By James Young
Belo Horizonte

Working at the Car Wash:

In 2015 the sheafs of stodgy political news that take up the front sections of most Brazilian broadsheets finally contained something to interest ordinary readers, as the Federal Police’s Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) investigation into corruption at giant state-controlled oil company Petrobras dominated the headlines.

The probe into the billion dollar bribes racket has seen the arrest of top executives from a number of Brazil’s leading construction companies, along with several major political figures, including the former treasurer of the governing Worker’s Party, João Vaccari Neto. It has also made a household name of the scheme’s bagman turned informant Alberto Youssef, and earned Newton Ishii, known as O Japa or “The Jap”, a police officer present at many of the arrests, his own carnaval theme tune.

Despite the damage wreaked upon Petrobras and an already reeling economy, many observers have suggested that by bringing down senior business leaders and crooked politicians Operation Car Wash represents proof that Brazil has finally sickened of its seemingly ingrained culture of impunity, and also demonstrates the healthiness of the country’s separation of powers, plus the strength of its judiciary – Lava Jato has brought about the first ever arrest of a sitting Brazilian senator, Delcídio do Amaral.

Cynics, however, would point out that much the same was said around the time of Brazil’s last enormous corruption scandal, 2005/2006’s Mensalão (“Big Monthly Payment”) swindle (and the enormous corruption scandal before that, and the one before that…), and suggest that it will take decades to root out the institutionalised culture of graft that riddles the country’s political framework.  

Protest Songs:

If things were bad in Brazil in 2015, then at least there was no shortage of people willing to speak out against them.  Many of the year’s demonstrations had an anti-government theme – from the panelaço (pot-banging) demonstrations that echoed from the balconies of apartment buildings in August, to the hundreds of thousands that took to the streets in the same month to call for impeachment, an end to corruption, and in some disturbing cases, military intervention.

Critics, meanwhile, dismissed such protesters, who in many cases were drawn from the better-off sections of Brazilian society, as merely reflecting upper middle class self-interest. In response, pro-government supporters took to the streets in smaller, but still significant, numbers in December.

Perhaps more encouraging than such partisan affairs was the #NãoFechaMinhaEscola (“Don’t Close My School”) protest movement in São Paulo, where thousands of students occupied their threatened schools and eventually forced the state government to suspend an educational reform programme that would have meant the closure of hundreds of learning institutions.

There was also what at least one article described as an embryonic “Women’s Spring” movement – a series of public actions in support of women’s rights, built around opposition to proposed law changes that would further hamper Brazil’s already extremely limited access to abortion.

Further highlighting the wrongs of the country’s often unpleasant culture of machismo was the online #MeuPrimeiroAssedio (“My First Harassment”) campaign, where, following the posting of a number of lewd comments about a 12-year-old female contestant on Brazil’s MasterChef Junior TV show, tens of thousands of Brazilian women used social media to recount the first time they had suffered sexual harassment.

Fear and loathing on the internet (and everywhere else):

If social media has allowed many of Brazil’s previously disenfranchised groups to find their voices, it has also given other sectors of society space to share the rather less edifying contents of their minds, and 2015 saw a number of incidents of online racism. Comments such as “I’ll pay you with a banana” and “lend me your hair so I can wash the dishes” were left on the Facebook page of black actress Taís Araújo in November, while TV journalist Maria Julia Coutinho suffered similar abuse in May.

Imbecilic TV comedy show Pânico Na Band, meanwhile, briefly thought it would be acceptable to feature a character known only as The African, played by a “blacked-up” white actor, who spoke only in grunts and shrieks and acted in what the show’s creators appeared to believe constitutes typical “African” behaviour – scratching at parts of his body, tearing at plants and leaves and performing a dance of thanks for the judges of a cooking contest.

Away from the headlines, such high-profile instances of prejudice reflected the reality of life for millions of black and working class Brazilians. The country’s social divisions came to the fore once again in September when, following a number of mob robberies on the city’s beaches, Rio de Janeiro police instigated searches of public buses running from the poorer northern suburbs to the wealthier seafront districts of Zona Sul.

At the same time, local residents set up vigilante groups to deal with the threat. “We’re looking for kids in cheap flip-flops, who look like they haven’t got R$1 in their pockets,” said one of the brave urban warriors. “It’s obvious that they’re here to steal,” said a shop worker from Copacabana. “If they want terror, we’ll give them terror. It’s self-defence.”

The Ballad of Dilma…

The storm clouds of impeachment have arguably been building in Brazil since President Dilma Rousseff narrowly clinched a second term in office back in October 2014, following a surly and spiteful contest. At the time, opposition leader Aécio Neves claimed he had lost not to a political rival but to a “criminal organisation”, while his PSDB party muttered darkly about being the victims of electoral fraud. Rousseff’s foes have been gunning for her and her governing Worker’s Party ever since.

The argument for impeachment often seems to follow one of four strands: (a) we don’t like Dilma very much (Rousseff’s approval rating sank as low as 8% in August) (b) Dilma used to be president of Petrobras (see Operation Car Wash, above) and so must be a crook (c) we don’t like Dilma very much and (d) the government’s pedaladas fiscais, or financial manoeuvres, where transfers to banks responsible for making a number of welfare programme payments are deliberately delayed, making the overall financial situation look rosier (or at least less terrible) than it actually is. Such manoeuvres, say those calling for impeachment, are illegal.

The pro-impeachment movement believe the pedaladas fiscais represent their smoking gun, and proceedings against Rousseff are now underway. The government, meanwhile, say the pedaladas have been common practice since 2000, when the opposition PSDB was in power, while Brazilians who oppose impeachment describe the process as a coup. No one knows how this particular novela will end, but two things are guaranteed – it won’t be short, and it won’t be pretty.

…and Eddie

No pantomime would be complete without a villain, and there have been few shadier politicians in Brazil in 2015 than Eduardo Cunha, dubbed the country’s Frank Underwood by a number of commentators. While Cunha has not (yet) pushed a reporter under a speeding subway train, his skulduggery in other areas seems unbounded.

“In all my time in politics, he’s the most Machiavellian figure,” Ivan Valente, the experienced president of the left wing opposition party PSOL, told The Guardian in an interview in October. “Cunha is a politician who is opportunistic, intelligent, ambitious and corrupt.”

Since being elected Speaker of the Lower House in January, Cunha – whose PMDB party remain, officially at least, Rousseff’s allies – has made it his mission to add to the President’s woes at every turn, leading campaigns to overturn government sponsored legislation or pushing through his own, usually government-unfriendly, bills.

At the same time, Cunha has been accused of taking millions of dollars in bribes as part of the Petrobras swindle, and of stashing the money in Swiss bank accounts. At least his alleged machinations have lent the often deadening weight of the recent corruption sagas a touch of glamour – Cunha’s wife reportedly used some of her husband’s ill-gotten gains to pay for lessons at Nick Bollettieri’s exclusive tennis academy in Florida.

At the same time, he has attempted to use his authority to accept or reject impeachment petitions to curry favour with both the opposition and the government.

Cunha, an ultra-conservative evangelical Christian who supports the creation of a “Heterosexual Pride Day” in response to what he sees as a growing “gay ideology” in Brazilian society, finally pulled the trigger to initiate impeachment proceedings mere hours after Worker’s Party deputies announced they would support an Ethics Committee investigation into his denials of the existence of the (alleged) Swiss loot.

Despite recently having had to endure the indignity of an early morning police raid at his home, Cunha snorts at suggestions he might step down, as well as the Frank Underwood comparisons. “He’s a thief, a murderer, and a homosexual,” he is reported to have said, “and I’m not”.

Sweet River No More

One of the most distressing sights of the year was the devastated landscape around the town of Mariana in the state of Minas Gerais after millions of gallons of mining waste burst free from a collapsed tailings dam.

At least 15 people are known to have died in the flood, and the ensuing environmental damage is likely to be catastrophic, with the sludge now having flowed down the Rio Doce (“Sweet River”) to reach Brazil’s Atlantic coast. “This is a permanent blow. The cost is irreparable. A lot of life forms are never coming back,” Professor Carlos Machado, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, told the LA Times in December.

Describing the dam burst as a natural disaster is misleading, however. This is a tragedy with human hand-prints all over it, with the aftermath revealing both the potential negligence of the mine’s operator, Samarco (a joint venture between the Anglo-Australian mining company BHP Billiton and the Brazilian firm Vale), and the failings of Brazil’s “outdated mining code and decrepit regulatory system”. According to an article in The Daily Telegraph, only 400 of Brazil’s 15,000 mining dams were inspected in 2014.

The environmental news was little better elsewhere – a critical water shortage saw São Paulo suffer long periods of water rationing as the south east of Brazil underwent its worse drought in 80 years, while almost a thousand towns and cities in the dry inland regions of the north east of the country declared a state of emergency because of a lack of water.

The Killing Fields

Police killings in Brazil are hardly a recent development – according to a report by the São Paulo based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety there were 11,197 homicides carried out by police between 2009 and 2013, a rate of six a day. Even so – perhaps it was down to greater media awareness or the ubiquitous presence of cell phones, useful for filming or photographing wrongdoing – the relentless stream of negative headlines involving Brazil’s police forces this year felt unprecedented.

From 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus Ferreira, who was shot and killed by police in the Complexo do Alemão favela in April (his mother claimed that a policeman standing over her child’s body told her “I might as well kill you, just as I killed your son, because I killed a bandit’s son”) to the five young men slaughtered when their car was sprayed with bullets in the Lagartixa community in the north of the city in November, Rio de Janeiro was the scene of many of the police killings.

The September murder of four young men outside a pizza restaurant in Carapicuíba in Greater São Paulo (a police officer, who claimed the men had mugged his wife, was later arrested and accused of the crimes), and the death of 20-year-old Alisson Campos da Silva, shot and killed by police as he reached for his cell phone – which the officer in question believed was a gun – in Recife earlier this month, shows that Brazil’s police murders, whether in the form of trigger happy cops on duty or extra-curricular vigilante killings, and which invariably seem to involve young working class black or dark-skinned men – are a national, not a local, disgrace.

As the writer and journalist Xico Sá put it when writing about such young men in an essay inspired by the footballer Flávio Caça-Rato (Flávio the Rat Catcher), who grew up in poverty in Recife – “some, like Flávio, escape, thanks to football, funk or rap, but most are lost along the way, little Rat Catchers doomed to a life amidst the human refuse or, worse, ended by the bullets (nothing stray about them) of the police – almost always dead by the time they are 30.”

With many Brazilian schoolchildren already enjoying their summer holidays, thousands of pupils in São Paulo have been protesting to save their schools from closure. Their efforts have provided a welcome break from the unseemly behaviour of the country’s adult political leaders in Brasília. 

By Gill Harris
São Paulo

As the Operation Car Wash investigation into the massive bribery scandal at state run oil company Petrobras rumbles on, impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff get underway, and Eduardo Cunha, the corruption-dogged speaker of Brazil’s Lower House, has his home searched by police while dressed in his pyjamas, a rather more edifying political movement has taken place in São Paulo.

