Around Latin America

-Former Uruguayan president Juan Manuel Bordaberry was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role as president during Uruguay's dictatorship.

-Honduras's Congress may finally be ready to get rid of the gag order that Roberto Micheletti placed on the media last year. Meanwhile, the National Autonomous University of Honduras is under fire for hiring two members of Manuel Zelaya's administration.

-Jose Roberto Arruda, a member of Brazil's right-wing Democratic Party and governor of Brasilia, was arrested this week on charges of corruption and accepting kickbacks on public works. Both that article and this one reasonably point out that the arrest could hurt the right-wing Democrats and PSDB in their efforts to paint the Lula administration as corrupt.

-Brazilian left-wing politician and educator Cristovam Buarque makes a compelling case of how economic slavery continues in Brazil.

-Finally, in Chile, a new commission is being launched to listen to the testimony of victims and families of victims of the Pinochet dictatorship. The commission will hold hearings in order to determine if those who still have not received reparations for their suffering should be rewarded or not. This new commission will be the third, following the Rettig commission of 1991 and the Valech Commission of 2004; the former certified over 3000 victims murdered during Pinochet's 17 years of rule, while the latter certified over 28,000 cases of torture and political imprisonment.

Carnaval in Brazil 2010 (II) - Racism and Class Warfare, in Rio and Beyond

So, Caranaval in Brazil has begun, even while Rio endures one of its most brutal heat-waves in decades (though Rio's most famous parades, which serve as the images and symbols of Carnaval worldwide, will not begin until tomorrow night, carrying on Monday night). It should be interesting to watch both during and after, for many reasons (including the fact that a judge this week OK'd 7-year-old Julia Lira serving as Rainha for the Viradouro samba school).

Of course, some are trying to denude Carnaval of some of the popular forms of expression and fun. Last year, I mentioned how Eduardo Paes was effectively launching class warfare in his efforts to limit beer sales during Carnaval (as part of his broader effort to strip Rio of much of its informal sector and street-life). Well, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes is at it again this year. While I have absolutely no problem in prohibiting people from pissing in the gutter or seeing the transformation of a brothel into a museum, I still believe the absolutist effort to clamp down on items like sales of snacks on the beach and prohibiting playing soccer before 5PM is not only ridiculous; it strips Rio not just of some of its vivacity, but also is directly trying to clamp down on popular forms of culture, expression, and leisure. The snacks and the soccer on the beach hurt absolutely nobody; they're simply ways for people to enjoy themselves in what is a public space. Paes's efforts to limit those legitimate and harmless forms of popular expression (which I dealt with in greater detail here) are appalling and ridiculous at all times of the year, but especially at Carnaval.

Nor is Paes alone this year on trying to counter cultural forms of expression. A mayor of a town in Minas Gerais has banned Brazilian funk and hip-hop from being played during Carnaval. Of course, this measure is offensively authoritarian - it's not just that you can't listen to it in public places, but that people caught listening to it anywhere "during the Carnival period would have to turn it off or face arrest and up to six months in prison." However, I know that some in Brazil, especially from the upper- and middle-classes, probably support this measure, as they believe it to be "noise" and "crass." Certainly, the lyrics are often offensive, but funk and hip-hop both come from the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo, and are closely associated with the culture, social life, and struggles of the poor in Brazil (not coincidentally, they are also seen as music that reflects the "darker brown" segment of society). So any ban on these types of music is not only classist in trying to impose more-elite forms of popular culture on the ceremonies; it is also racist. And blaming the music for "inciting violence," rather than blaming more deep-seated problems like racism and the enormous gap between rich and poor in Brazil, only further reifies the mayor's authoritarianism, ignorance, classism, and racism.

Eduardo Paes Determined to Destroy Rio de Janeiro through Useless Policies and Class Warfare

This past February, Rio de Janeiro's mayor, Eduardo Paes, launched the first step in his efforts to "clean up" Rio by banning beer vendors on the streets during Carnaval, a drastic and useless move that I hoped would be temporary. When I went to Brazil in June, I had a chance to see just how ugly and damaging Paes's clean-up efforts had become, undoing much of the harmless and enjoyable street life in Rio. Apparently, it has officially become Paes's goal to strip Rio of all of the harmless activities that one finds in public spaces, as he now has launched his assault on the most sacred sites in Rio: the beaches.

Under rules aimed at bringing order to Rio's famous beaches, ball games are among the undesirable activities being curtailed or banned as the city that will host a World Cup and Olympics within seven years seeks to clean up its act. [...]

The beach is just the latest target of a city-wide campaign to bring order to Rio, where traffic and other rules are often seen as optional. Though in place for nearly a year, the effort gained urgency with Rio's selection as 2016 Olympic host.

Rio state this month hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who takes credit for cleaning up the Big Apple, to help advise it on the Brazilian city's crime problems. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes recently told Cariocas, as Rio residents are known, to stop being such "pigs," referring to their habit of leaving piles of garbage on the beach.

The man in charge of carrying out the new policy, public order secretary Rodrigo Bethlam, said the beach's central place in Rio life made the battle for order there crucial.

"The beach is an emblematic place. If we can succeed in organizing the beach, it means we can organize the city," he told Reuters

This is just ridiculous in so many ways (and keep in mind - we're talking about soccer in Brazil - this isn't just some passing hobby among a handful). Firstly, the beaches are in fact public spaces, meaning they are for use by the public. The notion that playing soccer on the beach (in areas that are informally designated as athletic areas) is somehow "disorderly" and cutting into the power of the state is absurd. Secondly, the idea that if you can organize the beach, you "can organize the city" is stupid beyond description. The beach is in no way representative of all of the non-beach aspects of the city - it is a place of leisure for most, and business for an handful. It is not the financial district. It is not the favelas. True, you do get to see the wide income gap play out on the beach, but solving the "problem" of people playing soccer or volleyball on the beach does nothing to address that income gap, nor to address the issues of murderous police, the drug trade, the enormous gap in wealth, or the troublesome and often disgusting racism and classism of Rio's elites and middle class. Cleaning up the pollution on the beaches is a great idea, but again, has nothing to do with pick-up games of soccer. And it's not like there's an absence of space - while the beaches do get crowded on hot weekends, Copacabana and Ipanema alone are 9 km (about 6 miles) long, and Rio has over 50 miles of beaches.

