Vai se preparando que o final da Copa não significa que não teremos mais de ouvir “Decime que se siente”, música da torcida argentina para tirar sarro dos brasileiros. Afinal, era óbvio que as torcidas brasileiras usaria essa versão cumbia de “Bad Moon Rising”, do Creedence Clearwater Revival”, para inspirar novas gozações.
Nesta sexta, a torcida do América-MG mostrou o caminho antes da vitória por 3 a 0 sobre o Oeste na Série B. Adaptou a letra para jogar na cara dos atleticanos quem é o único decacampeão mineiro e, principalmente, quem é o proprietário do estádio Independência. Imagina-se que o Atlético dará o troco assim que possível, e assim vemos o surgimento de um legado da Copa do Mundo.
Yesterday, I was quoted in a number of French newspapers as saying that the World Cup 2014 has been, so far, better organised than the London Olympics 2012. It is my duty to report that this does not in any way whatsoever misrepresent my views.
I stand by what I said.
There have been months, if not years, of negative reports on the 2014 World Cup. Before the event started, comments from all quarters (Western media, FIFA, patrons and waiters at the pub alike) promised absolute doom and gloom in Brazil. The stadia would not be ready in time, spectators would be prevented from travelling to the venues because the infrastructures would not be ready in time or because Brazilians would be protesting to no end. Most commentators were very short of saying ‘those lazy, unpatriotic and unreliable Brazilians’ – when they did not actually say it…
Unless I am mistaken, so far none of this has actually happened. All the stadia are ready and used for the Cup. Brazilians are exercising their democratic right to protest and there are isolated reports of Pelé or other football celebrities not making it to the venue. Yet, stadia are not only ready. They are full at every game! Even when South Korea is playing Algeria, in a game where the sporting stakes are not high.
Compare this with the London Olympics which were marred by a number of controversies:
Brazil has been accused of going overboard when it comes to controlling the demonstrations. I would most certainly agree that fewer policing is usually a better solution when people are exercising their democratic rights pacifically. However, the British authorities went even more overboard than the Brazilian government when it comes to security. Just think: the army was allowed to install ground-to-air missiles on private property near the Olympic sites. As even the BBC pointed, this was just for « show » and could realistically not serve any purpose. Who would shot down an airplane a few hundred yards from a stadium, apart from someone who is trying very hard to get this plane to crash on the stadium and kill a maximum of people? Let’s mention that, although the demonstrators are a reality in Brazil, we are yet to see a plane, or even a hang glider for that matter, threaten the Olympic sites.
We could add to the list of ‘things that went pearshaped at London 2012’: for example, the gatecrasher at the parade of nations which shocked many people in India, LOCOG displaying a South-Korean flag instead of North-Korea (logically the North-Korean team refused to warm up and play until the right flag was displayed, prompting the game to be very much delayed…) but the point is not to criticise otherwise relatively well organised Olympics. I don’t want to be unfair with the Brits either as there are often controversies surrounding the organisation of a mega event. Let’s just recall that, to my knowledge, the only international sporting event that had to change country because a stadium was not built in time, is the 2007 Athletics World Championship, planned in Wembley, London and which finally happened in Oslo. Once more, let’s be fair with Britain: construction delays are common in every country, and construction budgets almost invariably go overboard.
The point, instead, is to show the gap between reality and perception. Whenever an event is organised in a Southern country, the discourse, and the memory, is of potential fiascos, that have usually not materialised. Whenever an event is organised in a Northern country, the discourse, and the memory, is of success, even when there were actual fiascos.
Following Edward Said, we can call this ‘orientalisation’, and say that in a world where the East/West divide was replaced in the 1990s by a North-South divide, this is the result of a distorted view that the Western/Northern media have of the Orient/South.
Let’s say things much more clearly: this is a xenophobic, or even racist, discourse.
Torcedores argentinos aguardam a chegada de sua seleção na porta do Beira-Rio, estádio da Copa do Mundo em Porto Alegre
*Por Bruno Marinoni
Todos eles foram levados para dentro de uma pequena casa à beira-mar, trancafiados e eliminados. Mais um filme sobre o genocídio nazista? Não. Trata-se de uma “humorada” publicidade de cerveja sobre a “rivalidade” entre brasileiros e argentinos, que vem sendo veiculada desde a partida Argentina e Nigéria, no dia 25 de junho. Qual o problema de os nossos veículos de comunicação alimentarem a xenofobia? De fazerem graça com a proposta de que os hermanos devem ser lançados ao mar, ou ao espaço por nós?
O portal Diário na Copa, do grupo Diário do Nordeste (CE), no mesmo dia 25, publicou uma matéria com a manchete “Argentinos assaltam torcedores e roubam ingressos antes de partida em Porto Alegre”. O conteúdo da notícia aponta que os suspeitos são argentinos, pois vestiam camisas da seleção argentina. E, assim, nossa imprensa acredita possuir elementos suficientes para associar as imagens do crime à de uma nacionalidade específica. Essa é uma equação bem conhecida pelas vítimas de campanhas racistas e xenófobas. Qual o problema de chamar de “assaltantes argentinos” pessoas que vestem camisa da argentina e roubam ingressos?
Uma matéria do site do Globo Esporte do dia 21 anunciava que “a Copa do Mundo registrou na madrugada deste sábado a primeira grande briga entre brasileiros e argentinos”. Qual o problema de se naturalizar a briga entre representantes das duas nacionalidades, já insinuando que ela é a primeira de uma série?
Temos assim exemplos nos quais o espetáculo da Copa do Mundo, a grande competição entre as nações, mostra-se um prato cheio para que a nossa indústria cultural alimente e se alimente da violência (simbólica?). Promover a criminalização de um determinado grupo, a naturalização da violência e a necessidade de eliminação do outro: eis um mecanismo comum que se volta de diferentes maneiras para diversos atores no nosso cotidiano e para o qual é preciso estarmos atentos.
Enquanto na publicidade temos um exemplo que se vale do humor para tentar neutralizar qualquer possibilidade de crítica, tem-se por outro lado a imprensa utilizando a estratégia do “realismo”, na qual o “relato objetivo do fato” esconde o papel ativo do jornalismo na construção do discurso sobre a realidade. Dessa forma, o discurso que demoniza um determinado grupo tenta nos seduzir tanto de forma indireta (foi só uma piada!) como de forma direta (essa é a verdade).
Alguém pode minorar o fato de que o futebol é um fenômeno midiático e argumentar que essa rivalidade entre brasileiros e argentinos não foi criada pela mídia. Tá legal, eu aceito o argumento. O que não dá para aceitar é que nossa mídia promova tendências à xenofobia e ao preconceito na sua busca por vender cervejas e aumentar sua audiência. Seu papel deveria ser problematizar e combater, ao invés de estimular, o espetáculo do ódio travestido de rivalidade.
Abaixo, o vídeo em que os argentinos são mandados para o espaço:
* Bruno Marinoni é repórter do Observatório do Direito à Comunicação, doutor em Sociologia pela UFPE e integrante do Conselho Diretor do Intervozes.
The last year has seen the emergence of large scale Brazilian protest movements of clear importance, and the World Cup has been a target of their criticism. But the macabre emphasis on violence and failure has obscured much more than it has illuminated about these movements, and about the real violence and social conflicts in contemporary Brazil.
To understand why so much coverage has taken this lurid form, it helps to look at historical representations of peace and violence in Brazil, as well as contemporary politics in Brazil and abroad.
First, consider this: in the run up to Brazil’s World Cup, The New York Times described the “highly modernistic improvement” in stadium security technology designed for the “highly excitable public” and the “huge crowds possible in this soccer-mad country.” The same year, The Washington Post lamented that “Brazil has for several years been miring deeper into a real crisis characterized by inflation” and a “breakdown” in “national equipment.” The paper warned of a country that had “outgrown its transportation system and power resources,” of “impoverished hordes” in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and that “the cost of living, already high, is going higher each day.” There was mention of elites hoping that a president, “swept into power by the underprivileged,” could “maintain a reasonable restraint on the masses.” Without such control the country might suffer “violent swings to the left, then to the right,” producing “chaos” that might prevent the country from setting “its economic house in order.”
Despite clear similarities with recent Anglophone reporting on Brazil, these articles were not from Brazil’s World Cup year of 2014, but from 1950, when Brazil also hosted the event. The “highly modernistic improvement” to Rio’s Maracanã stadium was a moat, designed to protect players from spectators—somewhat lower tech than the “Robocops” of today’s sensational headlines.
The list of economic and political woes in TheWashington Postarticle fits neatly with recent coverage of Brazil in the Anglophone press. But the president in question was the newly-elected former dictator, Getúlio Vargas, not today’s soon-up-for-reelection former revolutionary, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil’s PT (Worker’s Party). Like Dilma, Getúlio inherited a political program vastly popular with Brazil’s poor, but faced discontent, political turmoil, and the imperative to assuage fears of socialism among elites in Brazil and abroad.
When I went looking for 1950 reports about Brazil in the US press, the pickings were few, a dramatic contrast to the live video feeds, social media posts, and news reports of all kinds we are assaulted with today.
I will be in New York until I fly to Brazil on the night of the World Cup final. I’ll send in a few posts in this series on the aftermath of the Cup and on the (very different) topic of the book I’m currently finishing over the next few months, so I draw heavily here on those media. But, mindful of Jonathan Franzen’s warning that “free and universally accessible” information devalues many kinds of research (If you’re reading this, you can Google this stuff yourself), I will do my best to put some of the reporting we have been getting in a broader interpretive context.
The key point as I see it is this: in conversations in New York, I have been struck by the much greater continued focus on violence and failure than in (virtual) conversations with people in Brazil. The other night I had a discussion with a group of well-meaning New Yorkers wrongly convinced that massive battles between protestors and police are ongoing outside most of the stadiums. A few days earlier, I tried in vain to argue against the likelihood of stadium collapse with a man who thought such a disastrous event likely.
My colleagues on thisforum have done an excellent job analyzing the real conflicts surrounding Brazil’s 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, and repression of dissent around the stadiums has been draconian. This post should not be misunderstood as undermining the importance of these conflicts and that violence. As Ben Penglase has shown in this forum, the characterization of young dark-skinned men in Rio’s favelas as potential criminals serves to legitimate highly militarized policing of those spaces. Similarly, the lurid, often unrealistic, focus on Brazilian violence that I continue to encounter in conversations in the US (and in a style of reporting best described as violence porn), does not so much illuminate the conflicts in Brazilian society as it helps to legitimate the repression of dissent.
So why, prior to the World Cup, did violence and failure become such central tropes in foreign representations of Brazil, even though some Brazilian sources could have offered a useful counter-perspective?
The Myths of a Peaceful and a Violent Nation
To begin to answer this question, I’ll note that there has been a deep shift in the ideas about peace and violence that have circulated about Brazil over the last half century or so.I did my best in the introduction to emphasize the many similarities between reporting in 1950 and 2014; now I’ll emphasize the equally significant differences.
The 1950 New York Times article about the moat didn’t do a lot to stir up fear, and, unlike contemporary reports, mentioned no dangers greater than rowdy sports fans.
The 1950 Washington Post article (published after that year’s World Cup) clearly referenced many of the fears of a Washington Postreadership worried about “socialism” in Latin America after the election of a populist Brazilian president, similar to fears voiced in the international press during the early years of Brazil’s PT governance (2003 – the present). And the thrust of the Post article, awkwardly entitled, “Brazil’s ‘Socialism’ Probably Will Be a Relative Thing,” was to console Cold War-era readers that the president elect “wants foreign capital to help on the long-term national improvements that must be made.”
It is here that clear differences with the present emerge. The Postrelied on a cultural analysis to come to its mollifying conclusion. In a polar inversion of recently dominant representations of Brazil as an especially violent country, the article described a Brazilian national inclination to peacefulness. “The ‘adaptability’ of Brazilians helps them solve their problems with far less violence and stress than most peoples,” the article soothed.
This conception of Brazil as a uniquely peaceful country is one with a long history, although, at least in elite circles, it has mostly fallen into eclipse. Some of the main tropes of the myth are that Brazil achieved independence from Portugal without the bloodshed that characterized independence throughout the Americas; the country abolished slavery without a war (abolition came to Brazil after all other countries in the hemisphere, in 1888); the Brazilian military has not engaged in military action against foreigners in South America since the brutal Paraguayan War (1864-1870).
Contemporary English language readers may be most familiar with a closely-related myth generally called, “the myth of racial democracy,” the idea that Brazil has long had uniquely friendly and peaceful race relations. But if casual readers are familiar with this myth, it is likely because they have seen or heard it critiqued. Like the myth of Brazilian peacefulness, “racial democracy” enjoys some life as a popular ideology. But, in scholarship and middle and highbrow journalism, it is invoked almost exclusively to be debunked.
If I can take the general impressions held by my more interested US undergraduate students as a guide, the idea of Brazil as a violent and racist country, along with hard-edged popular culture such as Baile Funk, and City of God, have now completely surpassed the mid-20th century conceptions of peacefulness, racial democracy, and the soothing Garota de Ipanema, and Carmen Miranda as sources of internationally circulating clichés about Brazil.
I’ve written a paper with anthropologists, Thaddeus Blanchette and Ana Paula da Silva (currently in peer review), in which we show how representations of Brazil in the global north (especially the United States) frequently swing between utopian and dystopian poles, in part because the nation is just similar enough to the United States to serve as a conveniently blank slate. The myths of violent and peaceful Brazil follow this general pattern very closely.
The Failure of the World Cup?
Narrowing down on more recent history, why has the Anglophone global north press been so concerned with violence and failure when writing about the World Cup, when they stray beyond “fluff” and simple sports reporting?
But contemporary protests are about more than just the World Cup, as has already been shown in this forum. Despite this, the political concerns of the protests have been lost in international coverage that emphasizes the World Cup, on the one hand, and unspecified “anti-government” forces, on the other. For example, the one year anniversary of the massive nationwide June 19, 2013 protests were marked by some violence and by violent police repression, but this much-circulated piece from Reuters featured the words “World Cup” in the headline and multiple uses of “anti-government” before coming to the buried lede of the movement for free bus fares, which sparked those 2013 protests and these protests one year later. Similarly, this piece in Time about the same protest, featured a photo captioned, “protest against 2014 FIFA World Cup,” and alleged that the protests were “Antigovernment riots” merely “ostensibly calling for free public transit.”
To put this in perspective, on the day Vice.com put out the third video in their extremely popular “Chaos in Brazil” series (which includes some good journalism, despite the Vice-style lurid headlines and horror movie music), some 50,000 people were protesting in London against austerity. As my friend, the Rio de Janeiro based geographer, Brian Mier (who has done some high quality reporting for Vice himself), put it: “That’s around 50 times larger than any anti-World Cup protest that happened last week. According to the type of analysis in places like CNN about Brazil, this must be a sign that British society is crumbling at the foundations.”
But there’s a much stronger market for stories about Brazilian “society crumbling at the foundations” than there is for such stories about England. As journalist Lawrence Charles lamented from Brazil, “the only stories editors across the world are interested in fall into the Angry Violent Brazilian Who Might Mess Up The World Cup category.” So macabre and sensational stories are the ones we get. There’s a post-colonial and geopolitical logic to this: I predict more international hand-wringing about Brazil’s 2016 Olympics and Russia’s 2018 World Cup, but not about the prosperous and NATO-aligned Japan’s 2020 Olympics.
Additionally, in this Brazilian election year, analyses of the event and its consequences are inevitably shaped by partisan politics in Brazil. As political scientists João Feres Junior and Fábio Kerche have been arguing, the most powerful news sources in Brazil (Folha de São Paulo, O Estado de São Paulo, O Globo, Veja, and Época), are systematically biased against the PT (Worker’s Party) government that has been in charge of Brazil’s executive since 2003, shaping impressions of the nation’s politics domestically and abroad.
I think these scholars are right about this. Yet, their argument leaves open a significant question. The major Brazilian media have been positioned against the PT since the party’s founding in 1980. Yet for most of the first decade of the 21st century, Brazil’s PT, and its 2003-2010 President Lula, were beloved by institutions of global north governance and media, despite the party’s enmity with Brazil’s major media organizations. This global north affection seems to be on the wane under current PT president, Dilma Rousseff, with foreign and Brazilian major media swinging into closer alignment.
In a future post, I will offer some reasons for this shift. The answer lies in more than the downturn in Brazil’s economy, the differing policies and personalities of these different presidents, and Brazil’s emerging protest movements, I will argue.
For now, I will end with the suggestion that English language readers consider decontextualized accounts of Brazilian violence with some skepticism. Brazil’s new protest movements are clearly historic, and their police repression is real, but we do them no favors by taking internationally circulating violence porn at face value.
Sean T. Mitchell is assistant professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, Newark. His ethnographically-based work focuses on the politics of inequality, particularly in Brazil. His work also touches on science and technology studies; race and ethnicity; war and violence; governance and citizenship; social movements; and the politics of expertise. He is coeditor of “Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency” (Chicago 2010), and is currently completing a manuscript, “Space and Race: The Politics of Inequality at Brazil’s Satellite Launch Center.”
Levantamento do Reportagem Pública mostra como as “quatro irmãs”, Odebrecht, OAS, Camargo Corrêa e Andrade Gutierrez, se revezam nos contratos para as grandes obras da Copa e Olimpíadas no Rio de Janeiro
Nas maiores intervenções urbanas no Rio de Janeiro em função da Copa e Olimpíadas mudam os objetivos das obras, os valores, os impactos e as suspeitas de ilegalidade na condução dos projetos. Só não mudam as empresas beneficiadas. Por meio de consórcios firmados entre si e com outras empresas, Odebrecht, Andrade Gutierrez, Camargo Corrêa e OAS se revezam nos dez maiores investimentos relacionados aos jogos.
De acordo com um levantamento feito pela reportagem, chega a quase R$ 30 bilhões o valor oficial das dez maiores obras. São elas: a Linha 4 do Metrô; a construção do Porto Maravilha; a reforma do Maracanã e entorno; os corredores expressos Transcarioca, Transolímpica e Transoeste; a Vila dos Atletas e o Parque Olímpico; o Veículo Leve sobre Trilhos (VLT); e a Reabilitação Ambiental da Bacia de Jacarepaguá.Veja o infográfico interativo no link original da matéria:
A Odebrecht é a grande campeã: está presente em oito dos dez projetos. Já a OAS e a Andrade Gutierrez dividem o segundo lugar, com participação em seis projetos cada uma. Em 7 dos 10 projetos a licitação foi ganha por consórcios com presença de duas ou mais das “quatro irmãs”, como são conhecidas. Em dois destes, a concorrência pública foi feita tendo apenas um consórcio na disputa.
Nem sempre a participação das “quatro irmãs” se dá diretamente através das construtoras. Participam também empresas controladas por elas como a CCR e a Invepar. Os acionistas da primeira são Camargo Corrêa e Andrade Gutierrez, aliadas ao o Grupo Soares Penido (Serveng-Civilsan), com 17% de ações cada um. No Rio de Janeiro, a CCR detém o monopólio das travessias na Baía de Guanabara, administrando ao mesmo tempo os serviços das barcas e da Ponte Rio-Niterói. (As duas concessões responderam por quase 5% da receita operacional bruta da empresa, em 2013). A Odebrecht, que também era sócia na CCR, vendeu sua participação para criar sua própria empresa no ramo de mobilidade urbana, a Odebrecht Transport, que hoje administra o serviço de trens na região metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro através da Supervia. Já a gestão do metrô carioca fica por conta da Invepar, cujos controladores são a OAS e os fundos de pensão da Caixa Econômica (FUNCEF), Petrobras (PETROS) e o Fundo de Investimento em Ações do Banco do Brasil.
