, Chester is not obliged to be any kind of militant and perhaps he really didn’t want to think about being black in a white world, but surely he could have been put into the story more instead of focusing on Mandela’s relationship with Pienaar. Eastwood’s portrayal of Mandela as excessively concerned with Chester’s presence on the team may also be ingenuous as it would indicate that Mandela was leveraging Chester’s race for his own political project.

Enough with the geographic fantasy of the South African landscape. We get it, Cape Town is beautiful. Squatter settlements are romantic and tragic, best not seen except from the window of a tour bus. FIFA also gets it, which is why they refused the initial suggestions for the World Cup stadium location and moved it to a place that would look better for international television audiences. The geographic fetish of landscape brought
the Olympic Games to Vancouver, something that British Colombians will be paying down for the next generation.

Un-problematic class and race relations: the family of captain Pienaar is obliged to take their black maid because Pienaar has given her a ticket. The family hugs as South Africa wins, but the next day, the maid will be back at her post, traveling the same distance on the same crappy buses to get to a low paying life of sub-altern struggle. Nothing changes with the victory, she’s still a black maid in a white house. Sport does allow for the temporary inversion of social relationships, but the structural elements that allow those things to happen tend to reinforce inequality. This is especially true in regard to mega-events, and doubly true in South Africa (and Brazil) where the construction of sports facilities results in fertile grazing for white elephants.

The symbolic elements of sport are incredibly powerful and the evidence from South Africa is that nothing changed after the 1995 World Cup. In  1998, debates were still raging about the use and abuse of the Springbok symbols. Symbols acquire power and significance over time, and have emotional, cultural, and class significations that cannot be easily erased or changed. Sport is inherently political, making it more so doesn’t necessarily help.

The use of sport, and in particular, sport mega-events to transform societies is a much longer and more complicated process than Invictus would lead us to believe. The reality of post-Apartheid, and post 1995 World Cup South Africa is that race relations have improved, but that they have been substituted with unequal class and geographic relationships that have equally pernicious effects. We will undoubtedly learn that the 

2010 FIFA World Cup will transform South Africa. This is no doubt true, but opens nine stadium-sized cans of worms.

Movie rating: 1.5 stars. Not worth seeing.

Gaffney Interview with MBA Soccer

This is a link to an intervew with MBA Soccer, one of the top USAmerican websites dedicated to the exploration and analysis of the economic realities of global soccer.

Winter Olympics in Brazil

Needless to say, the Winter Olympics are not hugely popular in Brazil. The Brazilian delegation consisted of 5 athletes. The mayor of Rio as well as the head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee were also there to glad-hand and sign "information sharing" documents.  Even though global warming can't be blamed for Brazil's lack of snow,  Brazilian television stations are keen to start honing their coverage skills, and TV Record sent a team of 80 to Vancouver to cover the games.

The coverage is hugely different from that of NBC in the USA, primarily in the generalized absence of interruptions for long stretches as well as the lack of "up close and personal" coverage that makes Bob Costas such an intolerable sycophant. The biggest attraction for the TV Record producers was ice skating. Perhaps they are taking their coverage cues from NBC, but there seems to be something about the skating competitions (and non-competitions like the "gala") that glues people to the set. It is beautiful and takes dance to some crazy place, but personally, I'd rather watch an Olympic snowball fight.

The other sport that received coverage in an inverse proportion to its diffusion and cultural signficance was curling. Perhaps the slow pace appeals to the millions of doormen, security guards, waiters, and retirees in Rio. Brazilians must think that everyone in cold countries curls. The televisual reality is that there were some pretty good looking women bending into strange poses, which always makes for good tv.

As I was trying to tune into the USA v. Canada gold medal match, TV Record had a "Campeonato de Tunel" on for about an hour. The Tunnel Championship was structured like a knock out football tournament, except the contestants were dogs, dressed in the shirt of the preferred team of their owners, who were also dressed in the team shit, I mean shirt. If you can stomach it, check it out...way better than USA x Canada.