In early October pupils across the state discovered their schools were to undergo what was described by Governor Geraldo Alckmin as a “restructuring” of the education system, a move that would have entailed the closure of 93 schools and the transferal of over 300,000 pupils. The state government claimed a new system based on ciclos (which roughly translates as year groups) would benefit students’ learning.

Many critics of the reforms suggested that the government’s proposed changes were economically driven and pedagogically flawed: simply an attempt – and a fairly transparent attempt at that – to cut costs.

Either way, São Paulo’s outraged students were not about to take the closures lying down, and around a month later began to occupy the threatened schools. What had begun as just a few students camping out in classrooms swiftly turned into a regional insurgence against the government’s education policy, a movement that spread across social media via the hashtag: #naofechaminhaescola (“Don’t Close My School”).

On November 12, BBC Brasil reported students were camping out in several schools throughout the state, and by the end of the month almost 200 schools had been occupied.

Despite increasing pressure from the politicians and police, who in some cases treated students with truculence and aggression, the youngsters held firm, and last week Alckmin was forced to suspend his plans for reform.

While maintaining the position that the reorganisation would benefit students, Alckmin recognised the need to involve students more directly in any decision made on the matter. “In 2016 we will begin to engage in debate. We will open up dialogues, school by school,” he said. Amidst the backpedalling, state secretary for education Herman Voorwald resigned.

More cynical critics, however, have suggested that the decision to suspend the changes only came after Alckmin’s popularity took a battering.  Recent figures released by Datafolha showed approval for the governor had dropped to just 28%, the lowest in his time in office.

In spite of the suspension, however, protests against the restructuring in downtown São Paulo have continued, although the number of occupied schools has fallen to 57, according to the state education department.

Students from Fernão Dias Paes State School in Pinheiros, in the west of São Paulo, one of the schools that initiated the protests, told BBC Brasil they considered the battle to be only half won, while another newspaper report described the students’ belief that the suspension is merely a conciliatory strategy. The protesters are demanding an official statement from the government that the reforms will be dropped permanently from the agenda.

17 year-old Ana Luisa has been occupying two different schools for the past two months: one in outlying São Vicente until the evening, and then another in Praça Roosevelt in the centre of the city, where she spends her nights.

“With all the protesting and travelling I’ve barely had time to eat. I’ve lost three kilos,” she told From Brazil in early December, showing the space around her waistband. “But it’s worth it. Things here have reached a critical moment. We students know we’re making history. And we’re not going to stop until we have official proof from the government that they’re listening to us.”

The demonstrations come at a pivotal moment for the culture of public protest in Brazil. While the massive 2013 marches against political corruption, poor public services and the money spent on last year’s World Cup briefly captured the public imagination, their effectiveness was ultimately diluted by the sheer breadth of demonstrators’ complaints, and despite a vague, panicky government response that made promises of investment in public transport and political reform, few concrete benefits have emerged.

That movement has since been replaced with this year’s anti-government, pro-impeachment rallies, largely middle class affairs where protesters have dwindled in number as the spectre of impeachment has moved closer to reality, while this week saw around 50,000 demonstrators gather in São Paulo to protest against the impeachment campaign, which they describe as a coup. Politicians, meanwhile, have annexed the spirit of as ruas (“the streets”) for their own ends.

Against such a backdrop, and compared with the sordid political capering of the likes of Eduardo Cunha in Brasilia, this youth movement, along with other organic demonstrations such the recent public actions in support of women’s rights, feels refreshingly heartfelt and optimistic.

University professor and state deputy Carlos Giannazi has praised what he calls this “Arab Spring” of student politicisation, while Folha de São Paulo columnist Raquel Rolnik, a professor of architecture and urban planning, has called the movement “the most important political event of the year.”

The mother of one young protester, Rose, meanwhile, told the BBC that the protests were restoring her faith in politics: “it’s a lovely sight to see. These teenagers are taking to the streets to demand better quality education; we’ve never seen anything like it before.”

With growing mistrust in those who run their country, these children are taking their education into their own hands. A similar school occupation movement has begun in the mid-western state of Goiás, where organisers say they have been inspired by events in São Paulo, and a website, www.queronaescola.com.br (“What I Want In School”), posts videos of pupils demanding a more wide-ranging curriculum, school trips, and opportunities to discuss issues such as racism and misogyny.

In São Paulo, meanwhile, the debate as to who rules the school continues. “We might just be kids,” Ana Luisa said, “but I think we could do a better job of it than the adults.”

Editor’s note: On Friday (18th) one student group, the Comando das Escolas em Luta (“Fighting Schools Command”) announced it would end the school occupations, and that it was “time to change tactics”. Other students, however, said they had yet to decide if they would call a halt to their occupations. 

Over 30 journalists and bloggers have been murdered in Brazil since 1992, making it a dangerous place for those who speak out against local corruption – especially in the country’s remoter regions. And a culture of impunity means the killers are rarely brought to justice. 

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

In a country like Brazil, where there were more than 52,000 murders in 2014, it is not always easy to identify patterns. Especially in cases such as that of Roberto Lano, murdered in the town of Buriticupu in the northern state of Maranhão just over a week ago, and victim of one of the most typical types of Brazilian homicide – a gunman pulling up on a motorbike, squeezing the trigger, and speeding off into the night.

Or the death of 30-year-old Ítalo Eduardo Diniz Barros, killed in almost identical circumstances in another Maranhão town, Governador Nunes Freire, the Friday before that.

Or even the murder of Israel Gonçalves Silva, shot dead in a stationery store at 7.30 in the morning, again by men on a motorbike, in Lagoa de Itaenga, in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, on November 10^th. He had just dropped his two young children off at school.

What connects the deaths of Roberto, Ítalo and Israel – or Décio Sá, murdered in São Luís, the capital of Maranhão, in April 2012, or Gleydson Carvalho, shot last August as he presented his radio show in Camocim, Ceará, or any of over thirty other homicides in Brazil since 1992 – is that all were journalists or bloggers, and were apparently killed because the investigative or critical nature of their work had made them some powerful, dangerous enemies.

Ítalo Diniz criticised local authorities on his blog, and had told colleagues that he had often received threats from “mayors and town councillors”, while Lano had also recently attacked local politicians. Israel Gonçalves Silva regularly talked about corruption allegations on his radio show.

Another blogger, 67-year-old Evany José Metzker, was found dead in the countryside of the south-eastern state of Minas Gerais in May this year. His decapitated body showed signs of torture, and according to reports, police believe that the murder was motivated by the journalist’s investigations into child prostitution and drug trafficking.

Many other Brazilian journalists have had to deal with violence, threats, and even imprisonment as part of their work. A report by Brazil’s Associação Nacional de Jornais (National Newspaper Association), quoted in this article in The Guardian, has said that in addition to the killings, 24 journalists have been imprisoned, 33 have been the victims of assault and 59 have received threats since 2008.

Police intimidation and aggression is also an issue. A June 2013 survey by the Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo (Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism) revealed that during the massive month-long street protests of that year, eight journalists were arrested and 52 were beaten across ten of Brazil’s 26 states.

“The killings, particularly coming so close together, are very worrying and we urge authorities in Maranhão to make every effort to get to the bottom of them,” Andrew Downie, the São Paulo-based representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an independent, non-profit organization, said after the murders of Roberto and Ítalo.

“We ask that they devote the necessary manpower and expertise to finding the culprits and that they conduct their investigations in as open and transparent a manner as possible.”

“Other local bloggers have told the CPJ that threats are a common practice in the region and it is vital that local, state and federal government act together whenever possible to ensure they send the message that threats against the press will not be tolerated and will not go unpunished,” added Downie.

According to the CPJ, at least 16 journalists have been murdered in Brazil in retaliation for their work since 2011. To make matters worse, the killers are rarely brought to justice.

While the murderer of Décio Sá was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in 2014, and the killers of two other murdered journalists, Walgney Assis Carvalho and Rodrigo Neto, were also recently brought to justice, the CPJ points out that “as with the majority of cases…accountability has extended as far as the gunmen but not the mastermind.”

Brazil ranks 11^th on the organisation’s global Impunity Index, which spotlights nations where “journalists are slain and their killers go free”. That makes the country slightly tougher at dealing with such crimes than Russia, in 10^th position, but less effective than Bangladesh, India and Nigeria.

President Dilma Rousseff has promised to tackle the problem. “The federal government is fully committed to continue fighting against impunity in cases of killed journalists,” she said in a meeting with CPJ representatives in Brasilia in June last year, when she pledged to support legislative efforts to federalize crimes against freedom of expression.

Rousseff’s current political woes, however, mean that the safety of journalists is unlikely to be her struggling government’s top priority at the moment. And in any case, a tougher stance from Brasília against those who murder bloggers and journalists may not prove to be much of a deterrent against the often corrupt local level politicians and pistoleiros that hold sway in the backlands of states such as Maranhão and Pernambuco, where local law enforcement and infrastructure can be lacking.

For now then, it seems Brazilian journalists and bloggers who have the courage to speak out against corruption and wrongdoing in their communities will have to continue looking nervously over their shoulders.

Brazil face Argentina in Buenos Aires tonight in a crucial World Cup qualifying tie. Win or lose, however, Brazil’s future looks less than bright under unpopular manager Dunga. But, as James Young explains, the country’s footballing problems run much deeper than that – and it might just be the fault of the fans. 

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

“Brazil needs a coach with scientific knowledge, coupled with the wisdom to be a good observer and a desire to win, while playing attractively. Forget it! It was just a fantasy, and now it’s gone. The reality is quite different, and much sadder. The reality is Dunga,” wrote 1970 World Cup winner Tostão after the Seleção appointed its new manager after the World Cup. And not much Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri had done since has proved him wrong.

Sure, there were a few perky friendly victories between the Mundial and this year’s Copa America in Chile. In those games Brazil at least looked energetic and organised, and were certainly an improvement on the doleful lot who succumbed so humiliatingly to Germany in Belo Horizonte in the World Cup semi-final. But, Neymar aside, the lack of attacking flair and creativity was painfully obvious. Dunga’s Brazil were a counter-attacking side, the long, symphonic passing movements of old a fading memory.

Still, those effective, if unappealing friendly wins seemed like the glory days compared with Brazil’s performances in Chile. Dunga’s team were turgid throughout the tournament, losing to Colombia and only squeaking past Peru and Venezuela in the group stages, before getting knocked out by Paraguay in the quarter-finals.

Things have not improved much since then. Brazil were no match for Chile and Alexis Sanchez in their opening World Cup qualifying game in Santiago, and were unimpressive again in a win over Venezuela in Fortaleza. Now, Dunga’s side travel to Buenos Aires to face the old enemy Argentina – themselves struggling for form after a miserable start to the qualifying campaign.

Dunga, with his thuggish pitch-side manner and aggressive approach to dealing with the media, makes an easy cartoon villain. But perhaps the most worrying thing for Brazilian fans is the lack of alternatives. The hire ‘em, fire ‘em short term thinking of the country’s clubs means that talented young managers are an endangered species in Brazil. Dunga is the symptom, rather than the cause of the disease that ails Brazilian football.

