Beyond Incredulity

It may be that the readers of Hunting White Elephants are growing tired of the bad news coming out of Rio de Janeiro. I too, am weary of reporting and analyzing the daily acts of brutality, ignorance and aggression that the coalition of interests running the Games, Cup, State and City are raining down upon an all-too-passive population. For years, I have been pointing out the obvious, trying to make some sense of the disaster. It turns out that what I write here, say there, teach and publish generally may result in um grande zero because the rot has sunk so deep into the hearts and minds of Brazil’s classe dirigiste that there is no escape. Yesterday’s violent occupation of the Aldeia Maracanã was yet another clear example that could have been avoided with even the minimum of decency. 

Let's talk this over. OBobo photo. 

There was widespread and arbitrary use of tear gas and pepper spray. According to one eyewitness report, as the Military Police were negotiating with a group of indigenous people over the Aldeia wall, one became visibly upset, took out his spray and fired it into their eyes in the middle of the conversation. Evicting an unarmed group with chemical warfare and shock troops is a tactic taken from the pages of Columbus’ diaries.

Journalists were hit with both pepper spray and tear gas, manhandled by the MP, and had cameras broken before being shoved onto the median of a busy highway. The State Government simply does not care about how they appear in the press, national or international. When the ball is rolling for the Confederations Cup, no one will remember what happened on March 22. One hopes that the national and international press corps that were brutalized yesterday will remember that they have colleagues who cover sporting events as if they happen in de-contextualized space.

There’s much more but there’s other work and emergency meetings to get to on a Saturday morning.  

The new Rio de Janeiro State Secretary for Sport and Leisure (SEEL), whose name I hope to never write down, said in an interview this week that: “The place for Indians is in the forest. That’s why we’re protecting the Amazon, isn’t it?” This charming fellow gives me a cheek-full of saudade for his predecessor, Marcia Lins, who obtousely managed to not respond to any of my requests for information about the Maracanã for three years. 

The tactics of the MP here are neither new nor restricted to Rio or to Brazil, but their consistent and constant application to clear urban space for the implementation of privatization schemes is what is clearly marking Rio de Janeiro as an Olympic and World Cup host city. The same happened in Mexico '68, LA '84, Seoul '88, Barcelona '92, Atlanta '96, Athens '04, Beijing '08, Vancouver '10 and worse things are happening in Putin’s Sochi '14. The IOC and FIFA never make pronouncements about this kind of thing, remaining high on their Swiss perches holding moralistic discussions among themselves about “reform” and “transparency”.  Light me another torch, please, it’s cold out here in the American wilderness.

Zeitgeist-disgusting

One of the problems and benefits of living in a non-native place is that there is the temptation to criticize without assuming responsibility. These criticisms tend to flow more fluidly from wealthier to less wealthy places (without wanting to use the word “developed”), consolidating pre-existing power dynamics with the danger of haughty righteousness and colonialist indignation ever present in the commentaries. Most societies have barbarous practices that need to be called out so that they can be changed. Sometimes, heinous acts such as bombing wedding parties with drones, activating a presidential kill list (it`s not called the executive for nothing!), or handing over trillions to bail out banks, reflect a perverse zeitgeist from which we need to fabricate a collective emergence.

On Sunday, three nearly simultaneous incidents may reflect the general state of things in Brazil. I hope that they are isolated, perverse incidents. They all speak to something terribly wrong.

In Rio, three adolescents between 11 and 14 were walking along the sidewalk near the posh Jockey Club. Apparently there had been some kind of theft inside the club and two or three members of a private security firm started after the boys. The older boys managed to jump the wall into the Jockey Club. Alan de Souza, 11, did not. Alan was taken in a van up near the Vista Chinesa where he had all of his fingernails and toenails pulled out before being shot twice in the head. One of the suspects in the torture and murder of an eleven year old boy is a member of the Rio Military Police. The story has disappeared from the headlines.

In Sao Paulo, a 21 year old was driving home from partying all night and was doing zig zags in his car along Avenida Paulista. As he was playing about, he ran into a 21 year old cyclist on his way to work. The collision severed the cyclist’s arm, which somehow ended up in the car. The driver did not stop to see what had happened, but sped away. Eventually he stopped, found the arm in the car and…threw it into a canal! He later turned himself in. Protesters on bikes filled Avenida Paulista on Sunday.

Back in Rio, there was an exhibition of a Formula One car on the Aterro do Flamengo. The event drew tens of thousands of people and also had as part of the exhibition other Ferrari cars zipping about. Eventually, one of the Ferrari drivers lost control and crashed into the crowd, hospitalizing three and terrifying many others. A multimillion dollar car taking up leisure space on the weekend is questionable. Cars doing tricks at 300 km\hr while people crowd against the road with no protection is begging for tragedy.

I don`t know exactly what these three events say about the value of human life and dignity in Brazil, but they will hopefully stimulate some critical self-reflection, prosecutions and high-profile court cases. 