Now that the Vancouver Games are over, it's time for British Colombia to start cleaning up the mess and paying the bills for another IOC party. It's a shame that all of the human drama and accomplishment of Olympic sport come at such a tremendous cost to the host cities, their residents, and the urban and natural environments.

World Cup, Olympics, cities and the state of the world

The list of cities and countries that have hosted the World Cup and Olympics, and done horrible things to do so is growing. 1968 Mexico City: hundreds of students massacred. 1972 Munich was deliberately lax in security, opening the door for Fatah terrorists, who killed eleven Israeli athletes. 1976 Montreal: the Olympic Stadium took 30 years to pay off, at a cost of C$1.5 billion. 1980 Moscow and Lake Placid seemed to work ok, as did Sarajevo 1984, but the growing debt of Montreal, scared off every city in the world but Los Angeles from bidding for the 1984 Summer Games. These only came off because Peter Uberroth guaranteed private financing, a huge television audience, and because just about every major US American university has the infrastructure to host the Olympics. 

Shall we continue? 1988 Seoul: the military government repressed student protests in the lead up to the games, quelled labor unrest, and suspended discussions over constitutional reform until after the Olympics.  1992 Barcelona: massive reformation of the city center without democratic process, gentrification and dislocation, and the making of an international tourist city, forever altering the social and spatial character of the city. 1996 Atlanta: demolition of low income neighborhoods, the sweeping of the homeless under the podium, and rampant real-estate speculation, hper-commercialization of public space, and the total absence of an urban legacy. 

Want more? 2000 Athens: massive dislocation of Roma people, astronomical budgetary overruns (which are today part of a more generalized crisis for the EU), and nearly all of the stadia built for the event go unused. 

2002 Korea / Japan: 20 new stadiums...TWENTY! These were constructed in the midst of the East Asian financial crisis and the cities are struggling to keep them standing, much less occupied with teams and fans. 

2006 Germany: 1.4 billion euros on stadiums. Not much for a country with great transportation infrastructure and a huge soccer culture. Yet, the idea that a World Cup will bring more tourists was debunked as Munich saw an overall drop in tourism in 2006

2008 Beijing: the Bird's Nest is turning into a shopping mall. Enough said. 

2010 Vancouver: Gentrification, appropriation of native lands, hyper-security, dislocation of low-income residents, criminalization of the poor, huge costs. This video is good. 

2010 South Africa: it's hard to know where to start with this one. Cape Town? Housing rights?

labor? power shortages ? transportation problems? cost? Location of stadiums? FIFA's mafia?

2012 London: just to start, East End "regeneration" numbers. 

2014 Brazil World Cup: 12 new stadiums, no national rail or highway infrastructure, big problems with the airports. Keep coming back here for updates, but also check out this site for daily news. 

2016 Rio de Janeiro: R$ 30 billion guaranteed by the government. 2007 Pan American Games 10x over budget with the same people in charge. Violence, poverty, wealth, tranquilidade, cut-throat politics, corruption and a hell of a place to be. 

Geostadia on tour

The RDU days are numbered, the GIG and SDU years are nigh. Geostadia is on tour these coming weeks and months, shuttling between RDU, GIG, STM, SDU, DUA, RDU, and GIG between now and May. I'll keep you, er, posted.

There's a new gadget on the right that lets you see where readers are (with kudos to Candido Neto).

If you're reading this, recommend the site to one person today. Someone far away, so you can see when their little blip comes up on the map.

And for those of you who haven't seen it yet, here's the Al Jazeera video that resulted from the interview that I posted a couple of months ago.

Caçando elefantes brancos no Rio de Janeiro

Caçando elefantes brancos no Rio de Janeiro

Chegamos com dificuldade à terra dos elefantes brancos. Essa terra é longe do centro, um satélite orbitando o planeta carioca. Saímos da Zona Sul, distraímos com as paisagens incríveis de Ipanema, Leblon, Gávea e São Conrado pela costa Atlântica do Rio de Janeiro. Dia de sol, lindo. Pegamos um engarrafamento infernal na ponte que laça a Barra de Tijuca ao mundo carioca. 

