A free, flowing conduit of useful information

While reading the press releases and media reports about the Brazilian mega-event cycle, I have found it useful to keep on hand seminal works by (among others) Kafka, Machiavelli, Joseph Campbell, Sartre, Foucault, Agamben, David Harvey, John Horne, Naomi Klein, Chico Buarque, Fernanda Sánchez, Ruth Levy and Monty Python. The following video clip from The Life of Brian explains all one needs to know about the attempts of Rio 2016 and FeeFã to limit the use of particular words. Substitute “Olympic” for “Jehovah” and batons, shock troops, and Glocks for stones.

In addition to “being about” real-estate speculation as Chris Shaw poignantly demonstrates in Five Ring Circus, megas are also about the international arms trade. In August, the Military Police of Rio signed a contract with the Austrian arms manufacturer Glock to use the 9mm weapon as the “official” gun of mega-event security. This didn’t get much play in the media, but the link can be found here as well as on the LinkedIn Support the Organizing Committee group. Naturally, Glock flew the head honchos of the PM to Austria for a contract signing / head-in-a-bucket-of-vodka-and-red-bull party. Glocks do not have external safety mechanisms. Nice choice. Apparently, on exit, the bullets will leave five rings instead of one large hole. What’s next, a billy club that leaves the Olympic imprint on the skull? Five ring handcuffs? An Olympic drone-flying competition? My money is on the USAmericans there.

I can’t wait for the bloody Pope to get here in 2013 with his horde of young, brainwashed original sinners. The Lordships of Rio have literally taken things to the next level with the signing of a contract with the Vatican to bring the World Youth Day to Rio. This year, his holy-moly-ness extended the “fruits of divine grace” to Spanish youth that had had an abortion. Lovely of him to double down on that Catholic guilt, thanks.  I wonder if there will be speculation about an increase in prostitution surrounding this event. With hundreds of thousands of affluent adolescents running about in a town known for its sexual tourism, there are sure to be some bottled up hormones in loose pockets. And as if to justify the event by connecting it to the already over-justified events that are siphoning off public money into private hands, the Holy See is going to “invest in sport”, whatever the hell that means.

Oh, the Cup. The World Cup. The Copa do Mundo. O Mundial da FeeFã. It’s wrong, all wrong. The wheels are coming off before they’ve been put on, which is a pretty accurate reflection of the way Rio de Janeiro functions, or not. It’s confusing and simple at the same time.

Let’s start with costs. According to the Folha do São Paulo, World Cup related projects have increased by R$ 27 billion in 8 months. It’s hard to convert that figure this week as the Real has jumped from US$1.60 to US$1.90 in two weeks. But if we project this increase forward 1000 days, that will be around a R$100 billion increase. Without question, the Brazilian 2014 World Cup will be more expensive than all of the World Cups combined. This is no joke. We will likely arrive at a number well above R$130 billion and the majority of the projects will still not be ready.

The slowness of the contracting process has been exacerbated by the lack of planning on the part of the organizers. The closer we get to the Cup, the more things will cost to construct. Also, because of higher than expected inflation, the weakening of the Real against the Euro and Dollar which is making imports more expensive, the scarcity of qualified labor, the increase in construction materials because of Brazil’s construction and economic boom, the structural corruption of the big civil construction firms and their friends in government and the lack of interest on the part of the CBFdp and FeeFã to do anything in the realm of transparency…you get the idea.

Not only have the stadium costs increased by 170% in three years but the maintenance costs will also see a commensurate increase. Typically, a stadium requires a 10% investment of the construction costs in yearly maintenance. The Maracanã will cost more than a billion. Thus, in ten years, another billion will be spent just to keep it standing. Remember, at least R$300 million of reforms were undertaken between 2005-2007 to reform the stadium for the Pan American Games. These were, naturally, poorly done as this photo demonstrates.

Add into the mix of confusion the strikes that have been occurring at several of the World Cup stadiums. Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Salvador have all had workers strike to improve working conditions. The latest stoppage at the Maracanã lasted nearly three weeks until the courts stepped in and sent the lads back to the job against their will. When Dilma went to Belo Horizonte to mark 1000 days until the 2014 kickoff the workers used the opportunity to strike. That didn’t make it into the press as Dilma and Pelé posed with some of the boys. According to the ever wise, always frightened Minister of Sport Orlando Silva (who certainly must be the least communist member of the Brazilian Communist Party), everything is on schedule. OGlobo is none too happy with the strikes, or the threat of strikes, suggesting that the “shadow” of work stoppages is slowing the country down.

The government presented an official balance of the World Cup projects last week. Notable was the fact that 51 or the 82 public works scheduled for the Copa have yet to begin. While I have always said that the question “Will Brazil be ready for the Cup?” is the wrong question, it is one that is getting plenty of negative answers.

Returning to the confusion that is Rio de Janeiro, it is worth noting that the city government continues to do everything it can to irritate residents in whatever form it can. Recently, an order was sent down to the Guarda Municipal to start cutting the locks of bicycles chained to signs, light posts, fences, and other logical places to lock a bike in the complete absence of bike racks. This has, with good reason, irritated those who try to get around the city by bike. In my visits to the Institute of Brazilian Architects, one of the institutions most involved with the “reworking” of urban space in Rio, there is nowhere to lock a bike. There are no bike racks at the vast majority of Metrô stations, and none at the train station. The city government claims that Rio has 150km of bike paths, but these are concentrated between the center and Leblon and maybe if you count the paths in both directions you could arrive at this number. Many of the city’s bike paths are painted onto sidewalks, end abruptly or are in terrible conditions. One of the headlines from OGlobo today was that the Day Without Cars will reduce by 2,000 the number of cars on Rio’s streets: a drop in the proverbial bucket. Cyclists are rightly upset about all of this and there is a protest getting underway tomorrow afternoon in front of the city council chambers.[editor's note: on Friday 23 Sept., the Mayor signed a decree legalizing the locking of bicycles to posts throughout the city. Well done! We hope that this is an indication of the power of public indignation.]