In other words, this is yet another effort on Paes' part to A) "clean up" the city through absolutely useless gestures that accomplish no real good and detract much from the quotidian in Rio, and B) are specifically targeted towards the middle- and upper-class cariocas who lament how the beaches have become so "dirty" in the last decade or so, as the poor from the northern zone had increasing access to the richer southern neighborhoods in Copacabana and Ipanema. It's the worst kind of "high-modernism" one can find - the state's efforts to control everything end up stripping daily life of all of its harmless joys, all so the state can impose its presence in an obvious way that does nothing to deal with the actual substantial economic, social, and political problems facing a city (or country). Paes could use his office to try to improve the social conditions in the favelas and build up a beneficial state structure; instead, he makes sales of beer on the streets illegal at Carnaval. He could try to end the impunity police face as they enter favelas and kill indiscriminately; instead, he wages a war on beach-front soccer. The uselessness and stupidity of this is just mind-boggling.

And the useless enforcement goes beyond just soccer, touching everything that makes beach life enjoyable in Rio:

Among other cherished beach freedoms being withdrawn are sales of food on skewers such as shrimp and cheese that are hawked by entrepreneurs plying the sands. No longer will beach-goers, known here as "banhistas," be able to bring coolers for drinks or play music on stereos.

The main targets of the new policy are the hundreds of "barracas," or huts, that dot Rio's beaches, renting out deck chairs and selling everything from beer to barbecued meat.

Often emblazoned with their owner's name, they are colorful, if chaotic, fixtures of beach life that laugh in the face of sanitation rules but have their own loyal following.

Under the new rules, names or advertisements are out and they must accept being outfitted with all-white tents and equipment that, while smart-looking, are somewhat bland.

You want to eat on the beach? Sorry - that's no longer an option. You'll have to go to one of the high-end restaurants on the beach-front (restaurants that, not coincidentally, the poorer segments of Rio's population who come from the northern part of the city cannot afford). You want to rent a chair to sit on? Sorry - the guy who has a little tent and rents them out isn't allowed to do that anymore. Bring your own (which won't fit on the buses, again meaning that if you're not from that neighborhood, you're out of luck). Are you gay, and do you want to join other gay individuals in their own section of the beach? Sorry - the tents and flags that the gay community set up so others know where to find them aren't allowed, either. In short, Paes, in his increasingly ego-maniacal effort to control Rio, has launched blatant open class and cultural warfare, all in an effort to strip Rio of its vibrancy in the name of "order."

Fortunately, the people have begun overrule Paes on this one.

They are putting in place their own law, but it's wrong," said Marcel Damasceno de Matos, a 39-year-old who said he has worked his patch of Ipanema beach for 10 years.

"I have customers from the United States and other countries who come back year after year and look for my name. Now there's going to be a lot of confusion."

Still, in a country with no shortage of laws but a glaring lack of enforcement, not everyone on the beach is convinced that the shock of order will end up being so shocking.

"The law exists, but you're in Brazil," said Bernardo Braga, a 26-year-old model and student who was playing "keep up" on the Ipanema seafront.

"You just have to walk along here to see all the rules being ignored."

I already hope cariocas elect him out of office at the end of his term (which, unfortunately, is not for another 3 years). He has made it clear that important changes in the social and economic landscape meant to actually better the lives and existence of cariocas is not on his agenda. Instead, he is intent on imposing the state on the most mundane and harmless aspects of life, driving many out of their livelihoods, while issues like police violence, the drug trade, and disparities in wealth continue to plague Rio.

The Favelas, Infra-Structural Development, and the Eco-Wall: Good and Bad Manifestations of the Brazilian State

To build on Erik's post below, I wanted to add a little more on the so-called "eco-wall" put up around a favela in Rio. In addition to the report that CNN put up (it was actually the major story on cnn.com when I woke up yesterday morning, much to my shock and satisfaction, as stories about the favelas, and particularly the repression they face, are usually buried deep within CNN's site), there was another report that involved eyewitness journalistic accounts of the favela, which was not too far from where I lived in Rio (within 10 minutes, I could see the favela, and within 20 minutes, I could be in it).

For all of the talk of how "violent" the favelas and their residents are, I thought this part of the journalist's account was worth highlighting:
According to officials it’s an “ecobarrier” built to protect the surrounding rainforest, but a lot of people we talked to were offended.

They felt they were being caged in and saw it as an attempt to further separate the crime-ridden slums from the affluent condos on the beaches below.

But what struck me was just how safe Santa Marta was.

When I lived in Rio eight years earlier it was unthinkable to enter any favela without a police escort.

At night you could hear shoot-outs between rival drug gangs and nearby neighborhoods complained of “lost bullets” that tore through their homes while they slept.

That’s changed with Rio’s “pacification” plan. Santa Marta is one of the favelas that’s been occupied by police. They built a permanent headquarters in the community and have set up checkpoints where gangs used to sell drugs.

We actually saw very few police when we hiked along the winding paths, but the sense of security was palpable.

I commented on this "'pacification' plan" a couple of days ago. I don't know how "accurate" this journalist's report is - it is possible that it was just a particularly peaceful time when he was there, or that this was "pra ingles ver" ["for the English to see"], as they say. Still, I think there's a very real chance that his sentiment reflects the broader atmosphere in Santa Marta, and if what he saw and felt were the permanent conditions in Santa Marta, then I think the new approaches of the police may actually be working, at least in this favela. I've long said that infrastructural development in the favelas would be central to a shift in the policy towards Brazil's poor and marginalized; it seems that Santa Marta has only reinforced that suggestion.

That said, I think the eco-wall is absolutely the wrong kind of infrastructure to establish in the favelas. As I said in comments to Erik's post, I think the problems with the eco-wall are twofold. It was nearly impossible for Santa Marta to spread into the forest due to its location - the mountains around it are simply too steep. While the favela did manage to creep into a part of the mountains, the settled area is already steep enough that they have to have a tram to take residents from the bottom of the hill to the top. In that part of Rio (Botafogo), the mountains simply are unable to even support favelas, so deforestation for settlement is near impossible. My second problem (as much with the article Erik originally commented on, as well as the broader question at hand) is that it treats eco-protection and segregation as an "either/or" proposition, when it's not. It's absolutely possible (and, in this case, likely) that you could do eco-protection while (further) marginalizing sectors of society. Ultimately, this to me is segregation, plain and simple: where Santa Marta is located butts up against the federally protected forest of Tijuca, which is the largest urban forest in the world. What is more, Santa Marta simply cannot expand, and really hasn't - it was the same this past summer when I went to Brazil as it had been when I was first there in 2005. If this were an earnest effort to protect the environment without segregating the poor, it would have happened elsewhere in the city - not Botafogo.