Para chegar a essa terra plana com grandes lençóis de água o caçador intrépido pode escolher entre vários métodos de transporte. Pode chegar de barco, kitesurf, kayak, surfboard, jetski ou montando numa sereia. Nenhum desses jeitos funciona. Pode chegar de avião privado, helicóptero, balão de São João, free jump, etc. Se não tiver dinheiro, criatividade ou coragem para isso, pode também chegar de ônibus ou de carro. Alguns dizem que algum dia chegaremos de metrô.

O transporte terrestre é caracterizado por vias elevadas, túneis, afunilamentos, carregados de carros e ônibus privados. Todas as estradas parecem sofrer ate chorar com o menor acidente ou incomodidade. São nossos filhos mal educados. Se um acidente de três carros destrói uma tarde de trânsito, imaginem o efeito de três ônibus queimados e bem localizados. É fácil demais isolar a terra dos elefantes brancos.

Depois de uma meia hora, o trânsito ficou livre e fomos voando sobre os cinquenta metros de largura de Avenida das Américas a 90 km por hora, olhado a paisagem. Passamos em seguida por: um shopping gigantesco, lojas de autos, condomínios, árvores nas ilhas medianas bem gramadas, uma estátua da liberdade, lojas de autos, estrada boa sem buraco, Hard Rock Cafe, mais dois shoppings, condomínios, lojas de autos... repete. Os morros da maior floresta urbana no mundo nos encostavam com sua franca beleza. O mapa não identificou o país em que dirigíamos.

Tentando pular a linha amarela, vimos nosso primeiro elefante branco (inmovilus ambominavis). Tínhamos ouvido rumores que essa besta omnivora frequenta cada vez mais essa região. Ele é enorme, tem aspecto sonolento, ignorante, manifesta brutalidade e estupidez. Passamos depressa, evocando seu nome com tonalidade tronante – ci-da-de-da-mú-si-ca. Elefante mudo, mãos de cinco polegares rasgando o chão, tomando a paisagem. 

Passamos por centenas de animais até então pouco conhecidos no mundo científico. Eles eram altos, projetando sombras gigantescas ao mar (residencialis miamenses). Alguns deles eram azuis, com milhares de olhos, outros eram rosa ou multicoloridos, mais baixinhos, quadrados, tontos. Cada um projetou suas raízes concretas na profundidade do subsolo, procurando água doce, estabilidade, senso. Eles têm a tendência de se reproduzir mnemonicamente sem cansar. Quando as pessoas passam perto deles, desaparecem e só saem embrulhadas em metal e plástico. 

Viramos à direita na Avenida Salvador Allende e nos lembramos d 11.09.1973. Vimos gente esperando o ônibus que a cobra asfaltada engoliu. Passamos à beira da lagoa. Paisagem linda, pantanosa, úmida, frágil. Não havia mercado de frutas, nem casas particulares...mais um ponto do ônibus cheio. Ao lado equatorial da avenida estacionavam, estalavam, esgazeavam blocos de ninhos, alguns mais completos que os outros, esperando os pássaros migratórios chegar.

- Olha só!

- Onde?

- Lá ao lado da lagoa! O elefante branco! Cadê a câmera?

- Olhe que elefante moderno, elegante! Você acha que ele está tomando água da lagoa?

- Porra ‘tá sim, e muito! Você deveria ver o esgoto dele! Até que têm cheiro de dinheiro esbanjado.

- Você acha que ele é perigoso? Morde?

 

- Sim, morde, morde forte, mas têm jeito de acalmar.

- Qual é o segredo?

- Ele gosta de papéis pequenos e azuis, com um peixe num lado e um romano cego no outro. Ele gosta mais dos recém-tostados. Quando você lhe oferece três ou quatro, pode se aproximar por algumas horas. 

