Brazil's Dance With the Devil : Fight for Democracy (9781608464333)

by Zirin, Dave

  The billions spent on World Cup stadiums sparked June’s outrage over corruption. A law which requires local governments to balance their budgets was suspended for cities hosting soccer matches, clearing the way for huge public spending which allegedly lined the pockets of politicians. In Cuiabá, five public works projects were begun on the same day. None of them will be finished in time for the tournament. Three different government websites claim to offer transparency over the World Cup spending, which is a dramatic change from the past in Brazil, when no transparency existed at all. The problem is that the sites all have different sets of numbers for the same projects. It’s all fiction. Nobody can really say what is being spent.2

  The article, published in ESPN: The Magazine, as mainstream a sports publication as we have in the United States, warned darkly that “anger may consume the World Cup.”

  In every city, protestors adapted their tactics based on the needs, ideas, and particular political traditions of that place. This led to wildly different assessments and characterizations of both the political character and the aim of the masses in the streets. Yet some slogans did shine through, reflecting that the protestors were extremely aware that the whole world was watching. One slogan within the protests was “The Giant Awakens.” They were of course drawing attention to themselves, the Brazilian masses. It was also a cheeky reference to a Fiat ad meant to hype the World Cup.3

  What was particularly interesting about these protests was that they made all the sense in the world, given the current set of frustrations throughout the country, and yet everyone was stunned. When I traveled to Brazil, most people in the community of social movements agreed that these sports extravaganzas would leave behind major collateral damage. Everyone agreed that the spending priorities for stadiums, security, and all attendant infrastructure were monstrous, given the health and education needs of the Brazilian people. Everyone agreed that the deficits incurred would be balanced on the backs of workers and the poor. What people disagreed upon was whether anybody would do anything about it.

  Most argued that the country had become too apathetic. After six years of economic growth, which followed thirty years of stagnation, military dictatorship, and the occasional spike of hyperinflation, people were either too content or apathetic to protest. The ruling Workers’ Party was generally popular; most expected that as soon as the countdown to the World Cup actually began, all restiveness over the disruption would be washed away in a sea of green, yellow, and blue flags. Others argued that statistics showing rising wealth and general quiescence actually masked a much deeper discontent. Brazil was simmering, and the lid could stay on the pot for only so long.

  The pot, in 2013, officially boiled over. After the demonstrations, I spoke to Maria Oliveira, a young labor activist. She said, “We are often hamstrung in Brazil by the fact that it is so diverse and so vast that no one thinks anyone has anything in common with anyone else on a national level. But the arrival of the mega-events, which was supposed to unify and nationalize support for the government, has instead unified and nationalized dissent.” Brazil’s financial capital, mighty São Paulo, the world’s third-largest city, was brought to a standstill. In Brazil’s political capital, Brasília, protestors occupied the roof of the National Congress building.4 In Rio, thousands marched on the legendary Maracanã Stadium at the start of the Confederations Cup. As fans cheered inside, police gassed and beat protestors outside.5 While sports journalists recorded the action on the field, reporters in the streets were shot with rubber bullets—they were targeted even after identifying themselves as members of the press.6

  This protest eruption has been referred to as the “salad uprising” because a journalist was arrested on charges of having vinegar in his backpack. (Vinegar can be used to ward off the worst effects of tear gas.) After his arrest, people began openly carrying vinegar out of solidarity—and, given the expansive use of tear gas, out of practicality.7 Numerous factors drove people into the streets, but what crystallized all discontent was a twenty-cent fare hike for public transportation. The country was investing billions in tourist-centric infrastructure and paying for it by fleecing workers on their daily commutes. It was too much. Chris Gaffney emailed me:

  Big shit happening [in] downtown Rio tonight, with cars set on fire around the state legislature and attempted invasions of the building that were repelled from inside. News of police using live ammunition as well. It is of course linked to the spending for the mega-events, but also reflects a larger dissatisfaction with the state of the country. The government is corrupt, the police incompetent, the roads and services and schools and healthcare atrocious . . . and this [is the state of services] for the middle class! . . . People are realizing that the 50 billion spent on the mega events is going into the pockets of FIFA, the IOC, and the corrupt construction firms, etc. This latest little insult, hiking the fares by twenty cents, was just enough to get people out on the streets during the Copa. This is truly historical and inspiring. I didn’t think the Brazilians had it in them, and I don’t think they [thought they] did either. But they do and it’s massive.8

  The activists of the Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement), after protesting fare hikes for more than a decade and winning concessions with little publicity, suddenly found themselves with a mass audience. They were savvy enough to link their struggle with spending priorities for the mega-events. Reports from the ground were that demonstrators were holding up posters that read “We don’t need the World Cup” and “We need money for hospitals and education.” The slogan that has really gone down in the history books, though, was a reference to Sepp Blatter, the slithering head of FIFA. Blatter is infamous for always insisting with the regularity of a metronome, no matter the host country, that the old stadiums are simply not good enough and that the country must build “FIFA-quality stadiums.” Now people were holding up signs saying, “We need FIFA-quality schools” and “We need FIFA-quality hospitals.”

  The protests caused a head-on collision between the people of Brazil and the sport that reputedly defines their country, their culture, and their way of life. One massive demonstration gathered outside a luxury hotel in Fortaleza, where the Brazilian national soccer team was staying, with signs that read, “FIFA, give us our money back!” and “We want health and education. World Cup out!” A protestor in São Paulo named Camila was quoted in the international press as saying, “We shouldn’t be spending public money on stadiums. We don’t want the Cup. We want education, hospitals, a better life for our children.”9

  The right wing was also present in the streets, as Yuseph Katiya, who lives in the conservative city of Curitiba, pointed out to me. One of the loosely organized groups in the streets was a formation called Acorda Brasil (Wake Up Brazil). As Katiya wrote on his extremely informative Facebook wall:

  This is a mixed bag and difficult to describe, and I think is potentially dangerous. These are middle-class people that share some of the concerns of the World Cup/Olympic protesters and the Free Fare Movement people, but their beef is mainly with government corruption. Suddenly, the right-wing press here is supporting the protests but they are more likely to blame politician salaries on the country’s problems. I don’t think they care about rising transportation costs, let alone how it might impact low-income Brazilians.10

  Nevertheless, the protests gained energy and found voice among the Brazilian diaspora throughout the world. More than three hundred people marched in New York City. One sign read:

  Olympics: $33 billion.

  World Cup: $26 billion.

  Minimum Wage: $674 [about US $320 a month].

  Do you still think it’s about 20 cents [the price of the bus fare hike]?11

  Protests were also reported in France, Ireland, and Canada, among others. This wasn’t a movement against sports. It was a movement against the use of sports as a neoliberal Trojan horse. It was a movement against sports as a cudgel of austerity.

  This must have made Sepp Blatter, President Rousseff,
and Pelé incredibly nervous, because they all went public with the same disciplined message to the nation: “For the love of God, don’t blame the World Cup for our current mass upheaval.” Dilma said in a nationally televised address:

  Brazil, the only country to have participated in every World Cup and a five-time world champion, has always been very well received everywhere. We must give our friends the same generous welcome we have received from them—with respect, love and joy. This is how we must treat our guests. Football and sport are symbols of peace and peaceful coexistence among peoples.12

  Blatter, displaying his renowned empathy, was even more blunt: “I can understand that people are not happy, but they should not use football to make their demands heard. . . . When the ball starts to roll, people will understand!”13 Pelé, meanwhile, had to backtrack dramatically after saying, “Let’s forget all this commotion happening in Brazil, all these protests, and let’s remember how the Brazilian squad is our country and our blood.” Another Brazilian soccer hero, Ronaldo, said in response to critiques of stadium spending, “You can’t hold a World Cup with hospitals.”14 In sharp contrast to this was national-team star Neymar, who said, in an epic statement,

  I’ve always had faith that it wouldn’t be necessary to get to this point, of having to take over the streets, to demand for better transportation, health, education and safety—these are all government’s obligations. My parents worked really hard to offer me and my sister a good quality life. Today, thanks to the success that fans have afforded me, it might seem like a lot of demagogy from me—but it isn’t—raising the flag of the protests that are happening in Brazil. But I am Brazilian and I love my country. I have family and friends who live in Brazil! That’s why I want a Brazil that is fair and safe and healthier and more honest! The only way I have to represent Brazil is on the pitch, playing football and, starting today against Mexico, I’ll get on the pitch inspired by this mobilisation.15

  True to his word, Neymar was the star of the national team’s next Confederations Cup match, a victory against Mexico.16

  The Real President

  What Dilma, Blatter, and Pelé are doing is basically begging the people of Brazil not to turn the 2014 World Cup into a symbol of what ails the country. What frightens them is that, clearly, people don’t see the World Cup—not to mention the 2016 Olympics in Rio—as some sort of abstract, postmodern symbol of poor public services and high taxes but as an aggravator of social ills. It didn’t help Dilma’s argument that, after her statement, she deployed the National Force, Brazil’s feared federal troops, outside soccer stadiums for the duration of the Confederations Cup.

  And what about Lula? The wildly popular former leader, his cancer in remission, took to the leading newspapers with his own analysis of what was happening—but those looking for real insight would have to go elsewhere. It was an exercise in chutzpah. Lula wrote that he believed the “demonstrations are largely the result of social, economic and political successes. . . . We sharply reduced poverty and inequality. These are significant achievements, yet it is completely natural that young people, especially those who are obtaining things their parents never had, should desire more.” He added that “even the Workers’ Party, which I helped found and which has contributed so much to modernize and democratize politics in Brazil, needs profound renewal. It must recover its daily links with social movements and offer new solutions for new problems, and do both without treating young people paternalistically.”17 Given all that Lula did to engineer the separation of his party from the social movements, as we saw in chapter 3, such a statement beggars belief. But the coup de grace lies not in what is said, but in what is not said. Three words that did not make it into his piece were “World,” “Cup,” and “Olympics.” (Perhaps he was just abiding by their copyright statutes.)