Given the new tactics in São Paulo and the apparent success (though I'd like to see more reports) of the new tactics in Santa Marta, I feel that for the first time, there is a not-illegitimate hope that the violence in the favelas may have a real chance to decline. To re-state my original skepticism, the fact that Santa Marta is one of over 1000 favelas in Rio alone means there is a very long way to go. Still, these efforts indicate that, for the first time ever, the federal state and state government of Rio may actually be taking measures to establish infrastructural improvements that could decrease the violence. But eco-walls like the one in Santa Marta are counterproductive, as they produce no real benefits and antagonize residents that the state is trying to win over.

The Depressing Effects of Eduardo Paes's Efforts to "Clean Up" Rio de Janeiro

I alluded yesterday to the visible changes Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes (of the centrist Partido Movimento Democratico Brasileiro, PMDB) has effected in the first 6 months of his administration, and overall, they are extremely depressing. Back in February, I wrote about Paes cracking down on the informal economy in Rio, going after not just guys who sell cans of beer on the streets during Carnival, but people who sell corn, books, sunglasses, whatever. The article at the time made clear that this crackdown was not just some rhetorical move (though it was that, too), but was actually being implemented.

I had actually forgotten mostly about this since February, but the moment I hit the streets in Botafogo (in the southern part of Rio, where I was staying), it was immediately clear how strong Paes had cracked down. Many of the vendors I was accustomed to seeing in their usual spots just weren't there anymore. Sure, I hadn't been around in 15 months, and it's possible (and probable) that a vendor or two would move on or die or have some other reason to not be there, but this wasn't a case of one or two vendors gone - nearly everybody who sold anything on the streets was gone. Sure, near Guanabara Bay, the guys who sold pirated DVDs, video games, and computer software were gone - that crackdown on piracy had begun before I left Rio and before Paes was elected. But others were totally absent, too - a guy who sold hot dogs in the evenings a block away from my old apartment; the guy who sold books near a collection of restaurants; the woman who sold candy from a small cart; the guy who sold corn near the beach front. Not one of them was in their old haunts at any time of the day. And even those who had persisted had to be super-careful. In front of the building where I was staying on this trip, there was always a guy selling sunglasses and small housewares and a woman who sold home-made goods. One day, upon returning to the apartment, they (and a few other vendors) were suddenly running towards me. I was initially confused, until I realized (as they were looking back over their shoulders) that the police must be coming to crack down, and they were off to hide.

There is so much wrong with this policy, and this last anecdote points to one of the biggest problems - people adapt to laws. In this case, I actually admire the intelligence in these remaining vendors picking their spots to sell: the building they were stationed in front was on a major one-way street that could only be accessed by coming up this (multi-mile) street through traffic, or turning onto it from another (heavily-congested) one-way street. That may not make much sense, but what that position did was give these people a perfect location to set up shop and have plenty of time for a warning from a lookout if the police were coming. And that was exactly what had happened - the lookout, stationed on the intersecting one-way street, saw the cops coming and gave the signal, and the vendors bolted. By the time the police car had navigated traffic and gotten a green light to come around to the place where the vendors had been, they were out of sight.

To be clear, while I'm strongly against this crackdown in general, there is room for maneuvering here. While I think copyright laws really need to be overhauled, the Brazilian government writ large has been making some efforts to crack down on software and film piracy (while also insisting that companies like Microsoft need to make products more affordable in countries with lower incomes), so if Paes is involved in that, fine. I have a harder time cracking down on guys who sell sunglasses or fake rolexes, but not for legal reasons - I figure if they want to sell it, and people are willing to run the risk to buy it, then fine. It's not like citizens are compelled to only purchase from these vendors. The crackdown really gets indefensible on people whose income in no way is infringing upon the formal market, though - somebody making some delicious deserts to sell on the street for a low price? An old guy who has a bunch of old books to sell setting up his wares on a (very broad) sidewalk? There is no threat there at all, and cracking down on these people is only depriving them of a source of income, one that is even more needed as Brazil officially enters into the global recession.

And it's not like Paes is genuinely concerned about the actual economic effects of these vendors. He made it clear in his campaign, and in his rhetoric since, that this isn't about boosting the formal economy or even cracking down on contraband. It's about "cleaning up" the city, and, as I wrote back in February, that means only one thing:

[B]y appealing to the "Marvelous City" he never had, Paes is also appealing to the worst kind of elitism and repression of Rio's poor. Implying that the "Marvelous City" ("Cidade Maravilhosa," Rio's nickname) can only exist when street vendors are removed from the scene is patently, vulgarly, and quite frankly, unrealistically expecting to just wipe the face of poverty from the city of Rio. In effect, it's saying, "The city can only be beautiful when we keep the favelados and the poor in their own neighborhoods" where, let's not forget, they can easily find themselves victims of police occupations and violence.

Rio's facing a lot of problems, and certainly, some of the more major problems (like police corruption and the violence in the favelas) are, as the article points out, not within Paes's jurisdiction. However, concentrating his emphasis on street vendors and others who are involved in the informal economy not out of any huge entrepreneurship or search for the thrill of illegal activities, but for the simple reason that they are trying to make ends meet, is not only revolting, it's unrealistic. These efforts reveal Paes to be one of the most blatant elitists willing to wage obvious class war on his own city that I've ever seen any politician anywhere pull (as well as the micromanager's micromanager). The fact that he has no social program responses to offer alternatives to street vendors beyond "fines and/or jail" just makes it that much worse.