Piscinão do Derby

O Bobo photos

Good news! It turns out that the planned demolition of the Julio Delamare Olympic Swimming complex will not have much of an impact on the training regimes of Brazilian swimmers and divers. In a move that can only be described as blindingly prescient, the swimming complex has been moved into the Maracanã itself, making the stadium more of a multi-use arena than ever. In 2016 we will see the very high dive from the top of the new roof as well as synchronized car-floating and perhaps the staging of naval battles or exhibitions of indigenous fishing techniques. Perhaps the Joana and Maracanã rivers that flow past the stadium could be sites for hydro-electric dams that could provide electricity for the stadium. This will be the greenest Games ever! Our World Cup runneth over! Did anyone else hear the chorus of angels shouting “pega mijão!” to São Pedro on Tuesday night?

O Bobo photos

For those unfamiliar with the basics of fluvial geomorphology, I offer the following bon mot: water flows downhill and gathers at the lowest elevation. Swamps are swamps precisely because they are low-lying basins that accumulate water. The Maracanã lies between two rivers in a swampy low-lying area with a very high water table. Thus, in order to have adequate drainage for the stadium it is advised to elevate the structure as much as possible. This is particularly true for the playing field.

The reform deform of the Maracanã for the Pan American Games lowered the playing field by 1.50 meters, pushing it ever closer to the high water table. The latest reform deform has compromised even more the drainage capacity of the stadium. We saw in 2010 how an ordinary rain can destroy access to the Maracanã and it is a measure of the clear thinking of the deforms undertaken that more than a billion reales have been spent on a stadium that cannot withstand a tropical downpour in a tropical city.

Of course the problem is much greater than the stadium itself, which suffers from the same problems as the rest of the low lying areas of the city. But have a look at these pictures and make up your mind as to whether or not these problems can be solved by June 2 when Brazil plays England here. 

Meanwhile in Cuiaba, the police are preparing for the World Cup by beating up university students...

Video about urban realities in Rio

Worth watching as a good primer for what is going on in Rio as it "prepares" for the World Cup and Olympics

The MAR and the mar

The Rio city government recently invested R$80.000.000 in the MAR, Museu do Arte do Rio. Mar is also the portuguese Word for ocean. To run the MAR, the city pays one million a month to Brazil’s biggest media company to run the museum and they still charge admission to city residents (though not on Tuesdays when it is open to everyone for free).  It is a lovely museum, perfectly situated in front of the cruise ship passenger terminal at Pier Mauá. In a future post we will take up some of the surprisingly progressive and interesting elements of the MAR. 

After a visit to the MAR, I left Flamengo to take some precious house guests to the international airport, some 24 kilometers distant. Just after hitting the road, the skies unleashed a Biblical torrent. The city closed down as nearly every important highway flooded, all public transportation came to a halt, trees crashed, power outed and the city reeled from surging sewage.

The body count was relatively low: 4 dead 2 1 missing. One of the dead was a Polish woman who had the temerity to lead against a light post in the Largo do Machado and died from an electric shock. She had just moved to Brazil with her husband.

In addition to the smaller roads in Catete, Gloria, and the typical inundation of Tijuca and the Praça da Bandeira, Avenida Brasil, the main east-west highway flooded at its strategic entracnce that brings together traffic flows from the south and from Niteroi. The meters` deep fetid stew completely engulfed cars and stranded traffic on all of the elevated highway system leading to the north and west of the city. There was no way forward and no way back. We were stuck without moving for three hours. A sign over the entrance to the bridge to Niteroi kept taunting us with a sign that flashed “Fluxo Bom” (good flow).

The brilliant idea of the city government is to take this elevated highway (which was the only option to get to the airport as trees had fallen over the access to the Santa Barbara tunnel, trapping cars inside), and put it below sea level as it runs alongside the port area. I have been railing against this idiocy from the beginning, but demolishing Rio`s port-area elevated highway to put it underground in a city that is prone to flooding is attaining lofty heights of quixotic skullduggery that not even my forked pen can reach.

Fortunately, I was in a car on my way to the airport after having spent a day at the museum. There were tens and hundreds of thousands who had worked long days, had crammed into non-air conditioned buses with no toilets, no way off, no food, no drink, and with no relief of the traffic in sight. My 24 km trajectory to the airport took 4 hours, something that I could have done with a kayak, paddleboard, skateboard, bicycle, or walking quickly.  Others didn`t get home until 3 or 4 in the morning only to get up and retrace their steps. Why is it that there is no plan to put public transportation to the international airport?

I desperately wanted someone to come by with their Euro-American clipboards to ask all of the people stranded in traffic or stuck in the metro or wading through sewage to ask which is the happiest city in the world…

The long and short of this post is that we have just spent 80 million to build a museum called MAR, but relatively nothing on dealing with water movement within the city itself. These are the kinds of perverse priorities or “unlucky realities” that don`t show up on the Mayor`s ill-conceived Monopoly game, but that have hugely negative impacts on the lives of Cariocas and visitors. 

