The 2014 World Cup officially got underway today with the qualifying draw in Rio de Janeiro. Simultaneously, the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores de futebol (ANT, the National Association of Football Supporters) organized a demonstration against the World Cup (and the 2016 Olympics). ANT’s call to protest read thusly:
Do you think that the World Cup belongs to us?
Our government continually says that the World Cup and Olympics will bring benefits to Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. But who will benefit? The cost of living and rent are continually on the rise, families are forcibly removed from their homes and street vendors are prevented from working.
More: they are wasting public money on all of these projects and have put forward a law that will hide how much they have spent. To make things worse, the organizers of the World Cup, FIFA and Ricardo Teixeira (the president of the Brazilian Football Federation), are being accused of corruption by multiple sources.
Everything indicates that the World Cup and Olympics are going to repeat, on a larger scale, the history of the 2007 Pan American Games: misappropriation of public funds, unnecessarily large construction projects that become useless after the competition, benefits only for large businesses whose owners are friends of those in power and the violation of the human rights of millions of Brazilians.
The forced removal of families affected by these projects is happening in an arbitrary and violent manner. This situation has already been denounced by the United Nations. Mega-events are being used to install a State of Exception, with the systematic violation of the rule of law.
In this vein, what will be the legacy of the mega-events? The privatization of the city, of health and education? The gentrification of football culture and its stadiums? That private companies will reap profit and benefits with exemptions from taxation and subsidized loans? The profits from the World Cup will be for entrepreneurs, and the debt will be ours. Are we going to allow the mega-event histories of Athens 2004 and South Africa 2010 to repeat themselves?
Join us! Together we will change this trajectory, come and fight! Come kick a ball around with us at the Largo do Machado, the 30th of July beginning at 10am.
Zero evictions!
The city is not merchandise to be bought and sold!
No to the privatization of land and public resources, airports, education and health care!
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4 replies on “2014 World Cup Draw: Fans Protest in Rio”
I lived in Brasil for a year in 2007/8, and have seen the enormous gap between rich and poor. In fact there aremany similarities between Brasil and South Africa (although Brasil has a much stronger economy). It might be a bit early to fully assess the impact of South Africa 2010, but I definitely echo ANT’s concerns in terms of being able to handle the day to day issues affecting cities like Rio.
Hope we are wrong, cause the WC goes on despite peoples concerns.
I like the protest. I just hope it brings some balance and real social agenda into the preparation of the WC. We love football and love the World Cup, it’s hype and feeling good effect it has on people but there is a need to share cost and profit between FIFA and Co. industry and the organizers. I hop ANT voice is loud enough to temper the side effects of the 2014 WC hosting in Brazil.
The protest may look logical, but perhaps we need to reconsider this blanket vilification of the infrastructural investment in the less developed and/or highly unequal societies because of world football. Would be rather have all these mega sport activities in Germany, France, the UK and the US! Fine, lets then even have football banned in Brazil, because it is, has never been, and will never be of any use to the Brazilian society.
We are also in effect saying that Brazil, SA and other societies that have hosted mega sport events should cancel football and any other sport that links them to the global trends of popular culture. After all, such societies are too poor and/or unequal to engage in similar popular cultural activities as the developed world. They need to be left alone until, such a time that they are rich and/.or equal enough to engage in such cultural discourses.
What ANT is advocating, I think, is not turning over the World Cup to Europeans. Rather what they are calling for is what Gerard notes is “a need to share cost and profit between FIFA . . . and organizers.” In a context of inequality, poverty, privatization, and austerity, it strikes me as untenable and unjust to allow monopolistic international sporting bodies to dump the lion’s share of tournament costs on host nations while hauling away huge profits tax-free to Switzerland after the competition is over.
What I like about ANT is that it is actual football fans, not professional activists, fighting for equality and justice. Brazilian fans will still be there after the 2014 WC, but FIFA will just move on to the next cow to milk (Russia 2018, Qatar 2022).