Seguimos. Viramos á direita na Avenida Embaixador Abelardo Bueno. Logo depois, nos assustamos com a presença de um mamífero sem tamanho, sua pele cinzenta descuidada, os cabelos de seu nariz quarentão mal barbeados, pentelhos demais, unhas pintadas de grafite. Paramos. Ouvimos a grito particular dele. Sacamos as maquinas lentamente, ficamos quietos em meia sombra. A cada quatro minutos sai de seu intestino menor, se não me engano, o som de um piloto profissional (pilotus piloto) trocando marchas em alta velocidade. 

Entramos em uma comunidade estabelecida por um grupo de pescadores sindicalizados há quarenta anos. A estrada não pavimentada obrigou o carro ir muito devagar, o que abriu a possibilidade de apreciarmos a tranqüilidade do lugar. Ao nosso lado árvores parcialmente ofuscavam a pele do elefante. Seu som nos perseguia. Seguindo a estrada, a vista do lago nos pegou intermitentemente pelas portas abertas das casas humildes. Paramos o carro debaixo de uma bouganville cheia de flores. 

O Elias atendeu ao nosso toque da campainha com a abertura lateral da sua pesada porta de madeira. Os cachorros Mel e Preta lhe obedeceram sem discussão audível. O quintal da casa encheu o ar com fecundidade. Da porta de casa para trás, vimos o lago lambendo o terreno dele e de sua mulher baiana, Inalva.

A Inalva nos acolheu sentada no seu sofá, num estado doente, alerta e lutador. Na sua mesa estavam os livros Conflitos Ambientais no Rio de Janeiro e A luta por moradia e a política urbana no rio de Janeiro. Essa classe de livros é fundamental para quem pretende caçar elefantes na região.

Passamos horas lá, na sua casa construída por eles mesmos à beira da Lagoa de Jacarepaguá. Pelo menos eu não ficaria surpreso em ver um jacaré entrar pela água atrás da casa. Conversamos sobre os planos do governo de aumentar a alimentação do elefante desmatador com a idéia de treiná-lo para ser a grande atração num circo de cinco cones daqui a seis anos. Quando sedentos de tanto falar, o Elias trouxe água de coco gelado. Também café. Também almoço: polvo com arroz, salada com hortaliças do quintal, licor de banana. Qualidade de vida altíssima, tranqüila, quase soporífica. O elefante gritou de novo, o piloto voava sobre o melhor pavimento do país a trinta metros de distância e a trezentos kilômetros por hora.

 “Viver aqui é uma escolha ideológica,” pontuou Inalva, em seguida, continuar:  “Os treinadores dos elefantes querem os lugares mais bonitos da cidade para eles comerem e crescerem. Seus elefantes são guardam o patromônio. Não sobra nada para as pessoas em seu entorno.”

Inalva continuou, “O Eduardo Paes [prefeito do Rio] lançou sua carreira politica com o discurso de ‘limpeza social’ tentando nos tirar daqui ‘93. Hoje nos chamam ilegais, sujos, poluição visual, clamam que nos maculamos o meio-ambiente. Eles empregam qualquer forma de violência para nos tirar de nossas casas e construir lugares de consumo que danificariam muito mais o lugar em todos os sentidos.”

Com carinho e angústia, agradecemos aos nossos anfitriões e voltamos pela estrada, sabendo que a luta contra os elefantes será dura, cansativa e com resultado previsto. Eles estão chegando de longe, em marcha inexorável, nem pensando em se adotar a cultura local. Antes que o circo chegue, os donos do poder farão tudo que for preciso para o bom desempenho dos elefantes: dar-lhe-ão terreno, comida e treinamento. Para isso precisarão reformar o território e o uso de solo de cima para baixo, para tirar dos de baixo por cima, aplicando o choque, calando bocas, evitando discussão.

