Brazilian Porn redux, with Mr. Balls!

There was a brief moment when I allowed myself to believe that the perversions of Rio’s mad rush to privatize life might have hit a democratic roadblock.

After the May 9^th “revelation” that the Maracanã was being awarded to the same company contracted to do the economic viability study, on May 10^th Judge Gilsele Guida de Faria suspended the decision. In her ruling, the judge pointed out a million obvious things wrong with the contract including the lack of transparency, the conflicts of interest, and the huge loss of money for the public.

The most shocking piece of datum was this: the economic viability study suggested that the private management company would make approximately R$157,025,000 per year while paying the state a rent of R$4,500,000 (2.86% of profits). If this isn`t a direct transfer of wealth from public to private hands, then there are still WMDs in Iraq.

Mr. Balls enters the running for FIFA uber-mascot.
Once he parachutes into the stadium, a thousand
Fulecos will roll out of the ruptured scrotum.  

Beyond the financials and complete ludicrousness of privatizing one of the world`s most famous stadiums (after having totally disfigured it), the troubling element for Cariocas and Brazilians should be the fact that their democracy has been kicked in the Mr. Balls so hard that its growth may be permanently stunted. What we saw here was a state level judge identifying potential illegal activity on the part of the executive and sending down a ruling to stop the loss of public goods. The executive branch then cranked up its lawyers, went to the president of the tribunal to say “this will be a grave threat to public order and economic stability”. The president of the tribunal, Leila Mariano (who will no doubt have received future political or current financial benefit), ruled last night to suspend the suspension, allowing everything to fall into place so that public culture and a fledging democracy can be pulverized, put into pipes and smoked.

This ruling represents the end of checks and balances in Rio de Janeiro`s democrapitalist system. The Maracanã, tortured into submission will likely spend the next 35 years as a pet monkey held on a leash held by Brazil`s biggest capital interests. The novela of the Maracanã will continue but as with all porn flicks we know the sticky, unilateral ending.  

Pornographic Brazilian Pornography

There was yet more death and mayhem on the streets of Rio as another cyclist was killed. This time (as opposed to the triathlete killed in Leblon) there will be no solidarity cycle and no collective gnashing of teeth  as the cyclist was working, delivering water and gas canisters along impossibly crowded streets in the Zona Norte. The second paragraph in the ever-sensitive O Bobo was dedicated to the traffic problems caused by the accident. An excellent mapping initiative that will register crimes committed against cyclists has come of these recent deaths, but Rio remains an insanely dangerous place to ride a bike.

Following the death in Leblon, O Bobo revealed that on average, Rio’s buses accumulate traffic fines like the Guarda Municipal collects crack addicts. One bus on the line that killed the triathlete had 136 infractions in four years.  There have been innumerable fawning media reports about Rio’s intelligent city project and the mayor has used his technological initiatives to hobnob with the global elite (really looking forward to that Clinton visit in December!). But what’s the point of having an expensive IBM monitoring system when all you can do is watch in HD the streets flood and people get killed by buses? A “smart city” doesn’t willfully place its citizens at risk and then spend millions to watch them suffer.

Way back in 2007 when no one outside of Rio knew the name Eduardo Paes, he was plugging away as Rio’s state secretary of sport and leisure as the city prepared for the Pan American Games. The Olympic Stadium was over budget, poorly placed, behind schedule and, surprise surprise, poorly constructed. It also took on the name of a corrupt and disgraced former FIFA president. The stadium, like its declining namesake, has been closed for business because the roof is about to fall down. It has likely been in this condition for some time and the public has been at risk for years. Paes explained the other day that the stadium was constructed in a hurry  and that he was not at the head of the city government at the time so, hey, what can you do about the past? What exactly was Paes doing in his position of the state’s most important sporting institution when the stadium was constructed? If it is anything like the current secretary of Sport and Leisure, he likely gave nonsensical and offensive interviews with the intention of using the position as a political springboard. (Amber Alert: Marcia Lins).

Oh yes, because of old João’s peccadilloes with the ISL case and FIFA bribery he has not only had to resign from his honorary position at the IOC, but also at FIFA. The mayor-king has also given a green light for the changing of the Engenhão stadium name saying, “I’ve changed the name of a lot of things in Rio. I’ve changed them because I waned to. Botafogo has the naming rights and can call the stadium whatever it wants.” A little known fact is that Botafogo F.R. (who has the concessionary rights for a song) changed the name of the stadium years ago to Stadium Rio. Maybe we should change the name to Joana Havelange, João’s granddaughter who is one of the top people on the 2014 WC organizing committee, just to keep the black box clamped shut. More reasonably, there is a movement by several of Rio’s council people to put the name Nilton Santos on the Engenhão. Personally, I think the name Milton Santos would elevate geo-political consciousness a bit more (if you’re into geography porn).