Passando dos Limites / Going too far

The monthly salary for a public school teacher is around R$1600. I do not know people who work harder with fewer resources to do society`s most important and least valorized work. I can only imagine the complete indignation and revolt of public school professionals when the announcement came that the city government spent more than a million reais (US$500,000) to buy 20,000 copies of a board game to be distributed to the city`s schools. The game, presumably, will become an obligatory element of the curriculum. The game is called Banco Imobiliário Cidade Olimpica, or Olympic City Monopoly.

What are the UPPs about again?

It is difficult to know where to begin criticizing the idea that schoolchildren be indoctrinated with the ideology that the public places and spaces of the city be treated as mere commodities used to accrue personal wealth and power. We could begin with the fact that only the current administration`s projects are highlighted in the game, giving the impression that the mayor, governor and their cronies have produced the urban landscape since taking office. We could also highlight the fact that arbitrary monetary values are assigned to public places, eliminating any and all conception of use value for those that have paid for these things (the public) and transforming every element of the urban into something that can be traded on the open, deregulated market. How about the “sorte” (luck) card that says: “the value of your home increases after the favela in your neighborhood was pacified, receive R$75,000”. Paulo Freire is turning like a rotisserie chicken in his grave.

Just when I was starting to lose the hard edge of permanent pessimism, the perverse pedagogy and poor taste of the mayor took physical form in the public space of Copacabana Fort. In the fort, which is a federal property, a private club has opened to attend to the beautiful people [sic] of Rio`s Zona Sul who can no longer tolerate the hoi polloi and undifferentiated tourist mass of Ipanema and established a clubby off world inside the fort. Veja`s coverage was nauseatingly apologetic: “Club attracts high class clients in search of vip treatment and the experience of sharing the beach with people of the same profile”. A mere R$250 gets you into the club that has a pool, discreet waiters, blaring electronica, hot tub, R$5000 bottles of campaign, R$80 face towels and a lax security force that ignores the clouds of pot smoke drifting off the dance floor. If you are surprised that rich, white Brazilians are able to smoke weed bought in favelas inside a military fort while the favelas themselves are occupied by the military, then you clearly haven`t spent enough time playing Banco Imobiliário.

A few weeks ago I reported on the judicial victory of the Aldeia Maracanã. During the negotiations the government had offered to work with the Aldeia in some regard in order to maintain the site as a part of Brazil`s indigenous heritage. Incredibly, but unsurprisingly (another of Rio`s characteristics is that you are not surprised at being shocked), the brain trust of Rio 2106 and the State Government announced that the indigenous people would be expelled and the site transformed into an Olympic museum with all profits acruing to the IOC! Huh? This is the same set of intellectual heroes that have programmed the destruction of an Olympic swimming pool and an Olympic training center in order to prepare the city for the Olympics. It is a sadly transparent attempt to turn a judicial defeat into a victory. 

These paradigms of competency in public planning have also determined that the facilities constructed for the 2007 Pan American Games are almost completely inadequate. You know the situation is dire when OGlobo starts criticizing the R$1.6 billion that will have to be spent on the 2007 facilities to make them viable for 2016. To wit: the velodrome is being destroyed, the aquatics center will only host water polo while a temporary diving center will be built at the Copacabana Fort (someone better get rid of the rich potheads first), the basketball arena will only be used for gymnastics and every other installation will have to undergo massive upgrades. Of course, there is still no budget for the 2016 Games, and even if there were why should the public pay any more attention to it than the Games organizers themselves? 

A series of fires have occured in the Autodromo de Jacarepagua, site of the future Olympic Park. These are not ordinary fires but massive conflagrations of discarded tires. The toxic smoke has infiltrated the Vila Autodromo over the past weeks, creating a health and environmental hazard. This could be another manifestation of the pressure tactics used by the government to encourage people to leave their homes or at least to reconsider their negotiating position. When there is not grave incompetence in public administration there is likely malice and vice versa. Somtimes it is both. 

Evidence to support this last statement came from the Largo do Tanque this week where a series of forced removals occurred as the municipal government races to complete the Transcarioca BRT before the World Cup. The reports from Tanque are as disturbing as they are tragic. There is evidence that agents of the municipal government are negotiating the price of homes with the residents as the bulldozers circle the house. This is not the “key for key” policy dictated by Brazilian law and international statutes but rather an underhanded and divisive approach to eliminating social resistance to the invented needs of massive urban interventions. A few years ago there were a series of signs along Flamengo Beach that spelled out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those signs, along with the rights, have disappeared in the Cidade Maravilhosamente Especulativa.

The involuntary interment of crack addicts and homeless people continues throughout the eastern and southern parts of Rio. Rio`s program of forced interment is widely criticized by health care professionals as doing nothing to solve problems of mental health, physical addiction or the social conditions that produce such large numbers of homeless in Rio. There have been few investigations into the conditions of the internment centers, no data released on how long people are kept, what happens to them upon release or the efficacy of the program in decreasing crack use. Though it might be a stretch, the BRTs are no more a solution to Rio`s mobility problems than is the involuntary internment program a solution to drug addiction and homeless. In both cases human rights are violated while being sold as necessary for the betterment of the city.