To magnify what is already a chaotic transportation scenario, work is beginning on the destruction of the elevated highway that runs around the center of downtown. Though a terrible idea to begin with, the elevated highway has become one of the principal arteries that link the Zona Sul, Zona Norte, and Niteroi. Whenever there is the most minor accident, traffic backs up for hours. Now, traffic will be blocked up for years. These are the kinds of costs that are never measured. Ostensibly, the highway is going underground in order to “renovate” the port zone, so that the real-estate speculators can cash in. This new system will in no way reduce traffic in a city that has long dedicated its urban planning practices to the private automobile. Having driven the length and breadth of this city, I can testify to the chaos and frustration that define the experience. As incomes increase, traffic is worsening in the suburbs as residents there buy the used cars from the wealthier regions. Riding past the port, one can see thousands of newly unloaded cars and trucks waiting to clog even further the streets of Rio. This is a global problem, of course, and one that the Day Without a Car will do absolutely nothing to resolve unless the urban planners working for the city recognize the need for alternative forms of transportation.

And finally, the Olympic governance structure continues to amaze and confuse. The Empresa Brasileira de Legado Esportivo Brasil 2016 erected to deal with the Olympic projects in Rio has been eliminated before it even began to function. This latest case of erectile disfunction is particularly troubling as the Empresa has already received around R$109,000 for its non-existent work, with money going to government officials including the above mentioned Orlando Silva. It will take some work to get a working knowledge of how the Olympics are going to be structured and this latest twist in the plot has not helped me wrap my head around it.

Here we go again, de novo

Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. Copa, Copa, Copa. Rio 2016, Brazil 2014, Olimpiada, Brazil 2014, 2014 Brasil, World Cup FIFA,Mundial da FIFA, FIFA, FI-FA-FO-DA, FeeFã, Olympics, Olympics, ParaOlympics. O-limp-ics. Shout it from the rooftops, sing it in a taxi, whisper it while making love because EVERYTHING for now and forever is about the bloody mega-events: economy, politics, city planning [sic], health care, transparency, security[sic], media, and the pqp. But, if you happen to be whispering these sweet nothings into the hairy ears of Carlos Nuzman, Ricardo Teixeira, Jerome Valcke or their lawyers you are subject to criminal proceedings for copyright violation (and bad taste).

The “Law of the Cup” (LdC) emerged from its black box into the light of day this week, irritating everyone except the ruling party panderers. There are a number of items that are particularly noxious:

Chapter 2, Section 1 of the LdC deals with the protection and exploration of commercial rights for the Confederations’ and World Cup. The National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is the target of the law as their existing statutes have to be bent over to FeeFã's whispering will.

In Article 5.1.1, the INPI will not require that FeeFã prove that a given item is associated with their events. This will allow just about any visual or textual reference to come under the aegis of copyright protection statutes, thereby eliminating the possibility of non-associated businesses and vendors to make money.  Thus, using the “Brazil 2014” in any context could be considered a violation. Imagine a tourist agency’s ad: “Come to Brazil in 2014”. Illegal. Rio Copa, illegal.  In article 10 of the same section,  FeeFã  will not have to pay any money to INPI regarding the processing of claims they make.

Section 2 dealing with “areas of restricted commerce and access routes” is the shortest and perhaps most worrying. All levels of Brazilian government will assure that FIFA is granted the exclusive right to sell everything in the “official event locations, their immediacies, and in the principal access routes.” Hmm. Let’s suppose that some lefty anarchist wants to take the Metrô instead of driving to the Maracanã to see a World Cup match. That means that every road leading to all of the Metrô stations in the city becomes a principal access route and that FeeFã could tell the city to police all of those routes for non-official commerce.  What would happen to you if you decided to set up a t-shirt stand? Section 4 details your fate: three months to one year in prison or a fine. This is nothing short of the privatization of public space that is intended to maximize profits for FeeFã and their FeeFiliates.

So far, so bad, but nothing terribly surprising.

One of the elements that got Romário, yes Romário of the 1994 world cup winning side and now a federal deputy, up in a huff was the inclusion of a clause that would allow all levels of government to declare holidays during game days. The Rio de Janeiro state government has already altered the school calendar for 2014 to have the winter break occur during the World Cup. Now, any city can claim a holiday because a football game is going to happen. This is to reduce the inevitable traffic problems because the transportation projects are clearly not going to be finished on time,or as Romário said, "this will put makeup on the problems that we are going to have." More on that later. I personally think it’s great and that these special holidays will really generate some serious cross-cultural understanding. For example, the fine, yet perhaps sheltered, citizens of Cuiabá will have a holiday to celebrate the scintillating match between Ukraine and Cameroon, giving everyone a full day to find these places on a map. Jamaica x South Korea in Natal…feriado!  Paraguay x Norway in Salvador…feriado! All of the Brazil games...5 national holidays in one month! Brilliant!

The freebies of the LdC are extensive. We know that the stadiums are all built with public money and that they get handed over to FeeFã for months. But FeeFã will also get free secutiry, health and medical services (read: termas), vigilância sanitaria (whatever that is), and will also slide through customs and immigration.