Dentre as obras para Copa e Olimpíadas levantadas pela reportagem, apenas a Reabilitação Ambiental da Bacia de Jacarepaguá é alvo de investigações oficiais sobre cartelização. Porém, para o economista Paulo Furquim, ex-conselheiro do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica(CADE), algumas características observadas nas licitações merecem a atenção das autoridades. “Estas situações com grandes projetos, formação de consórcios e vencedores que se alternam trazem evidências que mostram uma probabilidade não desprezível de existência de cartel. Evidências adicionais como superfaturamento são motivos suficientes para investigação. São certamente situações preocupantes, em que uma autoridade de concorrência deve colocar uma lupa e olhar com bastante cuidado”, afirma.
Na história recente dessas empresas acumulam-se obras que mereceram a atenção das autoridades – dentro e fora do pacote da Copa. Executivos da Odebrecht, OAS, Camargo Corrêa e Andrade Gutierrez já foram investigadas pelo Ministério Público de São Paulo no chamado “cartel do metrô”, que envolveria o acerto de preços para licitações de obras, fornecimento de carros e manutenção de trens e do metrô em São Paulo. O órgão exige uma indenização aos cofres públicos de R$ 2,5 bilhões. Empresa da Camargo Corrêa, a Intercement também aparece em investigações do Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE) sobre cartel no setor de cimentos.
No Rio de Janeiro, a Andrade Gutierrez e Odebrecht compartilharam documentação na concorrência de obras do PAC no Complexo do Alemão, segundo reportagem da Folha de São Paulo. Além de indicarem a mesma empresa (Pomagalski) para fornecer os materiais para a instalação dos teleféricos, Odebrecht e Andrade Gutierrez usaram a mesma tradução juramentada da apresentação desta companhia. De acordo com a reportagem, “documentos apreendidos em várias operações da Polícia Federal mostram que empreiteiras formam consórcios ‘paralelos’ antes da disputa de licitações com a finalidade de superfaturar obras públicas”.
Enquanto isso, nas obras para as Olímpiadas…
Na construção do Parque Olímpico, em Jacarepaguá, e do Veículo Leve sobre Trilhos (VLT), no centro da cidade, a licitação teve apenas um concorrente. As construtoras Norberto Odebrecht e Andrade Gutierrez se uniram para ganhar a primeira, cujo orçamento estimado ultrapassa R$ 2,1 bilhões. Já no VLT não ficou ninguém de fora: foram agraciadas a Odebrecht, OAS (por meio da Invepar), Andrade Gutierrez e Camargo Corrêa (por meio da CCR). Para administrar a concessão de R$ 1,2 bilhão por 25 anos, formou-se o Consórcio VLT Carioca. Nele estão presentes, além de duas companhias estrangeiras, a Odebrecht, a CCR, a Invepar e a Riopar, que conta com a participação do empresário Jacob Barata Filho, que controla grande parte da frota rodoviária da cidade. Mesmo assim, quando questionado sobre sua relação com governantes em uma de suas raras entrevistas, Barata foi direto. “Ninguém está mais próximo do poder público do que empreiteira. […] A gente quer um dia chegar lá. Nós somos crianças perto dessa turma”, afirmou.
Odebrecht, CCR e Invepar também estão juntas no consórcio vencedor da licitação para execução das obras e manutenção da BRT Transolímpica, que prevê investimentos de R$ 1,6 bilhão. O corredor expresso ligará a Barra da Tijuca ao bairro de Deodoro, os dois principais polos dos Jogos de 2016. No caso da construção do corredor expresso Transcarioca, da empresa Andrade Gutierrez, o empreendimento foi considerados superfaturado pelo Tribunal de Contas do Município. Segundo auditoria do órgão, houve sobrepreço de R$ 66 milhões na construção dos mergulhões da via que ligará o Aeroporto Antonio Carlos Jobim à Barra da Tijuca. Antes mesmo da inauguração da obra, foram detectados problemas, como asfalto remendado e rachaduras.
O Maraca
Ao contrário do que aconteceu nas obras de outros estádios para a Copa, a reforma e a privatização da gestão do Maracanã foram feitas em duas etapas. Odebrecht e Andrade Gutierrez fizeram as obras do estádio, que recebeu seu primeiro evento-teste em abril de 2013; quase um ano depois, o Tribunal de Contas do Estado do Rio de Janeiro apontou superfaturamento de R$ 67,3 milhões nas obras. Além disso, graças à atuação do Tribunal de Contas da União – que também apontou superfaturamento – o orçamento das obras no estádio foi reduzido entre R$ 150 e 200 milhões, segundo o ministro Benjamin Zymler.
Sem considerar as obras no entorno, o custo da reforma do estádio até agora foi de R$ 1,2 bilhão, bancado com recursos do BNDES e Caixa Econômica Federal, além de empréstimo do CAF (Banco de Desarrollo da América Latina). Assim, inteiramente novo, o Maracanã foi entregue para a iniciativa privada. A própria Odebrecht se candidatou e ganhou a licitação da Parceria Público-Privada (PPP) como integrante do Consórcio Maracanã S/A, ao lado de Eike Batista e da AEG, em um processo que está na mira do Ministério Público do Rio.
A ação civil pública, movida pelo MPRJ, questiona o fato da empresa IMX ter elaborado o projeto utilizado para embasar o edital que ela mesmo venceu e também a decisão de demolir parte do entorno do estádio, como a Aldeia Maracanã (antigo Museu do Índio), Parque Júlio Delamare, Estádio de Atletismo Célio de Barros e a Escola Friedenreich.
“O Estado partiu da premissa que a viabilidade econômica da concessão do Maracanã dependia da exploração do entorno. Nós entendemos que esta é uma premissa falsa, em função justamente deste estudo de viabilidade. As receitas da exploração do estádio já eram suficientes para viabilizar economicamente o negócio”, diz o promotor Eduardo Santos, responsável pelo caso.
Estudos da IMX apontam as atividades comerciais no entorno como responsável por apenas 12% das receitas, enquanto consumiriam mais de 2/3 das despesas. Segundo Eduardo Santos, quando questionados, o Estado e a IMX afirmaram que é uma questão de sinergia. “Diziam que você só vai ter um público mais rentável se tiver um lugar para estacionar, um restaurante bacana. Isto não é algo que possa ser demonstrado matematicamente, mas é o argumento de defesa de ambos”, afirma.
Após as manifestações do ano passado, o governo recuou com a proposta da demolição. Mesmo assim, o Consórcio se manteve na gestão do Estádio. Beneficiando as empresas, a privatização do Maracanã se tornou um mau negócio para o governo do Estado. Os R$ 7 milhões da outorga anual a ser paga pelas empresas aos cofres públicos não cobre nem a terça parte dos juros do empréstimo solicitado pelo então governador Sérgio Cabral ao BNDES para bancar as reformas do estádio antes de privatizá-lo.
PPP da Zona Portuária
Igualmente benéfica para o clube das empreiteiras foi a PPP da Zona Portuária. Com investimentos na ordem de R$ 7,7 bilhões, a Operação Urbana Porto Maravilha é executada pela Odebrecht, OAS e Carioca Nielsen. Viabilizada por meio de uma “engenhosa operação financeira”, segundo o site oficial do projeto, a operação urbana foi criada para “promover a reestruturação local por meio da ampliação, articulação e requalificação dos espaços públicos da região, visando à melhoria da qualidade de vida de seus atuais e futuros moradores e à sustentabilidade ambiental e socioeconômica da área”.
Segundo Orlando dos Santos, professor do Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano e Regional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR), a operação possui três mecanismos principais: venda de terras públicas, isenções fiscais e emissão de Certificados de Potencial Adicional de Construção (Cepacs) para potencializar a exploração econômica do local. Dados do Dossiê do Comitê Popular da Copa apontam que mais de 600 famílias pobres foram removidas por causa do projeto.
A Prefeitura anunciou ainda um empreendimento imobiliário com o grupo Porto 2016/Solace, que além das três empreiteiras do Porto Maravilha (Odebrecht, OAS e Carioca Nielsen) reúne também uma empresa de Eike Batista. Também ofereceu uma linha de crédito especial para os servidores municipais comprarem esses imóveis.
“Hoje [a Zona Portuária] é o lugar da cidade onde mais tem especulação imobiliária, mais do que a Barra, e graças a Deus é assim”, comemorou recentemente o prefeito Eduardo Paes.
“Há um acionamento simbólico das Olimpíadas para validar certas intervenções públicas. É muito mais uma lógica de legitimação das intervenções do que efetivamente estar ou não associado aos Jogos”, critica Orlando dos Santos.
Longe dali, na zona Oeste da Cidade, a PPP do Parque Olímpico (R$ 2,1 bilhões) envolve a remodelagem para as Olimpíadas de aproximadamente 1,18 milhão de metros quadrados, uma área equivalente ao bairro do Leme. Deste total, 75% das terras serão entregues para a iniciativa privada ao fim da operação.
Com forte atuação naquela região, a construtora Carvalho Hosken se uniu com a Odebrecht e a Andrade Gutierrez para formar o Consórcio Rio Mais, o único que concorreu – e ganhou – a licitação. Odebrecht e Carvalho Hosken também estão à frente da construção da Vila dos Atletas, em terreno próximo ao Parque Olímpico. O local receberá sete condomínios que acomodarão 18 mil atletas em 2016 e serão entregues à iniciativa privada após os jogos.
A arquiteta Giselle Tanaka, que participa do Comitê Popular da Copa e Olimpíadas e pesquisa as intervenções no Parque Olímpico, acredita que o contrato do projeto não possui risco nenhum para as empresas. “A Prefeitura repassa as terras subvalorizadas para o Consórcio e ainda fazem uma remuneração mensal para as construtoras. Elas recebem dinheiro público por tudo que estão construindo”, afirma. De acordo com estudos realizados pela arquiteta, o valor do metro quadrado no repasse da área bruta de terras públicas para o consórcio Parque Olímpico 2016 (posteriormente batizado como “Consórcio Rio Mais”) foi de cerca de R$ 1,69 mil. No mercado, o metro quadrado das habitações construídas na região é de R$ 7,5 mil, em média, segundo a imobiliária Lopes Rio.
Atualmente, o Ministério Público Federal investiga a denúncia de supressão da vegetação nativa do Parque Olímpico sem nenhum critério ou estudo prévio (Procedimento Administrativo nº 1.30.001.007236/2012-14) e o Ministério Público do Estado recomendou a suspensão das obras do Campo de Golfe no final de maio de 2014.
Cabo de guerra
Considerado um dos grandes legados dos jogos de 2016, o Projeto de Recuperação Ambiental do Sistema Lagunar da Barra e Jacarepaguá teve seu contrato de R$ 673 milhões assinado somente em março deste ano, quase oito meses após o anúncio do vencedor da licitação pelo governo do Estado. A demora ocorreu justamente por causa de uma denúncia de acerto prévio entre as empreiteiras, publicada em julho de 2013 na Revista Época.
A revista teve acesso ao resultado da licitação e o divulgou de forma cifrada cerca de uma semana antes da abertura dos envelopes com os lances que levaram à vitória do Consórcio Complexo Lagunar (formado por Andrade Gutierrez, OAS e Queiroz Galvão). Segundo a reportagem de Isabel Clemente, a Odebrecht teria apresentado uma proposta de cobertura em troca de ter faturado poucos dias antes outra licitação de valor aproximado, em que a Andrade Gutierrez e a Queiroz Galvão apresentaram lances perdedores.
Após a denúncia, a Secretaria de Estado do Ambiente suspendeu o edital e solicitou investigações ao Ministério Público e ao CADE. Em agosto, anunciou uma nova concorrência, que foi questionada na justiça pelas integrantes do Consórcio Complexo Lagunar. O primeiro mandado de segurança foi negado; um segundo, concedido.
Somente no dia 18 de dezembro, já com ambos mandados unidos em um único processo, o Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (TJRJ) verificou a “coexistência de decisões sobre os mesmos fatos em sentido diametralmente opostos” e permitiu a continuidade do edital.
No dia seguinte, 19, o promotor Rogério Pacheco solicitou o arquivamento do inquérito contra as empresas, concluindo que “diante dos fatos apurados na presente investigação, verifica-se que não restaram indícios mínimos de práticas de atos ilícitos capazes de configurar irregularidades na licitação apresentada”. De acordo com ele, a conduta da Secretaria de Estado no caso foi “calcada, principalmente, na moralidade administrativa” e o fato de nenhum pagamento ter sido feito às empresas “afasta a hipótese de dano ao erário”.
Logo depois as empreiteiras foram ao Tribunal de Justiça do Estado do Rio de Janeiro e interpuseram agravo regimental, recurso especial, recurso extraordinário e medida cautelar para anular o segundo edital.
Novamente, a segunda licitação foi suspensa. Já em meados de janeiro de 2014, o governo do Estado desistiu. Alegando que “passados mais de seis meses das comunicações ao CADE e ao MP, nenhuma medida foi determinada por parte daqueles órgãos”, o secretário Carlos Minc solicitou a revogação da segunda licitação. E convocou o “consórcio vencedor do primeiro certame para assinatura do contrato e imediato início às obras”. Minc enfatizou ainda a “exiguidade de prazos para cumprir compromisso olímpico internacional do país”.
Em março deste ano as empresas investigadas pelo crime de cartelização enfim assinaram o contrato, que prevê 30 meses para a conclusão das obras. Ou seja, no cronograma atual, a recuperação ambiental das lagoas da Barra e Jacarepaguá não será concluída até as Olimpíadas. A Secretaria afirma estudar “alternativas para acelerar as obras”. Responsável pela apuração do crime de cartel, o CADE informou à reportagem que o inquérito é de natureza sigilosa e que “não há prazo para a investigação ser concluída”.
“Caso alguém tenha acesso a uma informação antecipada do resultado, isso não é apenas um ilícito concorrencial, uma coordenação de concorrência. É um ilícito de natureza penal também. Não é só uma questão econômica, é uma questão policial. Os elementos trazidos pela revista Época justificam uma investigação se há algum tipo de coordenação entre as empresas que participaram da licitação – mas não são ainda suficientes para determinar a existência desse ilícito”, afirma o economista Luiz Carlos Delorme, ex-conselheiro do CADE.
Prejuízo aos Trabalhadores
Apesar de serem possíveis indícios de cartelização, a formação dos consórcios e o rodízio entre vencedores não constituem por si só uma prática ilícita. “O crime de cartel é a cooperação ilegal entre empresas com objetivo de obter vantagens concorrenciais. Só é passível de ser provado através de documentos que indiquem este tipo de cooperação”, diz Luiz Carlos Delorme.
Edifício-sede da Petrobras: obra que marcou o início da atuação da Odebrecht no Sudeste – Foto: Rodrigo SoldonAs quatro irmãs Chegada da água bruta no Sistema Cantareira, em São Paulo (Foto: Anne Vigna)Dá para beber essa água? Cidades-sede restringem comércio ambulante na Copa do Mundo. Na foto, Recife. (Foto: Chico Peixoto/Leia Já Imagens)Território da FIFA
Celso Campilongo, conselheiro do CADE entre 2000 e 2002, pós-doutor em Direito e professor da PUC-SP, completa: “Dependendo da estrutura do mercado os rodízios podem significar acordo entre concorrentes. Pode ter uma cortina de fumaça para dar a isso uma aparência de legalidade e por trás dela pode haver uma ampla troca de informações entre concorrentes – o que o direito antitruste procura evitar. Mas também paradoxalmente pode ser o inverso. O fato de não haver sempre as mesmas parcerias, mas um rodízio, pode mostrar dinamismo competitivo”, afirma. Porém, Campilongo destaca a intensa comunicação entre empresas como um elemento potencialmente perigoso para a concorrência nas licitações. Ele cita uma passagem de Adam Smith no livro ‘A Riqueza das Nações’: “Pessoas com o mesmo tipo de negócio raramente se reúnem, ainda que seja meramente por entretenimento ou diversão, sem que a conversa termine em uma conspiração contra o povo ou em algum tipo de acordo para aumentar os preços”.
Para Nilson Duarte, presidente do Sindicato dos Trabalhadores nas Indústrias da Construção Pesada, além do possível prejuízo à livre concorrência, os diversos consórcios também prejudicam os trabalhadores. “Eles trabalham em cima de um CNPJ com início, meio e fim. Quando terminam a obra, eliminam o CNPJ e acaba a estabilidade para os trabalhadores, que às vezes estão ainda em tratamento de saúde. Aí eles vão recorrer a quem?”, questiona. “Com aumento concomitante de lucros, nós observamos um aumento da diferença salarial entre executivos (CEOs) e trabalhadores em geral.
A Copa do Mundo certamente ajudou a nos fazer uma sociedade mais desigual”, diz o jornalista e sindicalista sul-africano Eddie Cottle, autor do livro ‘Copa do Mundo da África do Sul: um legado para quem?’. Se aqui as empreiteiras são chamadas de irmãs, lá as cinco maiores construtoras do país (Aveng, Murray & Roberts, Group Five, Wilson Bayly Holmes–Ovcon – WBHO – e Basil Read) são conhecidas como “Big Five”. Enquanto aqui pairam suspeitas sobre as empreiteiras, lá elas foram condenadas pela conduta anticompetitiva.
“Dois caminhos levaram à descoberta do cartel. Primeiro, a investigação da Comissão de Concorrência da África do Sul sobre outras condutas anticompetitivas no setor de construção revelou que estas eram amplamente difundidas em todo setor. Segundo, houve aumentos contínuos no orçamento alocado pelo governo para a construção de estádios e outros projetos de infraestrutura para a Copa, o que levou a Comissão a iniciar um projeto de pesquisa para determinar se a conduta anticoncorrencial poderia ter contribuído para estes aumentos de custos”, afirmou em nota o órgão – algo como o CADE da África do Sul.
Das 9 cidades-sede na África do Sul, 6 construíram ou reformaram seus estádios para a Copa: em todas eles houve conluio entre as empresas. Depois das investigações, em 2011, a Comissão fechou um acordo oficial [Fast-Track Settlement] com 15 empreiteiras que assumiram suas condutas anticompetitivas em diversas obras, inclusive da Copa, para o pagamento de 1,4 bilhões de rands no total. A empresa mais penalizada pagou 311 milhões de rands – algo em torno de R$ 65 milhões hoje. Eddie considera a penalidade “bastante modesta, dado os lucros na época”. Agora, a Comissão está finalizando a investigação e a ação penal contra as empresas que não vieram a público revelar suas condutas.