It was reported this week that of the twenty coaches who began the Serie A season back in May, only two – unsurprisingly, Tite at Corinthians and Levir Culpi at Atletico Mineiro, the country’s top two teams – were still standing by its end. It was the lowest number since 2005.

In the last few weeks alone, with the season just a few games from its end, coaches were sacked by Coritiba and Avaí (both fighting relegation) and São Paulo (trying to finish in the top four and earn a spot in next year’s Copa Libertadores).

The stumbling explanation for the sacking of manager Doriva from São Paulo director of football Gustavo Vieira de Oliveira gave a rather chilling insight into the thinking, or the lack of it, that goes on behind the scenes in Brazilian football. “From his performance in this short period of time, and the observations we’ve made of his work, we don’t see anything wrong, but we want to try something else.” Doriva had been in charge for seven games and just over a month.

A report by the Mexican publication El Economista last year revealed that coaches in Brazil last just 15 games on average, compared to around 54 in Germany, 80 in England, and 88 in Major League Soccer. In the ten year period covered by the survey, at least four clubs had employed close to 40 coaches – or four a year.

Such impatience has two obvious negative outcomes. One is a lack of understanding and cohesion on the pitch. While Corinthians and Atlético Mineiro this year, and Cruzeiro in 2013 and 2014 have played intense, fast-paced football, with the ball (generally) moving quickly from boot to boot, such collective awareness is rare.

Most Brazilian league games are cumbersome affairs, with players taking a touch (often two) to control the ball before pausing and looking around in search of a teammate. The telepathic awareness of others’ movement and positioning that comes from playing in the same system over a long period, best typified in recent years by Barcelona, is an elusive dream.

The other consequence is that the confidence, willingness to experiment, and ultimately careers of promising young coaches are destroyed. Dado Cavalcanti, manager of Serie B side Paysandu, has coached 15 clubs in nine years – before his 35^th birthday. After doing well at Avaí in 2008 and 2009, Silas managed Grêmio for eight months, and was then sacked by Flamengo after just over a month in charge. In 2012 Grêmio sacked Caio Junior, who had coached an impressive Botafogo team in 2011, after just eight games in charge.

As a result, coaching jobs at the biggest Brazilian clubs tend to go to the same old faces, such as Muricy Ramalho, Dorival Junior (admittedly currently doing well with Santos), Celso Roth and Vanderlei Luxemburgo. One of the names mentioned in connection with the vacant position at São Paulo is Paulo Autori, who has coached close to 40 teams and has won nothing of note in the last ten years.

Even Brazil’s best coaches are flawed. Corinthians’ Tite is the current toast of Brazilian football, but he has had a long and chequered career, and favours a prosaic style of football that is not always easy on the eye. Atlético Mineiro’s Levir Culpi and Marcelo Oliveira, who did so well at Cruzeiro and now manages Palmeiras, while attack minded coaches, can be tactically naive.

All of which goes some way to explaining why, when the CBF (“the Brazilian FA”) ran out of patience with Mano Menezes as Brazil coach in 2012, they turned, with ultimately disastrous results, to Luiz Felipe Scolari (who managed the team in 2001 and 2002) and, following Scolari, appointed Dunga (who had coached the Seleção between 2006 and 2010).

Brazil’s club directors and football administrators are largely to blame for the situation. Club presidents and their posses, who more often than not lack the clear-headed professionalism and conviction required to maintain a long-term strategy, are democratically elected, meaning they depend on the approval of the fans to keep their jobs. And if the team is losing, that approval will disappear very quickly.

Which means, by a rather ironic twist, that as much as Brazilian fans may loathe Dunga, they may be at least partly responsible for him getting the job in the first place.

By howling for the head of their coaches after just a handful of defeats – the torrents of social media abuse aimed at Atlético manager Levir Culpi now his team’s bid to win the title seems to have fallen short are only one example – they fuel the atmosphere of impatient, hysterical short-termism that pervades the Brazilian game and that is a direct cause of the country’s dearth of coaching talent.

Win or lose in Buenos Aires tonight, it is Brazilian football that is paying the price.

As the Rio Olympics draw closer, organizers are cutting costs – but it may have more to do with Brazil’s crumbling economy than IOC initiatives or financial good governance. Jules Boykoff, author of “Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics” explains.  

By Jules Boykoff
Rio de Janeiro

Back in 2009, when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s economy was riding high. The Rio 2016 bid book boasted of “financial certainty” and assured IOC bigwigs that Brazil’s “proven economic policies” would “provide a solid economic foundation to support Games delivery.” Later that year The Economist published a cover featuring the iconic Cristo Redentor statue blasting off like an unstoppable rocket.

But no amount of Photoshop trickery can get around the fact that since then, Brazil’s economy has tanked. Despite those “proven economic policies,” the country’s financial tectonics have shifted mightily. In the past year alone, the real has lost 70 percent of its value against the dollar. Inflation has spiked to close to 10 percent.

At the same time, President Dilma Rousseff’s popularity ratings have plummeted into single digits and now hover around 9 percent. The scandal-wracked political system seems dangerously close to implosion, with impeachment being bandied about the halls of political power and the Frank Underwood-esque speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, threatened with removal on corruption charges. This is the worst recession the country has suffered in 25 years, and economists expect it to extend through the Rio 2016 Games.

In the Olympic world, the tectonic plates have also moved since Rio won the Games. In December 2014, the IOC unanimously passed a slate of recommendations called “Olympic Agenda 2020.” This was a direct response to the fact that the Olympic movement itself had hit a low point. To host the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Russians spent $51 billion, a gob-smacking total that surpassed the costs of all the previous Winter Olympics combined.

In addition to that boondoggle, bidder interest in the 2022 Winter Games was wilting, with only two candidates still in the race — Beijing, China and Almaty, Kazakhstan — both of them anti-democratic, repressive states. IOC President Thomas Bach needed to take urgent action — or at least appear to do so. After all, a Tupac-style hologram of reform might just do the trick.

Enter “Olympic Agenda 2020,” a set of nebulous recommendations, rather than full-force policies. The recommendations spoke of the obvious need to halt runaway spending. Host cities were encouraged to use existing arenas and would now be allowed to hold Olympic events outside city limits.

The goal was to reduce the number of venues destined to become what sports mega-event mavens call “white elephants”: hulking, underused structures that drain city coffers through pricey maintenance costs long after the sporting spectacle leaves town.

The IOC also streamlined the bidding process, reducing it from a forest to a mere meadow of paperwork. Overall, while Agenda 2020 is awash with jargon about “synergies” and “stakeholders,” the wider goal of reducing host-city costs makes sense.

In 2009, when Rio bid jockeys floated their plan, extravagance was the order of the day. Olympic “gigantism” — high-priced five-ring spending sprees on supersized events — reigned supreme. President Bach hyped Rio’s mega-plan at a glitzy gala one year before the Games were to begin: “This will be the biggest urban redevelopment project since the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games.”

Indeed, Rio organizers plotted a complex path, with four venue pods in different parts of the city and a gaggle of brand-new arenas and structures built exclusively for the Games.

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes used the Olympics to spur development in Barra da Tijuca, Rio’s relatively affluent western suburb and a kaleidoscopic consumer paradise. Real estate tycoons — many of whom helped fund Paes’ re-election campaign in 2012 — grinned from ear to ear. Brazilian property baron Carlos Carvalho revealed to The Guardian that in Barra he hoped to forge “a city of the elite, of good taste.”

For this to happen, Mayor Paes needed to bash down the barriers to profit. This included clearing longstanding communities such as Vila Autodrómo, a favela perched on the edge of the Olympic blueprints where residents have put up a spirited fight that continues today.

After all, as Carvalho saw it, “the new city” in Barra da Tijuca was meant to be “luxury housing, not housing for the poor.” According to one survey, since Rio was handed the Olympics in 2009, some 60,000 favela residents have been displaced due to urban interventions or because they live in supposed “zones of risk.”

But even with a bevy of building barons on their team, Mayor Paes and the Rio 2016 Olympic Organizing Committee struggled to keep construction moving apace. Back in 2014, IOC Vice-President John Coates rattled Rio’s cage when he declared that organizers’ preparations were “the worst I have experienced” and even “worse than Athens” where construction for the 2004 Summer Games ran notoriously behind schedule.

In recent months, however, Rio 2016 appears to have rallied. The venues are only slightly delayed, and the gap appears closeable. Even so, there’s a borderline iron law of Olympic development: the closer the deadline, the higher the costs.

So, what does the IOC’s “Agenda 2020” have to do with Rio 2016? Turns out, not much. To be sure, Agenda 2020 recommendations, if converted into actual toothy reforms, could have benefited the Rio Games by limiting the number of freshly built venues.

But as Rio 2016 was chosen in 2009, its organizers are not bound by Agenda 2020 recommendations. That, however, hasn’t stopped the event’s luminaries from making strategic use of the program’s loose lingo. When in doubt, they trot it out.

For the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, Agenda 2020 has become a strategic shield used selectively to deflect criticism and to defend its deficiencies. When construction delays forced Rio 2016 officials to consider shifting preliminary water polo matches from the Julio Delamare Aquatic Park to the main Olympic Park’s Maria Lenk Aquatic Center, they claimed this was simply in tune with the Agenda 2020 rationale. A spokesperson said, “One of the pillars of Rio 2016 is to deliver games that are economically sustainable and that is in line with Agenda 2020 framework.”

When the international swimming federation complained that Rio’s Olympic aquatic center was substandard compared to London 2012, the Rio Organizing Committee’s retort was that building a smaller facility simply chimed with Agenda 2020 sustainability principles. Rio 2016 issued a statement asserting, “everyone knows that the goal of Rio is to deliver sustainable Games in accordance with Agenda 2020.”

Then again, forging tactical connections to a phantom document is better than insulting the world’s top athletes. Recently, Rio Organizing Committee President Carlos Nuzman did just that. During an Olympic test-event for BMX racing in October, a brouhaha broke out when participants blasted the track as too dangerous.

Citing safety concerns, athletes banded together and unanimously refused to ride. “We shouldn’t have to race on such sub-standard tracks,” British BMX world champion Liam Phillips posted on social media. Nuzman responded with a glib dismissal. “Whoever wanted to race, should have raced,” he said. “Whoever chose not to race…I think they should look to be in another sport.”

In light of Brazil’s economic woes, Rio 2016 organizers recently announced a 30 percent cutback to the Games’ operating budget. Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian filmmaker who is overseeing the Olympic opening ceremony, revealed, “Since we joined the project the money has been cut, cut, cut.” He added, “We’re in a crisis and there are better places to put money in Brazil than just the opening ceremony.”

Rio 2016 will also replace a number of sturdier, more permanent structures with tents, the ticketing system will be revamped to cut costs, and the volunteer program will be slimmed. Organizers also recently said that the Olympic Village will not be equipped with fixed air-conditioning units, with athletes being forced to rent portable devices instead.

Rio 2016 Communications Director Mario Andrada told the BBC, “People get upset about luxury and excess, we have to tighten our belts.” But the projects listed by the BBC as on the fiscal chopping block did not include the “luxury and excess” that IOC members have come to expect. Will such cost-trimming apply to the Olympic Brahmins who will jet into Rio, quaff fine wine, and luxuriate in five-star hotels?

