Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio De Janeiro on the Brink

by Juliana Barbassa

  Beyond Alemão, murders, street theft, and robberies in public transportation were up. Cariocas were back to swapping horror stories during lunch breaks and Sunday barbecues.

  Street urchins in ragged shorts and flip-flops roamed in clusters again, new incarnations of that kid who’d once stuck a piece of broken glass against my ribs, holding me up for pocket change. There were many of these children, a little younger, a little older, mostly boys, sometimes girls, all hard-eyed, bony, and tough. Caring little for their own lives, they moved with a fearlessness that was heart-wrenching and chilling at once. I watched them hopscotch through eight lanes of rapid-fire traffic with a maniacal grin to reach a promising target, and knock over a cyclist to steal his ride. Petty theft in my neighborhood went up more than 60 percent in a year.

  Tension coursed like an electrical current under the rush and heave of the urban fabric. When it exploded, the damage was far uglier than anyone had anticipated.

  Rio was once the sort of place where armed, off-duty officers killed homeless kids. The most stunning instance happened in 1993, when cops took potshots at the sixty or so kids sleeping in front of the Candelária Cathedral downtown, killing eight before they scrambled. The outlines of the children’s bodies were spray-painted onto the sidewalk, creating a sort of anti-postcard of Rio, a portrait of the times: in the background, the soaring sanctuary, a symbol of our aspirations; in the foreground, a reminder of our worst sins.

  When I returned to Rio, my bundle of expectations included the hope that cowardice of this sort was a thing of the past. The summer of 2014 brought it back, only this time it wasn’t police. Cariocas began to catch kids suspected of street theft, or in one case, stealing food from a supermarket, and administer their own version of justice.

  This particular strain of cruelty intersected with my daily routine on the last night of January. It came in the form of a young black man, a teenager still, who was beaten, stripped naked, and bound to a street sign.

  Neighbors saw him, his fingers gripped around the arc of the bike U-lock that pulled his throat against the metal post. Someone called Yvonne de Mello. She lived around the block and worked with traumatized kids. She’d been a first responder to the Candelária massacre. More than two decades later, she was the one who sat with the young man and called the fire department for help. While they waited, he told her he was seventeen and came from the state of Maranhão, where the northeastern coast approaches the equator. The firemen had to use a blowtorch to get the lock off. The teenager was taken to a hospital for treatment, but escaped overnight, as if knowing what would come.

  In just over twenty-four hours, a photo of the seventeen-year-old and details of the case had circulated widely through newspapers and social media platforms. As they spread, Yvonne began to get death threats. Neighborhood watchdog sites and online forums overflowed with comments, some calling for calm and others praising the vigilantes, inciting more violence.

  “Wake up you idiots . . . people in Flamengo know he’s a THIEF who robs elderly ladies and women every day. What they did wasn’t enough, they needed alcohol and a lighter to ‘sterilize’ the delinquent,” wrote one man.

  “Too bad I didn’t pass by with my Pit-bull to let him play a little. Bandido bom é bandido morto,” wrote another.

  This happened at the end of my block, a pretty residential stretch shaded by tall trees draped with orchids and bromeliads. This was the corner where I paused every morning, waiting for a break in traffic so I could dash into the park for a run. It was where I’d catch my first glimpse of the Sugarloaf’s craggy face.

  After that January, that spot on the sidewalk would be a daily reminder that among my neighbors were those who’d slip a U-lock around the skinny neck of a teenager and leave him exposed and bleeding on a public street. These were the same men who stood next to me in the supermarket line, chatting about prices and the weather, who jogged by me, nodding their good mornings.

  This was Rio de Janeiro in early 2014.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE CUP OF CUPS

  Brazil’s World Cup felt like an impending disaster.

  As the countdown to kickoff on June 12, 2014, went from months to weeks, strikes and skirmishes continued to break out around the country. São Paulo choked in its own traffic as subway employees went on strike and were repressed by police. Housing activists invaded the offices of construction companies to protest money spent on stadiums. In Rio, a bus driver stoppage turned violent, leaving nearly five hundred damaged buses. The northeast saw street cleaners in Fortaleza and public servants in Salvador walk off their jobs. Federal police threatened to quit, shutting down immigration and frontier checkpoints.