Rio specifically, and many of Brazil's urban centers more generally, has a rich history of launching "cleanup" campaigns that have only further marginalized the poor (and often racially "darker"), from the 1890s after emancipation and the end of the empire, to the 1920s, when the poor were kicked out of the center of the city in anticipation of the Belgian royal family's visit to Rio in 1922 (the first European royalty to set foot in Brazil since the Portuguese Crown arrived in 1808 when it fled the Napoleonic invasion), to the 1960s and the governorship of Carlos Lacerda. By taking this stance on the informal economy, Paes is only adding his own name to this infamous list of injustices.

And I wish it stopped there, but it doesn't. Paes, in his effort to "clean up" the city, is also cracking down on the little bars that dot the landscape, where you could sit down at a nice plastic table on the sidewalk in the evening and have a nice cold beer (in Rio, quality is determined more by coldness than by taste, a flawed system but one that has its logic based on the heat). It was a wonderful way to spend a night chilling out, and it wasn't like these little bars were occupying the sidewalks out of maliciousness - oftentimes, the "bar" itself was no more than 10 feet deep and 5 feet wide, meaning that they had to expand their business onto the sidewalk if they were to actually have any clients, and they only put tables on the sidewalk once neighboring businesses had closed for the day.

However, Paes has declared that these activities also must go as they are an eyesore on the landscape. Now, I actually lived above no fewer than four of these places, and while it got noisy, it was never so terrible that you couldn't sleep - certainly, the crowds below talking were less noisy than the idiots driving by honking their horns, or the delivery trucks that arrived at the grocery store across the street at 4 in the morning. Yes, the sidewalks would get crowded, and I understand why that would bother some, but it was never like you absolutely could not walk on the sidewalks when these places set up shop. In short, it was nowhere near a major inconvenience, and it afforded not only a great way for inexpensive leisure, but gave Rio a particular vibrance.

That vibrance does not fit within Paes's elitist vision, though, and he has cracked down. Upon walking through my old neighborhood, no fewer than 3 old bars had been closed, unable to remain open in the face of a policy that prejudiced the owners' livelihood over the principle of "aesthetics." The obvious conclusion is that this policy has shut down small businesses (which were a part of the formal sector, not random street vendors), leading to more people jobless and having to find work in an economy that isn't the most favorable right now. But that's not the end of the consequences, either. Many of these little bars provided people who weren't necessarily of means (which is a majority of Brazil) to be able to get together with friends over some inexpensive beers and have a good time. In Rio go to a "bar" like those we have in the U.S., you would end up paying double to triple the price of a bottle of beer that you paid on the street - the "bar scene" in Rio is very much a middle-class/hipster (yes, they have them everywhere) thing to do, and most Brazilians are not middle-class (nor hipsters). Thus, Paes's policies haven't just prejudiced the poor and small business owners in their means of earning income; they've also directly attacked their means of leisure.

As should be clear by this point, I'm fairly biased, but I'm still comfortable in saying that Rio was a much more depressing place upon my visit this time. Much of what had given it its cultural flair - cheap books and good food on the street, hanging out with friends and total strangers on the street and having a cold beer - is gone. This isn't to say, "oh, poor Rio - it's culture is now dead and stagnant," for that's far from the case, and no place has its culture bound up only on things like the informal economy. Nonetheless, a not-insignificant part of the city that I knew is gone (and I didn't even make it into the downtown area, where the informal economy was much stronger). Even walking along the beaches and through other neighborhoods, the streets had a ghostly, more subdued quality about them. Sure, the ocean was still beautiful to look at, as were the mountains. While there, I couldn't help but feeling outrage, frustration, and anger that such an elitist vision of Rio had been so (though not totally) successfully implemented. But mostly, I felt sadness: having seen the effects of Paes's policies in only 6 months, I left Rio feeling that the city hadn't become "marvelous;" rather, it had been stripped of part of what had made it so "marvelous" in the first place.

Rio's New Mayor Launches Blatant Class Warfare

The AP ran a disturbing story (courtesy the LA Times, though I originally read the article on my Wii news channel, which will probably merit a blog post of its own in the near future) about the new tactics and policies of Rio's new mayor, Eduardo Paes.

Eduardo Paes, the fresh-faced 39-year-old mayor who took office on Jan. 1, is energetically trying to reverse Rio's reputation as an anything-goes city where savvy citizens learn early that some laws exist only on paper and can be safely ignored.
But the mayor isn't giving up his campaign, even as more than 700,000 visitors crowd the streets. "We have to give a shock of urban order to the city, an organized posture, to recover authority and better conserve public spaces," he explained during the mayoral race.

"A shock of urban order" sounds rather extreme and authoritarian, perhaps, but let's see what his plans are. Who is Paes going to go after first?

His first targets have been the countless providers of what many citizens consider to be useful — if illegal — services in Rio's informal economy.

From men who sell boiled corn in the streets, to boys who demand coins to safeguard cars from thieves, to women hawking ice-cold beer from small coolers on Copacabana beach, hundreds of these workers have felt the pinch.

"I've been selling books here for 40 years," said Rubem da Consigao, 71, a wisp of a man whose small folding table held 100 used volumes in the posh Ipanema neighborhood. "Then last week, the police came, said I didn't have a vendor's license, took my books and said they would burn them. This country is full of thieves — if they take the bread from my hand, there is going to be one more."

Many such workers say they have been hassled by police. Almost all say they have little choice but to keep working illegally. [...]

Ah - going after people who harmlessly sell books, beer, or corn on the street! How brave! It's genius! Everybody knows - all of Rio's problems come from its informal economy!!! And who could argue with Paes's logic?

"Paes has said that Rio lost its luster long ago by allowing little crimes to tarnish its reputation: "I've never lived in the Marvelous City," he has said, invoking one of Rio's old nicknames."

Sarcasm aside, it should go without saying, but by appealing to the "Marvelous City" he never had, Paes is also appealing to the worst kind of elitism and repression of Rio's poor. Implying that the "Marvelous City" ("Cidade Maravilhosa," Rio's nickname) can only exist when street vendors are removed from the scene is patently, vulgarly, and quite frankly, unrealistically expecting to just wipe the face of poverty from the city of Rio. In effect, it's saying, "The city can only be beautiful when we keep the favelados and the poor in their own neighborhoods" where, let's not forget, they can easily find themselves victims of police occupations and violence.