The General Osorio metro station opened in 2010, bringing the Metro to Ipanema 35 years after its inauguration. Last week the General closed his doors for 10 months so the extension to the one and only metro line in the state can start. Just to be clear, two years ago the line was extended to Ipanema with the full knowledge that it would have to be further extended for the Olympic transportation project. Instead of planning for that extension without needing to close the station the top-notch intellects at Rio Metro closed the tunnel system and therefore have to pick up where they left off in 2010. In addition to the inconvenience of the closure, the astronomical sums of money and urban disruptions of the Linha 4 [sic] are causing protests and revolt among even the stodgy lovers of the status quo in Leblon.

And finally, the call for proposals for the privatization of the Maracanã was launched on Monday. The companies that are bidding for the 35 year “concession”, IMX and LusoArenas, will have one month to submit their proposals and then a committee comprised of ONE PERSON will rule in favor of one or the other. As IMX was the external consultant that devised the economic feasibility study it looks as if Eike Batista will be able to add another of Rio de Janeiro`s iconic spaces to his Banco Imobiliário. The billionaire with the ten dollar toupee has not been having much luck financially lately, but was recently granted his long-time wish to build a nine-story convention center in the Marina da Glória. The agency responsible for protecting Rio de Janeiro`s architectural and cultural heritage, IPHAN, has once again surfed the wave of privatization. There are likely no cards in the Banco Imobiliário game that represent IPHAN or IBAMA or INEA (environmental regulatory agencies), much less something that would make one pay for an impact study or have to spend money and time consulting the public about the future use of public space.

This Thursday, 28.2.13, the Comitê Popular da Copa e das Olimpiadas is sponsoring a seminar that will treat the Maracanã in all of its symbolic, historical, political and cultural complexity. The seminar will begin at 2pm in the auditorium of the the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa, on Rua Araujo Porto Alegre, 71. More details can be found on the Comite`s site: www.comitepopularrio.wordpress.com

Counterpoint: Cidade Maravilhosa

Part of Rio`s charm lies in its decadence, grit and difficulty. If the urban system functioned efficiently or were governed competently or justly, Rio might lose something of its essence. The stark topographical and environmental contrasts are reflected in the social divisions and vice-versa. The classic images of favelas cascading down (sometimes literally) the mountains into the high-rise condos, present us with the essential paradox of Brazilian democrapitalism. The transit deaths and traffic jams are a reflection of a long-term lack of long-term planning, itself a reflection of the Brazilian jeitinho and improvisation. Yet the unmistakable character of the city lies in its unpredictability, the chance encounters on the street that lead to 25 chopps (for R$125), the random vegetable vendor singing an aria in the weekly market, or a completely full beach on a Wednesday afternoon. In the city center, layers of urbanism emit a stink of reality that both stimulates and challenges the intellect. Making sense of Rio is as difficult and enticing as the city itself.

An economist friend of mine recently gave me the following bit of analytic advice: “Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence.”

This phrase cannot be easily applied to the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) but it can be applied to the general organization of the World Cup. There are cost overruns and delays and poorly conceived projects all over the place. The majority of the transportation projects will not be completed, nor should they be, as they were projected without any public input. The general incompetence of sport management regimes in Brazil, including the World Cup Organizing Committee, can partially be explained by the absence of sport management programs in Brazilian universities. Ditto for public administration. Put the two together for the World Cup and you can expect confusion, delays, headaches and a missed match or two - but a wonderfully improvised party.

As happened last year with Ricardo Texeira, there is a movement to get rid of the current 81 year old head of the CBF. As Andrew Jennings has recently shown in great and disturbing detail, Jose Marin was rather cozy with the military dictatorship and is one of the old cronies of Havelange and Texeira. Texeiria is piddling around Florida, immune from prosecution. Havelange is trying to live longer than Oscar Niemeyer, his extended worldly tenure holding back any chance of meaningful change in Brazilian football.  Marin is an octogenarian obfuscator who is holding the reigns for the Havelange clan. Like the Pope Nope, it is time these ancient, angry old men made way so they can spend their last years having their income redistributed through the Bolsa Familia program.

Stay tuned for news about the Maracanã which saw a one day labor strike this week. The panicked governor intervened but the terms have yet to be accepted. Now that the deadline is almost here, there is wide speculation that the stadium will not be ready and that the games scheduled for Rio will be moved elsewhere. This is an excellent time to strike again for better wages and working conditions. This week will also likely see the release of the privatization scheme. One hopes that the investigation underway into possible collusion between IMX and the Rio Government in the elaboration of the economic feasibility study will negate any possibility of this coming to fruition. 

Democrapitalism

For those accompanying this blog and the ongoing saga of uncreative destruction in Rio de Janeiro there is likely little I can report at this point that will be new or unusual. The horrors of administrative incompetence, corruption, and a generalized lack of concern for public welfare in both the public and private sectors occasionally converge to produce tragedies like the one in Santa Maria, RS two weeks ago. In Rio, we are simply waiting for the next disaster to occur. It is only a matter of time. Will the Sambòdromo collapse? Will one of the overloaded ferries collide with a super-tanker? Will a disgruntled member of the Military Police open fire on an unruly crowd? How many people will the BRT lines kill?