Article 8 describes in the most minimal details the development of a separate court system to process FIFA’s legal needs. Similar to the military tribunals in Guantanamo or Iraq, these will process and judge cases specifically related to FeeFã’s occupation of the country.

Chapter Three, Article 26, XI gives possible good news for those who decide to leave your conscience at home, overcome the global financial downturn and spend ten thousand dollars on a two week trip: “spectators who posses tickets…and individuals who can demonstrate official involvement with the events…considering a valid passport sufficient for the visa” will “have a visa issued without any restriction to nationality, race or creed.” This could mean that some visa fees will be waved, or not, I’m not sure and neither is anyone else.

Enough about the LdC. It’s more or less what we expected and somewhat less than FeeFã wanted. Next up, the strikes, increases in costs, and organizational nightmares for the Oh-limp-ics.

Burden of Proof

The burden of proof of benefit for public works related to the World Cup and Olympics should fall on the government, not on civil society. What is happening in Brazil is that the master plans of cities have been altered to attend to the short term demands of Swiss-based NGOs, with the promise that the outpouring of tens of billions in public funds will generate short, medium, and long term benefits. Of course, the opening of public coffers for massive public project will inevitably generate jobs and secondary benefits for a limited range of social actors. However, the justifications (be they technocratic, economic, or geo-political/symbolic) for those projects and the ways in which they (ostensibly) fit into medium and long-term city planning mechanisms that will generate more just and livable cities are not in evidence at all. Herein lies part of the problem: mega-events, almost without exception, are predicated upon short term return on public investment for private industry – economic projections that indicate massive growth for small businesses are conducted by firms contracted to demonstrate just that. There is a farcical absence of independent economic analysis that justifies multi-billion dollar investments before these investments are made. The studies and reports that are coming out now about the World Cup and Olympics in Brazil are mechanism for justifying what is already underway. The inexorable, relentless carrying off of these projects at whatever cost, needs to be justified somehow. Much like the continual selling of various wars in the USA, the continual selling of mega-investment in Brazil is an exercise in public relations based in voodoo economics.

For readers new to this blog, I am attempting to cover the massive changes in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil from a perspective based in critical geography mixed with investigative journalism. That my comments here are almost wholly in opposition to the projects underway in Brazil is based on my decade of research into the ways that sports impact urban and social relations. There is a global tendency to de-politicize sports. No one likes to think of their leisure activity as yet another field of political action. However, everyone surely understands that the marriage of sports and nationalism in international competitions cannot be effectively separated from ideas of citizenship, notions of belonging, human rights, and the foundations of a global political-economy. The complications inherent to sport are multiplied and accelerated with the World Cup and Olympics, especially as they stimulate and accelerate myriad processes already present in the places / spaces in which they occur. Mega-events crystallize the articulations between the local and the national and the global wherever they occur, opening opportunities for the questioning of and resistance to the worrisome trends of social polarization and the implementation of ever more severe tactics of neo-liberal governance.

I changed the sub-heading of the blog to “Black Boxes and Trojan Horses” as an indication of the way I see these events unfolding. That the World Cup and (to a lesser extent) the Olympics operate in secrecy is no secret. We have yet to be presented with the governance structure of the 2014 World Cup. We don’t know how decisions are being made, just that there is little or no democratic input into the ‘system’ that is taking billions and restructuring cities and social relations, especially in relation to the use of public space, the installation of new security mechanisms, and the re-articulation of the right to the city. The Olympics have adopted a new governance mechanism that erects a non-governmental authority to direct the billions into project that are defined by the needs of the Games and not the city itself. That is to say, the city needs to be restructured to suit the Games, and not the other way around. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this and am attempting to show how and where and when and why this is happening.

My comments are occasionally hyperbolic but always based in archival and field research that I am conducting. My interpretation of media reports and press releases is hopefully providing a different perspective into the euphoric vision of mega-events that dominates popular discourse. My ire and incredulity are not couched in anti-sport or anti-event rhetoric but rather come from my belief that the World Cup and Olympics are being used as opportunities to maximize capital accumulation opportunities in perverse and negative ways. The models currently being employed are simply not capable of bettering cities, making them more livable, more just places. Rather, the autocratic imposition of these events requires a restructuring of “democratic norms” in order to facilitate the transfer of public wealth to private hands. These are lost opportunities to implement projects that would bring lasting and not short term benefits.

These events need a massive restructuring, a dose of humility, and should attend to the demands of the places in which they are held. As it is, they are ever-larger, require ever-more public funds, and re-shape spaces and places to meet the exigencies of international sport federations and their corporate partners while stimulating real-estate speculation and re-enforcing false notions of “progress” and “social development”. Of course, the massive outlay of public money for these events is going to generate benefits, employment opportunities, and improvements in transportation, communication, etc. But shouldn’t these projects have long-term urban and social planning as their foundation? It is likely that without the events that the political consensus necessary for such a massive outlay would never be possible. However, the opportunity costs are extreme and rarely measured, if only because it is difficult to do so. But considering that the Brazilian federal government just cut R$50 billion from the education budget while it is projecting to spend at least R$60 billion on mega-events indicates that these costs are real and worth considering. 

Mobility, Death, Stadiums, Strikes: Normalcy

GEOSTADIA MILESTONE: 25,000 HITS!!!! 120 Countries!!! Thanks everyone!

Good news first – there is a plan to extend the Metrô across the bay to Niterói and São Gonçalo. The linha 3 project video link is here and is a much, much, much needed improvement in metropolitan mobility. No timeline has been set, but at least the state government has recognized the impossibility of transporting tens of thousands of people across a narrow bridge. There will even be a stop at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. Holding one’s breath for this project to be completed is not recommended.