De volta à terra carioca, encontramos mais um elefante. Dessa vez, vimos um elefante mal formado, mal alimentado, de proporções estranhas, desabitado, fechado, cabisbaixo. Ele ficava na sua gaiola, esperando alguém lhe explicar teorias existenciais. Absorto em seus pensamentos inúteis, lhe deixamos lá, rodeado por estradas boas, condomínios autoritários, shoppings, e outros tipos de animais cada vez mais presentes naquela região.  

Interview with Al Jazeera

Interview with Al Jazeera

4 December 2009

Rio de Janeiro

AJ: Al Jazeera

CG: Christopher Gaffney

AJ: What is taking place on the ground here as you see it in relation to the Olympics and the World Cup?

CG: In regards to the Olympics especially, I think they are reforming territory in order to put the projects in place. This involves rezoning, redesigning infrastructure, and creating an Olympic City – that is a very limited vision of the city. In order to build projects, in order to get tourists to come, you have to build infrastructure. That is what is going on right now, they are preparing the ground.

AJ: Right, and in this preparing the ground, you have denounced things that are taking place, could you tell us a little bit more about it?

CG: There have been some laws passed by the city government that have reformed the plano director , the master plan for the city of Rio, that have happened through unconstitutional processes, without public audiences, that have rezoned strategic parts of the city and set off a series of real estate speculations without taking into account the people that live there already. Most of the targeted areas are poorer communities that are threatened with forced relocation in order to allow the real estate projects to move forward.

AJ: And these forced relocations, would you say there is a pattern, how generalized are they?

CG: There is a pattern that happened during the run up to the 2007 Pan American Games when members of the housing commission would come through communities and try to cadastrar or register people and households, saying “we’re here to register your houses” and then the next week would come back and say “ok, now that you’re registered we know you’re here illegally and it’s time to remove you.” If you want to go peaceably we’ll give you a check for x amount of Reales and you can be on your way. In the Canal de Anil, they forcibly removed sixty families in 2006 in preparation for the Pan American Games. These people had rights and title to their territory but were forcibly evicted.

AJ: Right, how may people are we talking about in this case for the Olympics?  

CG: Certainly in the hundreds if not one or two thousand people. I’m not sure how many people, I know that 30 communities have been targeted by the city as targets for removal or at least identified as “areas of concern” in relation to the new zoning laws in relation to the Olympic project.

AJ: As we were talking about before why are people not organizing to prevent this from happening?

CG: The people in the communities are trying to organize. There’s a lot of co-option that goes on of course, clientelist politics in Brazil are still very much alive and well, and then the hegemony of the media outlets prevents the story from getting out there. The forces allied in favor of the Olympics are quite strong and those against it almost nil. There are social groups organizing but they have very little coverage in the general media.

AJ: And we saw that because of the violence taking place here almost all the time but now with the Olympics coming I’m sure they’re doing loads of things to improve the situation but I’m sure there’s going to be other consequences in terms of speculation, I don’t know if you could tell us a little about that aspect as well. Not in terms of human  rights and other controversial aspects along the way to making things peaceful but what can we expect in terms of other consequences?

CG: There are many other types of violence that are also going on. The mere threat of being removed is a kind of violence and then there’s the actual act of removal. People are already experiencing the threat of forced relocation which is causing considerable stress. People have to take time out of their ordinary lives in order to mobilize with the same intensity as the forces that are mobilizing against them. This is quite a different level of fight for an individual or a small community versus say the International Olympic Committee which has money, a strong bureaucracy and political clout. We can expect that these dislocations will probably happen and will probably happen with violence that will be resisted, but in the end the dislocation will be carried out. In the end, around 30 communities will lose the rights to part or all of their territory in the Olympic region in the southwest part of the city.

AJ: And more generally, the Dona Marta favela and other “pacification” projects aren’t going to be part of the Olympic project are they?

[Dona Marta is a showcase favela in Botafogo. It has been occupied by BOPE (shock troops) since 2008. Madonna made a visit there last week].

CG: There will be tourists going there now as part of their Olympic experience and now that it’s “pacified” it will be a protected area. Every place that becomes pacified, controlled, settled, becomes then fair game for part of the project.