In addition to administrative incompetence and fetid cronyism, a collective lack of indignation, willful ignorance and cruel passivity drive the creaky machinery of Brazil democrapitalism. While the fingers can always be pointed in all directions, it doesn`t hurt to start at the top. Reports that indicate Lula, the soon to be disgraced former president, spent twenty million in public money on hotels in one year. Overspending public money on luxury hotels may not be as bad as having a personal kill list, but the repercussions of presidential attitudes across the cultural bandwidth are undeniable. Lula, Dilma and the PT have repeatedly shown that the old ways are the best, that collusion and corruption bring great rewards and that business as usual is best done between old friends.

This last is a lesson that Sergio Cabral and Eduardo Paes have taken to heart and employed to great personal effect in Rio de Janeiro. The brutal disregard for the public welfare reveals itself in dysfunctional public transportation systems, the militarization and privatization of public space, the criminalization of poverty, the unbridling of capital, the pushing of undesirables to the periphery and the pursuit of public policies that do little to improve the material conditions of those who contribute more than 35% of their salaries to the government. For instance, if you want to stop people peeing in the streets, install public toilets, don`t put people in jail. The ongoing fight for the Maracanã  is but one in a long list of obfuscatory collusions with vested interests that are feeding at the trough of the brothers Grimm.  Why no one raises their voices in the direction of Eike Batista is a mystery to me.

In order to gain the bare minimum of public benefit from public authorities a massive fight has to be waged against the very people that are supposed to have the public good in mind. This requires a strong, institutionalized civil society that is, in theory, supported by the government. However, the political zeitgeist in Brazil is one that privileges the private over the public, the individual over the collective, and the powerful over the weak. The turpitude of the Worker`s Party is partly to blame, but exacerbating the problem are the collective desire for shiny new trinkets and a thought bubble floating above the heads of the middle class that reads “it`s better than it used to be so that`s good enough.”

It could simply be that Brazil has raised expectations and is failing to deliver. I personally think that there is no point in comparing Brazil with other places and that things here will take decades if not generations to shift in significantly positive ways. The World Cup and the Olympics were a good opportunity for that to happen, but the chance has been blown.  Yet the constant search for affirmation from outside begs for comparison at the same time that Brazil, and Rio more than any other place, is chronically self-referential, protectionist and fundamentally conservative.

Rio de Janeiro is Brazil`s self-referential epicenter, never more so than during Carnaval. I used to think that the two week binge was a time when people could exorcise the demons accumulated over the past year while dealing with all of the crap that the public authorities and the city itself heap upon the heads of its citizens. It may have been, in the past, a time of ephemeral transformation, when inversions of all kind became the norm. Now, the party seems like just another opportunity to sell the city to itself and to foreigners while putting on a mask of happiness and openness that hides rapacious consumerism and a singular distain for the very people that make the party possible.

My suggestion for those here enjoying the party: Turn the band of the free Antartica hats around and write your own message. Consider it a form of gorilla marketing. 

Victory for the Aldeia!

Victory for the Aldeia!

This weekend a state judge ruled that the building could not be demolished. The injunction against demolition came after IPHAN, the institution responsible for identifying and preserving historical and cultural patrimony, decided in favor of the museum`s preservation. If the government wants to go ahead with its plans for demolition in order to turn the Aldeia Maracanã into a parking lot they will have to pay a fine of R$60 million. Next up, the battle for the Celio de Barros athletics facility - one of the few Olympic training sites in Rio. A public act against demolition is planned for Thursday January 31^st at 1830 hrs at the Associação Brasileiro de Imprensa, Rua Araujó Porto Alegre 71, auditório 9o andar.  

Metro broken, train off the rails, crack addicts on the highway

Eight stations of the one line Metro system ceased to function because of a lack of energy this morning. Early reports were of people trapped in cars between stations, a lack of emergency services and a generalized absence of information. The sudden increase in demand for bus transport caused huge lines and overcrowding in the direction of Ipanema. People in Copacaban, Ipanema and Botafogo that usually take the Metro used cars, choking the northbound access along the Aterro do Flamengo.  The energy failure has yet to be explained and there has yet to be more clear information coming from Metro Rio about their apparent unpreparedness for emergency situations.

The problems in public transport were aggravated with a derailment of a car near the Central do Brasil. This caused significant delays in the Santa Cruz and Japeri lines which are the primary arteries that connect the western suburbs. Road transport was also complicated by an accident involving a car and a crack addict on the Avenida Brasil highway. The main east-west artery in the city has become a living space for crack addicts that were recently pushed out of the Manguinhos and Jacarezinho favelas, occupied with UPPs. The city`s program of obligatory internment is selectively applied and does not appear to have enduring effects on the health or living conditions of crack users who live outside of the tourist areas. The internal medians of Avenida Brasil have become the living space for crack addicts, making fatal accidents routine.

