{"id":5840,"date":"2013-06-21T08:06:55","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T08:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5840"},"modified":"2013-06-21T08:06:55","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T08:06:55","slug":"brazil-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5840","title":{"rendered":"Brazil burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"brazilcup\"<\/a>Protests in Brazil indicate what goes way, way beyond a cheap bus fare.<\/p>\n

\n

When, in late 2010, Dilma Rousseff was elected President after eight years of the impossibly popular Lula, a national narrative was already ingrained, stressing that Brazil was not the \u201ccountry of the future\u201d<\/i> anymore; the future had arrived, and this was a global power in the making.<\/p>\n

This was a country on overdrive \u2013 from securing the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics to a more imposing role as part of the BRICS group of emerging powers.<\/p>\n

Not unlike China, Brazil was breathlessly exploiting natural resources \u2013 from its hinterland to parts of Africa \u2013 while betting heavily on large agribusiness mostly supplying, you guess it, China.<\/p>\n

But above all Brazil fascinated the world by incarnating this political UFO; a benign, inclusive giant, on top of it benefitting from a lavish accumulation of soft power (music, football, beautiful beaches, beautiful women, endless partying).<\/p>\n

The country was finally enjoying the benefits of a quarter of a century of participative democracy \u2013 and self-satisfied that for the past ten years Lula\u2019s extensive social inclusion policies had lifted arguably 40 million Brazilians to middle class status.<\/p>\n

Yet this breakneck capitalist dream masked serious cracks. Locally there may be euphoria for becoming the sixth or seventh world economy, but still social exclusion was far from gone. Brazil remained one the most unequal nations in the world, peppered with retrograde landowning oligarchies and some of the most rapacious, arrogant and ignorant elites on the planet \u2013 by-products of Portuguese colonialism.<\/p>\n

And then, once again, corruption raised its Hydra-like head. Here\u2019s a first parallel with Turkey. In Brazil as in Turkey, participative democracy was co-opted, ignored or forcefully diluted among an orgy of \u201cmega-projects\u201d<\/i> generating dubious profits for a select few. In Turkey it revolves around the ruling party AKP\u2019s collusion with business interests in the \u201credevelopment\u201d<\/i> of Istanbul; in Brazil around public funds for the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics.<\/p>\n

The new capitalist dream could not mask that the quality of life in Brazil\u2019s big cities seemed to be on a downward spiral; and that racism \u2013 especially in the police \u2013 never went away while the demonization of peasant and Native Brazilian leaders was rampant; after all they were obstructing the way of powerful agribusiness interests and the \u201cmega-projects\u201d<\/i> craze.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s no Turkey Spring \u2013 as there\u2019s no Brazilian Spring. This isn\u2019t Tunisia and Egypt. Both Turkey and Brazil are democracies \u2013 although Prime Minister Erdogan has clearly embarked on a polarizing strategy and an authoritarian drive. What links Turkey and Brazil is that irreversible pent-up resentment against institutional politics (and corruption) may be catalyzed by a relatively minor event.<\/p>\n

In Turkey it was the destruction of Gezi park; in Brazil the ten-cent hike in public bus fares was the proverbial straw that broke the (white) elephant\u2019s back. In both cases the institutional response was tear gas and rubber bullets. In Turkey the popular backlash spread to a few cities. In Brazil it went nationwide.<\/p>\n

This goes way, way beyond a cheap bus ride – although the public transport scene in Brazil\u2019s big cities would star in Dante\u2019s ninth circle of hell. A manual worker, a student, a maid usually spend up to four hours a day back-and-forth in appalling conditions. And these are private transport rackets controlled by a small group of businessmen embedded with local politicians, who they obviously own.<\/p>\n

\n

Arguably the nationwide, mostly peaceful protests have scored a victory \u2013 as nine cities have decided to cancel the bus fare hike. But that\u2019s just the beginning.<\/p>\n

The mantra is true; Brazilians pay developed world taxes and in return get sub-Saharan Africa quality of service. The notion of \u201cvalue for money\u201d<\/i> is non-existent. It gets even worse as the economic miracle is over. That magical \u201cgrowth\u201d was less than 1% in 2012, and only 0.6% in the first quarter of 2013. The immensely bloated state bureaucracy, the immensely appalling public infrastructure, virtually no investment in education as teachers barely get paid $300 a month, non-stop political corruption scandals, not to mention as many homicides a year as narco-purgatory Mexico \u2013 none of this is going away by magic.<\/p>\n

Football passion apart \u2013 and this is a nation where everyone is either an expert footballer or an experienced coach \u2013 the vast majority of the population is very much aware the current Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup are monster FIFA rackets. As a columnist for the Brazilian arm of ESPN has coined it, \u201cthe Cup is theirs, but we pay the bills.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Public opinion is very much aware the Feds played hardball to get the \u201cmega-events\u201d<\/i> to Brazil and then promised rivers of \u201csocial\u201d<\/i> benefits in terms of services and urban development. None of that happened. Thus the collective feeling that \u201cwe\u2019ve been robbed\u201d<\/i> \u2013 all over again, as anyone with a digital made in China calculator can compare this multi-billion dollar orgy of public funds for FIFA with pathetically little investment in health, education, transportation and social welfare. A banner in the Sao Paulo protests said it all; \u201cYour son is ill? Take him to the arena.\u201d – RT<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Protests in Brazil indicate what goes way, way beyond a cheap bus fare. When, in late 2010, Dilma Rousseff was elected President after eight years of the impossibly popular Lula, a national narrative was already ingrained, stressing that Brazil was not the \u201ccountry of the future\u201d anymore; the future had arrived, and this was a … Continue reading “Brazil burning”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782,1295],"tags":[650,2553,3378,3377],"class_list":["post-5840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-in-depth-coverage","tag-brazil","tag-fifa","tag-political-turmoil","tag-world-cup"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/brazilcup.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5843,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5840\/revisions\/5843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}