Rio's facing a lot of problems, and certainly, some of the more major problems (like police corruption and the violence in the favelas) are, as the article points out, not within Paes's jurisdiction. However, concentrating his emphasis on street vendors and others who are involved in the informal economy not out of any huge entrepreneurship or search for the thrill of illegal activities, but for the simple reason that they are trying to make ends meet, is not only revolting, it's unrealistic. These efforts reveal Paes to be one of the most blatant elitists willing to wage obvious class war on his own city that I've ever seen any politician anywhere pull (as well as the micromanager's micromanager). The fact that he has no social program responses to offer alternatives to street vendors beyond "fines and/or jail" just makes it that much worse.

It should also go without saying that basing your "cleanup" program on Rudy Giulani's campaigns of the 1990s is a terrible idea - Giuliani oversaw, among other things, impunity in escalating police violence and an extreme widening of the income gap in a city that now has 1.5 million of its 8 million residents (that's 18.75%) living below the poverty line, due in no small part because of the Giuliani/Bloomberg policies of the last 16 years.

But hey - at least Paes isn't hiding his true colors.

The Future of Brazilian Race Relations: A Barack Obama Effect?

I stayed out of the original comments thread from Karthika's post because I had plenty to say, and I think between the comments there and Erik's post, a lot has already been said. Erik gets Brazil right for the most part, as do Randy and Venha Futuro; there, race is incredibly coded in terms of money, clothing, education, and capital-c "Culture." Thus, Sao Paulo residents call idiot drivers or the poor or anybody who pisses them off "baiano" (in Rio, it's "Paraiba," another poor northeastern state with a large number of Afro-descendants), and I've had conversations with my "whiter" Brazilian counterparts where they have point-blank said that there is no racism in Brazil, all while sitting and eating in a pricey restaurant where all of the poorly-paid staff is brown-to-black, or heard somebody explain to me how the funk of the favelas is not "culture," that "culture" means Beethoven and Monet. This is in no way to enter into a "whose racism is worse" debate by claiming Brazil's racism is worse than the U.S.'s- such a debate over things like racism or slavery is less than useful, and tends to obscure the fact that those institutions are appalling regardless of where they are or their particular structures. Each country has its own historically formed racist expressions and structures, and it should go without saying that they are both troubling.

I think a lot of what Erik is saying about the U.S. is fascinating (and frightening). I am a bit curious as to what role he, Karthika, or anybody else thinks identity politics might play in combatting or reifying racism in the U.S. And I am a bit bothered (though it's no fault of his own) that this talk of America being a post-racial society is a particularly white issue (at least it's seemed as such to me). As Erik alludes, it's easier for whites, and maybe even others, to say America is "post-racial" now, but given the implication that racism therefore is no problem seems risible, and I'm fairly certain if I were to walk into Harlem, Washington Heights, the California fields, etc., and suggested that racism was dead, I would be met with a justified amount of derision.

However, what I really want to address here is the flip-side of Erik's discussion; specifically, the effect Barack Obama has had on Brazil. In short, Obama has given hope to more people than just U.S. residents. For generations, Brazilian and American scholars have debated whose racism and/or slavery was worse, and it's not uncommon to hear from most Brazilians the statement that American racism is worse (and again, I don't endorse this view or its opposite; I think neither view is particularly helpful). However, Obama's victory has forced a bit of a re-evaluation and introspection in Brazilian society, especially among Afro-descendants. For example, declaring oneself to be "black" has become far more popular than it had been prior to the election, and while a majority of Afro-descendants still categorize themselves as "brown" (and certainly some politically active Afro-descendants called themselves "black" before the election), I think it's safe to say that self-identifying as "black" has become a much stronger claim to personal pride and ability than it had before Obama was even campaigning. In some ways, it's almost the opposite of what's happening in America: where we are now seeing a major discursive effort to hide race under the rug by pointing to Obama's victory, some in Brazil are forcing the issue of race into public discourse by radicalizing their identity within Brazil's social structure, drawing inspiration from Obama's victory.

What is more, Obama's victory has forced some more uncomfortable self-evalutaions in Brazilian society. If America was supposed to have a worse racism than Brazil, and we've now elected an Afro-descendant to the office of the presidency, why hasn't Brazil done so? And not just to the presidency; the number of "brown" to "black" people in office at the national, state, and even local level is miniscule, and may be poorer than in the U.S. Certainly, Rio has never had a David Dinkins or a Ray Nagin. In short, the fact that we've been able to not only nominate but an elect an Obama has forced some Brazilians to quietly ask why they haven't been able to do so yet. Some progressives in Brazil have countered Obama has a Brazilian counterpart in Lula, who rose up from being a metal worker with no college education to become president of Brazil. While this is true (who's the last labor union leader we've elected? Oh, right....), the class-based nature of this argument in Brazil in some ways just reifies the racist structures of Brazil; by suggesting that Obama is to Lula what race is to class again denies the race-components of class in Brazil (as well as the class-components of race in the U.S.). In other words, they claim that Brazil only has class issues to overcome, and made great strides by electing Lula, thereby ignoring the racial problems still present in Brazil.

I think that Obama's victory and this self-imposed introspection in Brazil may actually lead to some small but important shifts, though. Just this past election year, international news agencies ran stories on 10 candidates who ran for public office in Brazil as "Barack Obama" (in Brazil, you can have virtually any name you want appear for your candidacy on the ballots). Just recently, Frontline ran an excellent report on one of the first of Brazil's "Baracks," as it followed Claudio Henrique's campaign to become the first black mayor of Belford Roxo, one of Rio's poor suburbs (and, in a great epilogue, his journey to the U.S. to attend the inauguration). The 10-minute story (which I highly encourage you to take time to watch) really gets at the key issues of how Obama has affected racial identities, society, and the political landscape in Brazil. Henrique didn't run as "Barack Obama" as some sort of gimmick; he ran because he had genuine hope and admiration for the man he felt had made his own candidacy possible. As one of the people interviewed put it, Obama has become a symbol for uniting, for overcoming society's racial obstacles, and this symbology has taken on major importance in Brazil.

This isn't to say that Obama's candidacy and now victory will lead to a "post-racial" society in Brazil anymore than it will lead to a "post-racial" society here, and many people in Brazil are dismayed and fearful that Obama's victory will lead to Brazil's own racially marginalized only getting "uppity" and making demands that rock the boat of denying racism. Nonetheless, the importance of Obama's victory to racial politics in Brazil cannot be denied, and it seems, at least right now, that there could be some subtle but important shifts in how Brazil deals with its own racial problems and legacies in the next several years.