With Carnaval around the corner, one hopes that the public transportation system in Rio will stop misbehaving. Expectations are tempered by statements such as the one from Sub-Secretary for Transportation Joaquim Monteiro who said that his primary goal is “to prevent a total collapse of the system”.

Heartfelt sympathies to all involved in the tragedy in Santa Maria, RS. 

Battle for the Aldeia

The government moved to take the Aldeia Maracanã today. The Aldeia, a centuries old indigenous heritage site, is wedged between the Estádio Mario Filho and 14 lanes of traffic and train. The government claims that the Aldeia is going to congest the flow of fans from the stadium to public transport and so needs to be made into a parking lot. This parking lot was not in any of the plans for 2014 reform deform and FIFA has never called for the elimination of the Aldeia. Of course, being FIFA, they haven`t made a case for it either.

The state government insists, and people in the football industry agree, that the Maracanã complex needs to be privatized. The desire for privatization is shared by stadium management companies and “sports business experts” who see in the World Cup stadium deforms a chance to make a killing. The terms of the Maraca privatization will only require the “arena manager” to pay back a miniscule percentage of the R$1.2 billion project. The Maraca, is no longer a stadium but a multi-use arena that will perform to the degree that it is “rentable”. Once again, the Brazilian bullet train towards “modernity” and “global tendencies” lurches between stations of self-deception and insecurity before running indecently off the tracks into a cesspool of debt and moral lassitude.

The truth is that without public participation, no entity, private or public, would have the capacity to deal with the Maracanã, much less collaborate with the people at the Aldeia. The absence of transparency and dialogue is certainly true of SUDERJ (the state superintendence of sports) and the CBF is a paradigm of obscurantism and chicanery. The closed and secretive nature of the management and deformation of the Maraca, and along with it the Aldeia are, if nothing else, consistent and reflective of the interests and allies of the state and city.   

Workers at the Maracana applaud the Aldeia. 

Despite the failings of the government, there are a million arguments for preserving Aldeia Maracanã and for keeping the sporting complex in public hands. There are a thousand ways to use the deformed Mario Filho in socially useful and interesting ways. There are dozens of schemas for stadium management that could make productive use out of the billions in public investment.  The government does not want to have this debate, never did.  Out of ideas and patience, perhaps being pressured by FIFA, the state is opting for the least creative, most truculent and most violent mechanisms at its disposal. The ethnic groups and citizens camped at the Aldeia are agitating in defense of not just the rights of those who live and work at there, but in defense of the collective rights that are being stripped from all us for the “good of the game”.

tá de brincadeira

Chicken Ass on a Stick. Ever had it? Well I hadn´t either until I moved to Taiwan in 1996. If you want to read more about this delicacy, check out the latest issue of XI Quarterly. If you follow this link you´ll get a snippet of the article. Follow this link for an interview I did with the XI Quarterly editors. Sadly, I didn't make their list of best-ever American midfielders abroad. 

In Rio, there's no chicken ass on a stick, but there are frangos a-plenty. It is nearly impossible to find a decent game of pick-up football, and extremely difficult to find public transporation that doesn´t kill you or test the limits of human endurance. To solve the former, I am starting a weekly pelada  on the Aterro do Flamengo, Campo 1, at 6pm on Wednesdays. To solve the latter, well...there appears to be no hope.

Check out this video (warning, facebook link) to see how the security agents of the Metrô push people into the cars at rush hour. Remember, these are the cars that took two years to get here from China, arrived rusted, and when put on the tracks, were several cm higher than the platforms, making impossible their access by wheelchair. 



I suggest that all Cariocas go to work in their swimwear, bring a can of olive oil and grease up before getting on public transport. 

The "super-modern BRT system" that the mayor calls a "transportation revolution", turns out to be merely revolting. Less than six months after its hurried inaguration, there are a half-dozen stations that have not been opened, yet have televisions turned on all the time and appear to be functional, the final stretch of the BRT has no exclusive lane putting more buses on the city streets, and along a major part of the line, the buses can no longer run because of the immense potholes. These buses are also already stuffed to capacity. In addition to the poor planning, poor execution and hurried implementation, pieces of the new tunnel have started to fall off.  The BRT also can´t operate when it rains too much.  

When I last visited the BRT Transoeste in December, I could not buy a ticket at the Salvador Allende station because the ticket booth did not open until 2pm. All of the morning functionaries had been fired - no replacements.  The machines for recharging tickets were not working. The security guard, who worked for an outsourced firm, was obliged to open the gates to let everyone on for free. As Woody Allen once said, "It´s a joke of a ruse of a farse of a travesty", but in Rio, it´s business as usual. 

Is there another major city in the world that does not have a map of the bus system or in which city buses regularly flip over, run red lights or crash into each other? The buses are expensive, disorganized, uncomfortable, have no schedule and treat their users like animals. The bus drivers, in general, have the ghost of Ayrton Senna in their right foot. The salary for a bus driver is around R$1700 a month. 10 hours a day in Rio's traffic is enough to make anyone furious, but with that salary, ten tons of metal becomes a tool for revenge. 

The title of this blog is a useful phrase for visitors and locals alike: tá de brincadeira = you´ve got to be kidding me. 