The IOC was conspicuously mute about the budget cuts, although it did deliver a statement to Inside the Games that was a blend of the vanilla and telltale: “We will discuss this topic over the next few weeks with the Rio team, as we continue to look at how the implementation of Olympic Agenda 2020 can help Rio to make its Games as economically sustainable as possible.”

The statement was in fact revealing, capturing as it does precisely what is wrong about the idea of over-hyping the IOC’s moves toward reform. While the idea behind the Olympic Agenda 2020 program has potential, the reality is rather more PR masterstroke than genuine change. Another Tupac hologram—and this one is wearing Olympic laurels.

Overcrowded, unsafe, and wracked by sickening levels of violence, Brazil’s prisons were described by a report published last week as a “human rights disaster”. To make matters worse, many inmates have not yet been convicted but must endure months in appalling conditions while they wait for their case to be heard.   

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

If, as Dostoyevsky put it, the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons, then Brazil would appear to be in a sorry state indeed.

Last week the Human Rights Watch NGO released a report entitled “The State Let Evil Take Over” that described the shocking conditions inside the Curado prison complex (previously known as the Anibal Bruno prison) in Recife, the capital of the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, as well as penitentiaries in Itamaracá, about 45 kilometres away.

“During visits to Pernambuco’s prisons in 2015, a researcher from Human Rights Watch entered a windowless cell without beds, in which 37 men slept on sheets on the floor. Another, which had six cement bunks for 60 men, lacked even enough floor space. A tangle of makeshift hammocks made it difficult to cross the room, and one man was sleeping sitting up, tying himself to the bars of the door so that he wouldn’t slump over onto other men. In that cell, the stench of sweat, faeces and mould was overpowering,” said the report, which was accompanied by a disturbing video, available on YouTube.

The study painted a gruelling portrait of overcrowding (Curado, which was built to house around 2,000 prisoners, is home to about 7,000), lack of sanitation, disease, sexual and physical violence, and described how criminal gangs controlled large parts of the institutions.

Perhaps most chillingly of all, Human Rights Watch revealed that a large number of the prisoners were pre-trial detainees – in other words, they had been incarcerated while awaiting trial for the crimes of which they had been accused.

Custody hearings, where the accused appears before a judge soon after being arrested, are, says the report, “required under international law but have not — until recently — been provided to detainees in Pernambuco or most other states in Brazil.” According to the organization, “nearly 60 percent of the nearly 32,000 people held in Pernambuco’s prisons have not been convicted of a crime.”

An earlier Human Rights Watch study told how when judges held custody hearings in the state of Maranhão between October 2014 and March 2015, around 60 percent of those arrested were released on the grounds that pre-trial detention was not warranted, compared to 10% when no such hearings took place and judges based their decision solely on police reports. At least in this area there are some signs of progress – Pernambuco began providing custody hearings in August this year.

But that alone is unlikely to save Brazil’s prison system, the horror stories surrounding which are almost too many to mention. There were a reported 62 murders in the Pedrinhas jail in Maranhão in 2013, and in January 2014 a video emerged from the prison showing the decapitated heads and bodies of victims of a gang feud.

There were also reports of the visiting wives, girlfriends and female relatives of prisoners being raped by the leaders of the criminal factions that effectively run large parts of the institution. In May this year the director of the prison, Cláudio Barcelos, was arrested, accused of taking bribes to facilitate escapes.

“The tragedy of Pedrinhas could have been foreseen and could be repeated, at any moment, in other prison complexes with the same problems,” said Lucia Nader, of the Brazilian NGO Conectas, in January 2014.

Prison riots, which often end in fatalities, are alarmingly frequent. A 2013 outbreak of gang warfare in Pedrinhas, which has a long history of violent uprisings, ended with nine fatalities, and a riot in January this year in Curado resulted in three deaths.

Earlier this month a rebellion in the Penitenciária de Teófilo Otoni in Minas Gerais left three prisoners dead while fourteen escaped, and another riot in Governador Valadares in the same state in June saw two deaths. The Minas Gerais government says there is a shortfall of 26,000 places in the state’s prison system.

Nor are precarious safety conditions the sole preserve of the country’s adult prisons. In September five breakouts in the space of eight days from the Fundação CASA young offender institutions in São Paulo saw a total of 117 inmates escape.

And even those outside the prisons cannot take their safety for granted – a few weeks ago 33-year-old Recife resident Ricardo Alves da Silva was brushing his teeth in the garden of his house near the Curado complex when he was shot and killed by a gunshot that came from inside the prison.

According to this Vice article by From Brazil contributor Ben Tavener, Brazil has the world’s fourth-biggest incarcerated population after the United States, China and Russia, with numbers growing by 161 percent from 2000 to 2014 to reach 607,000 prisoners in June last year. At the same time the country’s prison system is designed to hold a maximum of only 376,000.

In such overcrowded conditions, where floor space to sleep on, let alone beds, is often lacking, rehabilitation facilities are usually either limited or non-existent, contributing, along with the pervasive atmosphere of criminality within jails and the social conditions inmates are likely to face upon release, to an estimated recidivism rate of 70%.

Yet the crisis in Brazil’s prison system attracts considerably less political and media outrage than might be expected. President Dilma Rousseff discussed the issue during the 2014 presidential debates, saying that she believed Brazil had to change its entire prison strategy, and that rehabilitating prisoners was absolutely essential. In September a law was introduced that makes the provision of high school level education in prisons a legal requirement.

But at the same time, the powerful “Bullet Caucus” in the Brazilian parliament is pushing for a tougher stance on crime, including lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16, which, according to an article by Stephanie Nolen in The Globe and Mail, would add an extra 32,000 people to the prison population in its first year.

It is not all bad news for those who find themselves on the wrong side of Brazilian law, however – provided they have the means to extricate themselves from their situation. Last week 28-year-old business administrator Juliana Cristina da Silva knocked down and killed José Airton and Raimundo Barbosa, city workers who had been painting a cycle lane in the Zona Norte region of São Paulo, while almost three times over the legal alcohol limit. She then fled the scene and was only stopped by witnesses 3 km away.

Following a night at a police station she was released on R$15,000 (U$3,850/£2,500) bail the next day, and will now spend the undoubtedly lengthy wait for her trial at liberty. It was the latest in a long, long list of similar cases in Brazil.

The sentencing of drunk driving fatalities is a controversial issue around the world, and there are obviously differences in the legal status of Juliana’s crime (which is considered homicídio culposo, or manslaughter) and the offences committed by, or the charges awaiting, many of the prisoners in jails like Pedrinhas or Curado.

But at the same time, the right to bail and quickly granted provisional freedom of the former, compared with the denial of human rights and barbarous conditions doled out to the latter, provided a jarring reminder of the sense of inequality that often seems to surrounds the Brazilian justice system.

As an article in Carta Capital magazine entitled “Justice is Rich and White” argues, while such a system appears to automatically assume that the lower-class prisoners in the ruined cells of its overcrowded jails are marginais and bandidos (“thugs and criminals”) when denying them pre-trial hearings and even the most basic living standards, a better-off Brazilian such as Juliana is treated rather like “a good girl who made a mistake”.

That, perhaps, should not come as too much of a surprise, for in doing so Brazil’s penal system merely reflects the divisions that run across the country’s society like deep, jagged scars.

River transport in Brazil’s Amazon region is both an essential means of getting around for locals and an unforgettable experience for travellers. And with a unique sense of river camaraderie, it’s hard to feel lonely. In search of adventure, Sam Cowie took the slow boat from Manaus to Porto Velho.   

By Sam Cowie
Manaus

Spending four days on a boat slowly chugging its way down the Amazon is probably not for everyone. For some, sharing a relatively small space with 100 strangers – a fair few of whom are young children – in humid heat, with only two bathrooms, set meals, limited electricity and zero privacy would be a nightmare.

For many Amazonians, however, long distance river transport is unavoidable, as much of the region is unreachable by road and air travel is often prohibitively expensive. Around 14 million passengers used Amazon river transport in 2012, many travelling distances of up to 1600km. Thirty per cent of them earned between R$450 and R$720 a month.

Personally, I found lying in a hammock with no internet and little more to do than read a book or stare at the scenery rolling by an extremely pleasant break from Brazil’s wonderful, but at times stuffy and hectic, metropolises.

After being on assignment in Manaus one of my few ways out of the city without catching a plane was to take a boat to Porto Velho in neighbouring Rondônia, which has the dubious honour of being Brazil’s most deforested state. A highway connecting the two cities was built in 1973 by the then military government, but fell into disrepair shortly afterwards. Today all that remains is a dirt road.

A four day ticket to Porto Velho, including drinking water and three meals a day, costs R$200 (U$52), about three times cheaper than the one hour plane flight. I arrived at the boat a few hours before we set sail and, finding few remaining spaces, set up my hammock in a corner next to a cheerful 70-year-old Afro-Brazilian woman, travelling to Porto Velho to collect her older sister who had fallen ill while visiting relatives.

Sometime after sunset the engine roared to life and, with the sky lit up by lightning from a dry tropical storm, we made way our way down the Rio Negro towards the Amazon, passing flaming gas refineries and the bright lights of the famous Manaus free trade zone.

Lights on the boat go out around 10pm, perhaps because the day begins at 6am when the crew, a surly bunch of few words and even fewer smiles, serve up sickeningly sweet coffee and buttery crackers for breakfast. The lunches and dinners are, perhaps surprisingly, tasty and satisfying, roughly equivalent to what you’d expect to find at a decent worker’s restaurant in down São Paulo or Rio.

The landscape is green and lush, and towering trees and muddy banks slide by as the boat slowly makes its way down river, passing small villages, hut-sized Evangelical churches, herds of horned Amazon buffalo, and fishermen waving from rickety canoes as they pull in their catch.

It doesn’t take long to make friends and very quickly I met a bunch of good-natured, larger than life characters. One of my favourites was “Repeteco”, an 80-year-old forró (traditional folk music from the north east of Brazil) composer from Pernambuco travelling to Porto Velho with 800 copies of his latest CD to sell. Under the circumstances, I could hardly refuse to buy one.

As the days drift by, living with people in such close quarters allows me to witness first-hand the famous, if somewhat cliched, “Brazilian warmth” that one hears so much about. Almost everyone is open, friendly and generous – sharing things like fruit and sweets – as well as respectful of what minuscule privacy their fellow passengers have.

Alongside the Brazilians there was a relatively large contingent of passengers from other Latin American nations on board, including an Ecuadorian juggler, a Paraguayan missionary and Felipe, a 26-year-old Venezuelan history teacher, who was leaving home to start a new life in Uruguay. There were also groups of backpackers from Mexico and Peru. The only other “authentic” gringo on board was Giles, a Canadian in his late sixties who was on a long distance motorcycle trip.

Further down river, the landscape becomes more arid, the brown banks turn golden and there are more sightings – or rather blink and you miss it glimpses – of leaping river dolphins and alligators.