  Passing through the terminal at Rio’s international airport two weeks before the World Cup’s first match, I watched as a great rectangular ceiling tile came loose and fell on deplaning passengers. In a cartoonish sequence, it knocked down a fence and revealed the startled construction workers behind it. The airport’s refurbishing was two years behind schedule. Even the most essential equipment for the Cup, the stadiums themselves, were astonishingly late. The São Paulo arena was running so late that its test match would be the one for which it was being built—the opening game between Brazil and Croatia.

  All this made FIFA officials very nervous. From the start, the Swiss-based organization had clashed with Brazil’s slow-moving World Cup machine. FIFA’s secretary-general, Jérôme Valcke, offended officials all the way to the president when he retorted in 2012 that the country needed “a kick in the butt” to speed up its organization. He later apologized, but FIFA officials and Brazilian leaders traded barbs throughout the fraught preparations. Dilma called FIFA officials “a weight” on her back; Valcke vented during a debate in Switzerland that he’d been “through hell” dealing with Brazilians.

  Though they didn’t want to hear it from others, Brazilian authorities were also worried. Many of them had staked their political futures on the World Cup’s success. Their determination to make the competition go as smoothly as possible led to a rash of decisions meant to ward off foreseeable problems.

  To ensure the free flow of tourists, VIPs, and teams, all sixty-four game days were declared full or partial holidays in their host cities. In Rio, the mayor canceled all non–World Cup public events and halted construction projects for two months.

  Copacabana’s homeless vanished before the tournament. They would reappear after the monthlong competition, and the state prosecutor would denounce their forced removal, but during the Cup the beach was free of panhandlers and ready to play the role of party central.

  There would be no tolerance for disruption during the Cup—the message came from the president herself. To prevent protests, Rio’s police arrested more than one dozen activists before the games started. Cops got new Kevlar-plated suits, helmets, gas masks, and belts loaded with a Taser, a pistol, extra ammunition, a nightstick, and handcuffs—twenty-two pounds of gear that turned a street cop into an intimidating Darth Vader look-alike. The federal government readied twenty-one thousand soldiers for action.

  In spite of these preparations, there were plenty of signs that much could go unpredictably, embarrassingly wrong. Two weeks before kickoff, a bus carrying the Brazilian team to their training ground was surrounded by a mob of public school teachers on strike. The players, usually afforded the reverence of minor gods, stared in shock or covered their faces as police raised batons against teachers. Their banners called for more funds for education and less spending on stadiums.

  In June, on the eve of the World Cup, a deep ambivalence pervaded the soccer nation. A Pew Research Center survey found that two-thirds of Brazilians were dissatisfied with the state of the country and the economy. Most felt the Cup had worsened conditions by taking resources away from essential public services.

  For the politicians who’d bet on the success of the Cup, this was a nightmarish reversal. What if this dark, sul
len mood lingered? And worse—what if millions poured into the streets and manifestations turned violent, with tear gas wafting into stadiums and frightened tourists hiding in their hotels?

  Rather than just waiting to find out, the federal government went on the offensive with a national advertising campaign. Its goal: to promote the World Cup to Brazilians. It was ludicrous, unthinkable, but there it was. Pelé lent his image to a government-sponsored competition for the most elaborate street ornamentation. Posters in subway stations pictured happy children playing with soccer balls in streets festooned with green and yellow; a minute-long ad showed Brazilians drumming, dancing, and grinning like mad while touting the jobs, the tourism revenue, and the refurbished public transportation they would inherit after the competition. It ended with the campaign’s slogan: “This is our Cup; it’s the Cup of Cups.”

  The country had been building toward this moment for years; now that it had arrived, nothing, absolutely nothing, was as expected. Just as no one saw this coming, no one could predict what lay ahead. The effect was profoundly unsettling.