“Aumentos consistentes nos preços de materiais e custos dos estádios e infraestrutura são os fatores mais evidentes na identificação do cartel. Claro, isso pode ser escondido pelo disfarce da inflação, mas então os cartéis por sua própria natureza produzem pressões inflacionárias”, pondera o jornalista sobre o cartel das empreiteiras em seu país. Cottle afirma que o “Big Five” obteve em média 100% de lucro entre 2004 e 2009. E provoca: “Será que no Brasil é diferente?”. Procurada pela reportagem, nenhuma das “quatro irmãs” forneceu explicações sobre a razão econômica para a formação dos consórcios. A Andrade Gutierrez se limitou a dizer que “são decisões estratégicas” e que não iria comentar o assunto.
Uma longa história
Segundo o historiador Pedro Campos, professor da Universidade Federal Rural de Rio de Janeiro, a prática de cartelização no Brasil vem de longa data e é típica de períodos com grandes investimentos públicos. “Quando se trata de períodos de regressão econômica as empreiteiras entram em uma briga fratricida. Mas na ditadura, por exemplo, elas agiram claramente de forma cartelizada. Isso era aberto”.
Em sua tese de doutorado, ele aponta como a divisão de obras era explícita mesmo às vésperas da redemocratização do país, tendo nos sindicatos e associações empresariais os principais intermediários. “Eles combinavam inclusive possíveis brigas e recursos. Dividiam obras para garantir sempre um maior taxa de rentabilidade. Entre as empreiteiras isso é notório”, afirma. A prática ocorria às claras, principalmente por meio dos sindicatos patronais e associações de empreiteiras.
Um exemplo: em 1984 o Sindicato Nacional da Indústria da Construção Pesada (SINICON) estampou no primeiro número de seu informe impresso a seguinte manchete: “SINICON quer dividir obras rodoviárias”. A notícia relatava o lobby do sindicato no Ministério dos Transportes para conseguir uma “distribuição proporcional de obras do Programa de Recuperação de Estradas” entre seus membros.
“No Brasil os cartéis não eram entendidos como ilícitos. Nós temos desde 1938 um dispositivo legal proibindo os cartéis, porém ele não era aplicado. Em muitos períodos históricos o próprio governo incentivou a comunhão dos agentes econômicas e sua atuação coordenada. No governo militar isso era muito forte. A mudança de orientação do governo veio na primeira metade dos anos 2000. Antes disso, eram raríssimos os casos [de condenação por cartel]. As partes sequer tinham consciência da ilicitude do que estavam fazendo”, explica a advogada Paula Forgioni, professora da USP que atua com direito da concorrência.
Hoje, a atual diretoria do SINICON tem João Borba Filho (Odebrecht) na presidência. Roberto Zardi (OAS), Flávio Gomes Machado (Andrade Gutierrez) e Marcelo Bisordi (Camargo Corrêa) dividem a vice-presidência com outros executivos. Dentre as empresas, as três primeiras também possuem representantes na diretoria da Associação das Empresas de Engenharia do Rio de Janeiro (AEERJ).
Fundada em 1975 “com a missão de lutar, junto às autoridades estaduais e municipais por melhores condições de trabalho e por preços justos”, a Associação de Empreiteiros do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (AEERJ) percebeu em 1998 “que a sua credibilidade estava ameaçada pela palavra ‘empreiteiro’, estigmatizada pela opinião pública, que não via com bons olhos qualquer pleito ou informação desse setor”. “Após diversas consultas, pesquisas realizadas por empresas de comunicação e exaustivas discussões na Diretoria, foi aprovada, em Assembleia Geral, a mudança do nome da entidade […], mantendo a sigla AEERJ”, relata sua publicação “30 Anos: 30 anos de obras públicas no Rio de Janeiro (1975-2005)”.
Durante a preparação para a Copa as associações de empreiteiras também buscaram influenciar decisões, como aponta a arquiteta Any Ivo em sua tese de doutorado. Ainda em 2007 a Associação Brasileira da Infraestrutura e Indústrias de Base (Abdib) organizou um seminário sobre a Copa em Brasília com a presença do Presidente Lula, 12 ministros e representantes da Câmara dos Deputados, Senado e Poder Judiciário. O objetivo era chegar a uma “visão bastante sincronizada do que é preciso fazer e como fazer”,segundo Ralph Terra, vice-presidente executivo da Associação.
La expresión ‘puto’ es empleada como ofensa en los juegos del futbol mexicano y también en partidos de la selección nacional (Especial).
Lo más importante
El futbol es un modelo de masculinidad para la cultura mexicana
Para los especialistas, la palabra ‘puto’ reafirma el lenguaje ‘peladito’ y ‘cantinflesco’ del mexicano
Los futbolistas son productos de la cultura mexicana, donde deben sustentar su masculinidad
¿Por qué no se cambia el uso de la palabra y por qué no se grita ‘¡cobarde!’ o ‘¡heterosexual!’ en el estadio?, porque esas palabras no tienen toda la carga peyorativa que tiene la palabra ‘puto’
Genaro Lozano, politólogo
(CNNMéxico) — En los partidos de futbol de la LigaMX hay elementos que nunca faltan: dos equipos, cuatro árbitros, varios balones, elementos de seguridad, aficionados… y el grito de “¡eeeh puto!” cuando despeja el portero del equipo rival.
El ‘ritual’ es el siguiente: cuando el balón sale por la línea final del campo y lo toma el portero, los aficionados levantan los brazos, agitan las manos y preparan la garganta para gritar en cuanto el jugador del equipo rival despeje el balón. En ese momento se consuma el grito que enseguida provoca risas.
“No lo utilizamos de una manera homofóbica. Alguien que es ‘puto’ es una persona que no defiende. Y también tiene la otra referencia hacia los gays, pero en el contexto del estadio es así, alguien sin valor, que no tiene los ‘huevos’ para pelear o para defender”, dijo en entrevista el Punker, integrante de la barra Sangre Azul que apoya al equipo Cruz Azul.
Según el diccionario de la Real Academia Española, esa palabra puede tener dos significados, el primero, “hombre que tiene concúbito con persona de su sexo”, y el segundo, refiere a una expresión que “denota el esfuerzo que se hace para no ser el último o postrero en algo”.
La expresión tiene más que ver con una cuestión del lenguaje que utiliza el mexicano y no con una connotación sexual, considera Carlos Albert, exfutbolista y conductor de televisión. El “pinche” o “chingar”, que supuestamente son malas palabras, añadió, también las conjugamos para bien o para mal, “no lo justifico, pero tampoco diría que es una ofensa para los que tienen una preferencia distinta”.
Pero el politólogo e internacionalista Genaro Lozano piensa lo contrario.
“Esta palabra se ha utilizado para tratar de amedrentar y hacer menos al equipo contrario en el estadio de futbol. Y la justificación que dan quienes la están utilizando es exactamente decir eso: ‘es que no nos estamos refiriendo para nada a la homosexualidad'”, señaló el también analista, quien ha abordado el tema en varios textos de su autoría.
“Si así fuera —que el grito no tiene connotaciones homofóbicas—, ¿por qué no se cambia el uso de la palabra y por qué no se grita ‘¡cobarde!’ o ‘¡heterosexual!’ en el estadio?, porque esas palabras no tienen toda la carga peyorativa que tiene la otra”, añadió.
Para el sociólogo Miguel Ángel Lara, dicha expresión, en el ambiente futbolístico, es resultado del lenguaje “peladito (vulgar) y cantinflesco” que caracteriza a la cultura del mexicano, que también ha hecho de este deporte un producto de la masculinidad.
“Es un ámbito masculino, donde toda la testosterona sale a flote, pero es una testosterona que no piensa, que no es inteligente, en cambio sí es manipulada, asustada, reprendida y tiene una limitante”, explica el también profesor de la Universidad Iberoamericana.
De acuerdo con la Encuesta Nacional sobre Discriminación en México(Enadis) 2010, 4 de cada 10 personas en México, sin importar el rango de edad (de 12 a 49 años), opinan que la preferencia sexual provoca mucha división entre la gente, además de permanecer como uno de los mayores problemas de intolerancia en el país.
Albert señaló que “alguien, algún día le gritó ‘puto’ al portero y le pareció gracioso, luego ya fueron cinco y después ya fueron muchos y ahora se convirtió así como en la ola en los estadios y de repente en una especie casi de costumbre”.
“La gran dificultad (para controlarlo) es por el arraigo cultural de ciertos estereotipos sobre los cuales se ha construido este deporte, por ejemplo, una visión de un espacio donde no solamente se juega lo deportivo, sino lo masculino”, dijo Ricardo Bucio, presidente del Conapred, en una entrevista para CNNMéxico en 2013.
Armando Navarrete, portero del Puebla de la LigaMX y exguardameta de equipos como América, Necaxa y Atlante, explica que un futbolista está expuesto a todo y que la cancha y en general el estadio, es un espacio de libre expresión y que para eso los aficionados pagan su boleto.
“A mí nunca me ha parecido bien, pero uno como jugador tiene que aguantar. Como portero, si se dan cuenta que fallo me dicen de cosas, pero no me queda más que aguantar y enfocarme en el partido”, dijo en entrevista telefónica.
La idiosincrasia y la figura del machismo, señalaron las fuentes consultadas por CNNMéxico, influyen en el comportamiento de quienes asisten a los estadios y se expresan de esta manera en las tribunas.
“La cultura popular tiene en nuestro país desde hace muchísimos años ese tipo de cuestiones que pueden parecer pintorescas, chistosas. México es el país del albur y del doble sentido. Los mexicanos usamos un idioma y una jerga que a muchos se les hace simpático y eso, que es parte de nuestra idiosincrasia, se refleja también en el futbol”, añade Albert.
Pero Ricardo Bucio, titular del Conapred, piensa distinto. “El grito de ‘puto’ —al igual que los de ‘maricón’, ‘joto’, ‘puñal’, etc.— es expresión de desprecio, de rechazo. (…) Homologa la condición homosexual con cobardía con equívoco. Pero es también una forma de equiparar a los rivales con las mujeres, haciendo de esta equivalencia una forma de ridiculizarlas en un espacio casi exclusivamente masculino”, escribió en un artículo publicado en el portal de dicho Consejo, luego de que México ganara la medalla de oro en los Juegos Olímpicos de Londres 2012.
Los futbolistas “son productos culturales que forman parte de la familia mexicana y de esa educación de: ‘tú eres el hombrecito, los hombres no lloran’. Es un deporte viril, también en los discursos de la televisión es una entrada viril, de ‘¡hombre!’, sobre todo cuando se barren o cabecean”, complementa Miguel Ángel Lara.
En marzo del 2013, la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación (SCJN)determinó que las expresiones “maricones” o “puñal” son ofensas discriminatorias que no pueden ser resguardadas por la libertad de expresión que consagra la Constitución en su artículo sexto, sin embargo, la palabra “puto” no fue incluida.
“Nosotros somos así, nos gusta decir esa palabra y muchas más. Creo que esa palabra no es tan ofensiva”, comenta El Punker, miembro de la barra Sangre Azul.
Robbie Rogers, jugador estadounidense del equipo Los Ángeles Galaxy de la liga de EU; Anton Hysen, futbolista sueco del Utsiktens BK de la tercera división de ese país; Marcus Urban, un alemán que prefirió retirarse tras dar a conocer su homosexualidad, son algunos de los jugadores de soccer que han hecho públicas sus preferencias, además del también alemán Thomas Hitzlsperger, quien reconoció ser homosexual en enero, tras anunciar que se retiraba como profesional.
“El futbolista mexicano que decida ‘salir del clóset’ debe ser consciente de que tendrá que aceptar algún insulto, aunque igual con el tiempo todo se va a calmar”, afirma el portero del Puebla.
Por su parte, El Punker asegura que si esto ocurriera, sería una presión más para el jugador. “Si es del equipo contrario, nos lo acabaríamos, haríamos mucho, mucho folclor de eso. Pero si se trata de un jugador de nuestro equipo, no dejaríamos de decir ‘puto’ (a los rivales), pero al nuestro sí lo defenderíamos”.
“¿Por qué no nos hacemos la pregunta de si algún director técnico estaría dispuesto a que sus jugadores se sumen a una campaña contra la homofobia?, yo creo que ninguno lo haría, porque muchos de ellos utilizan este lenguaje justamente cuando quieren criticar al oponente, les gritan ‘mujercita’, ‘pégale como hombre’. Sus comentarios son homofóbicos, misóginos y sexistas”, afirmó Genaro Lozano.
Apenas el lunes, la Federación Mexicana de Futbol (Femexfut) anunció que en los partidos oficiales de liga, copa y ascenso será implementado el protocolo contra racismo que dicta la FIFA.
Para Lozano, el Conapred debería asumir un papel más protagónico para hacer frente a este tipo de problemáticas. “(Porque) no ha hecho ningún tipo de campañas justamente para combatir la homofobia. Hace falta el respaldo institucional”, concluyó.
The chief operating officer of El Tri says that Fifa can do nothing about the slurs that fans have used at the World Cup in Brazil
The chief operating officer of the Mexico national team has defended the use of gay slurs by the country’s fans, saying that nothing can be done about it.
Mexican supporters who have travelled to watch their side compete in the World Cup in Brazil have been heard shouting a derogatory term each time an opposing goalkeeper takes a kick – a common practice in Mexico.
Four days ago, football’s world governing body, Fifa, announced they had begun disciplinary proceedings in response to the chants.
However, the COO of the Mexico team, Héctor González Iñárritu, defended the fans and explained that it was part of the country’s culture.
“The [Mexican] Federation is unable to restrict this expression. We cannot do anything legally or administratively,” he stated.
“It is not aggression – it is something that we’ve had for a long time in the Mexican League and in international matches.
“The people of Brazil were also yelling ‘wh**e’ at Guillermo [Ochoa] and it’s the same. Fifa would have to punish all federations.”
Mexico coach Miguel Herrera backed the use of the slur recently when he said: “We’re with our fans. It’s something they do to pressure the opposing goalkeeper.”
But, Piara Powar – a member of FARE (Football Against Racism in Europe) and the Committee Against Racism – condemned the behaviour.
“The homophobic chants are totally unacceptable. There must be action quickly before it starts to run out of control,” he said.
“Fifa have strong regulations in this regard. Zero tolerance is what is required here.”
Under Fifa’s regulations, supporters could face punishments such as suspensions or expulsions from grounds if they are found guilty of breaching the rules.
“The sporting sanctions are the only effective punishment,” Fifa president Joseph Blatter said.
Cada Vez nos Despedimos Mejor Press Conference (Photo : Clasos/CON LatinContent Editorial)
Mexican actor Diego Luna is speaking out against homophobic chants during World Cup matches. Fox News Latino reported that the award-winning actor and producer said it is regrettable that homophobic terms like “puto,” a common cry heard at Mexico’s soccer stadiums, are used to insult players during games.
Some say the word means weak or coward and isn’t directed at gays, but it is clearly meant to mock an opponent as weak and unmanly.
“I went to the [2006] World Cup in Germany, and I did hear [that cry],” the actor said in an interview with MVS radio. He said he never joined in because he couldn’t be proud of doing so.
“Soccer is a reflection of what we are in many ways,” he said. “We live in a classist, racist, homophobic society into which we are very assimilated, that’s all. I’m not really proud of that.”
On Thursday, the International Federation of Association Football, or FIFA, opened a disciplinary inquiry into the chants Mexican fans yelled during World Cup games against Cameroon and Brazil.
ESPN told Outsports it will try to prevent the chants from being heard on-air Monday when Mexico plays Croatia. The network says it is sensitive to the chant.
Andres Aradillas-Lopez, an economics professor at Penn State University, was born in Mexico and said he told Outsports the slur disgusts him.
“I heard them during the Cameroon game and also today against Brazil. Every single time the opposing goalie had a goal kick, they chanted [‘puto’],” Lopez said. “The media should make a bigger deal out of this and publicly shame that country and its fans. No other country in the world does this, and it would be unacceptable in any U.S. stadium.”
Mexico national team coach Miguel Herrera didn’t take the chants seriously, saying, “We have nothing to say; we’re with the fans. They do it to put pressure on the other team’s goalkeeper — I don’t think it’s that serious.”
FIFA statutes state that discrimination — by players, coaches or fans — against any country, individual or group for their race, skin color, ethnic origin, nationality, sex, language, religion or other factor is prohibited.
Luna has played LGBT characters in his films, including “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Milk.”
LGBT activists have been using the World Cup to draw attention to anti-gay killings that have plagued Brazil. Last year there were 313 anti-gay killings in the country, according to watchdog Grupo Gay de Bahia.
O melhor em campo na partida em que a França atropelou a Suíça, Karim Benzema perdeu um pênalti, fez dois gols (o segundo não valeu por que o juiz caprichosamente havia apitado o fim da partida), deu duas assistências — e não cantou o hino.
Não é um detalhe. Ele não estava nervoso e atrapalhado. Benzema não entoa a gloriosa “Marselhesa” jamais. “Não é porque eu canto que eu vou marcar três gols. Se eu não cantar a ‘Marselhesa’ e marcar três gols, não acho que no final do jogo alguém vai reclamar. Zidane, por exemplo, não cantava. E há outros. Eu não vejo isso como um problema”, disse ele.
Benzema, como Zidane, seu ídolo e amigo, é filho de imigrantes argelinos e é muçulmano. O silêncio é um protesto a uma letra que fala: “Às armas, cidadãos/ formai vossos batalhões/ marchemos, marchemos! / Que um sangue impuro / banhe o nosso solo”. É duramente criticado por essa atitude. A Frente Nacional, de extrema direita, fundada por Jean Marie Le Pen, o chamou de mercenário desleal e pediu seu banimento. “Ele não vê problema nisso. Bem, o povo francês não veria nenhum problema se ele não estivesse mais no time”.
É uma falácia. Benzema, que também cravou dois contra Honduras na estreia, faz toda a diferença para a França, uma equipe majoritariamente de filhos de imigrantes. Além dele, o time tem Valbuena (descendente de espanhois), Cabaye (de vietnamitas), Matuidi (angolanos), Sagna (senegaleses), Varane (os pais são da Martinica).
Há três anos, o ex-técnico da seleção, Laurent Blanc, chegou a sugerir que se limitasse o número de atletas não-brancos. Blanc queria uma cota de 30% de descendentes de africanos na federação. Para sorte dos franceses, a ideia não foi adiante.
Na Espanha, Benzema costuma ser chamado de “vendedor de kebabs”. “Se marco gol, sou francês. Se não marco, sou árabe”, afirma. Karim Benzema e seus colegas são um problema, sem dúvida, mas para os adversários. E uma lembrança perigosa para o Brasil, cujos jogadores estufam o peito para cantar a capella o ouvirundum.
MANAUS, Brazil — The PP Maués would not set sail for an hour, but its long and narrow decks were already crisscrossed with hammocks for an overnight trip down the Amazon.
By the time it was to dock early last Monday at the regional port for which it was named, the Maués would have traveled 15 hours from the nearest World Cup stadium.
A second boat would be needed to reach an even more remote indigenous village that planned to watch Brazil play Mexico last Tuesday. The village did not have electricity or cellphone signals and would rely on a diesel generator to indulge its secluded passion for soccer.
While Rio de Janeiro and its famous beaches provide the touristic backdrop of the World Cup, the fevered grip of the world’s most popular sporting event can be felt even in some of the most isolated areas of the rain forest, where outsiders seldom visit.