Terms and Conditions, 2013

For new readers, welcome to another season of Hunting White Elephants. For those accustomed to the logics and conditions of the hunt, hang on! The heard has proliferated during the holiday season and there are fresh pelts to be had. Remember, don`t aim for the head, as it is mostly empty. A sharp stick in the glottal is the surest way to hobble Elefantus Biancis Horriblus.

The historical errors that are being committed in the planning and operation of the World Cup are of mind-boggling dimensions. Can you conceive of a Trojan Horse dressed as a White Elephant? If so, imagine that when the doors to the city open and the elephant lumbers in, shock troops and anti-terrorist units from around the world rappel out of its ears. The tail lifts and out fly drones and spyware, digital surveillance consumer tastes and lifestyle managers.

Imagine that instead of merely sacking and occupying your city, you were to discover that your elected officials opened the gates for the Trojan Elephant. Worse, they paid for its very construction with public money and have prepared ample living space for its permanence. Once the citizens have been removed, soldiers deployed and the city pacified, the elephant will lay down at great and enduring cost.

We cannot afford this! say the people.

We cannot afford this! says the government.

 I`ll save you!, says the market.

The market will save us! We must give them the elephant!, says the government.

When you look into its eyes and under its ears, you will find a large, humming black box that is kept behind seven locks.  Are there more boxes inside this box? If so, of what color?

These is nothing special about the elephant, it looks and behaves like all the other ones. Inevitably, some will find it beautiful and interesting, for a time. But Elefantus Horriblus ages quickly. The attentions of the people are fleeter than a graying, rapacious and voracious neighbor.  The off-shade is because the Horriblus suffers from Vitamin D deficiency, and loses its shine quickly even in the hottest of climes. The bones are not good and the flame of its spirit is not high or enduring. Though burdened with the most sophisticated jewelry, their luster quickly fades revealing a bare, obscure harlotry.

The coming agenda:  This week there have been alarm bells ringing loudly regarding the Aldeia Maracanã .  Accoring to one person that I recently had a radio debate with, “the place for Indians is in Amazonia”. There is wide suspicion that the state government is preparing the bulldozers for this weekend. This video is well worth a look and it is not too late to send your letters of disgust to FIFA, the City and State governments of Rio (addresses at end of video).  

At the Celio de Barros athletics facility, track athletes (including Brazilian Olympians) have had the track shut down. There is now some competition for Eike Batista in the privatization scheme, Luso Arenas. January and February are good times for the government to move on projects so look for some truculence. There are more tourists than ever before in Rio.  You can`t swim for 48 hours after it rains.  Careful on that bus! Deaths and injuries on public transit are increasing.  No public transporation reform in sight. Traffic is crippling, prices are insane. The BRT Transoeste ALREADY has to be repaved. 6 months. A new record. Parabéns.  Drones, drones, drones. Tanks, tanks, tanks. The tourist influx for the pope`s  nope`s July visit is between 1.5 and 3 million. Do they really not have a better estimate? How do you plan for that? The Brazilian national team is a shambles. I would bet on USAmericans playing in Manaus, Recife and Natal and the 2020 Olympics will be in Istanbul.  Why would you build a bullet train when there is no existing passenger rail service? Rio is not just in a bubble, it is a bubble.

something for the weekend calumet

1) There is no way to separate the social and cultural phenomenon of sports mega-events, the production of elite sport and the consumption of spectacle, from the circulation and accumulation of four types of capital: political, symbolic, cultural and economic.

2) Sport is increasingly used as a mechanism for the accumulation of all these forms of capital because it is easily detached from the politics of urban life. The combined actions of government, media, finance capital and mega-event rights holders work to differentiate the social and economic costs of mega-events from the provision of housing, transportation, education, sanitation, health care and human rights. This separation is facilitated by the emotional and historical milieus of sports competitions which frame the hosting of events within the non-rational, the patriotic or the intangible. The invention, production, marketing, and consumption of sports mega-events rarely includes complete information regarding the scope, scale and cost of urban and social interventions thereby constructing and maintaining a public veil of ignorance regarding the event.

3) The accelerated cycles of exceptional events has diluted their unique character, increased the scale of intervention and created a permanent and revolving “state of exception” (Agamben  2005). The global peregrinations of “celebration capital” (Boykoff 2013) have created trans-national knowledge sharing networks that continually evolve to meet the logistical, political and infrastructural challenges posed by hosts. These networks articulate with local, vested interests to extract maximum capital (in all its forms) within the event`s temporal horizon (seven years in the case of the Olympics and World Cup).  

4) In order for a maximum of accumulation to occur in the event horizon a specific mode of production needs to be imported and implemented. This mode of production can be considered a “Mega-event industrial complex” that is highly mobile and highly flexible, using metropolitan, state, national and international actors to transform the political, economic and socio-spatial dynamics of hosts. The mode of production requires extensive political, urban and social interventions in order to stimulate flows and circulations to the maximum degree possible. However, these flows are heavily directed and controlled, are of a certain type and have enduring effects on the exercise of power.