While the largely unvarying scenery is not perhaps truly breathtaking, there is something about the sheer degree of isolation, combined with the relentless flow of the river, that carries the mind to a place far removed from city life. As I sit and stare and at the passing villages, I try to figure out what it would be like to live in the region, a feeling summed up nicely in this article in The New York Times.

At night, the top deck fills up with people, some enjoying an evening beer as the forró and brega (cheesy Brazilian pop) music pumps from a loudspeaker. Most nights I play cards with a pair of factory workers from the Manaus free trade zone.

Among the other passengers was Kelly, 21, who was taking a two month holiday with her young daughter to see an aunt in Minas Gerais. Gilberto, 34, meanwhile, lived in Manaus in free lodgings provided by the soft drink factory where he worked, and was returning home to Porto Velho for a three week holiday, something he did every three months.

Each night the lone TV showed novelas, Brazil club football or DVD films. Most passengers though, were content to simply sit on plastic stools, talking and gazing out into the darkness or up at the piercingly bright stars.

“It’s as if you could reach out and grab one,” said Claudio, a carioca in his mid-forties, who was sleeping in a tent on the top deck, on his way home after a cycling tour of South America. He had caught dengue fever in Colombia and now, with no money and too sick to cycle back, had to present his medical certificate at the council offices of each town we stopped in to have his transport paid.

Word spread that the boat would be docking for three hours at Humaitá, where we would have the option of disembarking and taking a two hour drive to Porto Velho, or staying on the boat for another twenty four hours until we reached our final destination. Due to previous commitments rather than any frustrations with the trip, I decided to take the first option.

To say there was a party on the final night would be a considerable overstatement, but there were more people than usual out on the top deck, and something of a “grand finale” atmosphere. Some of the passengers even seemed to have dressed up for the occasion.

I sat with a pair of cable TV technicians who were traveling between cities looking for work. As we chatted they sipped on cachaça mixed with Fanta and played pagode (another type of Brazilian pop music) tracks on their cell phones. Eventually, exhausted, I crept downstairs to negotiate the dark maze of hammocks before falling into my own bed, the engine throbbing loudly in the background.

We finally arrived in Humaitá at 3am on Saturday morning, where I bid farewell to my newfound friends. The sense of river camaraderie wasn’t over yet, however, as I jumped in a taxi to Porto Velho – shared, of course, with a group of my fellow passengers.

A weekend of mob robberies on Rio’s beaches saw some Zona Sul residents attempt to take the law into their own hands. But the “crime mobs”, the vigilantes, and the social divisions that underpin them are nothing new, as James Young explains. 

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

Despite the start of the summer season and the giant Rock in Rio music festival drawing flocks of foreign and domestic tourists to Rio de Janeiro, the beaches of the Cidade Maravilhosa were reportedly quieter than usual this weekend.

Perhaps it was because of the overcast weather. More likely and more troublingly, however, it was due to the events of the weekend before. Then, images of gangs of shirtless young men, swarming across the sands of Ipanema, Arpoador and Copacabana, stealing cell phones, cameras, jewellery and wallets, were beamed across the country. In total 61 people, many of whom were minors, were apprehended.

Following the chaos, the police brought forward the start of its Operação Verão (“Operation Summer”) stop and search operation for buses coming in from the periferia (Rio’s distant, working class suburbs) with over a thousand police officers and social workers manning 17 check points on the main access routes to the beach neighbourhoods this weekend.

With many of those involved in the robberies below the age of legal responsibility, the authorities are keen to stress the social care aspect of their operation. “What the police were trying to do was related to the vulnerability of the individuals. If a minor leaves home, 30 or 40 km from the beach, dressed in just his bathing suit, with no bus fare or money for food or drink, then this person, in my humble opinion, is in a situation of risk,” Rio de Janeiro Security Secretary José Mariano Beltrame told Brazilian TV.

Nonetheless, the idea of stopping and searching thousands of largely poor, generally dark-skinned Cariocas from the Zona Norte suburbs as they attempted to access the more affluent tourist areas of Zona Sul was a troubling reminder of the financial and social abyss that separates Brazil’s haves and have nots.

Some, including Eufrasia Souza, Coordinator for the Defence of the Rights of Children and Adolescents of Rio’s Public Defender Service, have criticised the idea of detaining people who have committed no apparent crime, and talked of a “social apartheid“.

While an expanded welfare system, economic and social development and an increased minimum wage mean much progress has been made towards greater equality in Brazil in recent years, Rio’s beach wars seemed like an echo of the problems and prejudices of the past.

Os Pobres Vão Á Praia (“The Poor Go to the Beach”), a documentary broadcast on the TV Manchete (“Headline TV”) channel in the 1990s, showed the unvarnished reality of what it was like to make the long journey from Rio’s poor outer suburbs to the beaches of Zona Sul – complete with often rowdy passengers surfing on top, or climbing in through the windows, of heaving buses.

More compelling viewing than the discomfort of the journey (accompanied by the song Nós Vamos Invadir Sua Praia (“We’re Going to Invade Your Beach”) by the band Ultraje a Rigor), however, is the reaction of the better-heeled Brazilians in the documentary.

“They’re uneducated, you can’t take people out of…the swamp and take them to Copacabana. I can’t be around people who have no education…You have to charge entry…you can’t put someone well-dressed from Ipanema, someone educated…and put them in the middle of people who aren’t educated, who are rude, who are going to eat farofa and chicken…you’d die of disgust, it’s horrible,” says one appalled young woman. “It’s horrific that they’re from my country…they’re not Brazilians, they’re a sub-race,” she continues, as the words scenes of explicit prejudice flash on the screen.

The Poor Go to the Beach was reposted on YouTube on 27^th September, a few days after the beaches of Rio had been invaded once again, albeit at times in a more criminal, violent fashion. “You can see that nothing has changed in Rio. We made programmes about arrastões (“crime mobs”), the war between the classes, all these phenomena, the battle against the drugs trade, police corruption. Some people think that all this started today, but it’s been like this for dozens of years and the documentary shows that,” said Nelson Hoineff, the director of the Documento Especial series, of which the programme was part.

But the arrastões were perhaps not even the most troubling story of Rio’s violent weekend. That came later in the afternoon, when reports emerged of groups of men, mainly from Zona Sul gyms and combat/martial arts clubs, forming vigilante gangs and going off in search of the enemy – namely young men or boys from the poorer suburbs.

“We’re looking for kids in cheap flip-flops, who look like they haven’t got R$1 in their pockets,” said one of the vigilantes. “It’s obvious that they’re here to steal,” said another, Antônio, a shop worker from Copacabana. “If they want terror, we’ll give them terror. It’s self-defence.” On at least one bus, passengers were forced to smash a window to escape the justiceiros (“vigilantes” in English – interestingly, the word vigilante in Portuguese usually means security guard).

Such vigilante action has becoming alarmingly common in Brazil in recent years – or else it has always been there, but has simply become more visible in the smartphone and internet era. In February last year a 15-year-old boy was beaten, stripped naked and chained to a post in the Flamengo neighbourhood of Rio, while 29-year-old Cledenilson Pereira da Silva, suspected of robbing a local bar, was also stripped naked and tied to a lamppost before being beaten to death in São Luis in the northern state of Maranhão in July this year. Similar incidents have been registered in other parts of the country, from the state of Espirito Santo, adjacent to Rio de Janeiro, to Piauí in the north-east.

Such actions reflect many of the issues that trouble Brazilian society – the fear that one may become a victim of crime, in a country where there are over 50,000 murders a year; the loathing of criminals and, by association, the social groups from which it is assumed they come; and the sense of both impotence and rage that stems from the inability of the police or government to do anything about the problem.

The culture of justiceiros has sparked much debate. “It’s shocking to see a scene as deplorable as this in 2014. It’s barbaric. If he’s a criminal, arrest him,” said Rio resident Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, who found the boy chained to the lamppost in Flamengo last year.

Many have taken a different stance, however, including Rachel Sheherazade, the anchor of the “SBT Brasil” news programme on one of Brazil’s biggest TV networks. “This counter-attack is what I call the collective self-defence of a society without a government, against a state of violence without limit. And for the human rights defenders who took pity on the little thief chained to the post, I launch a campaign: do yourself and Brazil a favour – adopt a criminal.” The comments sections of articles about such cases, meanwhile, are inevitably filled with Bandido bom é bandido morto style messages – “the only good bandit is a dead bandit”.

Rio’s beach justiceiros, meanwhile, are nothing new. “S”, a 45-year-old Copacabana resident and former Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, described the situation in the 1990s to Vice Brazil. “If there was an arrastão, we’d retaliate, and obviously we’d kick their asses, because the kids from the periferia couldn’t handle a team of 20 or 30 trained fighters. But we weren’t vigilantes. It was self-defence.” The name for such fighters at the time, according to Vice, was “pit-boy”.

The economic divisions, fear and loathing of social classes other than one’s own, “crime mobs” and vigilantes that underpin and surround Rio’s beach violence, then, are nothing new. While Brazil has made some progress towards a more equal society in recent years, it seems there is still a long way to go.

While much has been made of Brazil’s economic downturn, a toxic political climate is equally responsible for the current woes of President Dilma Rousseff and her government. Mauricio Savarese looks at the complex backdrop to the crisis.

By Mauricio Savarese
São Paulo

There is no easy explanation as to why, just under a year after being reelected by a narrow margin, President Dilma Rousseff runs the risk of not completing her term in office. It took respected consultancy firm Eurasia months, for example, to weigh up all the factors and raise the chances of her resigning or being impeached from 30% to 40%. But one thing is easy to predict: whatever the outcome, the current climate of polarization is here for a while – perhaps even until after the next elections.

Although opposition militants argue that Rousseff has only herself to blame for her troubles, pro-government forces place the blame on kingmaker party the PMDB, and defeated PSDB presidential candidate Aécio Neves. Leftist groups continue to defend Rousseff’s mandate but oppose her fiscal policies. While it is difficult to know where the saga will end, there are clear reasons behind Brazil’s political crisis.

The aggressive, toxic campaigns waged by both candidates in last year’s elections are as good a place to start as any. Rousseff came close to defeat against Neves, who himself only made it to the second round run-off on the final straight – environmentalist Marina Silva had been running second in the polls until then. And the contest was only so tight in the first place because of a sluggish economy and the emergence of a new wave of scandals involving key members of the government. In 2013 most bets had been on Rousseff’s reelection.

After a narrow defeat, Neves barely recognized his opponent’s victory in his concession speech. Such a tight margin, the closest in Brazilian history, had two immediate effects: a smaller mandate for the winner and more sore loser griping from the other side. Impeachment talk emerged right after Rousseff was proclaimed the victor, and today it often feels as though the election never ended.

After a leftist-sounding campaign, the president turned her attention to the financial markets in a manner that shocked many of her voters. After much indecision, she picked American-trained Bradesco Bank economist Joaquim Levy to be her Finance Minister, and appointed a number of other conservative ministers, some of whom would have been more comfortable in a Neves cabinet. Before the end of the year she had managed to lose touch with her base, while at the same time failing to win over her adversaries.