“Football is in our blood,” said Andre Pereira da Silva, 32, the chief of a small community of Sateré-Mawé Indians in Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, who served as a guide. The intended destination was his home village, Monte Salém, one of an estimated 150 Sateré-Mawé (pronounced sah-teh-RAY mah-WAY) communities of about 11,000 residents along the lower Amazon.
The decks of the PP Maués were crisscrossed with hammocks for an overnight trip down the Amazon.CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times
“Wait until you see it,” Pereira da Silva said. “You will feel you are in the middle of the stars.”
As a boy in Monte Salém, he made soccer balls with the sap of rubber trees, using a stick to shape the latex into an improvised if sometimes uncontrollable sphere.
“Ten trees for one ball,” he said, sitting in the boat’s tiny dining room Sunday with his young son, his own thick hair tied in a ponytail. “The problem was, it bounced too much.”
On the passenger boat’s upper deck, the sentimental romance of Brega music played from two huge speakers. More than 300 customers were aboard a ship half the length of a football field. Children played among the hammocks and the luggage or peered over the rails. Some passengers transported used televisions or flat screens still in their boxes. In the aft of the boat, a new washing machine and refrigerator were lashed together, as if exposed as stowaways.
The game was also showing on a small, staticky television in the boat’s galley. Two men sat on backless chairs. Two more peered in the doorway as a cook made gelatinous soup from orzo, meat and carrots.
“Messi’s slow tonight,” Rodrigo Xavier, 26, said. “He’s not playing well.
Xavier, a Brazil fan, drew great pleasure from this.
Minutes later, Messi passed the ball and retrieved it on a give-and-go. He skimmed the top of the penalty area, dribbling past two defenders who collided and fell behind him. Given wide space, he ricocheted a shot off the left goal post and into the net. Xavier smiled. This was why Messi was widely considered the best player in the world. Even a Brazilian had to admit his appreciation.
Abruptly, the kitchen cleared. The boat had no satellite dish, and the TV’s antennas lost contact with the signal from Manaus. Paulo José, the ship’s owner, was left to eat in silence. He did not seem to mind.
“I don’t like football at all,” José said. “I’m different from most of the men.”
A nearly full moon appeared, sending a column of light rippling toward the boat. A man pointed his flashlight at the water’s edge, searching for caimans and their cigarette eyes. The stars seemed as white and near as the blossoms that hung from trees like scoops of ice cream.
MONDAY DAWNED COOL and overcast. Lightning flashed on the horizon. The rain came, and rolls of blue plastic were unfurled along the sides of the decks to keep passengers dry.
“It’s raining because the English are here” at the World Cup, Pereira da Silva said with a laugh.
Passengers disembarked the Maués after a 15-hour overnight trip down the Amazon.Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
By 8 a.m., only a drizzle remained as the boat reached Maués, a small regional port where a caffeine-rich plant called guaraná is manufactured for use in sodas, energy drinks and herbal teas. Firecrackers greeted the ship’s arrival. Fishermen paddled canoes toward market, their foam coolers full of prized fish with striped tails.
On streets above the docks, Brazil flags fluttered from an armada of motorcycles. The most deft or careless of the bikers steered with one hand and held an open umbrella in the other. Shops sold soccer balls, hats, plastic trumpets and jerseys of Neymar, the young Brazilian star forward. Even a kitten wore a necklace in Brazil’s colors, yellow and green.
Some men wore jerseys of the big Brazilian club teams — Flamengo and Vasco da Gama — allegiances built in the 1950s and 1960s, when the only radio signal that reached Maués came from Rio, more than 1,600 miles away.
A few teenagers were spotted wearing their own versions of Neymar’s distinct Mohawk mullet, which he sometimes dyes blond.
Neymar scored twice in Brazil’s opener against Croatia, but Pereira da Silva was not certain that Neymar was ready for the World Cup.
“He needs more experience; he needs to fight a little more,” he said. “He’s only interested in his gold hair. That’s the story of footballers today. They want to be good-looking.”
He carried a large sack of clothes to give to the chief of Monte Salém or trade for seeds to make necklaces and bracelets. He was to meet his mother and father in Maués and then travel together to the family’s ancestral village. At least that was the plan. Now there was a problem. The generator in Monte Salém was broken.
“Argentina,” Pereira da Silva said wryly, finding a convenient scapegoat. “Argentina breaks everything.”
After a breakfast of soup and hot sauce, he found another village with a working generator. It was called Nova Belo Horizonte. The trip would take 75 minutes by power boat from Maués. In midafternoon Monday, the equatorial heat was stifling, but Pereira da Silva’s parents yelled, “Waku sese” as the boat reached the village. Everything is really good.
Nova Belo Horizonte is home to 22 families, most of them living in wooden houses with thatched roofs. A rudimentary soccer field, with wood goal posts and no nets, has been cleared of stones and tamped flat amid the surrounding groves of guaraná, pineapples, oranges, bananas, peppers and the staple root called manioc.
For the first time, men’s and women’s teams from the village are participating in an area tournament of Brazil’s Indigenous Games. An important men’s match is scheduled for Sunday. The winner of the tournament will receive $1,500, which could readily be used in a village that, like other indigenous communities, has tried to protect traditional lands from encroaching development and perceived government indifference.
Health care is distant and inadequate, village elders said. There is no radio contact with the hub Maués, four or five hours away on the most common type of boat. Cellphones do not work.
The front steps of the school have crumbled, and the ceiling leaks. Classes for older students in Nova Belo Horizonte cannot be held at night during the World Cup, villagers said, because area government officials seem to be on holiday. Only a portion of the diesel needed to fuel the community generator had been provided.
“They only want our votes,” said Pereira da Silva’s father, Luiz Sateré, 56, a community coordinator for the Sateré-Mawé. “It’s the only thing that matters.
Sateré-Mawé Indians playing soccer in the Nova Belo Horizonte village. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Yet even if spending on World Cup stadiums seemed wasteful in a country with so many needs, it was important that the tournament returned to Brazil for the first time since 1950, said Reginaldo da Silva Andrade, 27, the chief of Nova Belo Horizonte.
“Brazilian people are the ones who love and watch the game the most in the world,” da Silva Andrade said.
IN NOVA BELO HORIZONTE, soccer serves many purposes: fun, fitness, conflict avoidance and a diversion from alcohol and drugs. It also provides a chance to socialize with other river villages. Teams travel by boat, and tournaments are often accompanied by festivals.
More important than the money available in the Indigenous Games, da Silva Andrade said, is a chance to “show people on the outside that we are capable of doing this.” He added: “We are realizing our dreams. People think we can’t play. We’ve got to show them.”
On Tuesday, when Brazil played Mexico, all classes were canceled in Nova Belo Horizonte. It will be the same every time Brazil plays. At sunrise, women in the village began hauling water from the well, carrying buckets on their heads. Soon, children kicked around a soccer ball. Some stood in the goal wearing flip-flops on their hands to cushion the heaviness of the shots.
Two small boys played with a ball made from plastic bags, paper and a sleeveless T-shirt. One kicked the ball past the other and yelled, “Goooooooal!” The generator rumbled on to test the television at the chief’s home. The TV kept going on and off.
It is a widely repeated story that soccer came to Brazil in the late 1890s when a man named Charles Miller returned from schooling in England with two balls in his suitcase.
But Pareci Indians earlier made balls from the latex of rubber trees and played a game called zicunati, which permitted only heading, according to “Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life,” a book by the British writer Alex Bellos.
An Indian nicknamed Indio helped Brazil qualify for the 1958 World Cup, the tournament that introduced Pelé to the world, Bellos wrote. In the late 1990s, José Sátiro do Nascimento, a defender who sometimes used coconuts for balls as a boy, became the first Indian to make one of Brazil’s top club teams, Corinthians of São Paulo. In 2009, a professional team of indigenous players was formed in the state of Pará.
Among the Sateré-Mawé, female players are welcomed, which is not always the case in the broader macho culture of Latin American soccer. One women’s team in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, carries the name of the initiation ritual in which boys in the tribe become men after being repeatedly stung by venomous ants.
When Brazil played Croatia in the World Cup opener, Janildzes Michiles, 28, said, she took written notes, concentrating on the defensive work of the mop-haired star David Luiz.
“It is a way to show women can do the same as men,” Michiles said.
On Monday night, while the generator in Nova Belo Horizonte ran for a couple of hours, Michiles watched the United States defeat Ghana, 2-1. Ghana seemed to play better, applying more consistent pressure, she said.
“The Americans ran hard for the ball, but they have to get faster,” she said. “They looked slow.”
Sateré-Mawé Indians in the Nova Belo Horizonte village watch the Brazil-Mexico match.Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
EARLY TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Nova Belo Horizonte hosted men and women from a nearby village, Brasileia, for two pickup matches. The visitors traveled in boats decorated with green and yellow streamers and announced their arrival by blowing whistles.
Both the women and the men from Brasileia prevailed by 3-1 scores in wilting heat. After Rariani da Silva Andrade finished the women’s game for the visitors, she lent her right shoe to her husband, Isaías Oliveira Gomes, whose left foot remained bare.
“He has an injured toe,” she explained.
Friendly defeat for Nova Belo Horizonte did not dampen enthusiasm for Brazil’s World Cup match against Mexico. Some villagers watched from their own homes. About 20 spectators gathered in the outdoor kitchen of the community chief. A few wore festive crowns made from palm fronds. Chicken stew and a crunchy flour called farinha were prepared. Eleven minutes into the match, the television clicked on.
“We will watch and learn,” said da Silva Andrade, the village chief.
Neymar soon threatened with a header, but Guillermo Ochoa, Mexico’s goalkeeper, dived and pushed the shot wide. At halftime, the match remained scoreless.
“I’ll be playing for Brazil in the second half,” da Silva Andrade joked.
When the game started again, Ochoa remained impenetrable. He deflected the ball with his hands and his thigh. His positioning and anticipation and reaction were impeccable. The villagers in Nova Belo Horizonte grew nervous, frustrated.
A pet parrot began to squawk at the anxious voices. One woman held tightly to her lucky beads. Michiles, the women’s player, hid her face behind three palm fronds. In the final minute of regulation, the score remained 0-0. Then the television went out.
It came back on briefly, then failed again as the game extended into three minutes of added time.
“The TV is angry with Brazil,” joked Pereira da Silva, the village chief and guide from Manaus.
Again and again, the screen flickered on, then went blank.
“The TV is scared,” said another villager, Geovani Miranda, laughing.
The screen went dark another time. When the picture returned, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazil’s coach, was giving a postgame interview. For a few seconds, there was confusion in Nova Belo Horizonte. Then came confirmation. The final score was 0-0 on an afternoon of intrigue and missed opportunity.
When Pelé appeared on the screen to give his analysis, the TV again went off. It was just as well.
“I don’t want to hear any apologies; I don’t want to hear how it would be different if Pelé was playing,” Pereira da Silva said, the humor gone from his voice. “Even the TV doesn’t want to hear him.”
It could have been worse. At least Brazil had not lost. In Nova Belo Horizonte, the home team remained favored to win the World Cup.
“Brazil is a fighter,” said Luiz Sateré, Pereira da Silva’s father, who wore a Neymar jersey. “Brazil is a warrior.”
Para driblar a extinção, tatu-bola ganha um plano nacional de conservação
O tatu-bola, escolhido como mascote da Copa no Brasil, é um animal em extinção devido à destruição de seus habitats na Caatinga e no Cerrado, além de sofrer com a caça. O pequeno mamífero também está correndo o risco de perder um importante reforço na luta por sua preservação. O trabalho desenvolvido pela Fundação Museu do Homem Americano (FUMDHAM) no Parque Nacional Serra da Capivara, no Piauí, está ameaçado por falta de recursos.
De acordo com a professora Rute Maria Gonçalves de Andrade, do conselho fiscal da FUMDHAM, todo o trabalho que vem sendo realizado em mais de 40 anos está ameaçado, além das espécies animais que ficarão desamparadas, mais de100 pessoas podem ficar desempregadas. “Infelizmente a fundação não tem recebido os recursos do ICMBio, nem do IPHAN já que o Parque é declarado pela UNESCO como Patrimônio Natural e Histórico da Humanidade, em quantidade suficiente e nos prazos devidos para fazer esta gestão”, desabafou.
Por meio de sua Divisão de Comunicação, o Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio) informou que “não houve nenhuma interrupção de repasses para a Fundação Museu do Homem Americano. Em 2014, foram repassados R$ 400 mil de recursos de compensação ambiental e há a previsão de mais R$ 300 mil, oriundos de emenda parlamentar”. Já o Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), órgão do Ministério da Cultura (MinC), não se pronunciou até o fechamento desta edição por conta de uma greve de seus funcionários.
Desde os anos 90, a equipe da FUMDHAM, liderada por sua presidente a arqueóloga Niède Guidon desenvolve ações de preservação da fauna local, o que tem sido decisivo para manter o equilíbrio da densidade populacional no parque de muitos vertebrados. Este trabalho consiste em manter limpos e cheios os reservatórios naturais de água existentes no Parque conhecidos como caldeirões, além de outros que foram construídos, para que os animais tivessem água na época da seca.
Para Rute esse é o momento ideal para chamar a atenção para os esforços de preservação da fauna e flora brasileira. “Talvez fosse importante que a partir da Copa fosse lançada uma grande campanha nacional em favor das Unidades de Conservação que preservam a duras penas o tatu-bola”, sugeriu.
Até o momento o trabalho de conservação do tatu-bola – cujo nome científico é Tolypeutestricinctus – está dando bons resultados. Segundo a professora Rute ele é um dos animais que compõem a fauna do Parque. “Após a fiscalização relativa à caça e o trabalho de fornecimento de água na época da seca possibilitaram manter a população desta espécie de mamífero, endêmico do Bioma caatinga”, afirmou.
Plano Nacional de Conservação – O biólogo Leandro Jerusalinsky, coordenador do Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Primatas Brasileiros (CPB/ICMBio), em João Pessoa (PB), faz parte do Plano de Ação Nacional para a Conservação do Tatu-bola (PAN Tatu-bola). A ideia é consolidar uma estratégia para diminuir o risco de extinção de duas espécies. “O plano tem como objetivo geral a redução do risco de extinção do Tolypeutestricinctus, que habita a Caatinga e o Cerrado, para a categoria Vulnerável e avaliação adequada do estado de conservação do Tolypeutesmatacus, encontrado no Pantanal e Cerrado, em cinco anos”, explicou.
Ainda segundo Jerusalinsky, o PAN Tatu-bola vai ajudar na conservação destas espécies por estabelecer de forma clara quais são as ações prioritárias para reverter ou atenuar os principais impactos sobre elas, que consistem na perda e fragmentação de habitats, caça e falta de conhecimento. “Desta forma, as diversas instituições envolvidas em pesquisa, fiscalização e licenciamento ambiental, por exemplo, poderão adotar essas ações em sua atuação, ajudando a conhecer e a proteger os tatus-bola”, detalhou.
O PAN foi elaborado por um conjunto de especialistas nestas espécies, sediados em instituições de ensino e pesquisa como a Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS), Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Universidade do Vale do Rio São Francisco (UNIVASF), Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso (UNEMAT), EMBRAPA Pantanal, além do próprio ICMBio.
Aguardada demonstração de exoesqueleto criado por grupo do brasileiro Miguel Nicolelis recebe pouco destaque na abertura da Copa do Mundo, mas pode ser marco da ciência nacional
Centenas de milhões de telespectadores em todo o mundo. Muito rebuliço na imprensa pela demonstração que faria um brasileiro com deficiência andar com um exoesqueleto robótico. Olhares atentos de uma comunidade científica reticente. Por tudo isso, a demonstração de poucos segundos, realizada em meio a outras atrações da festa de abertura do mundial de futebol, na beira do campo e cortada pela transmissão oficial, merecia um tratamento melhor.
Mesmo assim, a iniciativa liderada pelo brasileiro Miguel Nicolelis, da Universidade Duke, nos Estados Unidos, levou ciência a um dos maiores eventos esportivos do mundo e apontou possibilidades tecnológicas da medicina do futuro – apesar de não ter entregado exatamente o prometido e das críticas pela maneira pouco transparente como foi realizada.
A demonstração do projeto Andar de novo ocorreu pouco antes de a bola rolar na Arena Corinthians para a primeira partida do mundial. Em meio à festa, enquanto a transmissão se dividia entre a chegada da seleção brasileira ao estádio e as papagaiadas do espetáculo, o atleta Juliano Pinto utilizou a mente para comandar o equipamento robótico e chutar de leve a Brazuca, bola oficial do torneio. A proposta inicial era de que o exoesqueleto andasse cerca de 20 metros, o que não aconteceu – na verdade, ele não andou, nem dobrou o joelho ou deslocou seu centro de gravidade de maneira significativa, apenas moveu a perna.
Artigo de Roberto Lent publicado em O Globo de 14/6. A prévia publicação nas revistas especializadas é o selo de qualidade do produto científico, como o selo do Inmetro o é para os produtos industriais
Não deve ter sido por acaso que a Fifa reduziu para poucos segundos a exibição do exoesqueleto do cientista Miguel Nicolelis na abertura da Copa do Mundo. Talvez a prudência lhe tenha imposto essa medida.
Em torno desse polêmico episódio, há várias questões a considerar. Primeiro: não é possível aferir a originalidade e o impacto científico e prático da propalada tecnologia de comando cerebral do exoesqueleto sob feedback sensorial eletrônico. A razão é simples: Nicolelis ainda não a publicou em revistas especializadas. Sua produção científica e sua capacidade de trabalho permitem supor que o fará brevemente para a avaliação da comunidade científica da área. Ficaremos aguardando. Mas o fato é que até o momento pouco se pode comentar sobre o experimento da Copa que não sejam especulações.
Segundo: a exibição pública, para milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo, do chute à bola efetuado por um paraplégico vestindo o exoesqueleto é em si uma iniciativa importante para valorizar a ciência perante a sociedade. No entanto, do modo como foi feita, viola um princípio ético básico da divulgação científica – só se deve divulgar ao público leigo o que antes se publica nas revistas especializadas. Elitismo? Falta de espírito democrático? Não, responsabilidade social. A prévia publicação nas revistas especializadas é o selo de qualidade do produto científico, como o selo do Inmetro o é para os produtos industriais, a licença da Anvisa para os medicamentos, o carimbo do Ministério da Agricultura para os produtos agrícolas. Essas revistas, antes de publicar qualquer artigo, submetem-no a uma rigorosa revisão por especialistas. Além disso, os autores têm que apresentar todos os detalhes dos métodos que empregaram e dos resultados que obtiveram. Na abertura da Copa, o show do exoesqueleto representou uma ruptura com esse princípio. Talvez tenha sido isso que a Fifa percebeu a tempo.
Mas há outras questões em jogo: uma delas é o contraste entre o financiamento que o projeto Nicolelis obteve e o que conseguem obter os pesquisadores brasileiros de nossas universidades, com todo o crescimento dos recursos conseguido nos últimos anos. A Finep, agência de financiamento do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, colocou R$ 33 milhões no exoesqueleto. Nada errado nisso: trata-se de uma agência de inovação, cuja missão é justamente investir em projetos ousados, assumindo os riscos, que de resto são inerentes a todos os projetos científicos. Mas é inevitável comparar: o edital recentemente lançado por outras agências do mesmo ministério para a criação de Institutos Nacionais de Ciência e Tecnologia anunciou que proverá no máximo R$ 10 milhões para cada um dos grupos que vencerem uma acirrada concorrência. Como esses R$ 10 milhões se destinam a grupos que associam vários pesquisadores independentes, cada pesquisador contará com algo em torno de R$ 1 milhão para o seu projeto.
