Between Heaven and Hell: Life in Rio 2016

Rio de Janeiro is without doubt the most beautiful and most dangerous city to host the Olympics. Picture the beautiful people on the stunning beaches of Copacabana, framed by the green Pão do Açúcar rising out of the water and the Sambadrome filled with dancers during Carnival. Contrast those images with stereotypical imaginaries of the poverty of favelas—informal housing areas or “slums.” Made infamous by films like City of God and Elite Squad, favelas are perceived as urban warzones of drug lords and corrupt police.

In the popular imagination, heaven and hell have never been geographically closer. When Rio hosts the 2014 World Cup final and 2016 Olympics, it will be easy to forget it is a city of over 6 million, where, as in most places, people go about living their lives. Both imaginaries of Rio obscure how its inhabitants will experience these sporting events.

Already the words “development” and “security” are defining how the Olympics will affect the residents of Rio's favelas. Elsewhere globally, security and development have been linked to perpetuate inequality; from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the occupation of Palestine to the ongoing response to the earthquake in Haiti.

Rio's Olympic Games do not simply represent the “circus” to the “bread” of Bolsa Família—a state funded family-based conditional cash transfer to the poor in Brazil. To be critical of the Olympic process, one has to recognize the problem is not the popular excitement of sport, which can have many different meanings, but rather the processes of privatization that have come to define events like the Olympics.

During the neoliberal period of tax-cuts, privatization, and downloading of services, a model for urban “development” through massive sporting events emerged from the Global North. The 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, 2000 Sydney Games, and the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester City are often cited as successful examples of this model. The logic is that the international attention will drive investment for “public”-private partnerships—though that often means the public partially covering the costs for private benefit.

Underdeveloped (cheap) and de-industrialized areas of a city are selected as event sites for transformation, while more iconic areas receive corporate face-lifts. Infrastructure, such as transit, is often also improved. Sound familiar? Think Toronto's proposed waterfront redevelopment as part of its failed 2008 Olympic bid, which without the Olympics continues to languish.

In an era when public planning and public financing are impossible without “unpopular” tax increases, sporting events supposedly bring what people want: new subways, more housing, better parks, and a reinvigorated urban economy.

As Vancouverites are probably now asking with the approach of the 2010 Olympics, couldn't the city have built the infrastructure without privatizing public spaces, spending public money on private development, while actually focusing on the issues of marginalized communities? The Olympics in Rio will likely magnify the problems of development for private benefit because of the violent dynamic of “securitization” used around the world to maintain inequality.

In a 2007 article, Uruguayan social critic Raúl Zibechi provocatively linked the strategies of urban containment developed by the US military to control Baghdad, the actions of Brazilian peacekeepers in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, and the securitization of slums around the world. In such cases, governments and corporations label the poorest urban populations as a violent security threat, which coincidentally prevents economic development or aid delivery.

Unlike the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, who are completely contained and isolated, in many cases informally housed poor populations are vitally important to the urban economy. Many urban poor have migrated to the city in search for work in the low-waged, informal service economy, providing exploitable and cheap labour.

As the economic dynamic of exploitation expands with the migration of the poor to the cities, the rapidly growing inequality of wealth creates an explosive situation. Through international news coverage we are familiar with images of Brazilian police and military launching spectacularly bloody raids into the informal urban neighbourhoods of Rio and São Paulo to combat heavily armed drug gangs.

The week after Rio won the Olympics, several of the city's favelas exploded in violence with gangs fighting police and the army. A Reuters headline from October 25 read, “Rio violence upsurge underlines Olympic challenge.”

Rio is a city of over 500 favelas. We are trained to think the people living in the favelas are violent and dangerous and need to be securitized before they can be brought “development” schemes—which rarely mean water, electricity, jobs, dignity, respect, and equality.

Through the eyes of “security” we see the social processes of exploitation and exclusion as a problem of unruly and violent people first, poverty second, and rarely if ever as the true inequality that securitization perpetuates. “Development” and the Olympics are generally already on dubious foundations of privatization and public debt for private gain.

When our Olympics are protected from Rio's marginalized by the police, soldiers, and private mercenaries, will the coercive force also be used to further marginalize Rio's poor? When security and development collude to create the 2016 Olympic Games, what will be the legacy for the people of Rio de Janeiro?

Originally published in The Leveller volume 2 issue 4.

World Cup 2014 Comes to Porto Alegre

Upsidedown World has another fascinating article up (as always) demonstrating top-notch journalism, this time on the impact of hosting a massive international sporting event in a 'developing' country. The author, Michael Fox, uses Porto Alegre's 2014 World Cup plans as a case-study. Fox cites the use of 1990 Barcelona as the gold-standard model for 'development' through sports. Another, smaller but similar, case is Manchester's Commonwealth Games 'development' strategy, which has brought 'investment' to a previously industrialized city, and some argue revitalized the city's urban economy to fit in the 21st century.

The Porto Alegre story is of interest to me, as I recently briefly visited the city in the Brazilian winter of 2009. Winter time in southern Brazil is not that cold when you are a Canadian, but it is at the limit of Brazilian toleration. And thus understandably the city probably was not at its full hustle and bustle, but my very short stay (2 days) not enough to really have any idea about what life is like in Porto Alegre nevertheless was interesting. Porto Alegre was my introduction into Brazil and it is a city not made for tourists in my impression. It is a city that spends most of its time 'working', and not your typical North American/European stereotype of Brazil, and like many other large cities in the South gives off an air of discipline and organization (epitomized by Curitiba, the second largest city in the south and arguably the best organized city in South if not all of the Americas). I wandered around the city in my two days, unsure of safety levels (I was overly cautious because the transition to portuguese left me feeling defenceless), but could see a lot of 'potential' in the eyes of a North American who is conditioned to see 'development' in a particular light.

North Americans like showy restaurants, clean shopping areas, mixtures of old and glass in the architecture, and the opportunities of a 'waterfront' to transform into an ideal playground of the rich but not exclusionary to the aspiring 'middle class'. This is what we see as meaningful development. My limited understanding of Barcelona coming out of the Franco dictatorship and into the 1980s fits this as well, certainly Manchester had many of these qualities. Porto Alegre fits a lot of the necessary conditions - a busy pedestrian area that could be 'upgraded', old market buildings still functional but transforming into restaurants, old port buildings abandoned or underused near the centre, a 'waterfront' (river front) that has open space for building, and an industrialized character that could be polished and 'de-industralized' to leave a shell of its former-self and gutted.

These forms of transformation are so easy to accept for the middle-class mind. These spaces, while not necessarily fully accepting of the middle-class (the condominiums and housing is too expensive, the restaurants too pricey, the most shopping beyond the reach of even the credit card) but are open to you - you can stroll around, have a coffee, buy a stylized tee-shirt. And the visuals inspire the middle-class mind to think of the possibilities of becoming just a little bit richer. If we just focus on the 'middle-class' transformations such as Barcelona can be seen as wonderful and beautiful, and in a society in Spain or England or Canada where the majority walks around with a middle-class mind the perception can easily become 'popular'. Of course we ignore so much even here - particularly the cheap and exploited labour that cleans, cooks, builds, and generally maintains these spaces. This labour does not actually have access to these areas except to 'work' and in privatized spaces, which often accompanies this form of development the homeless, economically displaced, and overall marginalized are simply not welcome.

Porto Alegre did have an economic boom at one point and it does have a more sizable middle class than many Brazilian cities, but I would not want to exaggerate this point. And like most of Brazil its labouring class does not have access to the 'middle-class' mind, though it may aspire at times with delayed purchases of expensive sports shoes or other visible statements of class. It makes me question this 'development' possibility.

I have to admit I'm a football fan, particularly the world cup. having been in Brazil, I know how important the sport is. No corner is left untouched by the sport's influence. Porto Alegre is divided between its two teams Gremio and Internacional and is one of the few places in Brazil where the local teams crowd out the massive São Paulo and Rio teams. The World Cup is HUGE for Brazil and I imagine the excitement cuts easily across class. Is this bad? I wont try to argue that.

I think Fox does a good job getting to the contradictions and difficulties with hosting a massive sporting event that is clearly popular in a 'developing country'. Instead of copying the model of development that is clearly for the elite class, that appeals to the middle class mind, that exists in the privatization of public space that results from the Barcelona or Manchester model, I would hope Brazil creates a distinctly Brazilian-local model. Porto Alegre is the city that created large urban participatory budgeting, it hosted the World Social Forum - it has creatively attempted to 'do things differently' and make the marginalized, in some way or another, a central pillar of their programs. Curitiba is another city that has lead the world in thinking about urban 'development' differently, responding to the local issues and problems, and looking at itself to come up with its own strategies. As a result of the innovating urban planning, Curitiba now has cheap, effective, and efficient mass(ive) transit, accessible urban parks, and large pedestrian areas. Its impact as a 'model' is evident across Southern Brazilian cities, who all now have vibrant pedestrian centres.

What would development in Porto Alegre look like? Instead of building on top of the homes of already economically displaced and/or exploited peoples, they would be the central pillar. Transit and transportation would be built to make life easiest for those who have to move the furthest - the poor and working classes. Public spaces would be opened up, rather than privatized, so that everyone has ownership and contributes to the creation of space. Parks, public cultural spaces, an inclusive waterfront that integrates the environment rather than destroys it, and so on. What does that leave the middle-class mind? Rather than dreaming of being rich and aspiring to the practically unattainable, and being economically exploited all the way along (hundreds of dollars for a marketed shoe made for less than 1 dollar), it would be a space where they too would have the capacity to contribute. Instead of dreaming to be a part of a space already made, they would get the opportunity to create a public space. This model of development might not be a success for the sponsors of the world cup, but it would be a success for the world cup and the city of Porto Alegre.