  The ads only underscored the strangeness of it all. A Brazil that required an advertising campaign to jump-start enthusiasm for futebol was uncharted terrain.

  The only reassuring element in this scenario was the Seleção itself: the majority of Brazilians still trusted that their team would make them proud.

  The year before, Brazil had won its third Confederations Cup in a row. Brazil went into the World Cup with some of the most expensive defenders in international soccer. And there was the golden boy, Neymar. Lean and wiry, he was a dribbler with a light touch who’d been the Confederations Cup’s best player. All he needed to climb the ranks of the sport to the top was victory on a World Cup pitch.

  Even Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, a gruff man of few words, overflowed with confidence: “We will be world champions.” Sixty-four years was too long to marinate in loss. It was time to reclaim the Maracanã.

  The first match was in São Paulo. Rain had burnished the gray city to a silver sheen and the winter light was clean, unfiltered, sharpening the edges of the angular new stadium.

  For sports fans around the world, the Brazil versus Croatia match marked the beginning of four tense weeks; for Brazilians, it was the nadir of a long slog during which optimism had curdled into disappointment, into outrage at their own government and at FIFA, and even into regret.

  Then, on that twelfth of June, this: the pristine stadium under a luminous sky, the buzz of the gathering crowd, the stands snapping with color. Croatia’s checkered red-and-white jerseys popped like gingham tablecloths against a wash of Brazil’s vivid yellow.

  There was the Seleção lined up, shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm. The sun had set and the floodlights carved out each player’s outline against the grass. The first strains of Brazil’s national anthem lanced through the hum in the arena. Neymar lowered his head into his hand, overcome with emotion. When he looked up, his lips were a tight white line. The men strained for control. Some squeezed their eyes shut and turned inward; others looked to the sky for relief. Defender David Luiz enunciated each word with the zeal of a holy warrior; team captain Thiago Silva furrowed his brow, eyes closed against the battering emotions and the roar of tens of millions who sang along.

  Theirs was a fraught task—to win before a nation that had widely questioned the idea of holding a World Cup and yet still expected the Seleção to win. Perhaps it was the raw sentiment stamped on the players’ faces; perhaps it was the old habit of dusting off the flag and coming together for the Cup. But once the short, FIFA-regulation clip of the anthem was over, Brazilians in the stands ignored the rules and carried the next three stanzas in a thunderous a capella.

  It was as if something unclenched inside the stadium. There had been protest, tensions, disagreements, violence even in the previous months. But this was the World Cup. In Brazil. The mounting dread of the past year dissolved as the hymn echoed in the stadium. There was the canary yellow against the green. All else dropped away. At that moment, and for the next four weeks, the world would revolve around a soccer ball.

  The game itself started ominously. Ten minutes in, Brazil’s Marcelo scored the first goal of the Cup—for Croatia. His mistake was met with a sepulchral silence; his eyes popped as they panned the crowd for one beat, two beats. The metaphor was there for the taking: Brazil, ever the country of the future, perennially unable to marshal its resources and fulfill its potential, was at it again, starting its Cup of Cups by undermining itself. This sentiment was reinforced when rows of floodlights blinked out minutes later, plunging nearly half of the $8 million stadium in darkness. For a few minutes, the prospect of disaster loomed again.

  Then the lights came back on, Neymar snapped to life and tied the match with a shot that ricocheted off the post. Brazil muscled to a 3–1 finish; the tournament was on.

  With each game, angst gave way to jubilation, because first and foremost, the World Cup was primarily about futebol . . . and the play was astounding. Tightly contested, fast-moving, high-scoring matches drove fans to delirium with dramatic finishes that often extended into overtime and penalty kicks.

  With three, even four matches a day, lovers of the sport could gorge on world-class play. The round of sixteen was the longest in a World Cup ever: the eight games were packed with an additional two and a half hours of action. While the ball was rolling, soccer was the story, not the marches that failed to materialize or the heavily armed police that surrounded stadiums, in case protesters changed their minds.

