DISPATCH
The land of sun, sex, and soccer couldn’t be more down
about the World Cup.
BY SHANNON SIMS JUNE 9, 2014 / http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/09/brazil_is_totally_screwed_world_cup_rio_2014?utm_content=buffere56be&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
But just hours later, the scene on the
freshly cleaned Ipanema Beach returned to the product Brazil sells best:
no-worries happiness. Sweaty Brazilians in skimpy bathing suits gathered their
beach chairs into semicircles facing the blue-green waves as they filled each
others' cups with beer, laughing loudly about their Carnaval shenanigans as
smiling vendors hawked fruit salad and traveling musicians kept everyone
tapping their sandy toes to samba's catchy rhythms.
But if the piles of garbage seemed high
after Carnaval, imagine during the World Cup. Hosting the world's biggest
sporting event, which begins on June 12 and runs for a month, was supposed to
be an opportunity for Brazil
“Brazilians sense that this
opportunity offers more bad than good. They await the Cup's arrival the way
high school students might await a test they haven't studied for.”
Nothing encapsulates this sense of
impending doom like the phrase imagina na Copa, "imagine during the
Cup." The three words first came to prominence through the popular song of
the same name released last year by the superstar country duo Fernando e Sorocaba Brazil ,
echoing out from street protests and during a recent bus strike in São Paulo
While in former host countries Germany and South Africa Porto Alegre Peru
But with a 2012 average monthly income of
$850, according to a report released last week by the Brazilian Institute of
Geography and Statistics (IBGE), most Brazilians can't afford to leave the
country for a month. Instead, they say they will just lay low. "We're
stocking up on everything," Yessica Souza Guimarães, a 28-year-old
administrative assistant and mother of two, explained as she leaned over one of
three shopping carts full of food at a grocery store in São Paulo
Beyond the traffic and inconveniences the
World Cup will bring to daily life, some fear it will bring something even
worse. In the back of Sat's, a popular chicken joint in Rio's Copacabana
neighborhood, the tone of a rowdy Saturday night darkened as the topic turned
to the Cup. The bar owner, Sérgio Rabello, spoke with a burning intensity.
"Look at crime in our country. Our
city is out of control. The police are underpaid and abusive. And now a bunch
of gringos will be showing up rowdy and drunk. There's no way this mixture will
go well. This cup is going to be like a bomba going off. People are going to
die."
His fears are not unfounded. Rio is in the midst of a crime wave on the dawn of the
World Cup. Homicide numbers are increasing in Rio state, with 1,459 people
killed just since January, a number that nearly matches the high-water mark
level of 2008, the year Rio 's favela
"pacification" program began, with its aggressive police sweeps
through the city's roughest areas. The attempt to stamp out crime in the
favelas may have even driven up street crime in other neighborhoods; street
robberies and vehicle theft numbers jumped this year as well. Even the police
are under fire: Police mortalities are up 40 percent from last year, driving
some police to walk off the job, demanding higher pay.
In an attempt to avoid the perfect storm of
police strikes and street protests during the World Cup, the government acceded
to the threat of strikes by offering a 15.8 percent pay raise to federal police
agents and calling an additional 5,300 federal troops from the military into Rio . Whether the additional cash and manpower will make
an impact in preventing crime from marring the experience of the 900,000
visitors expected to descend upon the city remains to be seen.
And instability goes beyond crime, too.
Major cities all across Brazil
Imagining the Cup is an exercise in
envisioning everyday inconveniences, but at a greater level, Brazilians worry
about the longer-term consequences of an $11.5 billion event in a country
plagued by corruption. In reality, the event is likely to cost closer to $13
billion; the $11.5 billion price tag for federal, state, and host-city
preparations was last updated in September of last year, and many of the works
included in the preparations are still unfinished. A recent Pew poll found that
61 percent of Brazilians "say hosting the World Cup is a bad thing for Brazil
In 2013, Brazil
In 2007, when Brazil
first won its bid to host the 2014 World Cup, the excitement was palpable, from
the parties in the Amazon basin to the fireworks over the Christ statue in Rio . Famously soccer-crazed, Brazil Brazil
Away from the glare of the stadium lights,
many Brazilians are afraid of how their country will be perceived with all eyes
on them. The recent Pew poll found that 75 percent of Brazilians think their
country should be more respected abroad than it currently is. But they are
evenly divided about whether the World Cup will help Brazil
Many fear that the world will view them as
just another Third World country, not ready
for primetime.
“Many fear that the world
will view them as just another Third World
country, not ready for primetime.”
A series of structural failures during the
stadium constructions, including the deaths of eight construction workers, have
frayed the nerves of Brazilians. As she watched the news of the collapse of
part of a stadium in São Paulo São Paulo , complained as he waited in line for a taxi at
the São Paulo airport about how the electricity
had gone out at the airport in Rio , leaving
him stranded there for eight hours. "What do you think the gringos will
think of us when they can't even use the airport because the electricity fails?
Do you think they'll be impressed?"
Some Brazilians don't need to even ask
these rhetorical questions. "We're not afraid of embarrassing ourselves
because we know we will," says Thiago Baranda, a public servant from Manaus
Infrastructure remains a major challenge
for Brazil
In preparation for the Cup and for the
Olympics in Rio de Janeiro
Preparations for the Cup were packaged into
election promises during the last presidential election. Now many of those
promises have been revealed to be unmet. For example, in 2010 a $300 million fund was
set aside to bolster national park infrastructure in anticipation of the event
under a project called "Cup Parks." It recently came to light,
however, that only 0.15 percent of those funds were distributed.
On June 1, in both São Paulo and Rio
de Janeiro, a party was held to celebrate the inauguration of a bullet train
connecting the two cities.* The party was tongue-in-cheek, of course:
Construction on the project has yet to begin. During the recent Easter holiday,
the 270-mile trip between the two cities on the potholed two-lane road took 12
hours. Millions of fans will be making this journey over the coming weeks.
Brazilians would likely recommend imagining being somewhere else.
But "Imagine During the Cup" is
not the only slogan Brazilians are using to communicate their dread about the
imminent train wreck of the World Cup. Other sayings are scrawled across walls
in every city across the country, with more appearing every day. The pedestrian
crossings in Rio are now stamped with
"FIFA Go Home." In the historical center of Salvador Rio 's courthouse, shouting,
"Não Vai Ter Copa!" ("There will be no Cup!").
But while these other slogans often tend
toward the political, there is something pure about the "Imagine During
the Cup." It is not a demand. It is not a rhetorical question. Instead it
speaks simply to the nationwide dread that cuts across all segments of society.
It is Brazilians united as one, as equals, shaking their heads, looking each
other in the eye, and muttering under their breath, "We're totally
screwed."
*This sentence originally stated that the
party was held in late May. It was June 1. Return to reading.
Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário