Friday, January 24, 2014

Brazil's World Cup - The Favela Fight

 2014 is of course the World Cup in Brazil.  In June last year tens of thousands of people took part in street protests against public transport fares, corruption, inequality – and against the World Cup itself. In a country where inflation is making the poor poorer, where there are chronic shortages of doctors and nurses, and where infrastructure is basic, the World Cup is burning through vast amounts of money, with all six new-build stadiums behind schedule and federal prosecutors seeking injunctions to block the use of further public funds to pay for the delays. In Rio de Janeiro a reported 30,000 families are being forcibly relocated.

 The World Cup provides Fifa with £5.5bn in commercial revenue over its four-year cycle, from the bulging roster of "partners" – the usual Adidas, Coke, Sony, Visa, McDonald's. Street vendors in Bahia have been banned from selling Acaraje, a favourite Brazilian snack, around the World Cup stadiums because of "product placement" rules. The official Brazuca match ball is currently retailing for the equivalent of £98, but it will be free to Brazilians, 95% of whom can't afford it, but only to those who were born on the day of the World Cup launch.

 The World Cup is an overblown circus.

 Authorities are preparing a 10,000-strong anti-riot force to help police control potential demonstrations during the World Cup this summer. The anti-riot force will be lead by a military police colonel and will consist of military and civil police officers, firefighters and logistics experts. "The troop is not an ordinary force. We are only drafted in times of crisis, only for specific missions," Brazilian newspaper Globo  quoted Colonel Alexandre Augusto Aragon as saying.

In the vicinity of Rio’s Maracana Stadium, where the World Cup final match will take place in July, from November 2010 to December 2013, in the name of the World Cup, 637 families from the Metro Mangueira favela were "resettled" in public residential precincts.  However, while "favelados" were being evicted, others were arriving and occupying the derelict houses. The new occupants are even poorer than the original ones, and most of them are homeless.

Tensions started rising in the favela on January 4, when Wellington Sabino, a local resident and street vendor was killed by the police. On the following day, a small uprising exploded in the favela as a bus was stopped, emptied out and burned to ashes, and an avenue was blocked for several hours. On January 7, police forces came by surprise and immediately demolished 12 houses, with all occupants' belongings inside. The police resorted to tear gas, pepper spray and sound bombs to clear the way for demolitions, but the community resisted. Protesters from the favela set up a barricade, burned some of the omnipresent debris and faced the police advance. Media-activists, live-streaming with their cell phones, Twitter accounts and blogs arrived to reinforce the resistance lines, and so did black bloc-style protesters, who emerged as a major force during the protest wave of 2013. The conflict continued until one o'clock at night. The new wave of evictions was suspended, at least for now. The government told residents they had 15 days to move or face a police operation. After the evictions on January 7, officials decided to make an offer: a "social rent" of R$ 460 ($200) per month to be paid by the state, until they could be more properly "resettled" in housing complexes outside the favela. The offer divided opinions. It was considered too small of an amount and too much of an abstract promise. The favelados knew that that the more likely option was facing the police.
Currently, desolation is the right word to describe the favela: streets full of garbage, debris, wastewater, rats and insects. In some cases, people enter and exit their homes through holes in the wall. Rio's mayor contemplates turning part of the area into a commercial centre for automotive mechanics, and another part into a recreational park. None of it, however, is destined for those people presently living in the favela, as the government is considering the case closed since the eviction of the old residents.

The situation in the Metro Mangueira favela is just one more in an endless series of evictions perpetrated by the government since Brazil was officially announced a World Cup and Olympic Games host. According to a report published by the People's Committee for the Cup and Olympic Games in Rio, a comprehensive social movements' forum, around 3,000 families were already evicted by May 2013, many of them in violent operations backed by the police. More than 8,000 families  currently live in areas marked to be removed. Almost all of them are poor people and every marked community is a favela.

adapted from here

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