5) The general tendency of the mega-event mode of production is to limit the “right to the city” through the installation of a new form of governmentality (Foucault 2004, 108) that uses apparatuses of security as its essential technical element.  The mode of production can also be understood as a series of techniques, deployments, and tactics that restructures urban space through the mechanisms of discipline and security. This apparatus is meant to transform the use value of the city for local residents into exchange value for more mobile agents, thus transferring economic capital to higher circuits while allowing for the unfettered accumulation of political and symbolic capital by local and national politicians.  No informed population with a strong civil society would consensually submit to this outlandish proposal, thus the security apparatus functions to establish and guarantee these new circulations through the exercise of violence.

Agambem, Giorgio.2005. States of Exception. . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Boykoff, Jules. 2013. Celebration Capitalism. Forthcoming.
Foucault, Michel. 2004. Security, Territory, Population. Editions du Seuil/Gallimard. New York: Picador.

Lies, Truth and Chico

It`s almost too easy to pick on the CBF and the World Cup organizing committee, but they really do deserve all of the opprobrium that we can shovel on them, so let`s get to it.

Soccerex, the global football business conference, was as depressing and vapid as usual. One of the particular lowlights was the presentation offered by Ricardo Trade and Bebeto. The former is the head of something at the CBF and the LOC and the latter was a fine footballer in his day, but appears to be taking nips of electric kool-aid between electroshock sessions. Bebeto said the following at least half a dozen times, “when you`re a player, you have no idea what goes into making a World Cup, but when you`re on this side of things, you realize it’s a lot of work.” Genius! It`s probably better that Bebeto has completely ignored his duties as a federal legislator to take up a position on the left shoulder of whatever authority figure is strutting around.

The meat of the LOC`s presentation looked like it had just crawled out of Graciliano Ramos` Vidas Secas. Don`t bother asking for a copy because their public relations directive is to not give out any information. However, once in awhile, if you go to enough of these presentations, they let out something that might actually be true and I think I discovered a piece of reality in Trade`s brutal, condescending powerpoint:

   ·         Total investment in World Cup associated projects (including federal, state and city)- R$112.8 billion.

   ·         Total anticipated impact on Gross Domestic Production (PIB) – R$64.5 billion

You read correctly. According to the figures presented by the 2014 Organizing Committee at the world`s largest soccer business conference, for every R$1 invested in the World Cup, the Brazilian public can expect a return of R$0.57. Brilliant! [ed: apparently inspired by the deputy, the author begun to repeat things]

It is also important to point out (again) that the word sustainability is so hollow that if you hold it to your ear you can hear Mother Nature crying a polluted river. What no “sustainable” account of stadium construction or reform ever takes into consideration is the amount of energy and resources that go into making a monumental structure that will require even more energy to run. Does it really matter that the stadium in Brasilia will be LEED Platinum Certified if there is no demand for the principal use of the thing after 7 football matches in 2014? I`m not surprised that people say and do anything to drive up costs and to project themselves and their overblown ideas as good for society, but that these insipid discourses get accepted by journalists and the general public as evident truths is disturbing in the extreme.

Fuleco. That was not the name that received the most votes on this website but it is now the official name of the tatu-bola mascot of the World Cup. It is a mixture of “futebol” and “ecologia”. What with its high use of chemical fertilizers for fields, hundreds of thousands of kilometers of air travel, equipment manufactured in slave-like conditions in East Asia, the consumption of tens of millions of cans and bottles, vip travel in limousines and private jets, traffic jams for the rest of time, the creative destruction of cities and stadiums and the immense stresses on sewage systems in host cities it is very clear that football is an ecologically sensitive sport! It all makes perfect sense. If they weren`t walking around with pockets stuffed with public money, one would almost feel badly for the adults that have to swallow this garbage as part of their jobs. According to one report, upon hearing his name, the tatu-bola tried to commit suicide. Where are the Brazilian Kevorkians to help him along?

Cafusa. This is the name of the ball for the Confederations Cup. Confusa? Confucious? No, no, that is the ball of the 2026 World Cup in China. I`m cafuso. But thankfully because I know that all of Brazil is defined by Carnaval, Futebol and Samba, I can hopefully remember the name just like every other John Carioca. Why not pair cafusa will a ball named mulosa (mulata gostosa) and get all of the stereotypes into play?

In support of a Maracanã publico e popular

Unlike his former strike partner, Romàrio is on the CBF`s case and has just gathered enough signatures to open a Parliamentary Inquiry into the current and former leadership. The rot runs deep at the CBF and opening the black box as the World Cup starts coming into view is going to challenge FIFA`s newly re-proclaimed dedication to transparency. Força aì deputado!

The Maracanã is ours! O Maraca è nosso! The Rio de Janeiro State Legislature met yesterday to discuss the possibility of a plebecite for a yes or no vote on the privatization of the Maracanã. There are some strange bedfellows in this process, but the battle for the soul of Brazil`s most famous (and most expensive) stadium is heating up with major victories for the people. 

Here`s Chico Buarque on the subject, with more to come soon: