Brazil's Dance with the Devil

The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Struggle for Democracy

Dave Zirin

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781608464333
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

One of the Boston Globe 's Best Sports Books of the Year: "Incisive, heartbreaking, important and even funny" (Jeremy Schaap, New York Times –bestselling author of Cinderella Man ). The people of Brazil celebrated when it was announced that they were hosting the World Cup—the world's most-viewed athletic tournament—in 2014 and the 2016 Summer Olympics. But as the events were approaching, ordinary Brazilians were holding the country's biggest protest marches in decades. Sports journalist Dave Zirin traveled to Brazil to find out why. In a rollicking read that travels from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the fabled Maracanã Stadium to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Zirin examines Brazilians' objections to the corruption of the games they love; the toll such events take on impoverished citizens; and how taking to the streets opened up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports. "Millions will enjoy the World Cup and Olympics, but Zirin justly reminds readers of the real human costs beyond the spectacle." — Kirkus Reviews

Chapter 1

Brazil: “A Country for Everyone”

The City [of Rio] makes the poor even poorer, cruelly confronting them with mirages of wealth to which they will never have access—cars, mansions, machines as powerful as God or the Devil—while denying them secure jobs, decent roofs over their heads, full plates on the midday table.

—Eduardo Galeano

In September 2012, I walked through one of the most destitute favelas in Rio. For all its poverty, there was also a sense of community one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in the wealthier communities of Brazil—or the United States, for that matter. This particular favela was situated on a hill in one of the city’s most upscale areas. The close proximity of these contrasting communities had a dizzying effect when I exited the favela. It was as though I was stepping through a portal from one world into another. Around the corner was a Starbucks with an armed guard out front, so the wealthy of Rio could get their lattes in peace. He had a hundred-yard death stare for anyone who paused to look longingly through the lightly frosted glass. In just yards, I had gone from open doors and hillside soccer games to bullets and baristas.

Walking to the Metrô, I passed yet another of Rio’s seemingly endless construction projects. I have been living in gentrifying cities for most of my life, so massive, dirty, congested landscapes are nothing new. What is different about Brazil is that the construction operations are usually branded with slogans that speak to a kind of “we’re all in this together” national unity. This one had a banner that read, “Brasil: Um País de Todos” (a country for everyone). It’s like Orwell for gentrifiers.

This particular mass of rubble was one of the many development projects in motion to get Rio ready for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. It cannot be overstated just how invested Brazil’s elite was in seeing these games come off without a hitch. Hosting mega-
events is about projecting a message that reaches far beyond the sports pages. In his 2012 book Brazil on the Rise, Larry Rohter described a country that “conceives of the two coming events as a sort of giant coming-out celebration announcing Brazil’s arrival as a player, not just in athletic competition but also on the global stage.”1

When Brazil won its bid to host the 2016 Olympics, the country was heralded as a capitalist success story, with the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other organs of the 1 percent engorged over a nation whose stock market, Bovespa, had grown at a rate of 523 percent during the previous decade. My favorite example of this neoliberal ardor was the Economist’s cover article “Brazil Takes Off,” illustrated with an image of Rio’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue zooming into space like a rocket.2 Brazil, the article informed us, was once a country with “a growth rate as skimpy as its swimsuits, prey to any financial crisis that was around, a place of chronic political instability, whose infinite capacity to squander its obvious potential was as legendary as its talent for football and carnivals,” but which was now “on a roll.”3 For so many in Brazil, this was long overdue. Hosting these sporting events was about international recognition that Brazil’s day had come.

Georges Clémenceau, France’s prime minister during the last years of the First World War, was once famously quoted as saying, “Brazil is a country of the future, and always will be.”4 For Brazil’s wildly popular outgoing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the fifty thousand cariocas (the nickname for Rio’s denizens) who jammed together and cheered as the decision was announced, the chance to host the Olympics was about putting Clémenceau’s infamous maxim to rest once and for all. Lula, as he is known, was in tears upon learning the news and spoke for many when he said, in a choked voice,

Today I have felt prouder of being a Brazilian than on any other day. Today is the day that Brazil gained its international citizenship. Today is the day that we have overcome the last vestiges of prejudice against us. I think this is the day to celebrate because Brazil has left behind the level of second-class countries and entered the ranks of first-class countries. Today we earned respect. The world has finally recognized that this is Brazil’s time.5

Lula himself had completed an utterly improbable journey: from working-class labor leader during a time of military dictatorship to the heights of political power. He ran for president four times before winning, and some joked his gravestone would someday read, “Here lies Lula, the future president of Brazil.” But Lula made it to the presidency and impressed the IOC enough to win the right to host the Games. With national soccer icon Pelé at his side, Lula had presented Brazil’s case and faced down the ghost of Clémenceau, not to mention some heavy hitters from Chicago: newly minted US president Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and, even more impressively, Oprah.