In case all of this news didn’t excite you, here’s the money shot: After 63 years in the public domain, more than 750 million dollars of deforms in the last six years and a total dis-characterization of one of the world’s greatest sporting venues,  the Maracanã  has been privatized by the State of Rio de Janeiro. The winning consortium is comprised of IMX (Eike Batista’s main holding company that was contracted by the government to do the economic viability study), Odebrecht (Lula’s favorite civil construction firm), and AEG (a US based entertainment group that owns MLS teams and administers 120 stadiums around the world). The details of the concession are too painful to write down, but the rub is that over the next 35 years the state will receive less than 20% of its investment. I will be looking through this particular slice of this futuristic porn in the coming months but might not have the courage (or falta de vegonha) to write it down.

Photos from the Novo Maracana

Protest dancing, shoes optional

The protests outside of the stadium were not seen by many members of the media because they had been bused in government vans from the Sambodromo directly into the stadium and were told that they would not be permitted to enter and leave. This "worse than China treatment" (as one journalist put it), compounded a hugely confusing and overly-long credential process. Some jornalists spent more than six hours getting their credentials because the third party that had been contracted for the service had experienced a power outage of some kind and had not been able to print up the badges prior to the arrival of the media. 

Flying the flag with the question of the day.

The protest was organized by the Maraca é Nosso movement, a group affilitated with the Comite Popular da Copa e das Olimpiadas. The hundred-odd protesters included indigenous folk from the Aldeia Maracana settlement, parents, professors and students from the Escola Municipal Arthur Friendenrich, athletes and trainers form the two Olympic training facilities slated for destruction, members of the Comite Popular and the Frente Nacional dos Torcedores. Femen made an appearance and you can see the gratuitous photos of naked breasts on the globo site. 

The stands as television screen. Sit back and relax. 

 Inside the stadium, the show was on. This kind of display was meant to test the stadium`s lighting and sound capacity. The sound system was predictably bad, but the lighting reminded me of big concernt venues in North America, or going to an NBA game. The switching of lights and focus is a hallmark of multi-use arenas and this new arena will no doubt excell in the production of concerts and spectacle. Once they figure out the sound system, this will no doubt be one of Brazil`s most blinged-out concert venues.

A Praia do Maraca

Many of the drinking fountains were not working and the food service was not up and running so the Consorcio Rio 2014, in charge of the construction, handed out coke and water to the workers that comprised the majority of the audience (although selling of tickets for R$50 was the norm around the stadium for days leading up to the game). The Consorcio also gave away what could, in desperation, be called food: pringles and soggy sandwiches. The lack of trashcans was a problem. The lack of running water ensured that everythign had to be served out of plastic bottles and put into plastic cups. There was no clear recycling program and as a result, the inside of the stadium ended up looking like Ipanema after a sun-soaked Sunday (minus the floating arms). 

Having been to many stadiums and having seen the poor quality of construction relative to the seat installation that followed the deforms undertaken for the 2007 Pan, I was disappointed to see yet again that we find it very difficult to install seats properly in Brazilian stadia. The seats were either installed crookedly, had hugely varying distances beteen them or had confusing arms rests. In this photo we can see a bulge in the concrete that has twisted the yellow seat leftward. The seat has no arm rest, but the ones on either side do, in the blue row in front, some seats have one arm rest and others two, some none. It`s a small point perhaps, but the general impression is that the seats were all installed hastily and without much attention to detail. The same happened the last time around, as I noted in this post. 

No to privatization and an end to demolitions!

The protest made its way into the stadium and was fortunately not repressed by security forces, although I did hear one Consorcio 2014 worker shout over his walkie-talkie "we`ve got to get those people out of there". The banner is a call to maintain the stadium in public hands and to end demolitions and forced removals in Rio de Janeiro. The lack of action on the part of the security forces was a good sign for Brazilian democracy as is the fact that people are willing to risk getting beaten up to politicize an event that has been de-natured by most of the Brazilian media. 

Right hand only? 

Volte Sempre!

That the World Cup is the culmination of a process that is turning fans into clients was evidenced by the hundreds of green-clad Consorcio 2014 greeters that encircled the stadium before and after the game. On the way from the Metro I was greeted by a glad-handing troop of young Cariocas that were happy to point the way to the stadium. There is only one direction to the stadium so it was impossible to go wrong, but their presence indicated that the New Maraca will be dedicated to customer service. On the way out of the stadium, these same people lined the exits, cheering for the fans. The phrase of the night that really struck me was "Volte sempre" - come back always. This is the same phrase that we hear in the supermarket, the shopping mall, or in Wal Mart. This is perhaps the saddest twist to the entire saga. The Maracana is being promoted as an entertainment option, not as a historically important site of social and cultural reproduction. The presence of the hundreds of Consorcio Greeters consolidated the corporate nature of the event. That this has come at a cost of one point something billion R$ is disgusting, that it has come at the expense of democracy is quite something else. 