AJ: Is that part of the Games?

CG: It’s part of a generalized project to make the city safe for capital.

AJ: Can you tell me a little bit about that? What is the plan and how are they going to achieve it, basically?

CG: The plan, as with any Olympic city is to create infrastructure so that capital can arrive and circulate fluidly. That includes tourists, information infrastructure, media centers, people arriving through airport infrastructure, moving people thorough the city via metros and bus systems and private Olympic lanes. Part of the pacification programs, such as the BOPE occupation of morro Dona Marta, Pavão-Pavãozinho in Copacabana and trying to settle things down in the Complexo do Alemão is to make the city safe for capital. This is unabashedly the project of the governor, the mayor, Lula, etc…this is the Olympic project in Brazil – to make the city a market, to put it in the shop window. If you can have places in the Zona Sul on the mountainside with beautiful views where tourists can go and have a nice bed and breakfast while they go to the Olympics or World Cup, that’s also part of the project.

AJ: Is there already real estate speculation?

CG: We have seen real estate speculation in Dona Marta already. If it’s peaceful and it’s close to beautiful areas, people want to live there and you’re going to see a rise in rents. That pushes people who lived there in the first place because they needed a cheap place to live close to centers of employment, that rise in rents pushes them further out. A generalized “settling” of the favela in Rio will then dislocate that poverty somewhere else and as long as that poverty is not in the Olympic city, fine. They become forgotten. The real estate speculation in Barra de Tijuca and Jacarepaguá is part of the larger civilizing mission of the Games .

AJ: Do you think that the erecting of walls around the favelas is problematic?

CG: The strategy is problematic for a number of reasons. One, it’s penning people in, it’s animalizing a class, it’s criminalizing poverty. By walling someone in you’re limiting their ability to move freely. Of course, aesthetically no one wants to live next to a wall. Secondly, the rationale is that the favela is destroying the environment, that be erecting the wall, they’re preserving the environment. If they want to preserve the environment, they should put social services in, have water and sewage and trash collection – this would be preserving the environment. Building condominiums with a highly consumptive lifestyle in a fragile wetland in Barra de Tijuca destroys the environment much more than people living on a hillside or a favela expanding into the Floresta de Tijuca. Of course, every human settlement has its environmental impact, but a highly consumptive lifestyle in a car dependent landscape creates another level of impact where people are, just by their mere existence, destroying the environment more.

AJ: Can you talk about the method by which Rio is going about taking over these places in the city? How does this process work? What are the critical steps they are taking?

CG: The emblematic person for this process is Rudy Giuliani who was here in Rio yesterday and has been employed as a private consultant in the lead up to the World Cup and Olympics. The “zero tolerance” policy that he implemented in New York criminalizes ordinary behavior, but only in certain areas of the city. The idea that by enforcing the law with maximum authority, you create a situation by which those who can afford to evade the law or have knowledge of ways to avoid it, or those who create the law themselves, don’t have to obey it – so in the end you are further criminalizing poverty. This is what happened in New York and is what is happening here as well. There, you had a massive real estate boom because poverty and “disorder” was pushed away from Manhattan into smaller and smaller areas of the city where the “zero tolerance” policies were rigidly enforced. So Manhattan island becomes a massive area for real estate speculation and a global symbol of consumption. That is the idea here with the “Choque de Ordem” that Eduardo Paes has instituted. The more you can isolate and contain certain groups and their undersirable behaviors, the more real estate is going to rise in the south of Rio, in what is becoming an increasingly limited Olympic City.

The major problem for me with the Olympic planning is that it only touches a very small segment of the city. The imagination of Rio is this: the beach, beautiful mountains, Christo, futebol, samba, etc. but there is a whole other world of Rio that exists beyond that imagination that also needs to be included in the project. This lack of inclusion is accomplished by pushing people out, or conducting what the call a faxina social or social cleaning, and that is how these communities feel they are being treated. Step by step, moment by moment, that is what is happening to the point that now you can’t even drink a coco on the beach. For me it’s not a whole conception of the city. It’s dealing with little pieces that you can target, isolate, and exterminate and to me it’s complete violence against the poor.