Yet those heady days in Copenhagen and among the celebrating masses of Rio now seem like several lifetimes ago. Lula is no longer president; after serving out his terms he was diagnosed with throat cancer (now in remission) and stepped back from the spotlight, although he unwillingly had to reemerge to be questioned in a corruption scandal involving the state’s oil industry in 2015; the same scandal threatens to take Dilma out of power.6 Brazil, whose 7.5-percent growth rate—even in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession—had made the Economist swoon, saw its economy sputter in 2012 toward a growth rate of just 0.9 percent.7 Despite the near-absence of economic expansion, spending on stadiums and infrastructure projects for the 2016 Olympics in Rio and for the 2014 World Cup in twelve cities across the nation did not skip a beat. The facts on the ground in Brazil changed, yet, ravenous and remorseless, the World Cup and Olympic golems continued to feed. Projections for how much they have ultimately cost the country keep ticking upward at a taxi-meter pace. It is difficult even to keep up with the parade of stories of dissatisfaction, waste, protest, and tumult that appeared almost daily as this book was going to press. Frighteningly, as the second edition of Brazil’s Dance with the Devil was being updated, these protests have taken an even nastier turn, with right-wing parties attempting to capture the anger and left-wing political organizations being hamstrung by the general anger of the populace aimed at the status quo. They express what I saw with my own eyes.

Danger: Stampeding White Elephants

When I was in Brazil, I spoke with workers who were deeply concerned about the rush to build twelve new “FIFA-quality” World Cup stadiums. Their concern did not stem only from the fact that this country already had no shortage of well-equipped fields. They were also concerned about the round-the-clock hours, the exhaustion of those operating heavy machinery, and the unsafe working conditions. Then, in November 2013, a crane collapsed into Arena Corinthians (Corinthians Stadium) in São Paulo, sending an avalanche of newly cemented concrete to the earth below.8 This tragedy, which took the lives of two men, Fábio Luiz Pereira and Ronaldo Oliveira dos Santos, could have been far worse. One of their coworkers, José Mario da Silva, said, “I walked right underneath the crane on the way to lunch. If it hadn’t collapsed at lunchtime, a lot more people would have died.”9

A reporter who happened to be present as the crane was collapsing snapped pictures with his cell phone. The instinctual response from an engineer for Odebrecht, the powerful Brazilian construction company in charge of rebuilding the stadium, as well as from several stadium security workers, was to assault the reporter and delete the photos from his phone.10 Yet they could not keep the story quiet; in short order it was international news. Sepp Blatter, then the securely ensconced chief of FIFA (he has since been suspended and has resigned from his post) said that he was “deeply saddened” by the deaths, and FIFA issued its own statement that the “safety of workers is a top priority.”11 It is worth noting that Blatter voiced these comments just as FIFA faced international scrutiny about revelations of slave labor and multiple deaths during stadium constructions in Qatar, where the 2022 World Cup is scheduled to take place.12 Weeks after the accident, we also learned that the crane operator had been working for eighteen straight days, just another part of Brazil’s 24/7 sprint to complete stadium construction. Brazil’s sports minister, Aldo Rebelo, said nothing after the tragedy about confronting fatigue or labor abuses on work sites. Instead, he assured the media that “the stadiums shall be built on time.” As for the dead, Rebelo sent a tweet expressing “solidarity with the families of the victims.”13

The only true solidarity that the government showed, however, was with FIFA—to finish building the stadiums, no matter the cost. As Romário, star of the 1994 World Cup, put it:

FIFA got what it came for: money. Things like transportation that affect the public after the tournament is over? They don’t care. They don’t care about what is going to be left behind. . . . You see hospitals with no beds. You see hospitals with people on the floor. You see schools that don’t have lunch for the kids. You see schools with no air-conditioning. . . . You see buildings and schools with no accessibility for people who are handicapped. If you spend 30 percent less on the stadiums, they’d be able to improve the other things that actually matter. . . . They found a way to get rich on the World Cup and they robbed the people instead. This is the real shame.14

What took place at Arena Corinthians was not an isolated incident. In April 2013, a worker was killed doing upgrades at Arena Palmeiras in São Paulo. At Arena do Grêmio in Porto Alegre, eight fans were sent to the emergency room when a guardrail collapsed. In Rio, Arena Engenhão, a venue for both the World Cup and the Olympics, “had to be closed for repairs six years after it opened due to reports showing winds of 63mph could rip off a roof that is already suffering from corrosion.”15 In Salvador, right by the location of last December’s World Cup draw, where the groupings of the thirty-two participating national teams were announced, the roof of the brand-new Arena Fonte Nova collapsed. What provided the almighty structural pressure that caused it to fall? Rain.16

Judges tried to halt the opening of stadiums deemed unsafe in several cities. Ye...

Table of contents

• Brazil's Dance with the Devil
• Map of Brazil
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface to the 2016 Edition
• Introduction to the 2016 Edition
• Introduction Finding Michael Jackson in Rio
• Chapter 1 Brazil: “A Country for Everyone”
• Chapter 2 “There Is No Sin Below the Equator”
• Chapter 3 Oh, Lula!
• Chapter 4 Futebol: The Journey from Daring to Fear
• Chapter 5 Killing Santa
• Chapter 6 Neoliberal Trojan Horses and Sporting Shock Doctrines
• Chapter 7 Target Favelas
• Conclusion “FIFA-Quality Schools”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the author