Três a um foi a vitória da seleção brasileira; 33 a 1 foi a vitória de Nicolelis sobre a comunidade científica brasileira.
Roberto Lent é professor do Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Uma das atrações mais esperadas na abertura da Copa do Mundo de 2014 era a apresentação do exoesqueleto desenvolvido pelo cientista brasileiro Miguel Nicolelis, que permitiria a um paraplégico dar o chute inicial do primeiro jogo. Ele de fato fez um paraplégico se levantar e dar um pontapé numa bola de futebol no Itaquerão. Mas quase ninguém viu esse marco da ciência _ pelo menos, não ao vivo, porque a Rede Globo o exibiu por apenas alguns segundos, em meia tela, para mostrar o ônibus da Seleção Brasileira chegando ao estádio no mesmo momento.
Nicolelis havia dado a impressão, em suas entrevistas, de que o tal chute ocorreria no início do jogo, não que seria apenas um acontecimento paralelo à beira do gramado enquanto J.Lo, Pitbull e Claudia Leitte erravam o playback do tema da Copa do Mundo. Existe a possibilidade de que ele tenha recebido promessas e estas tenham sido descumpridas. Também houve boatos de que a Fifa teria impedido o chute no centro do campo por medo de o peso do aparelho prejudicar o gramado.
De qualquer forma, a ausência de cerimônia com que esse enorme passo do engenho brasileiro foi tratado, primeiro, pela organização da festa de abertura e, depois, pela principal emissora do país, simboliza com perfeição o espaço que damos à ciência no imaginário nacional. Até 2012, o Brasil investia cerca de 1,3% do PIB em pesquisa e desenvolvimento de tecnologia, bastante menos do que a média dos países da OCDE, que era de 2,3%. Conforme estudo da ONG Battelle, em 2014 o país deve investir os mesmos 1,3% de 2012, bem mais do que os 0,6% da Argentina, mas ainda longe dos 3,6% da Coreia do Sul, ou dos 2% da China.
As cerimônias de abertura da Copa, das Olímpiadas e outros eventos do gênero servem não apenas para mostrar um país, mas também para projetar um ideal, o desejo de uma sociedade para o futuro. O Brasil, na Copa de 2014, poderia ter projetado se tornar também uma potência mundial em pesquisa e produção de tecnologia, mas preferiu continuar sendo apenas uma potência esportiva e cultural _ o país do futebol e do Carnaval.
Marcelo Träsel é pesquisador e professor de comunicação na PUCRS.
IT’S wonderful that America has fallen in love with World Cup soccer, as it plays out across the greenswards of Brazilian host cities like Natal, Manaus and Curitiba. To walk through New York City on Monday night and hear the restaurant crowds’ whooping at John Brooks’s late-game goal, which propelled the United States over Ghana, was to experience soccer as it is experienced in the rest of the world: collective, noisy and cathartic.
But as someone who grew up in England in the 1970s and ’80s, I still can’t take seriously this idea of soccer as a wholesome multicultural bauble, the sporting equivalent of the small-plate gastropub. I’m bemused by these young people all over New York with their World Cup sticker albums, wearing club shirts from Barcelona and Chelsea — and even Paris St.-Germain, for heaven’s sake.
Until recently, when the Qatar Investment Authority bought Paris St.-Germain and scrubbed it up, investing tens of millions of dollars in new players, it was a terrifying club. Its stands were ruled by a group of fascist skinheads, the notorious Kop de Boulogne. Few Parisians dared venture to its games. At a match in 2008, its fans greeted the visiting club from Lens with a banner reading, “Pedophiles, unemployed and inbred.”
Longtime Chelsea fans now complain that games at their home ground, Stamford Bridge, once raucous affairs, have become as stodgy as a night at the opera. It’s now just thousands of well-behaved bankers and lawyers, chuntering approval at the latest high-priced midfield acquisition. The old frisson of hooliganism is gone.
In Northampton, the town where I grew up, the professional team was nicknamed the Cobblers, a reference to Northampton’s past as a center for shoemaking, but unfortunately also Cockney rhyming slang for “rubbish.” The Cobblers played at the County Ground a mile or so from our house, and on game days my parents ordered me inside and locked the doors as hundreds of fans walked to the game and back, chanting and leaving a trail of lager cans along Christ Church Road.
As a schoolboy, I had to play endless unwanted hours of mediocre soccer. There was the occasional sunny afternoon in our backyard when I would imagine myself as Glenn Hoddle, the midfield genius of Tottenham Hotspur and England’s national team. But if I had to play one of those rapid-fire word association games, here’s what would spring to mind: freezing, rain, ball like a rock, pain, bruise, yelling, losing. My favorite moment from the United States-Ghana match wasn’t the goals but Clint Dempsey’s taking a blow to the face and playing on.
As a cub newspaper reporter, I would drive to lower-division professional matches around the south of England. I would park my car, hide my stereo and walk to the match past a line of mounted police officers in riot gear. You took your life in your hands just eating the meat pies at these games. Grown men would swear with such explosive force you feared their teeth would pop out. Their feelings for the referee and the opposition, rendered in chant, were unprintable.
England’s national team used to be made up of hard nuts willing to bleed for the country on the field and drink off it. On their way back home from a friendly match before the European championships in 1996, they got soused and trashed a plane to the tune of more than $5,000 in damage.
I’m happy the players today are all listening to their nutritionists and thanking God for their blessings, but I wonder if ever there will be another Stuart (Psycho) Pearce to grace the England back four or a Paul (Gazza) Gascoigne to celebrate scoring by pretending to drink pint after pint of lager.
When I moved to New York, in 1998, the Yankees were en route to another championship. It was easy to love Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and the high-kicking Orlando (El Duque) Hernandez. I went to games at Yankee Stadium, read the works of Roger Angell and Roger Kahn. For one birthday, my wife even bought me a copy of “The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract” so I could nerd out on sabermetrics.
But when I tried to talk baseball with Americans, I could tell no one took me seriously. However much I knew, I could never really “know” the game in the same way as those who had endured hot summer afternoons of Little League or long losing droughts with the Mets. Anyone could like El Duque, the same way anyone can like Lionel Messi.
So it is with the new crowds of World Cup fans. If I feel a little protective of my game, it’s because my enthusiasm for it has been uneven and hard won. The good news is I don’t have to worry about this ever happening with cricket.
Quarta-feira, 18/06/2014 às 11:57 por David Butter
Quem diria: o pior da Copa é a torcida da seleção brasileira. Não falo da torcida dos bares, das casas e das ruas, de fora dos estádios por falta de condição, gosto ou oportunidade, mas da torcida das arquibancadas. – digo “torcida” por falta de outro termo.
Não, não andamos vendo a vergonha e o banzo circulando de cabeça baixa por aeroportos ou estradas, como imaginavam antes da competição os profetas da catástrofe, e sim pelas cadeiras das arenas “padrão Fifa”. Há algo de triste em quem passa por essas cadeiras: uma modorra atravessada de impaciência e melancolia.
Pois a torcida brasileira desta Copa é, até agora, uma torcida reativa. Até no seu canto mais efusivo (“Sou brasileiro/Com muito orgulho/Com muito amor”), a torcida de estádio parece estar respondendo a alguma ofensa não-enunciada. É como se o brasileiro entrasse xingado e cuspido nas arenas, e não extraísse disso mais do que a força para dizer: “Eu gosto do que eu sou”.
A torcida brasileira desta Copa não tem canções: tem musiquinhas que caberiam melhor numa festa de firma: expressões vagas de solidariedade e espírito coletivo – praticamente um convite às vaias e aos muxoxos. “Está ruim o salgado”, “que banda horrível é esta”, “aqueles pães-duros economizaram no uísque”: enxergo no torcedor desta Copa o “Mauro da Contabilidade”, um Jekyll chatíssimo que, nas confraternizações de fim de ano, converte-se num Hyde mais chato ainda.
E os Mauros todos converteram nisto a atual “experiência” de ser ver um jogo da seleção: um investimento individual de tempo (e dinheiro) em troca de algum retorno. A seleção “presta serviços” aos torcedores-consumidores; é uma seleção-bufê, um atração para eventeiros. Cantar qualquer coisa além do cânone santificado pela imprensa e pela publicidade não está no “briefing”.
(Ao fato: a torcida do México berrou por cima da torcida brasileira em Fortaleza. A ponto de me parecer que, para um jogo em Guadalajara, a seleção mexicana deveria encarar o empate como um tropeço.)
O hino se esgota antes da bola rolar. Não há tempo para concursos, nem festivais. Não existe, tampouco, era de ouro de cantoria para se espelhar. O que pode entoar de novo e de firme a torcida brasileira? Funk, sertanejo, paródia obscena, qualquer coisa mais viva, e menos encaixável num anúncio de banco ou sobe-som de telejornal – jogo as opções ao alto, por desespero de causa.
Surpreenda o Brasil, Mauro. Rasgue o abadá. Seja menos convencional uma vez na vida. Tenha algo a contar para seus filhos, algo diferente de “Os mexicanos/chilenos/argentinos me calaram”.
Paraplégico rebate contestações ao projeto do neurocientista Miguel Nicolelis
Por três segundos na última quinta-feira, Juliano Alves Pinto, 29 anos, apresentou às câmeras um projeto de R$ 33 milhões: o exoesqueleto que permitiu o jovem paraplégico dar o pontapé inaugural da Copa do Mundo. Se ao projeto do neurocientista Miguel Nicolelis não faltaram críticas, o paciente não economiza elogios ao experimento.
– Aqueles que criticam são pessoas sem informação sobre o projeto – defendeu Juliano na manhã desta segunda-feira em entrevista a Zero Hora.
Questionamentos ao experimento científico se baseiam na dimensão da demonstração frente à grandeza da promessa, classificada quase como um milagre: munido de uma veste robótica, um paraplégico levantaria de uma cadeira de rodas, caminharia até o gramado do Itaquerão e chutaria uma bola acionando apenas a força do pensamento. Não foi o que ocorreu.
– O tempo foi muito curto para que isso acontecesse – constatou o jovem.
O uso do exoesqueleto representou mais um aprendizado na vida do morador de Gália – cidade de 7 mil habitantes a cerca de 400 quilômetros da capital paulista. Há 7 anos e meio, ele perdeu o movimento das pernas ao fraturar a coluna em um acidente de trânsito – no qual perdeu um irmão de 27 anos. Sob a nova condição em cima de uma cadeira de rodas, teve de readquirir as habilidades comprometidas:
– Minha vida mudou. Antes eu conseguia fazer as minhas coisas e, de repente, precisava das pessoas para me ajudar. Tive de reaprender a fazer tudo sozinho. Hoje, levo uma vida praticamente independente, dirijo, pratico esportes, me troco, tomo banho.
Passados os segundos de fama e a repercussão posterior à abertura do Mundial – na sua cidade, foi recebido com carreata -, Juliano retoma a rotina habitual. Ainda nesta semana, participa de um campeonato que representa uma das suas motivações: o atletismo. Para o futuro, ele busca ajuda para a compra de uma nova cadeira de corrida para participar de torneios e, quem sabe, acumular pontos para se tornar profissional. Paralimpíadas em mente?
– Sonho sim. Não perco as esperanças, nunca – diz o galiense.
Confira os principais trechos da entrevista que o jovem concedeu a Zero Hora, por telefone, nesta segunda-feira:
Como ocorreu a seleção para participar do projeto Andar de Novo e da abertura da Copa?
Sou paciente da AACD (Associação de Assistência à Criança Deficiente) de São Paulo, onde o projeto já estava acontecendo e onde estavam sendo selecionados alguns pacientes. Há uns seis meses, surgiu o convite para mim e eu aceitei. Ao todo, foram selecionados 10 pacientes, oito continuaram e três foram pré-selecionados para fazer a demonstração na Copa, mas todos os outros estavam preparados para usar o exoesqueleto. Depois veio a notícia, faltando uns quatro dias para o evento, que eu fui o escolhido.
Qual foi a sensação quando você recebeu a notícia?
Fiquei muito feliz não só por estar fazendo parte do projeto e representando todos eles, mas representando todos que também têm uma deficiência como eu e sonham, um dia, ter um bem-estar melhor para a sua vida. Creio que toda essa parte da ciência vem para nos ajudar, é um bem-estar a mais para a pessoa.
Como foi a preparação e o treinamento para o projeto?
Estávamos cercados de grandes profissionais não só na parte da ciência, mas também fisiatras, fisioterapeutas. Deu tudo certo. Eu saía de Gália de madrugada, chegava em São Paulo às 8h, ficava o dia todo em treinamento e voltava para a casa.
Por que você foi o escolhido?
Eu estava mais preparado para o dia da Copa. Não que os outros não estivessem, mas eu me enquadrava melhor no perfil que eles procuravam.
Qual foi a sensação ao vestir o exoesqueleto?
Posso dizer por mim e acho que pelos outros pacientes que também tiveram a oportunidade de andar no exoesqueleto que é muito bom. Você está em uma cadeira de rodas e, por mais que ela permita que você se locomova normalmente mesmo sem ter a mobilidade das pernas, você poder trocar alguns passos novamente, é um grande ganho. No meu caso, depois de sete anos e meio, o exoesqueleto trouxe isso de volta. É algo muito satisfatório, de muita alegria, você novamente poder fazer algo que perdeu lá atrás.
Foi como caminhar novamente?
A sensação, sim. Creio que isso depende, também, da gente começar a se adaptar mais… mas, poxa, é uma sensação bem real, mesmo.
Pelo sua sensação, será possível, no futuro, trocar a cadeira de rodas pelo exoesqueleto?
Creio que sim. Durante esse pouco tempo que acompanhei o doutor Nicolelis e sua equipe, percebi que eles têm um grande potencial para que isso venha a acontecer. Mesmo que haja críticas, que as pessoas não acreditem, estando ali e presenciando o projeto, creio que isso será possível, sim.
Inicialmente, a expectativa era que você levantaria da cadeira de rodas, caminharia até a bola e a chutaria. Não foi o que aconteceu. Como você avalia o resultado da experiência?
Como o próprio Miguel Nicolelis abordou, o tempo foi muito curto para que isso viesse a acontecer. A gente se enquadrou dentro de um roteiro da Fifa. Muita gente questionou por que fizemos o que fizemos na abertura também nos ensaios, mas foi porque o tempo era aquele. Para a gente fazer tudo isso(levantar, caminhar e chutar), teríamos que ter um tempo maior, não tinha como. É como o doutor Nicolelis falou, não existe na história uma demonstração da parte robótica dessa maneira em 29 segundos. Conseguimos fazer em 16 segundos, e menos apareceu na mídia. Então, a gente se enquadrou no padrão que nos passaram, fizemos aquilo para obedecer o tempo que chegou até nós. Não que a gente tenha fugido do que foi dito, mas nos adequamos dentro do tempo que tínhamos.
Então pode-se dizer que foi um sucesso?
Com certeza. Foi um marco, algo que entrou para a história.
Apesar da ampla divulgação do projeto, o chute ganhou apenas três segundos na televisão. Você ficou chateado com a pouca visibilidade dada no momento?
Eu não tinha conhecimento que havia sido transmitido em tão pouco tempo. Quando comecei a acompanhar vi que, realmente, foi pouco mesmo. Mas, depois, foi amplamente abordado, a mídia trouxe bastante o assunto, mas acho que poderia, sim, ter se dado um tempo maior para a apresentação, ter focado mais. Não sei se posso dizer que fiquei triste, mas posso dizer que gostaria que tivesse sido dado um tempo maior.
Críticos ao neurocientista Miguel Nicolelis disseram que o projeto foi um fracasso. O que você tem a dizer a eles?
Aqueles que criticam são pessoas sem informação sobre o projeto. Eles se baseiam no que pensam, mas eu creio que, se essas pessoas estivessem vivenciando o que os pacientes viveram durante todo esse tempo, tenho certeza que os pensamentos e argumentos seriam diferentes. Não tem como você falar de uma coisa que você não conhece, como dizer que o produto é bom se você não conheceu e não sabe detalhes. Então, eu creio que essas pessoas não têm informações corretas acerca do que está acontecendo.
O que mudou na sua rotina desde quinta-feira passada?
Estou procurando viver uma rotina normal. Agora, vou voltar a treinar e quero levar a minha rotina normal. O que mudou foi aparecer bastante na mídia, foi um assunto que ficou bastante visto, mas acho que isso não tem me atrapalhado. O que eu quero fazer é deixar as coisas bem claras, não me esconder, e estar disposto a esclarecer o projeto também.
Quais são seus planos?
O projeto continua, e estou buscando a minha classificação nos jogos de atletismo que participo. Tenho o sonho de conseguir um equipamento melhor, uma cadeira de corrida, para disputar e conseguir um índice para um nacional ou até um mundial. No Brasil não se acha, apenas com representantes, e o preço vai lá em cima porque é uma cadeira importada.
Inequidad. Creció el consumo pero tuvo consecuencias inesperadas.
El antropólogo carioca Eduardo Viveiros de Castro estuvo recientemente –y por primera vez– en Buenos Aires. Participó del seminario “La bolsa o la vida. Modelos de desarrollo, nuevas conflictividades sociales y derechos humanos”, organizado por la Biblioteca Nacional y presentó el libro La mirada del jaguar. Una introducción al perspectivismo amerindio (Tinta Limón), que compila una serie de entrevistas donde cuenta su trayectoria como investigador. O mejor dicho, su experiencia fugitiva: cómo se conectó con los indios para huir de Brasil. “Fui a estudiar a los indios porque los indios justamente no eran brasileños. Me interesaba su total incompetencia ciudadana. La pregunta era ¿cómo salir de Brasil?, en el sentido de evitar esa problemática teórica de la nacionalidad, el destino de Brasil como nación, el carácter nacional”. La incorrección política que planteaba esa posición en los años 70 no deja de ser actual y sigue generando polémica. En esta conversación Viveiros de Castro cuenta cómo se vivieron las recientes movilizaciones callejeras y lo que se espera para este 2014 que luego del Mundial, afronta las elecciones presidenciales.
–La consigna que circuló en estos meses era sintética pero directa “No habrá copa” ¿Qué concentra esa frase?
–Para el pueblo la imagen es que el gobierno se vendió a la FIFA. La sensación es que la FIFA ha logrado que se instale un micro-estado de excepción que entrará en vigor incluso antes del campeonato. Hay una indignación patriótica por el modo en que Brasil se ha sometido a esa mega máquina de explotación capitalista que es la FIFA en tanto reduce el fútbol a un puro negocio. En Río, muchas favelas fueron removidas para hacer obras para el mundial, también por cuestiones de “seguridad”. Todo eso sucede al mismo tiempo de la propaganda de que Brasil es la nueva potencia económica mundial, con obras de infraestructura enormes, que incluye el desmonte de la Amazonía, hechas por las cinco constructoras más grandes del país que son las que contribuyen históricamente a financiar las campañas de todos los partidos, sean de derecha o de izquierda.