Lula's Plan for Brazil's Military to Upgrade, Improve, Diversify

This has been in the works for awhile, but yesterday, Lula finally announced his restructuring plan for the Brazilian military. Among other things, the plan reorganizes the entire military into brigades for faster mobilization abilities; seeks to decrease Brazil's dependence on other nations for arms and weapons and increase its own military technology production (including satellites and nuclear-powered submarines); and, in what is perhaps the most novel part of the plan, to actually enforce mandatory conscription on people from all classes.


The technological and tactical parts of this plan are interesting, and could have a profound impact on Brazil's economy, it's role in the region and the world, and its military and international relations. I admit that, upon first learning of this, I was a bit uneasy - after all, Brazil's military was frequently involved in politics in the 20th century. (In addition to the 1964-1985 dictatorship, the military also intervened in politics in 1930, 1937, 1945, 1955, 1961, and finally, 1964; these interventions were not always direct, and could often take the form of "the military is providing vague threats if we politicians don't do X," as was the case in 1961; nor were these interventions always successful, as in 1955; still, one can easily identify at least those 6 cases of military involvement to one degree or another in Brazilian politics, and you can argue that there were other instances, too). Up until the announcement of the plan, there were just vague mentions of "increasing the military's power" in Brazil. Still, it seems that this is directed mostly at improving the ability of the military to mobilize, improve its standing in the region, protect Brazil's territory (no doubt, the discovery of a major oil field off Sao Paulo's coast providing some additional motivation for this latter issue), and other measures. Certainly, increased firepower and greater mobility could lead to a greater role of Brazil's military in politics down the road, and I'm still a bit uncertain about this, but it is at least not openly increasing the military's presence in the political sphere, which is a small victory I guess. And the fact that Brazilian progressive Roberto Mangabeira Unger (who, tangentially, was one of Obama's law professors at Harvard) is the author of this project is also encouraging if for no other reason than it wasn't drawn up by some conservative or a hawk.

However, I find Lula's efforts to actually enforce military conscription for everybody to be quite a fascinating aspect. Although the military is technically and legally supposed to conscript from all Brazilian sectors regardless of class, race, etc., the reality is Brazil's military ranks are composed overwhelmingly of the poor and marginalized who do not have recourse to get out of such service and who often accept it because they need the money. For decades and even generations (dating back to at least the Paraguayan War) there has been an unspoken understanding that elites and (more recently) the middle classes were "above" military service. So in one sense, any effort to break through this mold to prove that "mandatory conscription" applies to all Brazilian citizens, and not just those who don't have an economic/cultural/political way to avoide it.

While I like the idea of forcing the middle class and elite youths into the military, in practice I don't think is this automatically a great thing. Taking the most recent case, when Brazil's military led the coup in 1964, it did so with the support of the middle and upper classes. Many of the working class men who were actually in the military at the time were strong supporters of Joao Goulart, the deposed president, and the military really had to crack down on its own troops in order to "keep the ranks in line." Even today, a majority of the Brazilian middle class and elites are social and political conservatives with little tolerance for the poor or the racially marginalized (a marginalization made greater by the fact that Brazilians by and large culturally deny the existence of racism by claiming extreme miscegenation makes racism "impossible," which is, of course, bunk). Filling the ranks with conservatives who believe the poor are poor because they are "lazy" and "criminals" seems to make it more likely that, if the military were to launch another coup because somebody was too "progressive" in the future, the military would have much more support from the ranks than it did in 1964. What is more, it's not like conscription of all classes will lead to some amazing social levelling. It still seems highly likely that, even if the ranks were levelled out socially, the children of middle-class and elite families probably stand a much greater chance of promotion into the officer corps, due to factors such as better education as children, economic power, political connections, etc. Thus, while the face of the ranks might become more diverse, I really don't think the officer corps would, and given that it's the officers who are responsible for strategy, the power structure in the military would continue to be lopsided.

In spite of all this, though, I just don't see this enforcement of mandatory conscription for all happening anytime soon; rather, I think that part of the plan is simply the first step in trying to force the issue in Brazil. And I think that Lula's administration recognizes this, too - after all, Unger himself said this should start a "novel debate" on the issue of conscription and exactly what role sectors like the middle-class and the elties play in the Brazilian nation. Generally, if you're really trying to enforce a strong program, you don't comment that y our plan will spark an "novel" debate. Still, the fact that any presidential administration is even going so far to admit that there's definitely a social inequality when it comes to who has to serve in teh military and who does not is a decent step. I don't honestly know if this will go any further, and wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't (Lula has plenty on his plate between now and 2010, and there's no reason to believe his successor would strongly push this issue). But it is an interesting if subtle shift in the way the governments since 1985 have dealt with the issue of military service and nation. This fact, together with the significant changes in more technical and technological aspects of the plan, make it a fascinating and potentially game-changing plan not just in terms of military composition, but of Brazil's internatinoal relations, regional politics, and militarization throughout the continent in the near future.

Brazil's Middle Class Growing

According to this report, issued yesterday in O Globo, Brazil's middle class is on the rise. According to the study cited in the article Brazil's "Classe B" (Brazil census and data measurements divide socio-economic standards into five classes; "Classe B" is the second 20% of income levels in Brazil), which is marked by a monthly income of 3,040 reais/month (US$1900/month) has swollen to almost 20 million people, or roughly 11% of society; home ownership among this group has grown nearly 80% in the last 5 years. The study cites the growth of personal as well as national incomes in Brazil under Lula's administration as the main reason for this growth. If the report is accurate, there are some truly encouraging things to be drawn from this, including people improving their class status, and consumer goods becoming more available to the populace (something I saw myself while in Brazil).