Bad news. Really bad news. The quaint and picturesque bonde that shuttles people around Santa Teresa has had yet another accident. Remember that last year a bonde collided with a bus, crushing a woman to death. Last month a French tourist fell to his death off the aqueduct in Lapa. Ten days ago, five people died instantly and more than fifty were injured when the bonde brakes failed on its way down the hill. In most places in the world a major transportation line killing a handful of people and critically injuring others would be a major and permanent scandal – especially when the secretary of transportation blames the dead conductor instead accepting any kind of responsibility when only 7% of the maintenance budget had been spent. Apparently, instead of using nuts and bolts to secure the brakes, something else was used as a temporary fix. Rumor has it that instead of replacing the wheels of the trams with the same size, used wheels from the SuperVia trains were put on and these were perhaps too large for the bonde tracks. Who knows? What we do know is that the total disregard for public safety inevitably led to the evitable deaths of five people. There are some criticisms being launched in the proper directions but no real outrage, no one demanding the Governor’s head on a platter. The Transportation Secretary retained his post despite massive evidence of incompetence.

That there was a disaster waiting to happen is evidenced in this video that shows the bonde heading downhill against traffic.

More ridiculous news coming out of the Ministério do Esporte. The MoS, responsible for the governance of all sport in Brazil, paid R$6.2 million to register soccer fans. The money was delivered, the project never was. The problem is not only in that the project was not carried off or that the company hired to do it pocketed the money (at least temporarily) but that it never should have been considered in the first place. The Brazilian government has consistently and incrementally implemented a policy of criminalizing all football fans, but especially those who are members of the torcidas organizadas. The “registration” of torcidas organizadas is another step along the way to the hyper-surveillance of all fans and curiously one that the torcidas of Rio de Janeiro are willing to accept. For those interested in the minutiae of Brazilian football culture, the torcidas of Rio e Janeiro are the only torcidas in Brazil that are not affiliated with the national association. I’ll save the explanation for another post.

Not surprisingly, and as I predicted here, there is a shortage of qualified labor for the 2016 Olympic projects. It is a very good time to be a civil engineer in Brazil. The shortage of labor is being used as a justification by the Olympic Organizing Committee to elevate the salaries of the personnel that they already have under contract. This will also necessitate the imporation of more expensive experts from abroad, so those of you thinking of making the jump to Brazil , come on in, the water’s lovely, although you’re still likely to get your electronic goods stolen on the street (an Italian friend of mine was robbed twice yesterday, the second attempt, obviously, not as fruitful as the first as there was nothing left, coitados).

The general strike at the Maracanã continues! There was a brief resolution last week, but all work has stopped again and the Consorcio Maracanã (Odebrecht, Delta and Carioca) is making no attempt to re-start negotiations with the union. One of the major complaints of the workers is that they were being served rotten food and that even after the last round of negotiations, the food provider was not changed. There are likely two sides to this story, maybe even three, but serving rotten food to one’s workers is certainly not in the best interests of the nation. Come on Dilma, get your petit-bourgeois party back to the left it left ten years ago!

After strikes at the Maracanã and Minerão, threats of striking in Cuiabá, there is now the possibility of a strike at the Fonte Nova in Salvador. Salvage capitalism meets head to head with relatively strong syndicalism! Drama total!

In case you thought that no one in the government was watching what is going on with these insanely inflated budgets, the Tribunal das Contas Da União (TCU) identified some price inflation in the Maracanã project. The official cost is now around R$859 million, or R$11.300 per seat. By contrast, the new privately financed Grêmio stadium in Porto Alegre will only cost R$6.600 per seat and Palmerias’ Palestra Italia stadium in São Paulo will privately finance 45.000 at R$6.670 per seat. Corinthians’ publically financed stadium in São Paulo will cost at least R$12.000 per seat.  Lesson: where public money and post-Cup privatization contracts are happening, the pigs are at the trough. Where the private sector is involved, costs are much lower. Does this mean that all the WC stadiums should be privately financed? No. But it does mean that there is a pervasive culture of getting hands in the till as often and as deeply as possible and that there is little or no control over public spending in the pursuit of mega-event legacies [sic].

Rio de Janeiro, August 2011

This city is absolutely bonkers. The flow of information and the rate of change and exchange are overwhelming. This is counterbalanced by the mind-boggling geology and the historical trajectory of Brazil. Nothing new, I suppose, just saying.

Real-estate markets are booming. Since October 2009, when the Olympics were announced, prices have more than doubled across the city. Where UPPs have been installed, rates of accretion are much higher. There is a migration of foreign dollars and foreigners into the Olympic City and a migration of locals to the periphery. The currency is overvalued, we appear to be living in some kind of bubble but in a country mired in centuries of bureauctaric inefficiency the structural changes are slow in coming which may, ironically, save Brazil from the depredations being suffered in certain European and North American countries.

Three new transportation lines are getting crammed through the city of Rio without any democratic process or access to information, tens of thousands of people will be forcibly displaced with tens of billions of public funds while the metropolitan transportation plan continues to not exist. BRT é crime.

Last week, someone realized that he had taken the wrong bus but ended up on the Rio-Niteroi bridge. His attempt to get to the other side was woefully unsuccessful and his premature death caused a 12km traffic jam. People desperate to get to work flooded onto the ferry, which has recently reduced service. There are no plans to create more effective links across the bay. The Metrô doesn’t go to either airport and there are no plans to link the two.

It frequently takes more than an hour to leave the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, which also has no Metrô service. Two weeks ago, my excellent though crazy bus driver solved the puzzle by jumping a median, doing a u-turn and going the wrong way on a two lane road for about 3km, altering the bus’ normal route to go through the airport and then taking another u-turn to head south again. A brilliant move, but really? Those not as fortunate literally waited three hours. There is an entire traffic jam industry with people walking between lines of stopped cars selling snacks and drinks. There are massive stretches of highway that people avoid for fear of assault or the predictable insanity of Rio’s notorious traffic. Some days, the advertising section for cars in OGlobo is larger than the news section. Did I mention that there is no map of Rio's bus system, no way to tell when a certain bus is going to pass a certain point or where it will take you from there?

On Wednesday morning a group of foreign and Brazilian workers were followed from their hotel by two cars. At a certain point on the elevated highway their vans were stopped by 8 machine-gun wielding men who mistakenly robbed the Brazilians and not the gringos. The police are going to come to work a few minutes earlier now, as the assault happened before the shift started. The week before last, a bus was hijacked in front of City Hall. After the bus driver jumped out the calmest dude in the bus was forced to drive on until the Military Police shot out the tires. In the standoff, there was some shooting in which six people were wounded. All of the bullets found in the bus and in the people came from the Military Police. But don’t worry, these very same police are training to rappel down from stadium roofs in the case that someone gets the bright idea to attack a stadium full of people (which to my knowledge has never happened in the history of sport).

I took the following picture this week, there was no one around. This city is also incredibly calm and beautiful.

Yesterday, the Movement of Homeless Workers occupied the Ministry of Sport building in Brasilia demanding an end to the forced removal of people from their homes in preparation for the World Cup and Olympics. Their estimate is that at least 70 thousand people have been forcibly removed already.

In Niterói, a judge who had taken a very hard line against police corruption was shot 21 times as she parked her car in front of her house. She had received multiple death threats, had asked for police protection that was refused, and was about to sentence a high-ranking member of Niterói’s PM. All of the bullets found in the car and in her body belonged to the PM of Niterói. The news was published above the fold in Oglobo, but below were smaller articles detailing her past and present amorous relationships with police, as if these relationships were somehow complicit in her death. Common sense in Rio has is that “she was asking to be killed” as she had perhaps forgotten her place or did not understand that there are certain social and structural conventions (such as milicias being taken on by uppity female judges) that should not be messed with. Despite Carnaval and some progressive social policies, Brazil is a very conservative country.

The city finally took down the fences that surrounded the Praça Tiradentes in the center of town. It looks great. Fences around public space area sign that the government fears the public. Let’s hope they continue to make improvements like this to all of Rio’s plazas and not just those that come under the gaze of foreign architecture firms (and/or graduate programs in Architecture).

The Olympic Park Project is going to be very, very interesting and a big challenge. The project is handicapped by the location which doesn’t lend itself to integrated urbanism, but will certainly provide an opportunity for longitudinal studies into the ways in which discursive Olympism meets up with the actual needs of the cities in which the Games occur. The technical production of the project is amazing, though in the official release we are given a very limited geographic perspective (south-east to north-west) of the project as a whole. However, from the looks of it, the majority of the Vila Autódromo will be saved. El Principe did not want to comment about that.

This weekend, all of the torcidas organizadas in the entire country – with the exception of those in Rio de Janeiro (who are not integrated into the national federation of torcidas organizadas because they have a somewhat cozier relationship with the existing power structures) – will protest against Ricardo Teixeira’s reign at the CBF. The movement Fora Ricardo Teixeira has gained tens of thousands of supporters throughout Brazil. The ANT-RJ will be brining the fight to the mean streets of the Fechadão prior to Vasco x Framengo this Sunday and ANT-SP will be doing the same. There is significant attention being drawn to the endemic corruption at the CBF and FIFA. No less a figure than Romário, Brazil’s great striker of the 1990s and now a federal deputy, has launched criticisms in the direction of the 2014 World Cup saying that completing promises made to FIFA without respecting human rights and national laws simply will not be tolerated.  This is an important figure saying important things that are going against the prevailing tide. It’s not too late to do things right. 

A bright, beautiful, and naturalized future ©

Lordy. When will the city government come to terms with the reality of how cities function? It’s a rhetorical question, the answer to which continues to shock and awe. Every day there is a new and more ridiculous edict intended to impose control on the uncontrollable. This week their Lordships launched the brave idea that all of the weekly ferias livres (open air markets) need to close promptly at 1pm. This un-loving squeeze (or the annihilation of space by time), which has also occurred  in São Paulo, was met with an entertaining, effective, and important protest, photos and video of which are below. In the short movie, well worth watching, the crowd is chanting “Epa, Epa, Epa, Quero minha xépa! Epa, Epa, Epa, Quero minha Xépa!”

Xépa is the discount price given by merchants at the tail end of the feira. The forced closing of the market at 13hrs will change market logics and eliminate long-standing custom. This is exactly against the principals of a free-market economy. The easiest thing to do to preserve the Xépa and the discursive integrity of their Lordships would just be to back the f€©k off and let the feiras be.

Informality will not be tolerated in the Olympic City of Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics Jogos de Verão 2016 Host City Olimpíada 2016, 2016, 2016, ©,™,℠,℗,ⅎ,∩, ₭. According to the ill-logic of the current regime that governs this city, Rio de Janeiro functions Best and Only when all of its elements are formalized, social practices regularized, and social formations crystallized. In order to accomplish this Sisyphean and Kafkaesque task, to contravene the very nature of the city, their Lordships are applying an extensive series of Shocks. Some of these shocks are, perhaps, welcome – at first. I like a swept street and sanitary restaurants as much as the next flaneur.  Shocks like the one being applied to the feiras are not only unnecessary, autocratic, and downright annoying, but contrary to principals upon which their Lordships depend for the continued accumulation of wealth and power. There is no Shock of Education, Shock of Health, Shock of Clean Air, Shock of Corruption – just the Schlock of Order.

The Saga of the Maracanã continues. This week, workers struck to protest the poverty of their wages and working conditions. The greve by the STRAICP union (Heavy Industry Construction) workers will continue into next week. After one of the workers was seriously injured by an on-site explosion, the workers walked out with a series of demands including an increase in the lunch allowance, safety inspections, and a health plan that is “equivalent to the directors’”. As the projects for the mega-events accelerate, the indices of accidents are bound to increase and workers' rights will be eroded. What is the highest blood/concrete ratio that Brazils’ major construction firms are willing to tolerate?

The Olympic governing structure is nearly erectus. It took awhile for their Lordships to figure out just where and how to pull and push and prod to get the juices flowing, but now that they’ve got it just about where they want it, the pistons of progress can lead us smoothly forward into a blissful, naturalized, and fully actuated future.  Just check out how easily the BRT lines are going to slice through the urban fabric, leaving a silky trail of effervescent efficiency. It's hard to see the tens of thousands of disappropriations happening in this video, but if you listen closely, you can hear the screams. 

The struggles to mount on Mount Olympus are the stuff of boring, though important tabloids. Henrique Mirelles has jumped out of the lower reaches of APO and moved to the Conselho Olímpico, a perch from which he will lend a certain sober credibility to the Herculean and Pharonic projects happening down below. The APO top spot belongs to Márcio Fortes de Almeida. The recent revelation was that he is willing to work with one third of the public functionaries that have been designated to work for him is a good indication of how much work the agency is going to do. Since Mirelles figured out where the real power lay and moved out, the APO has been stripped of nearly all significance. Remember, a few months ago the APO was going to have 484 positions. A senate committee hacked it down to 181 and now Fortes now only wants around 60. The APO will organize the  spending of R$29 public billions. I don’t think everyone working at the APO will be an accountant, especially as the organization is charged with determining what is to actually be built. How many urban planners will the APO employ? My guess is ZERO. This year, the paper tells me, just putting the APO together is going to cost the tax-payer R$22 million.  This is going to be a very expensive rubber stamp.

The other Olympic news of note was the announcement of the winner of the Olympic Park competition. AECOM of London (responsible for the London 2012 Olympic Park),  in conjunction with Daniel Gusmão (DG)of Rio, carried home the R$100 thousand prize and the right to deliver on their proposal. Interesting, the proposal intends to preserve at least a part of the Vila Autódromo, urbanizing and integrating it into the larger urban context of the Olympic peninsula. Whether this will actually happen or if the Vila Autódromo will be used as a Potemkin Village is yet to be seen. Here’s the video of that incredibly bright and interesting and naturalized future:

Futebol Explanatório 102

Barcelona 2 – Real Madrid 2, Spanish SuperCopa. 

In Europe generally and Spain more specifically, the previous season’s winners of the national cup competition (Real Madrid and the King’s Cup in this case) play the winners of the national league (Barcelona) in a one off game, in the Spanish case, home and away. This is the SuperCupa, good for filling the trophy case and for rubbing it in the face of the Madristas.

Messi playing for Barcelona is the best player in the world. Messi playing for Argentina is not Maradona. Club teams are forced to release players who are called up for national team duty. Botafogo’s porteiro, Jefferson, is the third string keeper for Brazil. He’ll never see the field, yet he gets called up for every friendly and qualifying match and Botafogo have some mão de alface (lettuce hands, one of my favorite Brazilian football expressions) minding the net.

The clubs are not compensated for giving away their best players for days, weeks, or months at a time, nor are they compensated if the player returns injured, crippled, or drunk (as has recently been the case with Fred at Fluminense, not to mention Adriano, coitado). FIFA determines the days set aside for international matches (friendlies or qualifiers) and tournaments. The clubs are told by national federations which players they “have” to release and the players trundle off to do their duty. The players get paid by the national federation for international appearances and there are likely some tidy bonuses thrown about when medals get hung around sweaty necks.

FIFA controls this from their buzzard’s perch in Switzerland. If you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume that you know about FIFA. National Football Federations or Associations are given membership in FIFA based on a two year affiliation with a regional confederation (FIFA divides the world into six regions, Europe - UEFA, Asia - AFA , Oceania - BOTO, Africa - CAF, South America- CONMEBOL, North and Central America + Caribbean - CONCACAF). Then they have to write a letter to the Secretary General of FIFA who decides, alone, if a country’s association is worthy of FIFA membership. There are 207 current members, with one vote each, organized and orchestrated through FIFA’s regional divisions. This very structure is a machine that generates corruption.

There are 32 spots available for the Men’s World Cup, unevenly distributed. FIFA allots 13 World Cup berths for European nations. 53 teams are sorted into 9 qualifying groups, the winners of which qualify directly for the World Cup while the 8 best second place teams will play a home and away series with the aggregate winners coming to Brazil. Africa will have 5 teams for the 2014 Cup following two rounds of qualifying. The 24 lowest ranked teams will play each other in a group round robin format before being placed in five qualifying groups that the highest ranked teams will join in. South America and Asia receive 4.5 berths each. This means that the fifth placed teams in each region will play each other for the right to go to Brazil. The same hold true of North and Central America and the Caribbean which has 3.5 berths to Oceania’s .5. Since Australia defied geology by leaving Oceania and heading  to Asia, FIFA took away the automatic qualifying from that region putting the winner of qualifying in a playoff against Honduras or Costa Rica (perpetual 3^rd or 4^th placers in the CONCACAF region).  Boring if you already know it.