Since then the crisis has all been about the government’s controversial ally, the PMDB. The centrist party, which has itself been associated with scandal more than a few times in the past, was never 100% on Rousseff’s side, and today it would be a push to argue that even 50% of its deputies and senators are still with the president. During the campaign some of the party’s key figures were already placing their bets on Neves, and the division has remained even after the president’s victory. Opposition forces were strong enough to elect her main PMDB adversary, congressman Eduardo Cunha, to the role of Speaker of the Lower House until February 2017.

Rousseff believed that her decisions would restore the credibility she had lost in her first term thanks to growing spending and the use of backpedaling, a form of delaying repayments to lenders who had provided money to pay for welfare programs, making the country’s books appear more robust than was actually the case – a breach of fiscal responsibility laws say the opposition, but common accounting practice according to the government.

But in fact those unpopular steps, which contradicted profoundly with the tone of Rousseff’s campaign, were eating away at her popularity. The Lower House, led by Cunha, began to think of ways to put further pressure on an already unpopular president.

The lack of enthusiasm for the new administration had been evident since January 1st, when Rousseff’s somewhat flat inauguration was attended by less than 5,000 people – around 10 times fewer than at the start of her first term. Rousseff picked a number of ministers that patently had few qualifications for their positions, solely to maintain the support of their parties in Congress. Cunha’s election as speaker may have been the first sign that the strategy had failed, but others have followed.

Despite being involved in multiple scandals, including the Petrobras investigation, Cunha is a wily strategist. With the speakership he had the power to define the Lower House voting schedule, and to choose which congressional inquiries would move forward. This latter power includes what is described as “an atomic bomb” in Brasilia: in other words, whether or not to allow an impeachment process against the president to progress.

When Rousseff’s popularity sunk to single digits, all the opposition, which had been repeatedly stirring up protests against the president, needed was a motive to seek impeachment, and in Cunha they had found a willing ally.

Three possibilities have now emerged. One is to find a direct link between the president and the Petrobras scandal, while another option is for the Superior Electoral Court to strip both her and Vice-President Michel Temer of their positions because of the use of supposedly illegal funds in their election campaign. The third potential outcome, meanwhile, is to accuse Rousseff of breaking fiscal responsibility laws in the form of the aforementioned backpedaling.

All these three possibilities remain in play, but none are conclusive. If proven, they would also result in different outcomes: in the first and the third cases, Temer would take over from Rousseff, although rumors have suggested the vice-president himself may be implicated in the Petrobras scandal – something he has already denied.

If both Rousseff and Temer go, runner-up Neves would take over, with even those in opposition recognizing that such a decision by the Superior Electoral Court would not necessarily give them the legitimacy they would need to govern. Since the restoration of democracy in Brazil in 1985, impeachment charges have been brought only against President Fernando Collor de Mello, in 1992, when he was directly linked to corruption scandals that had emerged during his term, showing the difference between the two cases.

Rousseff has relied on a number of factors to keep her job. The first is her turbulent yet enduring relationship with former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the main power behind the Worker’s Party. She also hopes to maintain her alliance with the president of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, who could also yet be implicated in the Petrobras scandal. The third is the pragmatism of many business leaders, who think impeachment would represent a major setback for a young democracy.

Further complicating matters is that in the event that impeachment proceedings are instigated in the Lower House, Rousseff may decide to take her case to the Supreme Court. Unlike congressmen, Brazilian supreme court justices have little interest in the polls and nor are they yet much concerned with the investigations of the Petrobras scandal. It appears impossible to tell what the outcome of such an action might be. Brazil is not for beginners, as the songwriter Tom Jobim once memorably said – and the complexities of the current political crisis show that his words are as true now as ever.

Recent high-profile examples of prejudice have stirred up the complex race debate in Brazil, a country that has in the past claimed to be built on foundations of racial democracy. 

By James Young

Belo Horizonte

From the glorious colonial architecture of Ouro Preto in the hills of Minas Gerais to the exquisite Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil is justifiably proud of the evidence of its rich history and culture. But a recent trip back into another kind of past – the blackface tradition of US theatre, or some of the darkest moments of 1970s UK TV, for example – has left more than a few Brazilians feeling squeamish.

Most famous for its scantily clad Panicat dancers, the puerile Pânico Na Band comedy show is not known for scaling intellectual heights. In recent weeks, however, it has plumbed new depths with the introduction of a character known only as The African, played by “blacked-up” white actor Eduardo Sterblitch, who speaks only in grunts and shrieks and acts in what the show’s creators presumably believe constitutes typical “African” behaviour – scratching at all parts of his body, tearing at plants and leaves and performing a dance of thanks for the judges of a cooking contest.

The show caused outrage among some Brazilians, with the National Black Slavery Truth Commission, an initiative of the Brazilian Bar Association, stating that the character was a “racial affront” which contributed to the “perpetuation of the effects and vestiges of slavery.”

Sterblich has since apologised for his performance, while Pânico has said that it intends to remove the character from the show, before rather spoiling the gesture by offering up the dubious defence that the program makes fun of “Mexicans, Chinese and Arabs” as well.

It is the latest in a string of recent racism-linked episodes in the media or involving well-known Brazilians. Last month the black presenter of the weather segment on the Globo TV network’s nightly news program, Maria Júlia Coutinho, was abused with a string of racist comments on the show’s Facebook page.

This week Flamengo boss Cristóvão Borges claimed that some of the deluge of criticism he has received during his career “has a racial connotation…I was even called the Mourinho of the Pelourinho”, a reference to Chelsea boss Jose and the historic district of Borges’ home city of Salvador, Brazil’s most African-influenced city, the name of which is taken from the Portuguese word for a slave-era whipping post.

Like the “monkey” chants aimed at the black goalkeeper Aranha during last year’s Copa do Brasil tie between Grêmio and Santos, the incidents have brought the issue of racism in Brazil to the fore, and provided further evidence of the myth of the theory of democracia racial – the idea that the country, with its complex racial mix of indigenous peoples, European colonizers, African slaves, and later large-scale immigration from countries such as Japan, Italy and Germany, would somehow magically avoid the racial conflicts seen in other nations.   

The high-profile examples above rather give the lie to such a notion, as does the sheer weight of statistics describing the different realities of life for Brazil’s racial groups. A 2014 study by the Brazilian Public Security Forum found that the murder rate among young black Brazilians in 2012 was 70.8%, compared to 27.8% among their white equivalents.

“There are more than 30,000 young people with this profile (black) murdered every year. It’s as though a full plane crashes every day,” said Atilia Roque, director of Amnesty International in Brazil, on the launch of the “Keep Black Youth Alive” campaign to bring attention to the issue. Another report last year found that black or brown-skinned Brazilians earn slightly over half the average salary of white workers.

 Yet despite Brazil’s great racial divide, visibly obvious everywhere from expensive restaurants to public hospitals, or etched on the faces of the manual workers queueing in early morning bus lines, the race debate is largely played out at low volume here. “If I went after everybody who called me black, I would have sued the whole world,” Pelé said earlier this year, when advising Aranha that “indifference” was the best form of defence against the racists, while the expression “Brazil is not a racist country” is commonly heard.

Part of that is down to the difficulties of racial classification in a country where there has been intermingling between different ethnic groups for so long. A recent survey found that 53% of Brazilians described themselves as “black” or “brown”, but the numbers of people declaring themselves as negro, branco or pardo (brown skinned or mixed race) can vary considerably from one study to another, based on the current cultural and social mood.

The concept that one’s racial identity can be flexible was summed up neatly by the footballer-turned-senator Romario when talking about Neymar. “I’m black,” he said, “If (he) doesn’t consider himself black, then he’s not. It’s up to him.” And a 1980 survey by the historian Clovis Moura identified 136 types of racial classification that Brazilians use to describe themselves, including “milky coffee”, “dirty white” and “cinnamon.”

At the same time, black consciousness in Brazil has grown in recent years through the activities of social groups and initiatives such as Dia Nacional da Consciência Negra, or National Black Consciousness Day.  “I became black – it was a process…but the fact that I had to “learn” to be black is terrible,” the actress Jana Guinond has said of her eventual decision to describe herself as negra.  

Episodes like that of “The African” and the affronts suffered by Cristóvão Borges and Maria Júlia Coutinho raise another issue in Brazil’s race debate – the local habit of using racially based slang terms such as Negão (“Big Black”), or Pretinha (“Little Black Girl”) or Japa (“Japanese-Brazilian”) to describe people.

Brazilians are fond of saying that such terms are mostly affectionate, not intended to be offensive, and used for physical description only. Subconsciously or otherwise, however, such language is surely built on stereotypes, and it seems unthinkable that such terms would be used in countries where the racial discussion is more sensitive.

And Brazilians may now have another area of potential racial conflict with which to deal. The shooting of six Haitian immigrants by a man with a pellet gun in the centre of São Paulo two weeks ago was notable for the fact that the shooter was reported to have shouted “you stole our jobs” after pulling the trigger.

Some estimates say over 50,000 Haitians have moved to Brazil since 2012, and the shooting felt like an unsettling echo of the resentment and xenophobia that surrounds immigration, often from Africa or Eastern Europe, into the wealthier countries of the EU, particularly when such countries are experiencing the kind of economic recession that Brazil is undergoing today.

If such unpleasant incidents have an upside, however, it is that from racist TV characters and football fans to anti-immigrant feeling, the race debate in Brazil seems slowly to be getting louder – and perhaps not before time.

Once a symbol of growth and rising confidence, the sprawling suburbs outside Brazil’s urban centers are feeling the pinch as the economy nosedives. And there are few places in the country where it is so obvious how out of touch the bickering politicians in Brasilia are with the realities of daily life.

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

Aside from the humdrum backdrop of harrowing, everyday tragedy, three subjects have dominated the headlines in Brazil in recent months – the enormous Petrobras corruption scandal, the country’s economic downturn, and the political game of thrones being played out on a seemingly infinite loop in the capital of Brasilia.

The narratives inevitably intertwine – as Brazil’s very own Frank Underwood, the speaker of the country’s lower house, Eduardo Cunha, wages war on Dilma Rousseff’s struggling government, the Petrobras investigation appears certain to involve many leading political figures, including now Cunha himself, while the acrid climate of squabbling and corruption, coupled with Rousseff’s toxic approval ratings, torpedoes any attempts to keep a seemingly sinking ship afloat.

Observing such events unfold from afar, however, lends a detached, surreal air to proceedings, like watching an episode of House of Cards with the actors replaced by Rousseff, Cunha, former presidential candidate Aécio Neves and the rest. It is often hard to reconcile the self-serving manoeuvres of such hardened players of the jogo do poder (“the power game”) with the tough reality of life in Brazil’s working class bairros.

One such hard-knock neighbourhood is Jordão, tucked behind the airport in the southern periferia of Recife, and home to around 20,000 people. Divided between the municipal authorities of Recife and neighbouring Jaboatão dos Guararapes, Jordão suffers from the familiar problems of many of Brazil’s lower class neighbourhoods, particularly in the nordeste – an unreliable public transport system, low quality housing, limited accessibility to healthcare and schools, an intermittent electricity and water supply, poor sewerage, and high levels of urban violence.

