Despite serious, violent street demonstrations last year, the political left in Brazil, like pretty much everywhere, has been marginalized by the forces of militarism and economic/financial development. Soccer is more than a sport in a place like Brazil. It's a philosophy of mind and body instilled in kids at a young age, and this June, Rio will be taken over by the World Cup, which a majority of Brazilians support enthusiastically. Then, next year, it's the Olympics. Poor people and communities are being displaced to make way for fancy sports venues to impress the world that Brazil is a full-fledged member of the First World Club. All of it is controversial. There will be losers, and they will be the usual elements at the bottom.
A young Brazilian historian I met liked to refer to Brazil as a "slavocracy." He pointed out that no Civil War was fought here over slavery, which was outlawed by royal decree in 1888. The legacy of slavery, he tells me, lingers in the current conditions of injustice where the darkest Brazilians are the poorest and those with the fewest options. For many of them, the much touted benefits from the rise of a middle class will never be seen. They will drown in the rising middle class sea. There's an established tradition now of militarized police pacifying the poor favelas that cling to the hillsides all over Rio. Controlling drug gangs was the motive for incursions in the past, but the motive could change.
The point is, the military is always there fat and sassy in their barracks to control unrest if powerful people feel another "revolution" is necessary. Still, there has been progress and something like 1964 does not seem in the cards these days. The struggle will, instead, go on in the corrupt halls of government. So looking out for the poor and the disadvantaged isn't easy in Brazil, given that it's going through its own version of manifest destiny in a multipolar world of capitalist giants.
Rubem Fonseca should have the last word. In a story about a modern flaneur (a random walker in a city), his narrator wanders Rio paying whores so he can teach them how to read; he is not interested in sex with them. He even hugs trees, at night, so no one will see him. "Among the trees Augusto feels no irritation, nor hunger, nor headache."
In his wanderings, he runs into Zumbi, the angry and dangerous leader of the UHS, the Union of the Homeless and the Shirtless. This is a reference to the famous Zumbi dos Palmares from the 17th century, a leader of black slaves who settled in what are known as quilombos or communities of fugitive slaves. Many still exist.
"We demand what they took from us," says Fonseca's modern Rio manifestation of Zumbi. "We don't hide under bridges or inside cardboard boxes ..., and we don't sell gum and lemons at intersections. ... We want to be seen, we want them to look at our ugliness. ... We have to stink and turn people's stomachs like a pile of garbage in the middle of the street. And nobody asks for money. It's better to rob than to panhandle."
JOHN GRANT is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new uncompromising four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues DAVE LINDORFF, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LORI SPENCER, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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