I actually was planning on writing about this beforehand, but Randy's comments in this thread merit some remarks, too. While I don't fully disagree, I don't fully agree, either, for a number of reasons. First, I never saw Lula as being the savior that many intellectuals and people from the left felt he would be when he was first elected in 2002 (and to be clear, I'm not accusing anybody I know in the US of having been like this). Too many people in Brazil turned on Lula when he didn't immediately launch a major revolution that solved Brazil's poverty issues immediately, which I found not only totally unfair, but completely unrealistic. While I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that poverty in Brazil is "intractible" (I feel that A) poverty probably can never be fully eliminated anywhere, just due to simple human nature to create inequalities; and B) (and rather paradoxically) I feel "intractible" suggests the current conditions can never be overcome, and I'm not willing to say that, either), it certainly faces such severe obstacles within society, that no president, Lula or anybody more radical (or counter-radical) could ever solve the problem of poverty in Brazil so quickly. It's ok to hope for important changes, and to even expect them, from Lula or other leftist leaders, but to expect that the extreme poverty in Brazil and, more importantly, social stigmas against the poor among the middle- and upper-classes could be eliminated under one president, strikes me as impractical. This is why I found the leftists and intellectuals' disillusion with Lula so frustrating when I was in Brazil; while he was and is certainly not perfect, the demands they were placing on him were so unrealistic as to be unachievable by anybody short of Jesus Christ himself, and even then, he'd have his hands full.

Secondly, I think this poll points again to how much the standard of living for people has improved during Lula's administration. Yes, it's just data on the 2nd-highest 20% of incomes in Brazil. Still, the fact that Classe B has grown so dramatically, and that access to consumption based not just on home ownership but on household goods has also increased, is promising, and does point to how much has been done in Brazil. Since Lula became Brazil's first "leftist" president since 1964, Brazil has seen unprecedented growth.

That said, I don't fully disagree with Randy, either. The report doesn't mention anything about Brazil's poorest, both in urban and rural settings, but it doesn't have to. Those people are still mired in poverty in a country with one of the greatest levels of economic inequality in the world. There are still plenty of landless, and plenty in the favelas, and any gains they may have made in the past few years are minor in the face of their situations.

However, I'm not quite willing to lump this on Lula, either, and not out of any particular partisanship. As I've said before, the problem runs far deeper within the social fabric, where poverty is treated as a criminal activity, and the poor little help or sympathy from the middle classes. In this atmosphere, the police can and do act not just with impunity, but with the tacit (and sometimes explicit) approval of wealthier elements of society and the media, garnering outrage and protest only when they torture and repress members of the middle class. Simply put, there is neither tolerance for nor acceptance of the poor and economically marginalized in Brazil. The fact that so many people have tried (and succeeded) to improve their class status alone hints at the social stigmas tied to being part of the lower classes. Like I said, while I wouldn't go so far as to say "intractible," the poverty issue in Brazil is indeed grim.

But again, I think this is where it is important to separate presidential politics and power from broader political and sociological processes. As Brazilian intellectuals failed to recognize, Lula, working within a presidential parliamentary system where white-collar politicians and much of the middle class (including many of my in-laws) irrationally hates him for having simply been a metal-worker, could only get so much done. Poverty is undeniably severe in Brazil, and police treatment of the poor, urban or rural, is abominable and unforgiveable, yet illicitly and explicitly approved of in Brazil.

When the time comes to evaluate Lula's administration, I suspect (though I may be wrong) there will be many areas where he will be legitimately deemed as a disappointment, if not a failure, particularly on environmental issues. However, I think that, at the end of the day, his administration has been nothing short of a major success on economic matters. That the poor are treated so brutally is not so much a symptom of Lula's failures as a symptom of the severe classism and racism that still pervade much of Brazilian society, issues which any president will be hard-pressed to solve by himself.

Brazil's CPMF Tax Goes Down

This morning, Brazil's Senate voted down the CPMF tax by a vote of 45 in favor of maintaining the tax, and 34 against keeping it (the tax would have needed a 2/3 majority, or 49 of the 79 senate votes). The CPMF (Contribuição Provisório a Movimentação ou Transmissão de Valores de Créditos e Direitos de Natureza Finança - Brazilian acronyms don't always totally match with their full names) was basically a tax waged on those who had bank accounts. Every time you paid bills online or did major withdrawals or deposits on your bank account, there was a .38% tax levied (originally the rate was .25%, but former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso gradually raised it to its current level of .38% in 2001). Because only the middle-middle to upper classes in Brazil have bank accounts (due to multiple economic and social factors), this tax really affected the wealthiest sectors of Brazil.

The failure means a couple of things. First, the opposition has celebrated this as a major victory, and it is a blow to Lula's administration (though nowhere near the "worst defeat Lula has ever suffered" and revealed a major popular refutation of his policies, which is what one member of the opposition declared. Losing a 2/3 majority by only 4 votes hardly constitutes a major refutation of his policies.) Additionally, as I mentioned in passing before, it really shows how despicably contrarian oppositional politics in Brazil are sometimes. The bill was defeated by the PSDB-Democrata right-wing political alliance, the same parties that voted for the bill's permanence in 1997 when Fernando Henrique Cardoso, of the PSDB, was president, and the tax continued to be passed during his administration. Yet the moment it came up for renewal (until 2011 in theory) under Lula, the opposition condemned the tax as one of the worst things to ever happen to "honest" (read: white and wealthy) Brazilians. Finally, there is the policy impact. The CPMF wasn't a useless tax - it played a major role in providing funds to social programs like Brazil's health care system and the Bolsa Familia, which helps families with less than the minimum income (which in Brazil is about $200/month). In seeking its renewal, Lula had pledged that all of the money would go to Brazil's health care (and most of it had already gone to health care). With this vote, the right-wing opposition, in what is in no way surprising yet still frustrating, basically said "to hell with the poor and disadvantaged in Brazil, and to hell with a funcitoning health care system".

This doesn't totally mean these programs will now disappear. Just because one form of taxation has disappeared doesn't mean others won't pop up, and already the Folha de São Paulo (incidentally, a much better example of good journalism without nearly the classism and Lula-hatred of O Globo) is already pointing out that other taxes can and will probably surface to replace the CPMF. However, the vote will also probably force Lula to reduce Brazil's budget surplus to continue to try to address the issues of social and economic inequality in Brazil.