Meanwhile residents do their best to fill the gaps in the services supplied by the government or city council. Ten years ago sisters Raquel and Rozeli Santos opened the Educandário Amara Maurício primary school in a tiny three room building, as neither Recife nor Jaboatão provided a public school for young children in the immediate area. “For years an up and coming local politician financially supported us,” Raquel told me, “making sure that local people knew all about his generosity. Once he was elected, the donations stopped.”

A new building has been constructed with eight classrooms, big enough for 300 children, and now the school survives (barely) on monthly fees of around U$27 per pupil, not enough to pay the ten teachers, all of whom are from the bairro, much more than the minimum monthly wage of U$240. When I visited the school just over a year ago, the yard was filled with jagged bricks left over from the building work, and there was nowhere for the children to play.

Jordão is often affected by water shortages and power cuts. “Some months the electricity is off for a few hours nearly every day,” said Jessica Santos, Rozeli’s daughter, at the time a teacher at the school.

“It feels like we’re forgotten,” said Raquel. “Recife forgets about us and Jaboatão forgets about us.” Drug addiction is a major problem in the neighbourhood, as is lawlessness. “They killed a young boy a few weeks ago,” Raquel said. “He hit someone’s motorbike, just a scrape. Someone pulled out a gun and shot him.” It is not a rare occurrence. Stories such as those of Klébson Gomes da Costa, the ten year old boy hit by a stray bullet during a shootout between police and traficantes (drug dealers) in May 2013, or Taísa Priscila Rodrigues da Cruz, a 20-year-old drug user who was shot and killed a few months later, are common.

In recent years residents of neighbourhoods such as Jordão have seen considerable improvements in quality of life, due to Brazil’s expanded Bolsa Familia welfare system, an increased minimum salary, and overall economic growth. Two years ago I sat in a scruffy bar and watched what seemed like half the bairro make its way to that essential staple of middle class Brazilian life, a plush new gym. It looked like better times lay ahead.

But now the government is introducing austerity measures and the growth has gone into reverse. According to research institute IBGE, the national unemployment rate last month was 6.9%, the highest June rate since 2010. The same study put the jobless level in Recife at 8.8%, although other surveys are even more negative – the Diario de Pernambuco, the oldest newspaper in South America still in circulation, stated that 12.9% of Recife’s workforce was unemployed in March.

Part of this statistic is Edilson Alves da Silva, a 36-year-old mechanic and factory worker. Edilson lives with his wife Elma and her daughter in a typically cramped Jordão house, with an imposing metal front door protecting a small bedroom, living room and kitchen. Another bedroom has been fashioned from a lean-to by the front entrance, and a tiny bathroom takes up one corner of the kitchen.

For the last eight years Edilson was part of the production line in a factory that makes the tin-foil plates used to hold quentinhas – the take-away lunches that are so popular in Brazil. His and Elma’s salary put the family firmly in the heart of the country’s swelling “new” middle class – Classe C and D, one of the groups that has suffered most during Brazil’s economic troubles.

Last October, just as campaigning in Brazil’s presidential elections entered its final straight, Edilson was made redundant, along with a number of his colleagues. “I think the company saw that the crisis was on the way,” he says. “When I lost my job I thought I’d find another one easily, but it hasn’t turned out that way. I’ve had around 20 interviews, but every time there’s a line of people like me looking for work.”

After working all his life, Edilson says it is difficult to get used to being unemployed. “It’s hard to survive, but at least my wife is working. My redundancy money was gone after three months – I wish the crisis had ended so quickly. Prices keep going up (some reports have put inflation at 8.47% over the last 12 months, but the price of many goods has increased at a considerably faster rate) which means what little money we have doesn’t go far.”

Edilson says he sees the results of Brazil’s economic woes everywhere he goes in Jordão. “There are lots of people standing around in the street, doing nothing, at 10 o’clock in the morning. They’re tired of going out every day delivering their CVs, having interviews, and not getting hired.”

Like many of his countrymen, he is scathing of the politicians’ attempts to solve Brazil’s problems, and their apparently greater interest in the jogo do poder.

“My hopes for the future are in the hands of the vultures in Brasilia,” he says. “The business leaders and politicians are supposed to have the influence and knowledge to find a way out of the situation. Those down below don’t have that option. All we can do is sit and wait.”

What if they put on Carnaval, and nobody came? A short work of fiction
By James Young

It was a glorious Saturday morning in Recife. A statue in the form of a multicolored rooster, the Galo da Madrugada, towered over the Duarte Coelho Bridge, streamers hung from the lampposts and on every street corner someone was selling beer, snacks or carnaval paraphernalia – rainbow-colored frevo parasols, wigs or whistles.

The VIP boxes that overlooked Avenida Guararapes were packed with local politicians and minor celebrities. In a box sponsored by one of Brazil’s giant beer companies, the mayor of Recife was talking to a young woman dressed in a halter top and a pair of very tight shorts.

“Being on Big Brother Brasil was just the beginning for me,” the young woman was saying. “Really I’m an actress. It’s my dream to be in a novela.”

The mayor bit his lip pensively and said nothing. He looked at his watch – it was already nine o’clock. What was going on? Normally by this time the streets were thronged with hundreds of thousands of revelers, but this morning there were only the beer sellers and a group of blonde-haired, pink-skinned tourists dressed in German football shirts. He gave an involuntary shudder.

He sipped his caipirinha. It was probably nothing. Perhaps everybody had drunk a little too much cachaça the night before. A few sore heads this morning. They would be here. The people loved carnaval. Everything would be fine.

By ten o’clock the Germans had been joined by a Japanese family and an American couple draped in the stars and stripes. Other than that, Avenida Guararapes was entirely empty. The mayor called his counterpart in the neighboring town of Olinda.

“I don’t understand it,” said the mayor of Olinda. “There’s no one here either. The streets are deserted.”

By eleven o’clock, even with free beer and caipirinhas, the VIP box had begun to empty. In Rio de Janeiro, the organizers of the Cordão da Bola Preta bloco, which usually attracted over two million partygoers, reluctantly announced that this year’s event had been called off as no one had shown up. In the afternoon the trio elétricos rumbled through the deserted streets of Salvador for a few hours before returning to their garages in defeat.

On Jornal Nacional that night, an ashen-faced newsreader described similar scenes across the country – cancelled blocos, deserted sambodromos and empty streets. For the first time that anyone could remember, on the opening day of carnaval, the people had decided to stay at home.

***

In Brasília, the president stared glumly at the TV. No carnaval? She couldn’t understand it. Sure, the economy had tanked, there were the usual corruption scandals, and there were water and electricity shortages, but was that really enough to cancel carnaval? The people loved carnaval! Goddamn it, she loved carnaval – axé, frevo, and most of all samba. Samba was her favorite.

Later that night she addressed the nation. She told the people that even though times were hard, they couldn’t let things get them down. There had always been carnaval. Carnaval was in their blood. Goddamn it, it was their duty to celebrate carnaval! She said “o povo Brasileiro” as often as possible, hoping to stir up a sense of patriotism, and finished off by saying that “God was Brazilian, and carnaval was Brazilian, so get out there tomorrow and party!”

The next day, however, the streets, the blocos and the sambodromos once again lay empty and silent. A survey showed that the president’s approval rating had fallen from 44% to 24% following her speech.

The opposition party was naturally delighted by the president’s woes. A television commercial was hastily put together where the leader of the party, a man from a wealthy family who had trouble connecting with less-well off voters, discussed the crisis. “The boycotting of carnaval is a clear sign that the Brazilian people have rejected this corrupt government, and the president’s message last night shows just how far out of touch she is! Carnaval belongs to the people, not the government!” The commercial ended with an exhortation to vote for the opposition in the next elections.

A survey the next day revealed that the opposition leader’s popularity had also dropped by half.

The crisis continued. Hundreds of foreign journalists arrived to cover the situation, and the Brazilian media reported with pride that the carnaval crisis was making international headlines. A group of well-known soap opera stars, footballers and musicians made a TV commercial in which they sang songs, danced and smiled at the camera, and begged people to come out into the streets and party.

In a darkened underground bunker in Mato Grosso, a group of generals from the Brazilian army discussed what action might be required on their part should the government fail to resolve the situation. Nothing, they decided, was too extreme. In some cities, the police attempted to make Brazilians celebrate carnaval by force – twelve people were shot in two days.

Meanwhile the main TV network attempted to coax people into the streets by showing carnaval footage from the year before and packaging it as live. It did not take long, however, before an observant viewer noticed a banner labeled “Carnaval 2014” and spread the news of his discovery via Twitter. The TV network pulled the footage (though neglected to apologize or admit any wrongdoing). The stock market and the currency both crashed as tourists demanded refunds from their airline companies and hotels and the billion reais carnaval industry ground to a halt.

Monday brought more empty streets. The carnaval cities of Brazil, normally filled with the sound of music and partying, had fallen silent. But then on Tuesday morning something surprising happened. An elderly man, his step frail and uncertain, climbed slowly up the Ladeira da Misericórdia in Olinda. He led a little girl, dressed in a traditional frevo costume, by the hand.

Immediately he was surrounded by TV crews, journalists thrust microphones under his nose and helicopters circled overhead. A nearby frevo orchestra started playing “Vassourinhas” and hired dancers filled the street, leaping in the air and twirling their parasols.

Watching on TV, the president smiled and quickly arranged a conference call with senior party officials. “This will show that playboy from the opposition!” she shouted triumphantly down the phone. “The Brazilian people never give up! Carnaval is back!” She hung up and told an assistant to dig out her old samba records. She was in the mood for a little celebrating herself.

On her TV the elderly man in Olinda was being interviewed. “Sir,” cried one journalist “why do you think no one wanted to celebrate carnaval this year?”

“Hum?” said the elderly man, who was a little deaf.

“Carnaval!” yelled the journalist. “There was no party, no blocos, no Galo. What happened?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” said the elderly man.

“Come on sir,” pressed the journalist, “you must have an opinion.”

“Well, I can only really speak for myself,” said the old man. He looked down at the little girl, who stared up at him with a worried expression. He squeezed her hand gently.

“Of course! Please do!” yelled the journalists.

“Well, personally, it just seemed a bit silly this year. With all that’s going on, I mean. To go out and jump around, though I don’t do much jumping around these days, he he, not with my hip, I’m not as young…”

“Yes, yes,” shouted the journalists impatiently, “but what about carnaval?”

“Oh, well, like I was saying, it didn’t really seem right, with things as they are, to go into the streets and celebrate, and drink, and laugh, and pretend that everything is great. How does the song go? “Sadness has no end, but happiness does…the great illusion of carnaval, we work all year for one moment of joy”, something like that? Like I say, I can’t speak for anyone else, but…”

The journalists looked perplexed. They stood quietly and tried to digest what the old man had said. Finally, someone asked another question.

“But you’re here now, aren’t you? Have you changed your mind? Do you think there are others coming? Is carnaval back on?”

“Well,” said the old man. “I wouldn’t know about that. And anyway, I’m not here for carnaval. I live around the corner, and I’m on my way to the bakery. My granddaughter here is hungry and wants a snack. Do you know if it’s open?”