  Early on, surprising contenders emerged. Colombia. Costa Rica. Chile, which knocked out Spain. Mexico stood up to Brazil in a valiant 0–0 draw that felt like a win, thanks to an impressive performance by goalie Guillermo Ochoa.

  There was brilliance, such as Tim Howard’s sixteen saves against Belgium or Arjen Robben’s breathtaking sprints, and pure joy like that of Mexico coach Miguel Herrera, who let loose in bellowing, fist-pumping, leaping celebrations that sent his tie and coat tails flapping. There was that holy-shit moment when Luis Suárez . . . did he really sink his teeth into that Italian? Fury or farce, the bite was dissected and debated for days.

  Whatever the latest twist, the action was magnificent and magnetic. Even Brazil’s toughest critic, FIFA’s Valcke, conceded: “This is the best World Cup in terms of the soccer.”

  Beyond the stadiums, logistics functioned. The traffic flowed; the sixty-four strategic holidays took care of that. With a 15 percent drop in business travel, airports performed adequately. Expectations were low and easy to meet. Fiascos that might have been played up as disasters in another country were dismissed as glitches—the blinking spotlights in the opening match, the faulty Internet connections in stadium press rooms, the security breach that allowed nearly one hundred Chile fans to break into the Maracanã.

  Even an overpass collapse that crushed two people to death in Belo Horizonte got little attention. The mayor brushed it off, saying “accidents happen,” and that was that. Short of a catastrophic stadium collapse or a murderous rampage involving tourists, no one wanted to hear bad news.

  In Rio, foreign journalists and visitors surrendered to the city’s physical beauty and the charms of its ever-simpatico natives, with their inclusive street parties and penchant for striking up a conversation with just about anyone, particularly over soccer. The warm welcome (nearly) made up for the occasional canceled flights, picked pockets, or stratospherically priced hotel rooms with spotty Internet connections and a trickle of hot water. No one throws gargantuan last-minute bashes like Brazil, and the Cup at its best was a country-wide, monthlong Carnaval-meets-beach holiday. Who was going to gripe about the details?

  The epicenter of this madness was Copacabana. Day and night, it swarmed with gleeful soccer fans in various stages of inebriation, dress-up—in national colors, mascot outfits, ridiculous wigs—or undress, as the visitors reveled in the balmy Carioca winter. T
wo weeks into this joyous mess it was clear Brazil’s World Cup would be unforgettable. Not because nothing went wrong, but because while the game was on and the sun was shinning, it was the only place to be.

  A sunburnt Brit I met in Copacabana summed it all up. I was walking along the ocean, scanning the crowd for friends. He was wading to shore. Cheery, chubby, with thin blond hair plastered to his head, he looked like a drenched duckling in dripping knee-length breeches.

  He beamed at me. I smiled back.

  “How are you liking the Cup?” I asked.

  He raised the beer can in his hand, shook it to show it was empty.

  “I’m here in the sun, right, up to my waist in water, drinking a beer, and watching football,” he said. “What’s not to like?”

  Indeed. Minutes later, I’d found my own happy place in front of the giant FIFA Fan Fest screen, my back against a palm tree, my feet planted in the warm sand, ready for Brazil versus Cameroon. It was the first game I’d watched with a crowd, and the atmosphere was all there: the chanting, the happy Babel of accents. Behind us, a clutch of twenty-somethings hollered at the screen, threw their arms around each other, and bounced in delight anytime Brazil approached the goal, and all the while carrying on a flirtatious exchange with an assortment of bemused Europeans.

  By the end of the first half, Neymar had sunk two balls into the net to Cameroon’s single goal. I gave myself over to the emotional swell. Brazilians cheer dramatically, elaborately, with grand displays of sentiment. There were those who dropped to their knees, begged or thanked the heavens, weaving elaborate promises to a pantheon of saints. Others cursed and threatened and paced, turning their back on unforgivable misses. Some walked away at crucial moments, unable to stand the pressure. Many just kept their eyes glued to the action, silent and entranced, as if they were personally responsible for the team and any distraction could throw the match.