AJ: Who benefits from this violence?

CG: The beneficiaries are real estate speculators, private security forces, wealthy merchants, bullet proof car manufactures, arms dealers. Military spending will increase.  Oglobo will benefit from selling the idea of fear, real estate speculators and security companies will benefit by selling condominium compounds far from the “poor parts” of the city. We see this in the United States, one of the most fearful societies in the world, that faces no real threats but people are scared continually. When there is not a threat you have to invent a threat. The threat here is the poor: the dirty, poor person that is going to steal your purse on Copacabana – that’s the threat. The people who live with the daily violence are the poor, not the middle and upper classes. They have violence touch them from time to time but it’s not …they’re the people gaining from that violence.

AJ: Is the drug problem being used as an excuse?

Yes. The drug problem is being used as an excuse, but the drug problem is also a problem. It creates violence within the favelas. It creates separate worlds within the favelas. Most people that live within the favelas are lower middle-class people living in communities that have been there, in some cases, for a hundred years. They’re not criminals, they’re just working people who want to live in a place that is close to where they work. The traffic is stimulated by those who have money for recreational drugs. There’s this link between extreme poverty and extreme wealth that circles around itself in Brazil and this drives all kinds of social, political and economic relations. It serves the police, it serves the traficante, it serves the upper-middle class kid going to the disco with his little bag of cocaine on the weekend, it feeds real estate speculation and car sales in Barra and there’s no real exit from it. The mechanism of capitalism and the mechanism of democracy in Brazil are such that these processes are interlinked and mutually re-enforcing. The World Cup and Olympics are only going to exacerbate the problem.

AJ: Is there anything else you would like to comment on?

CG: Yeah. I think that transportation and the issue of mobility are fundamental. The major problem that I see with both the World Cup and the Olympics is the issue of mobility in the city. In order to get from the Baixada Fluminese to the Center of the city or Zona Sul to work have to travel two hours, one way on a bus or non air conditioned train. One of the most frequent protests you see in Rio is either the burning of a train or the burning of a bus. This is a tradition that goes back to the nineteenth century, when people would burn forms of transportation in order to protest a hike in fares, poor travel conditions and things like that. Transportation here is fundamental. The plans in place for the Olympics do not link any part of the Olympic city, this Olympic ring, to the North, where the majority of the people in the city live. Or the West which is the fastest growing area of the city. The idea is to create specific Olympic lanes within existing traffic infrastructure. So for the three weeks of the Olympics, they are planning the transportation for the next fifty years and the idea of not linking the metropolitan region through effective transportation is serving to isolate and fragment the workforce. Where you are condemning people to live far from places of employment without mechanisms to get there and so you are keeping a workforce docile and immobile by limiting their transportation options. This is a form of violence equal to any other that needs to be addressed in a hurry before these plans really take off.

AJ: It sounds like a really bad idea for Rio to host the Olympics.

CG: The Olympics are never good things for anybody! This is the great myth of the Olympics. Who wins with the Olympics? Barcelona is the paradigmatic example of a brilliant Olympics but it transformed the city into a tourist spectacle. Barcelona lost a lot of its character it lost it’s working class population in the middle of the city. It turned into a city to be sold somewhere else and not a city to be lived in. Atlanta was a disaster, Sydney and Homebush Bay was a nightmare, Beijing, nem falar. The Olympics come around every four year and put an authoritarian regime in place. In Brazil the Olympic Authority is going to direct a budget of 30 billion Reales and it’s a parallel government and has not democratic responsibilities. They are in charge of planning the city for the next fifty years without consulting planners. The Olympics is three weeks. The Olympics brings a lot of money and reshapes and reinforces the spatial dynamics of the city for a long time.

AJ: Thank you very much!