The Draw that took place in Rio on the 30^th of July, which met with a very healthy protest led by the Comitê Popular da Copa and the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores, defined the qualifying groups for the World Cup. But now, the European national leagues are starting up again while the Brazilian and North American leagues (among others) are in mid-season.

This of course, is only dealing with men’s football. Women’s football is similar, though on a much smaller scale. Brazil has no functional women’s league, though many women play and there are nascent professional structures. The USA has a women’s league that appears to be healthy, though limited in geographic reach. There are no doubt fine places to read about that and I welcome any sugestõezinhas.

Right, that’s it for the football. Here’s a list of some good books:

Brilliant Orange, David Winner

The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt

Inventing the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson

Foul!, Andrew Jennings

Would welcome additions for a reader bibliography that could be posted and shared on Zotero.com

Football Explaination 101

Dále Vasco. This week the absurdly translated Bullet-Train from the Hill (A Trem Bala da Colina) beat Palmeiras 2-0 in the Copa Sudamericana and 1-0 in the Brasileirão. I make no secret about being a Vascaino and those who aren’t can’t figure out why, those that are nod their head in knowing appreciation of a shared sentiment (que não pode parar). A few people have asked me what these different tournaments are and how they all fit together. I’ll use Vasco as an example.

In 2011, Vasco da Gama will play in 4 different competitions, some simultaneously: Campeonato Carioca (divided into the Taça Rio and the Taça Guanabara), Copa do Brasil (which they won), Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, and Copa Sudamericana.

The Campeonato Carioca is a three division competition that is restricted to professional teams in Rio de Janeiro State. All of the other Brazilian states have similar competitions. Teams move between divisions through the globally recognized and recognizable system of relegation and promotion (top teams in lower divisions move up, lowest teams in all divisions move down or out). When Vasco won the second division in 1922, América, Fluminense, Flamengo, Botafogo, and Bangu, formed a separate league so that they would not be forced to share the field with players from lower social classes who were challenging the false notions of amateurism and social exclusion. Rio had a apartheid system in football from 1923 until full professionalism was instituted in1933.

The Copa do Brasil is a playoff system between 64 teams that qualify by either winning their state leagues, being in the CBF’s (Brazilian Football Federation) top ten ranked teams, or by riding a pack of botos between Manaus and Belém. Vasco won this year’s tournament which automatically qualifies them for the Copa Libertadores next year, more on that later.

The Campeonato Brasileiro, or Brasileirão, is a four division affair that extends across the length and breadth of this great land. Vasco are playing in the Serie A for the second consecutive year (2010, 2011) after competing in the Serie B in 2009 (for having finished in 18^th place in 2008). Ironically, the trauma of going to SErie B might have been one of the best possible things for Vasco as they were able to get some of the dead wood from the previous administration out of the front office and the Rio fans, whatever their faults might be, certainly come to the aid of their team when they’re struggling. Vasco had the highest attendances of any team in Brazil in 2009.

Vasco is also in the Copa Sudamericana, and were randomly pitted against Palmeiras twice in the same week. Once for the Copa, once for the Brasileirão. The Copa Sudamerica is open to almost every team in the top flight of Brasilian footy. A top 14 finish qualifies. The bottom four drop out of the league so there are only two teams in the first division that don’t qualify for extra pay days with TRAFFIC Sports (who own the transmission rights to all South American continental matches). Why have less footy when you can just make up a reason for teams to fly all over the place to play 10pm Wed night games? Similar to the newfangled Europa League and the oldfangled UEFA Cup, no one really takes this Cup seriously until the semi-finals.

The 2012 Copa Libertadores beckons, and this is a much more serious matter. Like the UEFA Champions League this features the top teams from all the domestic leagues in CONMEBOL who play two round robin rounds before moving to a home and away knock out round where away goals count more than goals scored at home. That is to say that if Vasco were to play LDU to a 2-2 draw in Quito and also drew 1-1 at the São Januário, they would progress to the next round by virtue of more away goals scored. If they lost 3-1 away and won 2-0 at home, they would also go through. Got it?

The winner of the Copa Libertadores in 2010, Santos F.C., will dispute the World Club Championship with the other winners of the confederation tournaments. Usually this is a showdown between the European champion (Barcelona) and the South American. However, much to the delight of Gremistas, in 2010 Inter Milan won after beating Congo’s TP Mazembe who had shocked Internacional of Porto Alegre in the semi-final.

That more or less takes care of the club competitions. This scenario repeats itself around the world with variations here and there. In the USA, for instance, there is no system of promotion and relegation. This, in part, owes itself to an antiquated exception in the anit-trust laws that gives monopoly power to the “Major Leagues”, who are able to set significant barriers to entry in to their relatively closed circuits of capital circulation. In Argentina, when a major team gets relegated, they change the entire league structure. As the bosteros of San Lorenzo put it to River: cambiaran a las reglas cuando ibas a la B, la platea te regaló un teniente-coronel, vos sos asi, vos sos gallina, junto com Boca sos la mierda de Argentina!

Planning Ahead

Since we now have the 2014 World Cup qualifying groups to ponder, we can begin to project what the tournament will look like. The only thing we know for sure is that Brazil and the USA will qualify. The former because they are hosting, the latter because they have to beat Jamaica, Haiti and Guatemala – and because World Cup tourism would fall by 20% if the Yanks don’t come. The USA sent the largest contingent of fans to South Africa and will likely send even more to Brazil in 2014.  