Slowly, the journalists lowered their cameras and their microphones. The frevo orchestra fell silent and the helicopters drifted away. In the president’s office, the television screen went blank.

*

Disclaimer – this is a work of pure imagination with no relation to the reality of 2015 Brazil. Tens of thousands of Brazilians have already taken to the streets for Carnaval. Some Folha coverage of that here. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. (With thanks and apologies from James Young to Jose Saramago’s “Ensaio Sobre a Lucidez”)

In deference to what now seems a rule mandating publications to ‘wrap up’ the past year, this is a list of some of the articles, in English, that told the story of Brazil in 2013. For this we turned to Sergio Charlab, a Brazilian journalist who maintains a very active Twitter with updates on pieces written by foreign correspondents, bloggers, and other writers trying to explain Brazil. All text below by Sergio.

By Sergio Charlab

[In chronological order]

1. “Rio, With Eyes Open” by Jodi Kantor. New York Times
2. “Cars made in Brazil are deadly” by Bradley Brooks. Associated Press
3. “Curiosidades Brasileiras” by Olivier Teboul. O outro diário d Olivier [PORTUGUESE] – English translation here
4. “Fear and loathing in São Paulo“, by Claire Rigby. From Brazil-Folha
5. “Explaining Brazil’s vinegar revolt” by Greg Michener and Chris Gaffney. Al Jazeera
6. “Prices fuel outrage in Brazil, home of the $30 cheese pizza” by Simon Romero. New York Times
7. “Jorge Lemann: He is…the World’s Most Interesting Billionare” by Alex Cuadros. Bloomberg
8. “Analysis: Brazil and U.S., like star-crossed lovers, foiled again” by Brian Winter. Reuters
9. “Grounded” – special report by Helen Joyce. The Economist
10. “In Brazil, more buildings are seized by residents in need of housing” by Vincent Bevins. Los Angeles Times
11. “A yellow card, the unfathomable violence, in Brazil” by Jeré Longman and Taylor Barnes. The New York Times
12. “Into Brazil: mountains and waterfalls” by Dom Phillips. Folha/From Brazil
13. “Generation June” by Wright Thompson. ESPN

[Guest post] – After a decade of economic growth and explosive protests, how does one explain what Brazil is to the outside world? Mauricio Savarese, a journalist from São Paulo, recounts his experiences over the last year in London, and dealing with a reputation often defined by old stereotypes or a tiny circle of traveling elites.

By Mauricio Savarese

“Why is Brazil important?” As the only foreigner in a very British MA course, I expected loads of strange questions about my country from my 49 colleagues. But I wasn’t ready for that one. It happened more than once during my first week in the course back in September 2012. One year later, I feel they know a bit more about the place I call home, but it isn’t clear whether that is because Brazil was more in the news recently or because I am the first Brazilian most of them have ever talked to. Perhaps both, maybe neither.

Before arriving, I took it for granted that every Briton had heard of the Amazon, the growing economy and the major sporting events coming here in the next years. I was sure many of them had been to Rio or Salvador. I believed those who refused to visit were too focused on reports of violence. But time after time I noticed I was wrong. Very often all I saw was a gigantic question mark on their faces. It wasn’t arrogance or disregard for our achievements. It just wasn’t a place they could relate to. Why should it matter?

At first I blamed the Commonwealth countries for their lack of knowledge about Latin America’s powerhouse. After all, Brazil was never a British colony. But that notion faded as I told them about the issues I covered as a journalist. One of those who asked about the importance of Brazil suddenly started studying our landless movement. Others debated the recent protests with real interest. Many promised to come for the World Cup. The more information they had, the less reservations they showed. But it was just curiosity.

If Brazil is an interesting country and foreigners get tempted when I talk about it, why is it so difficult to translate what we are about to people around the world? It was a shock to see that a big part of the blame for their indifference seems to belong to us. Again and again I heard Brazilians who knew nothing about their country using stereotypes to explain it. Some were too condescending, others were too whiny. Brazilians who want a say in the international community had no clue where they come from.

That made me see that the gap between what Brazil needs to say and what foreigners think about it is greater than I thought. It became evident as soon as the protests were on the BBC. After a first wave of support, as if Brazil were Turkey, most colleagues and fellow journalists gave up. They were confused by the hysterical behavior that Brazilians very often mistake for passion. Many international friends were turned off by those suggesting a boycott to the World Cup. Others, by pro-government enthusiasts.

Who can blame them?

One of the reasons for the confusion is the fact only a small elite has the chance to be overseas and explain what Brazil is. Out of guilt, as I noted in many conversations in Europe, some of the wealthiest Brazilians talk about issues as if they had nothing to do with them, no responsibility for them. As if the bad governments they themselves put in power were never a part of the problem. The class of Brazilians that created, reproduce, and profit from huge inequality then turn around to lament that inequality to foreigners.

In the few weeks that I’ve been back, all I heard was Brazilians thinking, more than ever, that they were sure that foreigners will understand us, make our agenda global and help us get attention in protests during the coming sporting events. They promise nothing back. Brazilians want to be understood by foreigners, but do they make the same effort to understand the rest of the world?

And foreigners seem less interested than ever in anything that isn’t their own (frail) economic recovery and the places they already know. Latin America still seems to be a different universe to many people around the world, but many Brazilians barely even recognize they are part of Latin America too.

Not all is lost for Brazil to be recognized as an important country and for our citizens to behave accordingly. During my time abroad, as it goes for many Brazilians, I realized I can be a bridge. There is a generation that could gladly live abroad in places like New York, or London. But they stay for an even better cause: making a real difference in improving their home country.

Mauricio Savarese is a Brazilian journalist, originally from Ipiranga, in São Paulo’s zona sul, and is the author of the blog, “A Brazilian operating in this area.” He was formerly a reporter in Brasília for UOL and is active on Twitter.

Though both the stadium and Brazil’s national side are still ‘under construction,’ Sunday’s match was a largely successful and inspiring example of what the World Cup here can be. Above, a dedicated England fan…who is Brazilian.

By Dom Phillips

Be careful around the Maracanã, because that part of town can be a bit sketchy, one carioca, or Rio native, told me before the world famous stadium’s reopening game between Brazil and England on Sunday.

But instead of street kids hustling for change, I was met leaving the São Cristóvão station by smiling, green-clad helpers holding giant cardboard hands that pointed the way up a flyover, which had been closed to traffic and was now full of pedestrians snaking their way peacefully to the newly rebuilt Maracanã stadium.

It was clear on the metro journey out that this was going to run smoothly. In my carriage, a young, and very pale, English couple in England team shirts sat quietly, surrounded by Brazilians in green and yellow, including a baby on its mother’s lap. At bars around the ground before the game, more England fans drank beer on the pavements in their red or white tops – some 900 apparently made the trip over, I was later told. They were an incongruous sight on Rio streets, particularly here in the centre, a long way from the Southern tourist beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. A sign of how much of a shock Rio is in for when the gringos – as all foreigners are called – actually show up in force, and of how interesting that might be for everybody concerned.

One São Paulo-based English ex-pat, wearing a smart red England shirt, told me before the game that he actually wanted Brazil to win, because it would be better overall for the World Cup and that’s what we all wanted. A British journalist even turned up to the game in a Brazil vest. The England supporters were drowned out with boos by Brazilian fans every time they attempted to start up a chant. But the mood amongst the 66,000 that watched the 2-2 draw in which both England’s Wayne Rooney and Brazil’s Paulinho both scored memorable goals was overwhelmingly affable, and while this was not a classic, it was still a hugely entertaining game.

Rooney’s goal was a long, curling strike from outside the box that had TV Globo commentators discussing its “surgical precision” – exactly the sort of golaço, as a beautiful goal is called in Portuguese, the opening game needed. Paulinho’s whiplash rebound volley to equalise exploded into the net. Fred hit his home hard. Neymar threw in some dazzles in a first half where Brazil played better.

Off the pitch, nothing went badly wrong. Sighs of relief all around official circles, you might imagine. Rio really needed this to go well, after a run of crimes and disasters made all the wrong international headlines for a city with two enormous international sports events to stage.

An American exchange student was brutally gang raped and her French boyfriend badly beaten on a collective transport van, and the vans have now been banned in South Rio’s tourist areas. After an argument between a disgruntled student and its driver, a bus careered off a flyover in central Rio, killing seven. Shootings have broken out in so-called pacified favelas like the Complexo do Alemão. A German tourist was shot and badly injured during a hold-up in Rocinha, a favela pacified in 2011.

The Brazilian authorities had locked down the entire area around the Maracanã, sealing off a sort of protection zone around the stadium which was closed to traffic. A helicopter buzzed overhead, there were armed police and soldiers on the streets, as well as the army of green-clad helpers, some of whom used megaphones to move the crowds.

In the days before the match, a roof panel fell off a stadium in Salvador and a Rio judge suspended Sunday’s match on safety grounds, later lifting the injunction. In March Rio’s other big stadium, the Engenhão, was closed for safety reasons. Photos of the Maracanã looking like a building site have been bouncing around Brazilian news sites.

But on the day, even though it is covered in plaster dust and not quite finished, the stadium looked impressive – particularly on the giant screens, as the camera swept around the concrete circles of this enormous gladiatorial bowl. Even the view from the rear of the stadium was stunning, as the sun set on the mountains that circle it and glinted on a hilltop favela.

It was a reminder that the World Cup is, for the vast billions of people who watch it, a television event. And if there is one thing that Rio – this vainest of cities, home to Brazil’s biggest television network and much of its cinema – knows, it is how to look good on television.

Sunday’s football was not classic, nor did it leave Brazil fans, or even coach Luiz Scolari happy. But with four goals in the second half, plenty of pace, and a handful of great moments, it was enough to whet your appetite for more big, set-piece games in a setting like this. Exactly what the World Cup promises.

Brazil needs its national side to raise the bar: Brazilian media have joked that both the Maracanã and the team are “under construction”. But the side did play with more bite. And the morning after the game, Brazil star Neymar was already at his new club Barcelona – many hope his long-awaited move to Europe will raise his game just as it has lifted that of his Brazil team-mate Lucas, now at PSG.

While for one Brazilian soccer fan, Sunday’s game was a dream come true. Miguel Salek Junior, 31, who writes for a Brazilian football website and has never been to the UK, has been a fanatic England fan since he watched Bobby Robson’s England side in the 1990 World Cup. Having waxed lyrical about Paul Gascoigne, Gary Lineker and David Platt, he showed From Brazil his red England shirt, with the name Lineker on the back, and his flag.

“The passion of the English fan for his national team is outstanding,” he said. “I expect a great game from England.” Miguel will not have been disappointed by Wayne Rooney’s “surgical strike”. While for even the most patriotic of England fans, the idea of someone from the country of Pelé and Zico glorifying as unglamorous a player as David Platt is, frankly, hilarious. But Miguel is a strangely heartening example of the kind of unlikely surprise football can throw up. Because this is a game that draws out the similarities between people from different nations, while simultaneously celebrating their differences.

Photos Dom Phillips