More Than A Mouthful

As I was debating on Radio Nacional the infinite reasons to maintain the Maracanã  complex in public hands,  there was a march organized by the state government to protest a law that would more evenly divide petroleum royalities among Brazil`s states. The countermarch to protest the authoritarian regime of Sèrgio Cabral was met with pepper spray and violent repression. On the same day, as the FIFA Vice President tried to tour the Maracanã , he was met with protests by indigenous groups and private citizens while at the same time a group of indigenous folk were performing for delegates at Soccerex where Ricardo Trade and Bebeto bored the pants off a room full of people who had drunk deeply from a bottomless cup of kool-aid. They also revealed that the World Cup will generate a R$64.5 billion return on a R$112.8 billion investment.  

In previous weeks dozens of people have been butchered in Sao Paulo and an 18 year old kid was killed in front of his grandmother in Rio by Military Police in an UPP favela who stormed into his room as he slept. The auditor general opened yet another investigation into mega-event fraud, this time dealing with the World Military Games, which blew a hole in the budget for no particular reason other than to keep in good form for the World Cup and Olympics. It`s raining in Rio which means that transportation has come to a standstill, except for the public buses which continue to kill people at an alarming rate. The opposite problem is happening to the ferries which cannot get away from the docks because there is so much trash in the bay that their motors are getting clogged. That, however,  is better than taking a car, because there is always the chance that a roving mob will stop traffic and assault everyone, or if you`re driving on Avenida Brasil where if you are not swerving to avoid the crack addicts pushed out of the newly-occupied favelas, you might find yourself having to go backwards to avoid a gunfight. This generally chaotic situation, we are told, will be solved through technology from the battlefields of Afganestan, as the Federal Police are in the process of buying surveillance balloons which can take photos of faces from a distance of up to 3km. 

In the midst of this chaos, it is no wonder that the CBF with its former president in exile and a current vice-president under investigation by the Federal Police is firing its coaches, shuffling the deck chairs and starting up the orchestra with the icebergs on the horizon. Save us Fuleco!