Finally, in the area of a more personal gripe, there is the issue of the PSOL (Partido de Socialismo e Liberdade). The Party claims to be from the left and to want to fight for equality amongst all Brazilians. Its claims appear leftist on the surface, but it has been clear since the party's foundation earlier this decade that there are no pretenses to issues of social equality in every aspect, as it repeatedly and adamantly refuses to even consider basic women's rights such as abortion. The strongest claims they could make to seeking "equality" were generally on economic grounds (better distribution of wealth, combat rural poverty, improve minimum wage, etc.). However, even those claims are now in doubt. The one senator from PSOL, João Nery, voted against the tax, in effect saying that he was not interested in approving a tax that actually taxed the wealthier in an effort to help the Brazilian poor and try to reduce the numerous social and economic equalities in Brazil. I have ideologically had more problems withe PSOL than the PSDB for a couple of years - at least I knew the PSDB wasn't even going to pretend to try to really work on issues like social equality, preferring neoliberalism and openly favoring "private initiative" (and subsequently blaming the poor for their conditions) instead. But any mild shred of respect for PSOL I may have had has basically disappeared. While it is possible, I find it extremely unlikely that Nery was bucking party policy behind closed doors on this one (as it was only founded in 2003, PSOL is still very much the party of its leader, Heloísa Helena, a presidential candidate last year, and her followers). Once again, despite its protestations to represent the "uncorrupt" left, the PSOL did everything to try to help the PSDB-Democratas right-wing alliance, as it has done many times before. Nery's vote today just goes to show that the PSOL, despite its superficial appearance and insistence otherwise, is no less than a mockery and affront to all parties and people actually interested in social and economic justice.

Risk, Carioca Style

For those who weren't sufficiently offended by "be an illegal immigrant" events and favela tours, a designer from Rio's Zona Sul has something new to offer: "Risk", Rio-style. Updating the old global-conquest game in which the players tried to use their armies to take over the 6 inhabited continents, 29-year-old designer Fábio Lopez has created "War in Rio", in which you can try to be any number of factions of drug gangs or Rio's corrupt police, trying to gain control of the city. Lopez has created a map of the city of Rio, divided like "Risk" into 6 major sections, but beyond that, the rules and idea are the same. Lopez apparently felt this was a good idea after he was robbed, an event which he apparently felt was "enlightening" enough to come up with this "game".

Lopez claims "The idea isn't to incite violence. What I want to provoke with the game is a discussion about the discomforts of living in a city at war with itself." Unfortunately, Lopez, like too many people here, only considers the violence in a one-way direction. He wasn't terribly worried about the violence within the city when police invaded Alemão and put it under a state of de facto martial law, nor did he seem to really consider the violence when the police were dismembering corpses of regular residents fighting for their rights in the faveals. Yet he gets robbed in the Zona Sul (one of the safest and richest parts of the city), and suddenly, he's worried about the violence in the city. It only pops into his head once it affects him directly, and given the fact that he's included the BOPE as one of the "factions" you can be, I suspect strongly that he falls into that category of middle class residents who believe that BOPE and other police forces are totally justified in any and all measures employed against the poor in the favelas. The fact that he could now stand to make money off this idea just adds to the repulsion of this.

Hopefully, the actual creators and producers of Risk will make sure any mass-production of this game gets halted on legal grounds. Still, the fact that it even reached this point is just one more example not jsut of how unwilling many people are to actually consider the real causes and effects of violence; it shows just how far from the reality of poverty, police brutality, and the favelas most residents of Rio are.

"Tropa de Elite" and Public Attitudes towards Police Violence in Brazil

For the past few weeks, the Brazilian film "Tropa de Elite", a movie about the Special Operations Battalion (BOPE) of Rio's police, has dominated the theaters, the media, and popular discussion. The movie, based on a former member of BOPE's memoirs, focuses on BOPE's involvement in the favelas, allegedly trying to show how the police fuel the favela violence as well. It was so controversial and eagerly awaited that you could buy a pirated copy of the movie in July, three months before the movie hit the theaters (which, to my knowledge, is pretty much unprecedented).

Director Jose Padilha (director/writer of the excellent "Bus 174" has claimed that the point of "Tropa da Elite" is to show BOPE's complicity in spurring unnecessary violence (including torture and executions) in the favelas. While I have reason to believe that may have been his goal, society in Brazil doesn't seem to be getting the point. Instead of more realistically showing how unnecessarily violent the police in the favelas are, people are walking out of the theaters viewing the police as heroes. Many of the standard middle- and upper-class notions of life and crime in the favelas (based on nothing of reality, but rather of images from the extremely-biased media and their own class-fears) are praising the police. As the article points out, children are wanting to join BOPE. Instead of having a "Trainspotting" effect (show drug-use realistically to reveal the horrors of heroin), it seems to be having the opposite - viewers are praising the police and becoming even more entrenched in their belief that, as one individual claims, "a good criminal is a dead one," and that any measure of violence is justified in killing "criminals".

I have no doubt that a decent part of the onus falls on Padilha himself. First of all, as I said, the story is based on the memoirs of ex-BOPE officer Rodrigo Pimentel (who had a hand in the screenplay), and, for obvious reasons, makes the protagonist (portaryed by Wagner Moura) come off looking pretty good. Additionally, it's no secret that the middle- and upper-classes in Rio (and Brazil more largely) have an irrational fear of the favelas, with a notion that they are inhabited only by lazy people and crazed druglords who are waging a war on society (not very close to reality, suffice to say). These sectors need no help in trying to justify police violence against favelados. The fact that Padilha tries to "let the story tell itself" and have his audience decide isn't good enough. This approach only logically leads (and has led) to the middle-classes reifying their belief in the value of violence against the poor. Padilha himself has seemed genuinely mystified that people are viewing the police so positively in his film, and he may be sincere. But that doesn't remove from him some of the responsibility for the fact that a society that he knows quite well has read exactly what they wanted to read into his film - that he didn't exactly say, "Police violence like this is bad", whose explicitness seems perhaps silly to a foreigner's eye, still leaves some burden on him.

Nonetheless, it just shows how far from reality the middle- and upper-classes in Brazil are, and how far we have to go for social equality here. When children who live in the favelas "play" torture based on what they have seen (putting plastic bags over each other's heads, mimicking a mechanism the police use in which you suffocate until your nose bleeds, and then they question you), the violence is clearly lopsided. This is not to excuse drug lords in the favelas; they, too, are a source of violence in Brazil. But until the police stop getting a carte blanche from society for their use of torture and indiscriminate murder, films like "Tropa de Elite" will do more harm than good.