As I had gone into the stadium before the end of the protest, I missed these joyful moments that occurred sometime after the game started. So much for my short-lived optimism, but at least I was correct about needing to have running shoes and a gas mask. 

Hunting White Parrots

In an article entitled “White Elephant Hunting” published in the New York Times Goal Blog today, we are presented with a number of fallacies that justify the massive public outlay on stadiums that will be used for the World Cup. The author identifies White Elephants in Manaus, Brasilia, Natal and Cuiabá, citing the Federal Deputy Romario`s criticisms of the stadia but then quickly saying that Romario gets it wrong because:

1. He doesn`t understand Brazilian history. The northeast has traditionally been the poorest region of Brazil and merits the investment in World Cup associated infrastructure projects (citing Fortaleza`s metro extension). 

2. Even though some of these investments were planned before the World Cup, the event is giving a push to completion. 

3. Brazil is huge, so it makes sense to include cities like Manaus and Cuiabá (which is erroneously identified as having a larger population than Atlanta) in order to balance the distribution of the tournament`s investments.

The challenge, the article goes on, is how to make the stadiums useful after the tournament. The felicitous solution? Privatize the stadiums and have monster truck shows, religious gatherings, football matches, and international artists. Shakira will be making a tour of Brazil every six months is she is to play to crowds in all of these White Elephants. Basically, the idea is to force the public to pay for stadiums they cannot afford and at the expense of other public investment,  privatize them, and then charge them top R$ to go to events at high-tech multi-use arenas every week.

The example of the Fonte Nova is a classic piece of data omission. The author tells us that Freddy Adu`s (a recently transferred US player) Bahia is one of the best supported teams in Brazil, and this is true, but their average attendance last year was 18,981. The capacity of the Novo Fonte Nova is 50,000 and will need “at least 33 well-attended football games a year to make it economically viable”. What is the definition of a well-attended football match? How will the average attendances of 2,000 in Cuiabá help to pay for the debt servicing on the stadium? The author thinks that stadiums could be filled by reducing ticket prices, yet as I have demonstrated here repeatedly, the tendency in all of Brazilian football is the increase of tickets to games and even the government is worried about a gentrification process, so how or why does the author think that clubs will look for ways to reduce ticket prices? I agree that prices should be reduced but the political economy of Brazilian football is headed in the opposite direction.

These kind of omissions are a familiar type of journalism associated with these events that only want to tell the “happy story” of global sport, ignoring the economic and social realities in order to circle back in the line at the kool-aid punch bowl. The following quote from the article is typical of such reporting and does nothing to advance the debate, nor to discuss honestly the real problems associated with the preparations and hosting of the event: “Nevertheless, amid talk of delays and spiraling costs, the 2014 World Cup will at least be an event for all Brazil. In a country where the north-south cultural and economic divide is so deeply engrained, that at least is something to celebrate” It is not merely talk of spiraling costs, but a massive public outlay that will have real consequences once the fans and reporters have moved on to the next host. How is hosting an event in 12 cities something for all Brazil? What about Belém? Why Curitiba? What does all Brazil mean socially when tickets for the World Cup have started to be sold at over $500?

The article`s closing argument has some kind of vague emotional appeal that FIFA must love as their product is the passion for the game and not the economic or social realities of their event: “Back when I was a young man, I never dreamed I’d see the World Cup here,” said Brasilino Almeida, an elderly Salvador construction worker who helped build both the original Fonte Nova stadium in 1950, and, 60 years later, its modern replacement. It is a sentiment that will be echoed in Cuiabá, Manaus and beyond.” Let’s say this person did work on the original stadium construction in 1950. Assuming 13 as the minimum age to lift a hammer on a northeastern worksite in 1950, this man now at least 76 years old – and he is still working on a construction site! [ed: to clarify, I never doubted the existence of this man, but find it absurd that at both ends of his life, no labor laws are being respected. Why is he still anywhere near a construction site at 76? Trotting out a old man to marvel at the wonders that hundreds of millions of mis-managed dollars can produce hardly qualifies as a strong argument for what is happening with the World Cup]. 

In sum, the article suggests that the Brazilian World Cup is rumored to be expensive, there may be some massive White Elephants roaming the land, we can see them and have them in our sights, but let`s not kill them because they will make us feel good for the 360 minutes of football (in Manaus, Cuiaba and Natal) that we won`t be able to afford to see in person. All Brazilian cities merit federal investment in infrastructure but we know that the projects associated with the World Cup were poorly planned, hastily executed (if at all) and may not serve the long-term needs of the cities or the country. There is no redress (as the author suggests) of historically-situated cultural or economic divides in World Cup investment, especially when we take into consideration the astronomical sums being invested in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics.

The author is keen to ignore the very criticisms that he identifies at the beginning of the article in order to sell the World Cup to an international audience. This article does not attempt to kill White Elephants, but to make them into bichos de estimação (pets).