–¿Cómo caracterizaría esas manifestaciones?
–Son bastante inéditas. Hubo partidos de izquierda pero sin ningún control sobre la movilización. Los partidos de derecha no van. Y toda vez que un periodista de la red O Globo se acerca es expulsado, por eso estas manifestaciones son fuertemente atacadas por la prensa. Han producido su propia prensa, que se llama Midia Ninja. No hay además un solo tema. Aunque podría decirse que existen dos cuestiones fundamentales. El problema de la movilidad urbana de la población obrera de San Pablo que vive en las periferias de la ciudad y tiene que viajar horas, lo cual supone un reclamo por el tiempo que lleva ir de las casas al trabajo, una reivindicación del tiempo libre. La segunda es contra la reacción represiva de la policía frente a las marchas, ante lo cual muchos jóvenes se indignaron.
–¿Esto está en el origen de la formación de los black bloc (grupos de protesta)?
–La práctica del black bloc, especialmente en Río, tiene que ver con la respuesta al accionar de la policía militar con la que cuenta cada Estado provincial, que es como un ejército privado y una herencia del imperio. Es una policía que usa armas pesadas y entrenada para la guerra. El gobierno es acusado de complicidad con esta violencia de los Estados provinciales. Dilma ha dicho por tv que está en contra de toda manifestación que ponga en peligro el orden público. Estas palabras, viniendo de una mujer que estuvo en la guerrilla, que dijo haber sido revolucionaria, orientan el discurso del PT hacia una retórica de orden propia de una derecha más clásica.
–Las movilizaciones en Brasil, a diferencia de las últimas en Europa o EE.UU., no se dan en un momento de crisis o ajuste. Más bien lo contrario: es claramente un momento de desarrollo en términos de inclusión masiva al consumo. ¿Cómo lo interpreta?
–Hay algo muy complejo vinculado al llamado crecimiento. Una gran parte de este aumento de los ingresos por medio de beneficios sociales como el de “Bolsa Familia” ha sido utilizado como método de endeudamiento para los jóvenes pobres. El prototipo podríamos describirlo como un joven de 22 años, sin educación formal, que trabaja de cadete, cuya familia recibe ahora estos subsidios, además de las posibilidades de acceso al microcrédito que el gobierno implementó. ¿Y qué es lo primero que hace este joven? Compra una moto y se endeuda por muchísimos años de su vida con un préstamo muy oneroso con los bancos. Parte fundamental del crecimiento es por este endeudamiento general de las clases populares, especialmente con electrodomésticos. Y no está mal que alguien que no tenía heladera pase a tenerla, todo lo contrario. El problema es que no pasan a tener la heladera sino a ser tenidos por ella, es decir, por la deuda a la que quedan obligados, casi siempre por medio de tarjetas de crédito. En la medida en que ciertos gobiernos de la región se diferencian de las políticas neoliberales tal como se dieron durante los años 90 y promueven un aumento general del consumo, se genera un consenso sobre la legitimidad de estos modelos y cualquier crítica se la clasifica como proveniente de la derecha. En Brasil los que argumentan así son los que llamamos “gobernistas”, es decir, la gente de la antigua izquierda que apoya al gobierno más allá de la medida que se trate porque siempre dicen “otro gobierno sería mucho peor”. Comparado con la Argentina, en Brasil resulta más complicado porque la dictadura no terminó, los militares no han sido juzgados y siguen diciendo públicamente que salvaron al país del comunismo. Y esto, me parece, funciona en acuerdo con el PT: los militares “toleran” que el actual gobierno “de izquierda” gobierne y el gobierno “tolera” que los militares sigan diciendo lo que dicen y no se los juzgue.
–Volviendo a la cuestión del consumo, ¿no cree que cierta crítica al consumo debería plantearse el desafío de deshacerse de toda carga moral?
–Me parece que la democratización en América Latina no llega por el consumo sino por la ampliación de servicios del Estado: salud, transporte, educación. Lo que pasa en Brasil es que el consumo ha sustituido esa provisión de servicios para las clases populares. Entonces, las clases populares en vez de tener más y mejores servicios tienen su crédito para comprar bienes producidos por el gran capital, sea su motocicleta o su heladera. La cuestión es qué resulta más importante: ¿que el gobierno invierta en cloacas, puestos de salud y escuelas o que invierta en liberar de impuestos la compra de autos baratos para que los pobres puedan tener un auto? Se podría responder “las dos cosas” y es una buena cuestión. El hecho a subrayar es que el gobierno brasileño ha invertido masivamente en el consumo mediante el crédito. Y el pedido de mejoramiento de servicios públicos es justamente uno de los reclamos del Movimiento de Passe Livre que inició la ola de manifestaciones. La verdadera inclusión pasa por la inclusión en el acceso a servicios que el Estado tiene la obligación de proveer a todos. Además creo que hay dos tipos diferentes de consumo que hay que distinguir.
–¿Cuáles?
–Por un lado, el consumo de quienes no tenían nada y ahora pueden comprar su tv o su heladera. Nadie puede oponerse. De todas maneras, eso no los convierte en clase media, como dice el gobierno. Pasan de ser pobres a un poco menos pobres. Y después está el consumo inmenso de una clase media-media que pasa a ser una clase media-alta y protagoniza un ascenso de clase verdaderamente consumista: es la gente que va a Miami o a Buenos Aires para llenar valijas con productos importados de marcas de lujo. Esta gente se multiplicó tanto o más que los pobres que acceden a un crédito.
It’s the moment every soccer fan’s been waiting for. The teams are out on the field and the match is about to begin. Then comes the rain. And then the thunder. And then the lightning. Enough of it that the match is delayed.
With the World Cup taking place in a country comprising several different ecosystems — a rain forest among them — you’re going to be hearing a lot about the weather in Brazil over the next month.
But we don’t have to wait until the day of — or even five days before — any given match to get a sense of what the weather will be. We already know the broad outlines of the next month of weather in Brazil — June and July have happened before, after all, and somebody kept track of whether it rained.
I did something like this for the Super Bowl in New York, when I provided a climatological forecast based on years worth of historical data. This isn’t the most accurate way to predict the weather — seven days before a match there will be far better forecasts — but it is a solid way to do it many weeks in advance.
I collected past weather data for the World Cup’s timespan (mid-June through mid-July) from WeatherSpark and Weather Underground for the observation stations closest to the 12 different World Cup sites. Keep in mind, the data for the different areas of Brazil hasn’t been collected for as long as it has in the United States. In some cases, we only have records since the late 1990s, which is about half as many years as I’d like to make the best climatological assessment. Still, history can give us an idea of the variability of the weather in Brazil.
You can see what high temperatures have looked like for the 12 World Cup sites in the table below. I’ve taken the average, as well as the 10th, 25th, 75th and 90th percentile for past high temperatures. This gives us a better idea of the range of what could occur than just the average. Remember, 20 percent of high temperatures have fallen out of this range. (For games starting in the early evening, knock off a few degrees to get the expected average.)
What we see is that the weather can be quite comfortable or hot, depending on the site. In the southern coastal region, we see high temperatures that average below 70 degrees Fahrenheit in the cities of Curitiba and Porto Alegre. (I’ve presented all temperatures in Fahrenheit.) It may seem odd to you that southern areas are actually coolest, but remember that this is the southern hemisphere, so everything’s topsy-turvy for a Northerner. It’s winter in Brazil, and climatology suggests that we shouldn’t be surprised if the high temperature is below 60 degrees at one of these sites.
Wikimedia CommonsHost sites for the 2014 World Cup.
But most of the country is not like these two sites. Belo Horizonte and Brasilia reach the mid- to high 70s usually, but don’t go too much higher because of their elevation (2,720 feet for the former and 3,500 feet for the latter). From Rio de Janeiro northward, temperatures average 80 degrees or greater, but winds from the ocean will often keep them from getting out of hand.
The site tied for the highest median temperature is Manaus, which is also surrounded by the Amazonian rainforest, making it the most interesting site climatologically. There’s a 15 percent chance that it will rain in Manaus on any given day during the tournament. In small quantities, rain can help a passing game by making the grass slick, but if there’s too much precipitation, it can slow the ball significantly as the pitch gets waterlogged. And that doesn’t even get to the threat of lightning, which can halt a game completely.
But Manaus isn’t the site with the highest chance of rain. (Just the highest chance of thunderstorms.) To figure out what is, I looked at the average rainfall and thunderstorm tallies during the 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. hours during June and July in past years. From there I estimated the chance of rain during two-hour stretches in the afternoon and early evening, rather than for the entire day.
So here are approximations for each site on rain and thunderstorms during the games:
It probably won’t rain during any given match, but if it does it’s likely to be in the sites closest to the tropics in the north and thehumid subtropical climate in the south. Recife, for example, has the best chance of rain of any site in the country, in part because it’s right where a lot of different air masses combine, which makes the weather there somewhat more unpredictable.
Thunderstorms, on the other hand, rarely occur anywhere besides Manaus, where the chance of a thunderstorm in a given afternoon hour is in the double digits. Manaus is also where the United States will be playing against Portugal in its second match; climatology suggests it should be a muggy game.
The Americans’ other games are likely to be hot but dry. The United States’ first match, against Ghana, is in Natal on Monday, a city that normally is expected to offer a high temperature around 84 degrees, with a slightly cooler temperature by the evening game time. The current forecasts (based on meteorological data, rather than climatology) are calling for something around normal with around a 15 percent chance of rain, as we’d expect. The weather for the U.S. team’s third match, on the coast in Recife, should be about the same. Thunderstorms probably won’t interrupt the game, but rain is possible.
Most likely, though, the weather will hold up just fine. The optimistic U.S. fan can safely engage in blue-sky thinking — for the team’s chances, and for the skies above it, even if our coach is finding another way to rain on the parade.
Harry Enten is a senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight.
FAMOUS FAN: A natural poster boy for the campaign was one of Sport Recife’s most famous fans, 69-year-old Ivaldo Firmino dos Santos, who received a heart transplant 12 years ago.
Published — Monday 2 June 2014
Last update 2 June 2014 12:07 am
RIO DE JANEIRO: An organ donation campaign by one of Brazil’s biggest football clubs targeting its fans has led to a massive rise in the number of life-changing transplants and reduced waiting lists for organs in the area almost to zero.
“Every Brazilian is born with football in the soul,” says Jorge Peixoto, of Sport Club Recife, one of the top teams in the north-east of the country.
For the last two years though, he has been more concerned about what happens to fans’ bodies when they die.
The club decided it “must look beyond the 11 players on the field and use its power for bigger things,” says Peixoto, the club’s vice-president for social programs.
It asked them to become “immortal fans” donating their organs after they die so that their love for the club will live on in someone else’s body, the BBC reported.
“I promise that your eyes will keep on watching Sport Club Recife,” says one man waiting for a cornea transplant in the television ad made to publicize the campaign.
“I promise that your heart will keep on beating for Sport Club Recife,” says a potential recipient of a transplanted heart.
The video is screened at every match in the club’s Ilha do Retiro stadium, a venue that seats 35,000 but could be filled almost twice over with the number of people who have signed up for a donor card — 66,000 so far.
The waiting list for organ transplants in the city of Recife was reduced to zero in the first year, Peixoto says, and the impact has also been felt throughout the surrounding state of Pernambuco.
“We used to perform from five to seven heart transplants a year, but last year we achieved 28… it was an incredible increase,” says Fernando Figueira, director of heart transplants at Pernambuco’s Institute of Integrated Medicine.
“There is a very tight connection between the campaign and this rise.”
People can apply online for the Sport Donor card — it’s the size of a credit card, the words printed over the outline of a heart with a fiery red backdrop.
According to Brazilian law, it’s up to the family to decide whether the organs of their loved ones will be donated after their death. But making this decision is not easy in such painful moments.
The success of the campaign has been noticed around the world and Sport Recife has been contacted by Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona, both thinking about adopting similar campaigns, Peixoto says.
He hopes the forthcoming World Cup will help spread the idea further.
A New York Times investigation of match fixing ahead of the last World Cup gives an unusually detailed look at the ease with which professional gamblers can fix matches.
JOHANNESBURG — A soccer referee named Ibrahim Chaibou walked into a bank in a small South African city carrying a bag filled with as much as $100,000 in $100 bills, according to another referee traveling with him. The deposit was so large that a bank employee gave Mr. Chaibou a gift of commemorative coins bearing the likeness of Nelson Mandela.
Later that night in May 2010, Mr. Chaibou refereed an exhibition match between South Africa and Guatemala in preparation for the World Cup, the world’s most popular sporting event. Even to the casual fan, his calls were suspicious — he called two penalties for hand balls even though the ball went nowhere near the players’ hands.
Mr. Chaibou, a native of Niger, had been chosen to work the match by a company based in Singapore that was a front for a notorious match-rigging syndicate, according to an internal, confidential report by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body.
FIFA’s investigative report and related documents, which were obtained by The New York Times and have not been publicly released, raise serious questions about the vulnerability of the World Cup to match fixing. The tournament opens June 12 in Brazil.
The report found that the match-rigging syndicate and its referees infiltrated the upper reaches of global soccer in order to fix exhibition matches and exploit them for betting purposes. It provides extensive details of the clever and brazen ways that fixers apparently manipulated “at least five matches and possibly more” in South Africa ahead of the last World Cup. As many as 15 matches were targets, including a game between the United States and Australia, according to interviews and emails printed in the FIFA report.
Although corruption has vexed soccer for years, the South Africa case gives an unusually detailed look at the ease with which professional gamblers can fix matches, as well as the governing body’s severe problems in policing itself and its member federations. The report, at 44 pages, includes an account of Mr. Chaibou’s trip to the bank, as well as many other scenes describing how matches were apparently rigged.
After one match, the syndicate even made a death threat against the official who tried to stop the fix, investigators found.
“Were the listed matches fixed?” the report said. “On the balance of probabilities, yes!”
The Times investigated the South African match-fixing scandal by interviewing dozens of soccer officials, referees, gamblers, investigators and experts in South Africa, Malaysia, England, Finland and Singapore. The Times also reviewed hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, emails, referee rosters and other confidential FIFA documents.
FIFA, which is expected to collect about $4 billion in revenue for this four-year World Cup cycle for broadcast fees, sponsorship deals and ticket sales, has relative autonomy at its headquarters in Zurich. But The Times found problems that could now shadow this month’s World Cup.
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A letter from Football 4U International to the South African soccer federation offered to provide referees for South Africa’s exhibition matches before the World Cup.
■ FIFA’s investigators concluded that the fixers had probably been aided by South African soccer officials, yet FIFA did not officially accuse anyone of match fixing or bar anyone from the sport as a result of those disputed matches.
■ A FIFA spokeswoman said Friday that the investigation into South Africa was continuing, but no one interviewed for this article spoke of being contacted recently by FIFA officials. Critics have questioned FIFA’s determination and capability to curb match fixing.
■ Many national soccer federations with teams competing in Brazil are just as vulnerable to match-fixing as South Africa’s was: They are financially shaky, in administrative disarray and politically divided.
Ralf Mutschke, who has since become FIFA’s head of security, said in a May 21 interview with FIFA.com that “match fixing is an evil to all sports,” and he acknowledged that the World Cup was vulnerable.
“The fixers are trying to look for football matches which are generating a huge betting volume, and obviously, international football tournaments such as the World Cup are generating these kinds of huge volumes,” Mr. Mutschke said. “Therefore, the World Cup in general has a certain risk.”
Mr. Chaibou, the referee at the center of the South African case, said in a phone interview that he had never fixed a match, and he denied knowing or having ever spoken to Wilson Raj Perumal, a notorious gambler who calls himself the world’s most prolific match fixer and whom FIFA called one of the suspected masterminds of the South Africa scheme.
“I did not know this man,” Mr. Chaibou said. “I had no contact with him ever.”
Mr. Chaibou said FIFA had not contacted him since his retirement in 2011. He declined to answer any questions about money he may have received in South Africa.
The tainted South African matches were not the only suspect ones. Europol, the European Union’s police intelligence agency, said last year that there were 680 suspicious matches played globally from 2008 to 2011, including World Cup qualifying matches and games in some of Europe’s most prestigious leagues and tournaments.
“There are no checks and balances and no oversight,” Terry Steans, a former FIFA investigator who wrote the report on South Africa, said of the syndicate’s efforts there in 2010. “It’s so efficient and so under the radar.”
An exhibition match between Guatemala and host South Africa in May 2010 at Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane was “manipulated for betting fraud purposes,” a 44-page FIFA report found.CreditAssociated Press
Referees for Sale
As players from South Africa and Guatemala gathered for their national anthems, Mr. Chaibou stood between the teams at midfield. He was flanked by two assistant referees who had also been selected by Football 4U International, the Singapore-based company that was the front for the match-rigging syndicate.
They were present because of a shrewd maneuver the fixers had begun weeks earlier to penetrate the highest levels of the South African soccer federation.
A man identifying himself as Mohammad entered the federation offices in Johannesburg carrying a letter dated April 29, 2010. The letter offered to provide referees for South Africa’s exhibition matches before the World Cup and pay for their travel expenses, lodging, meals and match fees, taking the burden off the financially troubled federation. “We are extremely keen to work closely with your good office,” the letter read.
It was signed by Mr. Perumal, the match fixer, who was also an executive with Football 4U.
Penalty kicks in an exhibition match between Guatemala and host South Africa in May 2010 awarded by the referee Ibrahim Chaibou aided South Africa’s 5-0 victory. According to FIFA’s report, Mr. Chaibou received as much as $100,000 to fix the match. Mr. Chaibou said he had never fixed a match.CreditGianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The offer sounded strange to Steve Goddard, the acting head of refereeing for the South African Football Association at the time. An amiable, heavyset Englishman who sometimes used a table leg for a walking stick, Mr. Goddard had had an eclectic career in and out of soccer. He sang in Welsh choirs and worked as a sound engineer for an album made at Abbey Road Studios. He knew that FIFA rules allowed only national soccer federations to appoint referees. Outside companies, like Football 4U, had no such authority.
Several days later, Mr. Goddard said, Mohammad returned and offered him a bribe of about $3,500, saying he was holding up the deal. Mr. Goddard said he declined the offer.
Nevertheless, other South African executives moved forward with Football 4U. At least two contracts were drafted, giving Football 4U permission to appoint referees for five of the country’s exhibition matches. The FIFA report called the contracts “so very rudimentary as to be commercially laughable.”
One contract, unsigned, bore the name of Anthony Santia Raj, identified by FIFA as an associate of the Singapore syndicate. The other contract was signed by Leslie Sedibe, then the chief executive of the South African soccer federation.
In an interview, Mr. Sedibe said that someone from Football 4U had lied to him about the company’s intentions, and that the FIFA report belonged “in a toilet.”
“It is the biggest load of rubbish,” he said.
Mr. Santia Raj could not be reached for comment.
Investigators found that South African soccer officials performed no background checks on “Mohammad” or Football 4U. The company was already infamous: It had attempted to fix a match in China about eight months earlier. Mohammad turned out to be Jason Jo Lourdes, another associate of the Singaporean match-fixing syndicate, according to the FIFA report. Mr. Lourdes could not be reached for comment.
The report said the South African soccer officials were “either easily duped or extremely foolish.”
But their behavior “inevitably leads to the conclusion” that several employees of the federation “were complicit in a criminal conspiracy to manipulate these matches,” the report said.
Fixers are attracted to soccer because of the action it generates on the vast and largely unregulated Asian betting markets. And if executed well, a fixed soccer match can be hard to detect. Players can deliberately miss shots; referees can eject players or award penalty kicks; team officials can outright tell players to lose a match.
Most fixed bets are placed on which team will win against the spread and on the total number of expected goals. Gamblers often place large bets in underground markets in Asia. By some estimates, the illegal betting market in Asia amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
The South African federation, troubled by financial difficulties and administrative dysfunction, was a ripe target. Once Football 4U had insinuated itself, the syndicate was able to switch referees at the last moment, and it had access to dressing areas and the sidelines.
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According to an email from Wilson Raj Perumal to Ace Kika, a South African federation official, the Singapore syndicate asked to provide referees for matches.
“The situation was ideal for the criminal organization using Football 4U to exploit these vulnerabilities and to offer money to SAFA staff, who were themselves suffering financial hardship,” the FIFA report said.
Mr. Perumal did not respond to requests for an interview. But he wrote a memoir, published in April, that captured his brazenness and provided details consistent with FIFA’s report. He wrote that his group offered $60,000 to $75,000 to Mr. Chaibou and his crew for each exhibition match they would fix.
“I can do the job,” Mr. Chaibou replied, according to Mr. Perumal’s memoir, “Kelong Kings.” (“Kelong” is Malay slang for match fixing.)
The memoir says Mr. Chaibou was paid $60,000 for manipulating the South Africa-Guatemala match.
The day of the match, Mr. Chaibou walked with Robert Sithole, a South African member of the officiating crew, to a Bidvest Bank in Polokwane, about three hours northeast of Johannesburg, Mr. Sithole said in the report.
Mr. Sithole told investigators that he watched as Mr. Chaibou deposited a “quite thick” wad of $100 bills, perhaps as much as $100,000, though Mr. Sithole could not be certain of the amount. Mr. Chaibou said he wired the money to his wife in Niger, according to the report.
A woman at the bank gave Mr. Chaibou a gift of coins bearing the likeness of Mandela, an apparent reward for “having deposited a huge amount of money on this account,” Mr. Sithole told FIFA investigators.
Hours later, Mr. Chaibou arrived at Peter Mokaba Stadium for the match. Another referee from Niger was scheduled to officiate.
Instead, Mr. Chaibou took the field.
Questionable Calls
That night, only seats in the lower bowl were full, but the crowd of about 25,000 was noisily expectant.
As the match began, FIFA’s Early Warning System, which monitors gambling on sanctioned matches, began to detect odd movements in betting. Gamblers kept increasing their expectations of how many goals would be scored, a possible sign of insider betting.
Before the match, the betting line had been 2.68 goals, an ordinary number, said Matthew Benham, a former financial trader who runs a legal gambling syndicate in England. By kickoff, the expected goals rose drastically, to 3.48, and then to more than 4 during the match, Mr. Benham said.
The questionable calls began early. In the 12th minute, South Africa scored on a penalty kick after a Guatemalan defender was called for a hand ball even though he was clearly outside the penalty area. At halftime, the two assistant referees from Tanzania “looked shivering, nervous,” Mr. Sithole said in the report. He was part of the officiating crew.
South Africa vs Guatemala (5-0) HighlightsVideo by Ecuatoriano122395
In the 50th minute, Guatemala was awarded a suspicious penalty kick for a hand ball, even though a South African defender stopped a shot in front of the goal with his chest, not his arm.
Mr. Goddard watched from the grandstands, where he noticed others seemed just as incredulous about the refereeing. A South African broadcaster kept looking in his direction in disbelief. A fellow South African soccer official repeatedly turned to Mr. Goddard with open arms, as if to say, “What about that?”
In the 56th minute, another debatable penalty kick was awarded to South Africa, which resulted in the team’s fourth goal in a 5-0 rout.
The FIFA report stated plainly that “we can conclude that this match was indeed manipulated for betting fraud purposes.”
‘We’re Going to Eliminate You’
South Africa had one more warm-up match, against Denmark on June 5, before it opened the World Cup. While expectations for the team soared, some officials in the South African soccer federation had grown concerned about the refereeing.
The night before the match with Denmark, several South African officials delivered a stern lecture to the appointed referees, who were from Tanzania and had been selected by Football 4U. Nothing inappropriate would be tolerated, they were told.
Ace Kika, one of three South African federation officials present, was vehement. He later complained to investigators that men connected to Football 4U had consistently tried to enter the referees’ dressing room at halftime of the exhibition matches.
The morning of the Denmark match, the scheduled chief referee withdrew, citing a stomach bug, although the report described him as “clearly alarmed.” A substitute referee was needed — fast.
Given the officiating in the Guatemala match, Mr. Goddard already had another referee on standby. “I was prepared for anything to happen that afternoon,” he said in an interview.
He persuaded Matthew Dyer, a respected South African referee, to officiate, even though it was unusual for a referee to work a match involving his home country.
But when Mr. Goddard arrived at the stadium, he found a familiar figure already there — Mr. Chaibou.
As the teams prepared to take the field, Mr. Dyer was hidden away in an unused room to perform his warm-up exercises. Mr. Chaibou received a massage and completed his own warm-ups, but that was as far as he got.
As Mr. Chaibou waited in a tunnel to lead the teams onto the field, Mr. Goddard said, he put his hand on Mr. Chaibou’s shoulder and told him: “I am kicking you out of the match. You are joining me in the grandstand.”
Another South African soccer official said he locked Mr. Chaibou in the referees’ dressing room while Mr. Dyer took the field instead.
Steve Goddard, the acting head of refereeing for the South African Football Association in 2010, said he had refused a bribe from Football 4U International, a front for a match-fixing syndicate, over the appointment of referees.CreditJoao Silva/The New York Times
South Africa won, 1-0. In Mr. Perumal’s memoir, he wrote that the fixers had wanted three goals in the match, and that $1 million “went up in smoke.” He also wrote that Mr. Goddard was “a big troublemaker.”
After the match, as Mr. Goddard drove away from the stadium, his cellphone rang. It was Mr. Perumal, who had once been convicted of assault for breaking the leg of a soccer player in an aborted match-fixing attempt.
“This time, you really have gone too far and, you know, we’re going to eliminate you,” he said, according to Mr. Goddard. Mr. Perumal later bragged about the episode, the report said. But in his memoir he said that he had threatened only to sue Mr. Goddard for breach of contract, not kill him.
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Goddard testified that Mr. Perumal threatened his life.
The South African officials made no written report of the threat and did not alert FIFA or the police at the time.
But Mr. Goddard said he took the threat so seriously that “to save my life,” his colleague, Mr. Kika, suggested that they allow the Singapore syndicate to pick the referee for the next day’s exhibition match between Nigeria and North Korea. Under duress, Mr. Goddard said, he agreed.
“That was basically to save my neck,” he said in an interview.
That night, at 8:26, Mr. Kika sent an email granting permission for Football 4U executives to appoint the referee. Mr. Kika declined a request for comment.
The referee in the Nigeria-North Korea match made several questionable calls. FIFA investigators could not confirm whether it was Mr. Chaibou, but they said the referee was definitely not the Portuguese official who had been assigned.
The referee took “a very harsh stance” in giving a red card for a seemingly lesser infraction, and he later took “a very liberal stance” in awarding a suspicious penalty kick, the report said. Nigeria won, 3-1.
If the Singapore syndicate was not shocked by the result, many bettors were. “We were absolutely trashed in that game,” said Mr. Benham, the professional gambler. “It made no sense at all in the betting market.”
As South Africa faced Denmark on June 5, the United States defeated Australia, 3-1, in another exhibition. According to an email from Mr. Perumal to Mr. Kika on May 24, the Singapore syndicate asked to provide referees for the match. In an interview, Mr. Goddard said that Football 4U proposed using three referees from Bosnia and Herzegovina who, according to the FIFA report, would later receive lifetime bans from soccer for their involvement in match fixing.
Mr. Goddard said he had warned American and Australian officials of Football 4U’s intentions. Ultimately, South African referees officiated the match.
United States soccer officials said they did not recall receiving any warnings about fixers or a change in referees. The FIFA report gives no indication that the game was manipulated.
“We’ve never heard anything about this before and have no reason to doubt the integrity of the match,” said Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation.
Even if it could not place referees in the United States match, Perumal wrote in his memoir that the Singapore syndicate walked away from the South African exhibitions “with a good four to five million dollars.”
Shrugging at the Evidence
Mr. Perumal remained in South Africa until June 30, 2010, deep into the World Cup, according to the FIFA report. Mr. Perumal wrote that he offered a referee $400,000 to manipulate a World Cup match, but that the referee declined because he thought Mr. Perumal had a “loose tongue.”
After the World Cup, a freelance journalist, Mark Gleason, reported suspicions among some African soccer officials that exhibition matches had been rigged. FIFA did nothing at the time.
In fact, FIFA did not investigate the suspicious games for nearly two years, until March 2012. By then, Mr. Chaibou had reached FIFA’s mandatory retirement age, 45. FIFA has said it investigates only active referees, so its investigation of Mr. Chaibou stopped. “It took a while to get around to it, longer than we would have liked,” Mr. Steans, the author of the report, said in an interview.
At the time, FIFA’s investigative staff amounted to five people responsible for examining dozens of international match-fixing cases, he said. The group has no subpoena power or law enforcement authority.
Investigators spent only three days in South Africa and never interviewed the referees or the teams involved, the report said. An unsuccessful attempt was made to interview Mr. Chaibou at the time, according to Mr. Steans.
FIFA officials in Zurich received the report in October 2012 and passed it to the soccer officials in South Africa; it had little meaningful effect there. A few South African officials were suspended but later reinstated. And no one was charged with a crime even though FIFA had found “compelling evidence” of fixed exhibitions and apparent collusion by some South African soccer officials.
“We never got to speak to the referees, which was sad,” said Mr. Steans, who operates his own sports security firm. “It would have tied up a lot of loose ends. I’m sure they would have given us some relevant information.”
Mr. Sedibe, then the chief executive of the South African soccer federation, shrugged off the report as a politically motivated witch hunt. “Why is it taking so long to get to the bottom of this?” he said. “Why not refer this matter to the police to investigate and bring closure to it?”
Three months after the suspicious South African matches, Mr. Perumal was linked to another daring scheme. In September 2010, he organized a match in Bahrain in which the opponent was a fake squad claiming to be the national team of Togo, in West Africa. The referee for that match? Mr. Chaibou.
The presence of Football 4U and Mr. Chaibou made soccer organizers uneasy. In 2011, a South African official, Adeel Carelse, said that after being misled by some in his national federation, he learned that Mr. Chaibou was about to referee an under-23 age-group match in Johannesburg. Mr. Carelse said he raced across the city with a car full of South African referees to replace Mr. Chaibou’s crew at the last minute.
Ibrahim Chaibou, second from left in Nigeria in 2011, the referee at the center of the South African case, was seen depositing a “quite thick” wad of $100 bills before a suspect exhibition match, according to FIFA.CreditSunday Alamba/Associated Press
Mr. Chaibou retired to Niger in 2011.
Mr. Perumal was arrested in Finland in 2011 and found guilty of corruption. He was given a two-year sentence, although he was released early. He was arrested again in Finland in late April for his continued role in match fixing.
Since the South African episode, Mr. Steans has left FIFA. He said the investigative staff in Zurich had a docket of about 90 match-fixing cases worldwide. along with other security duties. To seriously combat match fixing, Mr. Steans said, FIFA needs at least 10 investigators working full time on monitoring the manipulation of games, and two offices in each of its six international soccer confederations.
“You need the local intelligence and local knowledge on the ground,” Mr. Steans said. “You need to be talking to sources face to face to get live information that helps you counter match fixing before the fix happens.”
A FIFA spokeswoman said Friday that the Zurich staff now included six investigators and that FIFA worked with a broad network of law enforcement officials including Interpol. Delia Fischer, the spokeswoman, said that for the World Cup, 12 security officers would be assigned to each stadium, with the monitoring of potential match fixing among their duties.
In addition, Ms. Fischer said, a security staff of 18 will be on hand from FIFA headquarters in Zurich. Mr. Mutschke, FIFA’s security chief, said on the organization’s website that a primary concern about fixing is the third and final game of the group phase of the World Cup, when a particular team has been eliminated or has already qualified for the second round.
“Prevention is not something where you can see easy success stories the next day,” Mr. Mutschke said in the FIFA.com interview. “So we are investing in long-term solutions, and we certainly need the help of our member associations as well to be successful in the end.”
In late 2012, an elite anticorruption police unit, called the Hawks, said it was investigating potential corruption linked to the match-fixing scandal inside South Africa’s soccer federation, including a possible bribe of about $800,000. But in March, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa said he would not form a commission to examine charges of match fixing, leaving the matter to FIFA.
“I’m disappointed for South African football,” Mr. Steans said. “I’m disappointed for football in general because when these things happen to the game, they need to be investigated and the truth found. And two years, well, four years since this happened was way too long.”
The other day, as she was priming her re-election campaign, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff hit a speed bump. There she was, racing across the country to launch shiny public-works projects ahead of the World Cup, and the only thing those annoying journalists wanted to know was if the airports would be renovated on time and up to “FIFA standards.” The reference, of course, was to the rigorous Switzerland-based global soccer authority. “The airports will not be FIFA-standard,” she shot back. “They will be Brazil-standard airports.”
And there it was, in a sound bite, the official spin on Brazil’s complicated moment in the sun, a candid take on the rolling public-relations disaster that has been this country’s relationship with the wider world and its international gatekeepers. Rousseff’s prickly riposte might have been calculated. With presidential elections scheduled for October, she has been struggling in the polls. Hardly a week passes without some angry klatsch or another taking the streets — not least because of Brasilia’s perceived weak hand in dealing with those overweening bean counters from Zurich. A mini-genre of anti-FIFA articles has bloomed here and abroad. It’s about time the Brazilians kicked back, she said.
It’s an odd moment to circle the wagons. Brazil is days away from the curtain call for the crown event of the most popular sport on the planet. Two years from now, Rio de Janeiro will stage the Summer Olympics, drawing hundreds of thousands of athletes and tourists, plus billions of television viewers. And yet nationalism and resentment have flared, and with them memories of times that Brazilians had imagined were behind them. “FIFA go home,” says a message stenciled in white on the pavement of Copacabana, Rio’s signature beachfront neighborhood.
Squint a little and you can see the faded graffiti of another cranky time, some three decades ago, when international creditors were banging on Brazil’s door for their due and the International Monetary Fund was their policeman. FIFA Go Home! is the direct heir to IMF Go Home!
This is passing strange. Brazil, with the world’s seventh-largest economy, traffics in a globalized world and its signifiers and acronyms, from the Gini coefficient, which measures economic inequality, to the International Organization for Standardization, which sets proprietary, industrial and commercial standards. When the country excels, Brasilia trumpets the achievement. The nation’s traditionally skewed income inequality score has improved since the beginning of the last decade, even as most fast-growing developing nations become more lopsided. When the country flops, such as in the PISA — the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s yardstick for 15-year-olds, measured by standardized scholastic tests (Brazil is a lowly 58th on a scale of 65 nations) — the official handlers rush to print disclaimers. Then there’s the mother of all acronyms, the WTO. Not only does a Brazilian, Roberto Azevedo, head the World Trade Organization, few countries have been as aggressive as his in wielding its authority, taking protectionists to task 26 times since 1995.
That’s one of the big reasons that Brazilians revere soccer. Roberto DaMatta, the brilliant anthropologist, nailed it when he said that futebol isn’t some opiate for the witless. Brazilians love the game because it is fair, has transparent rules and is played on a level playing field. What counts on the pitch is how you play, not who you know. It’s a scale model of a better world. The current World Cup anger notwithstanding, Brazilians have always been proud of their FIFA standing (currently fourth), and they will remind visitors that they got there the proper way: by beating the best.
More than an ankle kick at Brazil’s intrusive outsiders, Rousseff’s FIFA outburst was essentially the declaration of an era. To her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil was destined for glory. He pushed for a seat on the United Nations Security Council and a nuclear energy deal with Iran. He opened 40 new embassies abroad. Bagging the World Cup was part of the package. Brazil “will now with great pride do its homework,” he promised the FIFA brass in Zurich. That was then.
To contact the writer of this article: Mac Margolis at macmargolis@terra.com.br.
To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net.
Rio Violence Spikes Ahead of World Cup. In the months before the World Cup, violence in Rio has spiked despite pacification tactics that have drawn criticism from some who live in the favelas. Credit Ana Carolina Fernandes for The New York Times; Video by Nadia Sussman
RIO DE JANEIRO — Alda Rafael Castilho dreamed of being a psychologist, and joined the police force to pay for her studies. Her dream ended at age 27 when gunmen stormed the outpost where she was on duty in Complexo do Alemão, a sprawling patchwork of slums. A bullet pierced her abdomen, and she bled to death.
“They left her there to squirm on the ground like some sort of animal,” said her mother, Maria Rosalina Rafael Castilho, 59, a maid who lives in the gritty outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. “The politicians talk about the pride of hosting the World Cup, but that is an insult,” she said. “They can’t even protect their own police, much less the visitors to Rio.”
With the start of the global soccer tournament in Brazil less than two weeks away, a crime wave is setting nerves on edge across Rio de Janeiro, which is expecting nearly 900,000 visitors. A security overhaul was supposed to showcase a safer Rio on the global stage, but muggings are surging, homicides are climbing, and there has been a spike in shootings of police officers.
Maria Rosalina Rafael Castilho holding a picture of her daughter Alda Rafael Castilho, a police officer who was shot and killed in Rio de Janeiro in February.CreditAna Carolina Fernandes for The New York Times
At least 110 officers have been shot in Rio so far this year, an increase of nearly 40 percent from the same period last year, according to figures compiled independently by the Brazilian journalist Roberta Trindade with the help of police officers. Most of the episodes involved on-duty officers, but in some cases, off-duty officers were shot in assaults when they were identified as police.
In one bloody 16-day stretch in May, Ms. Trindade recorded 14 shootings of police officers, including two who were killed. Altogether, at least 30 on-duty and off-duty police officers have been shot dead this year, she said, including Ms. Castilho, the aspiring psychologist.
The security forces have been trying to reclaim territory in the city from the control of heavily armed drug gangs, and until recently, the deployment of special teams called Pacifying Police Units in dozens of favelas was viewed as a major achievement. But the officers have come under increasing attack in these “pacified” favelas, and the security gains are eroding.
Effectively acknowledging that Rio’s stretched police force cannot guarantee security for the World Cup, state officials have turned to the national government for help, asking for 5,300 troops from the armed forces to help patrol city streets, the way troops did for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012.
Officials contend that Rio is still safer than it used to be, despite the setbacks and the request for troops, and they point out that other Latin American cities like Caracas, Venezuela, or Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and even some Brazilian cities like Salvador, have higher homicide rates. In Rio, the rate was 20.5 per 100,000 residents last year, well below the rate of 37.8 per 100,000 recorded in 2007 before the security push into the favelas. During that time, the number of police officers in the city and the surrounding state rose to 47,710 from 37,950.
“We’re still distant from the earlier levels of criminality,” said Roberto Sá, a senior security official of the state government. “There are areas where an actual war had to be waged just for the police to enter. Now the police can do so without so many personnel because drug traffickers are losing their territorial bases.”
Contending that the new crime wave is an anomaly, Mr. Sá pointed to the state’s measure of armed attacks on the police, which is limited to officers killed on duty: seven so far this year. While that figure was regrettable, he said, the killings often get little notice in the Brazilian news media, while in many other countries, “the people who die become heroes.”
“I know it is undesirable, but we live in this kind of culture in Latin America, one of violence and criminality,” he said. “We have to understand that this is the reality.”
The challenge facing the police here was thrown into sharp relief in February when the commander of Rio’s “pacification” police forces, Col. Frederico Caldas, was caught in a gun battle in Rocinha, one of Rio’s largest slums. He dove to the ground to avoid a spray of bullets, and wound up having to undergo surgery to remove fragments of rock and plastic from one of his eyes.
Homicides rose 17 percent last year in Rio de Janeiro State, the first increase since 2010. The state recorded 4,761 homicides, with 1,323 of them in the city; by contrast, New York City, with a larger population than Rio, recorded 333 homicides in the same period.
A Pacifying Police Unit officer in Rio de Janeiro. At least 110 officers have been shot so far this year, an increase of nearly 40 percent from the same period last year.CreditMario Tama/Getty Images
A surge in street crime is also jolting residents. Street robberies and vehicle thefts increased sharply this year to levels higher than when the favela pacification program began in 2008, according to official figures. There were 20,252 reported muggings of pedestrians in the first quarter this year, up 46.5 percent from a year earlier.
On Rio’s streets, on television and across social media in Brazil, the crime wave is playing out in ways that are at once surreal and horrific.
A crew from the television network Globo recently interviewed a woman near Rio’s old center on the subject of crime, and in the middle of the interview, an assailant tried to rip a necklace from her neck.
In another episode that tested some residents’ faith in the Rio police, a driver recorded video footage on his smartphone showing the body of a woman hanging out of a police vehicle and being dragged along the pavement through traffic.
The police officers in the vehicle claimed they were taking the woman, a 38-year-old favela resident from the northern part of the city, to a hospital after she suffered gunshot wounds. They said they had not noticed that her body was dangling from the rear of their vehicle. However, an investigation concluded that the woman had been shot and killed by two of the officers, though not intentionally.
Military police officers stood during a presentation of troops that are responsible for security ahead of the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro.CreditPilar Olivares/Reuters
“The legitimacy of the police is at a disturbingly low point,” said Luiz Eduardo Soares, a former top security official in Rio. “The pacification process simply shifted crime to other parts of Rio’s metropolitan area. Now we’re seeing the police coming under attack even in the favelas, which they are calling pacified.”
Security experts attribute some of the animosity toward the police to the resilience of drug gangs like Comando Vermelho, which originated in a Rio prison in the 1970s, and the growth of smaller criminal groups like Terceiro Comando Puro, formed after a split from Comando Vermelho in the 1980s.
Police officers say their jobs are made harder by inadequate training and low pay. But at the same time, the persistence of brutal police tactics, involving the abduction and torture of some residents, contributes to the anger against the police in some communities.
In Rocinha, the hillside favela overlooking some of Rio’s most exclusive residential districts, the disappearance last year of Amarildo de Souza, a 42-year-old construction worker, set off street protests. Investigators found that he was given electric shocks and asphyxiated with a plastic bag after police officers detained him in during a sweep of drug-trafficking suspects.
To the further outrage of many here, investigators said Maj. Edson Santos, the police commander in Rocinha at the time, bribed two witnesses in the case to say that drug traffickers were to blame for what happened to Mr. de Souza.
“This honeymoon within a large part of Rio’s population and the media was deeply shaken,” said Julita Lemgruber, a former director of Rio’s penitentiary system, referring to the hopes raised by security gains in recent years. “The case of Amarildo was a turning point.”
Brazilians angry at their government and FIFA could turn this giant soccer tournament into a tipping point. Are these corrupt, elitist spectacles worth it?
The world’s “beautiful game” is about to stage its biggest tournament in the country that is its spiritual home. The realities on the ground in Brazil, however, are far different from how its ringmasters had envisioned. Stadiums haven’t been completed; roads and airports not built. Ten thousand visiting journalists may find themselves unable to make deadlines due to poor Internet and mobile service.
More ominously, there is a rising tide of discontent that threatens to turn the streets into war zones. History may well record the World Cup in Brazil as the tipping point where the costs meant the party just wasn’t worth it anymore.Nao Vai Ter Copa has become a national rallying cry. There Will Be No World Cup. People want bread, not circuses. It’s OK to love the game, but hate the event. The governing body of the game, FIFA, is not amused.
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Events like World Cup and the Olympics have become obscenely expensive, with few trickle-down rewards to the citizens who bear the brunt of the costs for the benefit of the few. The people of South America’s largest country were promised the dawn of a new age of prosperity that these mega-events heralded. In a country where corruption is insidious, all-encompassing, and a virus that suffocates all semblance of progress, it is bricks, steel, and mortar that the people see, not new hospitals, schools, or public transport. Even then, Itaquerao stadium, as an example, won’t be ready in time for the opening kickoff in São Paulo on June 12. “Is this what we get for $11 billion?” the people are asking. It is a fair question.
A new type of democracy has sprung up as a result; a unity of thought and expression that is uniquely Brazilian. Citizen collectives with names like Direitos Urbanos (Urban Rights) and the Landless Workers Movement (MTST) were formed to create avenues of options for people who have had to make way forordem e progresso—the national motto of Brazil inscribed on the flag. Order and Progress.
“The calls for protest aim to highlight the pain as well as show the world who is behind the curtain, pulling the strings,” he said. “There is a highly sophisticated plan that just as the government’s World Cup plans for Brazil are designed for international consumption, there is also an unprecedented global spotlight. The great journalist Eduardo Galeano once wrote, ‘There are visible and invisible dictators. The power structure of world football is monarchical. It’s the most secret kingdom in the world. Protesters aim to drag FIFA from the shadows and into the light. If they are successful, it will leave a legacy that will last longer than the spectacle itself.’”
During a congressional hearing by Brazil’s tourism and sports commission this year, former FIFA World Player of the Year and 1994 World Cup winner Romario, now a popular politician and member of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, was quoted as saying, “We can’t expect anything from FIFA, where we have a blackmailer called [General Secretary Jerome] Valcke and a corrupt thief and son-of-a-bitch called [President Sepp] Blatter.”
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Yan Boechat writes for the top news magazine in Brazil, Revista Istoe. Among his previous assignments were stints in war zones like Afghanistan and the Congo. He will be covering the action on the streets during the World Cup.
“A lot of money was spent on construction of things we don’t really need,” Boechat said. “There’s a big stadium in Manaus, a place without a football culture and not even a team in the first or second division. The government removed hundreds of thousands of poor people from their houses to make space for stadiums, roads to lead to them, and other construction projects. Most of these people were sent to places far away from the city centers.”
Photojournalist Ana Lira is from the northeastern city of Recife and a founding member of Urban Rights. She has meticulously documented the bulldozing and burning of poor neighborhoods and the infamous favelas, the shantytowns that dot the hills of Rio and streets of São Paulo.
“So far 27 people have died in the protests, with more than 300 wounded since last year,” she said. “In this number, there are two professional photographers and a journalist who was blinded after being hit in the eye deliberately by the police. They used rubber bullets. Some other professionals were hit or arrested in areas near the protests just because the police wanted someone to pay for the protests.”
“If Brazil does well on the field, then perhaps people will be happy and not protest as much. But if Brazil fails, they will be much larger. There will be violence.”
“We are now seeing a new wave of protesters coming to the streets,” Boechat added. “Teachers, street cleaners, police officers, unions, a movement for affordable housing—all those people are going to be on the streets during the World Cup. They see this as the right moment to fight for their interests. Those groups do not traditionally mix with the anarchists and anti-capitalists.”
This week that number included about 3,000 indigenous peoples in tribal dress, gathering in front of the new stadium in the nation’s capital, Brasilia.
“For whom does our government work?” one of the indigenous leaders, Lindomar Terena, asked the crowd. “Instead of the government standing for the federal constitution and finally ending the demarcation of indigenous lands, it is investing billions in an event that lasts for a month, prioritizing big businesses over ancestral peoples’ rights.”
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A new anti-terror law has been rushed through the Brazilian congress to deal with the protesters. It has been nicknamed Bill A1-5, a takeoff on the 1968 AI-5 Act, which gave extraordinary powers to the military junta and suspended key civil and constitutional guarantees for more than 20 years. The implementation of such a law opened old wounds. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was a member of a Marxist revolutionary group after the 1964 military coup d’état in Brazil. She was captured, imprisoned for two years, and reportedly tortured. It is a very important narrative for Brazilians. Her complicity in allowing the World Cup to proceed at the expense of the Brazilian poor is seen as a sellout of the poor to the rich.
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At the vanguard of the protests has been the galvanizing effect of social media. Websites like Portal Popular da Copa e das Olympiadas, and by citizen-journalist movements like Midia Ninja, a Portuguese acronym for “independent narratives, journalism and action,” created to spark disparate movements across the country.
“We’ll be on the streets, covering all political and cultural movements, the passion for football and this new moment of political unrest,” says Rafael Vilela, a founder of the Midia Ninja collective. Their hub is an aggregate of photographs and eyewitness reports taken by hundreds of collectives. The portal will have a system of simultaneous translation in three languages including English.
Midia Ninja and Fora do Eixo (Outside the Axis), a music and cultural collective, have created a community called Cinelandiain downtown Rio, where people can come in, play music, debate, write their blogs, and edit cellphone videos and post them online. There are edit suites mounted on shopping carts, and portable generators to power them. The protests can be seen live on the Internet via Twittercast.
“We’ve managed to do a lot with very few resources except our creativity and collaboration,” says Felipe Altenfelder, a founder of the FDE collective. “Never before has our generation been more prepared in terms of social technology and social knowledge. What we are doing is totally new in Latin America. The various collectives across Brazil have a structure of sharing food, money, even clothes, so even the poorest people can work within our groups and not just survive—but participate in actions against social injustices 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Director Spike Lee has been in Brazil working on a documentary, Go Brazil Go, in which Felipe, Rafael and other members of Midia Ninja figure prominently.
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There are 170,000 or more security troops assigned to the World Cup—not to protect the thousands of tourists who will be coming to Brazil to watch the matches, but to quell dissent. Among them are a group of 40 FBI agents, part of an “anti-terror” unit. In January, French riot police were brought in to train their Brazilian counterparts. There are several Israeli drones, the ones used to chase down suspects in the West Bank, as well as 50 robotic bomb-disposal units most recently used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. There are also facial-recognition goggles that police can use to spot 400 faces a second and match them against a database of 13 million. But there won’t be that many tourists, so exactly whom, people want to know, are the police checking? At a cost of nearly $1 billion, the international composition of the security measures is not only a contentious issue among Brazilians, but a cruel irony given FIFA’s mandate of bringing the world together through football.
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“If Brazil does well on the field, then perhaps people will be happy and not protest as much,” said Boechat. “But if Brazil loses, there will be big problems and civil unrest. I think the way we play the World Cup will define a lot of things that will happen outside the stadia. We’re going to have protests; that’s for sure. But if Brazil fails, they will be much larger. There will be violence.”
As the Roman emperors knew during the staging of the gladiator games at the Coliseum, so FIFA knows now: The mob must be appeased. Remember when South Korea beat Italy in the 2002 World Cup and the Ecuadorian referee later admitted taking money from South Korean officials? Or the most dubious of all: Argentina’s win over Peru by six goals in the 1978 World Cup, the exact margin required to proceed in the tournament. The chiefs of the military junta had gathered in Buenos Aires to watch and a Peruvian goalkeeper of Argentinian extraction duly had a nightmare evening. Corrupt to the core.
FIFA wants a show, not protests. They know Brazil has to win to keep people quiet. President Rousseff knows that with an election coming up later in the year, her chances of winning would be a lot better with a sixth Brazilian World Cup win.
In the end, there is always the financial aspect of the biggest show on earth. Goldman Sachs strategist Peter Oppenheimer said the company’s analysts have found that, according to past history, the winning country’s equity markets outperform global stocks by 3.5 percent on average in the first month after winning, “although the outperformance fades significantly after three months.”
Brazil will beat Argentina 3-1 in the final after they see off Germany and Spain in their respective semifinals, Goldman analysts including Jan Hatzius and Sven Jari Stehn said in a report. The host nation has a 48.5 percent probability of winning the FIFA tournament, followed by Argentina at 14.1 percent and Germany at 11.4 percent.
These are bankers, not bookies.
A report like this can lead the mind to extreme cynicism about how and why games are determined.
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Unlike in the U.S., where soccer is a game of the middle classes, the roots offootball are firmly entrenched in the working-class neighborhoods and slums of places like Buenos Aires, Lagos, Rio, and, at its birth, in the towns and cities of Industrial Revolution-era Britain. The qualities of energy, zest, improvisation and enterprise needed to survive in such environments created a cauldron of bubbling passion for the game. It’s only soccer, but it is also about liberation. Former Manchester United star Eric Cantona was in Rio filming his seventh documentary, which will be screened at the first-ever Amnesty Football Film Festival in the U.K. In an interview with Amnesty in Paris, the always-outspoken Frenchman lamented the possibility of Brazilian football losing its greatest legacy of all.
“I have been in Maracanã [in Rio, site of the final] before, and I loved Maracanã. But now it is just a stadium like the Emirates Stadium [in London] or Stade de France. And they say, ‘It’s a revolution for us, we have to educate the people to sit.’ But they don’t want to sit, they just want to stand up and sing and dance.” Those who want to sing and dance can’t afford to go anymore, he says. But it is a shame because it’s these kinds of fans who created football and it’s these kind of fans who have a child who will play football,” said Cantona. “Because most of the people, most of the players come from poor areas. To be a footballer, you need to train every day when you are a kid, you need to go in the street and play in the street every day.”
So as the clock winds down to the opening kickoff on June 12 when Brazil will play Croatia, there is a profound melancholy that permeates the emotions of soccer fans. We love the game. We love the World Cup. We love the way it was.
“I love its drama,” wrote the great Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby, “its smooth playing skills, its carelessly laid rhythms, and the added flavor of contrasting styles. Its great occasions are, for me at any rate, unequalled in the world of sport. I feel a sense of romance, wonder, and mystery, a sense of beauty and a sense of poetry. On such occasions, the game has the timeless, magical qualities of legend.”
Some of my greatest life memories come from the World Cup, but there also comes a time when the massive show, fueled by corporate might, is overshadowed by the engine of social and political change. Brazil was under a military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. Democracy is relatively new. What is beginning to emerge is Brazil at an adolescent stage as part of a national rite of passage. The World Cup may yet precipitate the maturing of a nation. In spite of FIFA’s best efforts to act as a shadow government.
Jogo entre Brasil e Croácia preocupa a Secretaria de Segurança Pública
29 de maio de 2014 | 17h 00
Brian WInter – Reuters
SÃO PAULO – A polícia de São Paulo está tentando prender manifestantes de uma facção violenta antes do início da Copa do Mundo, em duas semanas, usando escutas telefônicas e outros mecanismos de vigilância para evitar confrontos que prejudiquem o torneio.
Sergio Castro/Estadão. Manifestações preocupam governo e Fifa
O secretário de Segurança Pública de São Paulo, Fernando Grella, disse à Reuters que a polícia está preparando possíveis acusações criminais contra um pequeno número de líderes dos manifestantes, que, segundo ele, estão conspirando para “cometer atos de violência, quebrar, depredar, agredir pessoas”.
O trabalho de inteligência ainda não está finalizado, por isso não está claro se os promotores irão concordar em fazer acusações que resultariam em prisões preventivas, declarou Grella.
A probabilidade de manifestações violentas é uma das maiores preocupações do governo brasileiro e da Fifa à medida que se aproxima o dia 12 de junho, início do Mundial.
Brasileiros revoltados com o gasto de dinheiro público no torneio, entre outras queixas, vêm organizando protestos periódicos há um ano. Embora a maioria dos manifestantes sejam pacíficos, vários protestos resultaram em embates com a polícia e vandalismo, que as autoridades atribuem a um pequeno número de estudantes e outros jovens.
A “intensa operação de inteligência” descrita por Grella é uma das mais abrangentes das forças de segurança do país, mas as agências federais também estão reunindo informações sobre os manifestantes.
Grella afirmou que a polícia usou imagens de câmeras de vigilância e registros internos para identificar os manifestantes mais violentos e, em alguns casos, grampearam seus telefones e monitoraram suas mídias sociais e e-mails.
O objetivo, ele disse, é identificar casos de violência premeditada e organizada que constituiriam “associação criminosa” – acusação semelhante à de conspiração mais comumente utilizada no Brasil contras facções do crime organizado.
Se os promotores concordarem em fazer as acusações, alguns líderes dos manifestantes poderiam ser detidos imediatamente e presos por um período de alguns dias ou mais, afirmou Grella.
“É um policiamento preventivo que garante o direito de manifestação e a liberdade de expressão, ao mesmo tempo em que procura organizar esses movimentos de forma que eles perturbem o menos possível a vida do cidadão e evidentemente evitar os atos de violência”, disse o secretário.
Ele disse que preparar um processo contra os manifestantes é “difícil, mas não impossível”.
“Quero crer com a sua conclusão talvez nas próximas semanas possamos ter eventualmente alguns pedidos de prisão”, acrescentou.
CETICISMO Duas fontes de alto escalão do Ministério Público, que teria que aprovar as acusações criminais contra os manifestantes, declararam estar céticos quanto à legitimidade das acusações de conspiração.
A professora universitária Esther Solano, que estudou os protestos ao longo do ano passado, disse que, de forma geral, eles não têm uma liderança e uma organização, tornando difícil para a polícia identificar arruaceiros em potencial.
“O que (a polícia) está tentando fazer parece excessivo”, disse ela. “Isso mostra a pressão que a polícia e os políticos estão sofrendo para evitar uma grande bagunça durante a Copa do Mundo”.
O Ministério da Justiça, que supervisiona a polícia em todo o país, não respondeu de imediato a pedidos de comentário.
Indagado se as manifestações podem ser maiores do que aquelas que atraíram centenas de milhares de pessoas às ruas em junho passado, durante a Copa das Confederações, espécie de aquecimento da Copa do Mundo, Grella declarou: “É difícil dizer”.
Ele declarou, entretanto, que o dia 12 de junho, quando a seleção brasileira estreia contra a Croácia na Arena Corinthians, em São Paulo, “é o que mais nos preocupa” em termos de manifestações.
Grella disse não ter recebido indicações de uma ameaça em particular de terroristas internacionais ou facções do crime organizado do Brasil.
Yesterday, 
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It probably won’t rain during any given match, but if it does it’s likely to be in the sites closest to the tropics in the north and the
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