  What none of the powers that be can say is that the World Cup, in their hands, is a tool of neoliberal plunder. Neoliberalism, at its core, is about transferring wealth out of the public social safety net and into the hands of private capital. As anyone who has ever relied on public services—little things like schools and hospitals—can understand, this agenda is wildly unpopular with much of the world. But the IMF wants it. The World Bank wants it. Local elites want it. And international capital wants it. So how do they make it happen? One way is to unleash the police to simply smash institutions of popular economic self-defense such as trade unions, general assemblies, and social movements. But that approach carries an attendant risk. As we’ve seen in Turkey, Brazil, and even New York City in the early days of the Occupy Wall Street movement, police repression can make demonstrations look sympathetic and even wildly attractive to people who are fed up but have no outlet for their frustration.

  The Olympics, World Cup, and other mega-events have, over the last thirty years, provided something that couldn’t be found at the end of a military-grade truncheon: the consent of the masses to neoliberal policy goals. The walled city of Troy is the social safety net, and the Trojan horse is the games people are initially proud to host—until the marauders of the free market descend from its hollowed-out stomach and start taking their pound of flesh. The countries change, but the scenario stays the same: a profit orgy and a tax haven for corporate sponsors and private security firms, obscene public spending on new stadiums, and then brutal cuts that fall on the backs of the poor when the party’s over. But in Brazil, they’re not waiting until the cameras are gone and the confetti has been swept away. People started protesting in advance—and that immediately made what they were doing historic. To find a similar scenario, you would have to go back to the 1968 mass protests in Mexico City before the Olympics, which ended in tragedy: the slaughter of hundreds of Mexican students and workers. (Remembering the horrors of what is known as “the massacre at Tlatelolco Square” is a way of ensuring that it won’t happen again.)

  The mass actions of the summer of 2013 exposed the neoliberal theft rooted in the planning and execution of the World Cup. No truer words were said during the protests than those of Romário: “FIFA is the real president of our country. FIFA comes to our country and imposes a state within a state. It’s not going to pay taxes, it’s going to come, install a circus without paying anything and take everything with it. They are taking the piss out of us with our money, the public’s money. The money that has been spent on the [one] stadium could have been used to build 150,000 housing units.”18 The demonstrators swear they will return for the World Cup, but this is a great unknown—the problem with social explosions is that they’re unpredictable. You can be assured, though, that Dilma will use military hardware, drone planes, and preemptive arrests to make sure that any protests are a blip on the international radar.

  But something changed in 2013. The protests in Brazil were far more than an expression of extreme anger and disaffection. While polls of mass demonstrations should be taken with a grain of salt, one survey of demonstrators showed that 84 percent don’t see themselves as part of any political formation.19 The protests became a catch-all for every grievance under the sun, with World Cup and Olympic spending coming to symbolize an austerity economy beyond the reach of any semblance of democracy. This is both a strength and weakness. It’s a strength because the Brazilian people are learning lessons in real time about democracy in the streets: São Paulo city officials even repealed the hated bus fare hike in an effort to quell demonstrators.20 It also is a weakness, as reactionary forces enter the fray hoping to turn demonstrators against the Workers’ Party government and make the protests about “government spending.” It’s a cheap, opportunistic effort to deflect attention away from the behind-the-scenes corporate feeding frenzy in conjunction with the Workers’ Party. The right wing in Brazil has no problem with austerity; it just doesn’t like who is administering it. But, as Theresa Williamson, who was among the throngs being tear-gassed, said to me, “It is about individual demands and frustrations that converge into a unified whole. This is a future-oriented movement. If a handful are trying to a
ppropriate it you can bet the movement will get them out. If they don’t, things will digress only to evolve in a few years into something even more substantial.”

  Whatever politics eventually carry the day, it is clear that masses of young people marched with the basic hope that their dreams for a more just and democratic nation would take concrete form. They were acting to reshape their country, with incredible bravery, amid tear gas, rubber bullets, and concussion grenades. They took the fight to the stadiums and forced those inside to feel the itch of wafting tear gas in their eyes, hear explosions in the distance, and see the reality of international sports in the age of neoliberalism. Sepp Blatter said, “When the ball starts to roll, people will understand.” Indeed, they might. But as the smoke wafts into the Maracanã, they will understand something far different than what Blatter, FIFA, and Rousseff had in mind. They will understand that, in the twenty-first century, the World Cup arrives with a terrible price.

  Juca Kfouri, a leading Brazilian commentator, said that the protests hold the possibility of waking the world up to the reality of Brazil, not just the Disney image marketed to tourists: “There is a false idea of Brazilian happiness that is based on a wrong assumption that Brazilians do not claim ownership,” he said. “But next year, there will be big parties inside the stadiums and big protests outside.”21 When Romário was asked if he thought the demonstrations would return for the Cup, he said, “Not only do I think they will return, I think they should return. There will be a World Cup here next year, we know that. But this, these demonstrations, is the way you make politicians wake up.” Then he laughed and said, “This is the way you make people think about whether or not they are going to rob you again tomorrow.”22