At South Africa 2010, 6 of the 8 groups played their 6 games in 6 cities. Two of the groups (B and G, with Argentina and Brazil, respectively) played in 5 cities. (For those who don’t know, the WC is divided into 8 groups of 4 teams each, with the top two progressing to the next round). Let’s suppose that FIFA is going to repeat this scenario in Brazil. By using the USA’s group from 2010 as an example (USA, England, Algeria Slovenia), let’s look at what could happen in 2014.

		date	City	***Hotel/day
USA	England	14.6.14	Manaus	US$90
Algeria	Slovenia	14.6.14	Cuiabá	US$100
USA	Slovenia	19.6.14	Fortaleza	US$85
England	Algeria	20.6.14	Salvador	US$75
Algeria	USA	24.6.14	Brasilia	US$140
Slovenia	England	24.6.14	Natal	US$65

Let’s suppose that your average Yank wants to get to Manaus a couple of days early to do some poking about the Amazon and also wants to catch a weekend in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the trip. The flight from the USA to Manaus for September 2010 (cheaper than the high season of the 2014 World Cup) is around US$1000. The in-country flights, MAO-FOR-BSB-GIG-MAO, run US$815 on TAM (allowing for a few days in each place for games and tourism). We can figure tickets will be around US$150-200 each, although for Algeria-Slovenia in Cuiabá they’ll be giving them away. Add hotel prices (US$100/day) and a US$100 allowance for food, drink, taxi, diversions.

International Flight	US$1000
Domestic Flights	US$815
Hotel (12 days)	US$1200
Food/Drink (12 days)	US$1200
Tickets (3 games)	US$600
Misc.	US$400
total	US$5200

The result is that for a two week trip, at 2010 off-season prices, the average fan will spend around US$5200. For two people, this cost will not quite be doubled and with research and planning many of these costs can be dropped. However, with the current inflation rate and the increasing demand for seats on planes (imagine 20,000 people trying to get on these planes and into the hotels) and the inevitable confusion that is going to define the World Cup, the financial and psychological costs are certain to increase. Start saving your shekels!

FIFA comes to Rio, not all is well

FIFA descended upon Rio de Janeiro for the 2014 World Cup Qualifying Draw during the last week of July. The city government shelled out R$30 million to Geo Eventos, whose parent company is O Globo, to host the party.  FIFA demanded that the Santos Dumont airport be shut down for hours and the Very Important People arrived at Eike Batista’s (Brazil’s richest person) Marina da Gloria in limousines escorted by police motorcycles. The normal, pathetic media frenzy ensued: no answers of substance were given to questions of weight and interminable platitudes met the inevitable softballs. Pelé showed up at the behest of President Rouseff but did not cross paths or exchange knowing glances with Ricardo Teixeira. Yawn.

Out on the streets were a thousand protestors flanked by riot police. The Comitê Popular da Copa e Olimpíada spent months organizing the protest and was able to gather a sizeable and vocal group that, among other things, was demanding the head of Teixeira. This head controls the CBF and Brasil 2014 and has been under increasing media and government scrutiny, including a highly revealing article in Piauí. This was the largest, earliest anti-FIFA movement in the history of the World Cup and was a very encouraging sign that not everyone in Brazil is going to passively accept the autocratic implementation of legalized robbery.

Just before the events of July 30, the Ministério Público RJ held the first Audiência Pública (Public Hearing) to discuss the Maracanã construction process. That this was the first  public hearing about the stadium’s fate speaks volumes about how the World Cup is being carried off. That the Maracanã underwent R$320 million in reforms in 2006-2007 to prepare it to host the World Cup screams for massive judicial inquiries into the management of Rio’s public facilities. These reforms, as I have shown here on various occasions, have dis-characterized the stadium, transforming it from an iconic public space of cultural production into a sanitized space of consumption. The Audiencia Publica did nothing to discourage this view.

The discussants were Professora Sonia Rabelo, Professor Carlos Lessa, the head of EMOP (Public works for the state of Rio) Icaro Moreno Junior, the president of IPHAN Luiz Fernando de Almeida, and the procurador from the MPF Mauricio Andreiuolo Rodrigues. The debate circulated around the idea that the construction project should be stopped because what is being destroyed has been protected by IPHAN as a cultural patrimony and that the Novo Maracanã project will completely change the stadium’s character. On the side of the people were the professors, on FIFA’s side EMOP and IPHAN.

The most disturbing element of the discussion came from the IPHAN president. After asserting that the only criteria being used to evaluate the project was the preservation of the ethnographic character of the stadium, the 100+ people in the audience were treated to a spotty video of the new stadium. It showed what could have been the inside of a shopping mall or a closed condominium complex. I asked the IPHAN president whether or not he agreed that we were being shown an ethnographic film that pertained to the upper classes and if this was consistent with the character of the Maracanã. He responded by saying that for him, the preservation of the ethnographic character was “ to host the World Cup in the Maracanã” and that “if you want to have a FIFA World Cup one has to abide by what FIFA demands”. In short, IPHAN has sold out, bowed to pressure, showed no spine or integrity in relation to the Maracanã  - forever altering the character of the stadium and saying, basically, that if we don’t like what has been done to the stadium after the World Cup (especially the roof, which was the center of the debate), we can demand that it be restored. I’ll let the reader decide if this makes any damn sense at all.

Following the Audiência there was rumor that the legal system had intervened to stop the project but this was just rumor. It appears that the project, whatever it is, will continue apace and that the Maracanã in 2013 will, as the EMOP president recently stated, “be recognizable as the Maracanã by those who see it from a distance”. Great. Well done lads! 

Here are some photos of what has been lost.