segunda-feira, 21 de julho de 2014

between tragedy and farce: getting back to normal in rio de janeiro

not surprisingly, the end of the world cup hasn’t done much to improve human rights in rio de janeiro.  it’s not as though they were doing very well before the cup came along, of course, but the authorities’ eagerness to put on a happy face for tourists and show off a “global city” to foreign investors and multinationals provided a huge accelerating force for the sharp (but not especially short) shock of forced evictions, police brutality, and clampdowns on free speech.  the first justification for those instincts has passed, but with presidential and gubernatorial elections coming up in october and the olympics scheduled to come crashing down in two years, it seems unlikely that the situation will improve any time soon.

we want to have classes - free our teachers!
(sign at the july 15 protest)
it’s been a pretty bizarre week here, accentuated by brief glimmers of hope and by a bumbling criminal justice system that would be funny if it weren’t so fundamentally belligerent.  after the intense repression that marked the final world cup protest last week, there was a protest on tuesday to free the 19 activists being held temporarily and accused – though not formally charged – of criminal conspiracy.  the protest was bigger and louder than most of the actions during the world cup (around 1000 people showed up), and though the riot cops came out in force, they mostly managed to restrain themselves:  there was no tear gas, no rubber bullets, and apparently not even any arrests.   toward the end of the march, word got out that a habeas corpus motion had been accepted and that 12 of the prisoners would be released the next day, and that four of the cops caught on video beating the shit out of protestors and stealing their stuff were going to be taken into administrative custody.

protest is not a crime:
the new de rigeur facebook profile picture for the local activist set (by amnesty international)

this news kicked off days of bureaucratic confusions and contortions.  the habeas corpus writs were initially challenged and then upheld, but the actual paperwork somehow took more than 24 hours to find its way to the right people, so the 12 people scheduled to be released on wednesday only got out early on thursday morning, when their 5-day arrests should already have expired.  almost as soon as they were released, state prosecutors announced that they would release a new dossier file a new motion to arrest all of them again on friday.  that motion apparently went through without any delays for paperwork, and the 12 are now considered fugitives (along with 6 others who managed to avoid the initial arrests).  meanwhile, 5 more prisoners are still being held indefinitely, along with 2 underage prisoners, who are still in custody but not subject to criminal prosecution.

before being leaked to the press, the new charges against the 19 activists were classified,
which sent their lawyers on a bureaucratic goose chase

the accusations keep getting more grandiose and the numbers keep shifting – there were originally supposed to be 60 arrest warrants, with more possibly on the way – which has understandably created a pretty constant sense of fear among most of rio’s activists.  with different state agencies and public officials competing with each other to either vilify or liberate our friends, it’s difficult to how large the anti-activist dragnet will extend or what consequences will be attached to what actions.  the recently-leaked police dossier makes some pretty outlandish claims (for example, that a local anarchist coalition was plotting to blow up the rio de janeiro state legislature), and to my mind, its tone is eerily similar to ai-5, the 1968 declaration of martial law that signaled a major turning point for the worse in brasil’s dictatorship.  (i won’t go into detail about that in a blog post, so you’ll either have to take my word for it, or wait for my phd thesis in about three-ish years).

as new warrants circulate, raising the prospect that more prominent activists will be subject to arbitrary imprisonment, comparisons between between current political circumstances and the 21 years (1964-85) of full-on military dictatorship keep coming up. these comparisons have been common for a long time brasil, in part because so many of the faces of the political and intellectual leadership are the same (check out josé sarney and antônio delfim netto for a very basic introduction), but mostly because institutions like the military police operate in essentially the same way, largely ignoring the 1988 constitution and interpreting the older, unchanged criminal code as they see fit.  it’s a trueism that the dictatorship stood out for subjecting the primarily white middle and upper classes to the same sort of treatments that poor people of color always were and continue to be subjected to:  torture, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances, to name just a few.   

the difference between a political prisoner and a common prisoner
is that the common prisoner doesn't know that he's also a political prisoner
the human rights debacle that we’re seeing played out now didn’t start with the world cup, and what my activist friends are going through has long been an everyday reality for favela residents throughout brasil, among others.  ironically, many of the folks getting locked up now have been especially vocal in pointing out the continued abuses of the criminal justice system, and their current situation highlights what they’ve been expressing for years:  namely, that many of the practices that defined the dictatorship continue more or less unabated. bruno cava, a legal theorist, points out in this article (in portuguese) that the current situation is not so much a return to the dictatorship as a reflection of how the current political system in brasil has absorbed both dictatorial repression as well as more democratic instincts that are constantly trying to outdo each other.  these days, unfortunately, the old-school hardliners seem to have the upper hand.


a lot of folks in rio have been reviving marx’s quote that “history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce.”  it’s worth bearing in mind, though, that there’s an ongoing cycle of repetitions at work, and that the distinction between tragedy and farce depends less on the passage of time and more on an observer’s distance from any given event.  as we move on from the world cup, things may slowly be getting back to normal, but that doesn’t mean they’re getting any better.

cavalry cops with swords (and with no id numbers or badges) at the final world cup protests

segunda-feira, 14 de julho de 2014

protesting in rio: the legacy of the world cup

so yesterday’s protest sucked.  it’s important to start off with that because basic rights here are under siege.  yesterday’s protest was like a showcase for exaggeratedly bad policing, a homegrown and fifa-approved smorgasbord of international-grade repression.  free speech is in deep trouble in rio, as is freedom of the press, freedom of movement, and the right to assemble.  meanwhile, we’re drowning in a sea of euphemisms: ideas like “public safety,” “pacification,” and the ubiquitous “progress” are serving either as smokescreens for increasingly violent repression, or as catchphrases to justify it.

photo by mauro pimentel, a photographer for the mainstream news site terra,
as he was being beaten by police
yesterday’s protest was called by a coalition of different groups in an attempt to unify local activists and boost the number of people present.  even so, it was a small crowd of probably 600 people at its peak, obviously reduced by saturday’s “preventative arrests” and the intimidation they provoked.  (the loud and incessant predictions that the brasilian team’s 7 x 1 loss in the semifinals would lead to widespread political instability were never more than a lot of noise).

protestors started to assemble around 1 pm at praça saens peña in tijuca, a couple of miles away from the stadium, and started marching a little more than an hour later.  the praça was surrounded by riot cops from the beginning, and their numbers seemed to keep increasing.  by the time the march began, they outnumbered protestors by a factor of at least two to one.  there were cordons around the marchers as well as in the middle of the march, in addition to barricades of mounted police, motorcycle cops, and ordinary officers on all of the surrounding streets.

policing in rio has always been defined by its brutality, but it’s important to point out that what went down yesterday happened without any real provocation.  none of the protestors threw projectiles or rushed police barriers or skirmished with cops or among themselves (although when groups of cops moved in to search or arrest protestors at random, other protestors would surround them, chanting and monitoring what was going on).  because of the barricades, only about three blocks were available for marching:  the protest moved to the first barricade, reversed course until it ran into the second, and then started to head back, at which point the cops started to unleash the stun grenadres and tear gas (the pepper spray had started earlier in generous but selective doses).
 
i assume this is tear gas, but i didn't stay long enough to find out
photo by ellan lustosa/a nova democracia
i was at the back of the march, along with a friend with a cracked rib.  we had decided to leave at the first sign of trouble, so as the tear gas bombs started to fly in on three sides of us, we speed-walked in the one direction that was mostly clear.  we managed to slip past one barricade with pleading looks and ours hands high in the air, but one block later, we found ourselves sandwiched between five lines of police with all available exit routes cut off.  pedestrians who were on their way home or leaving apartments or stores in the neighborhood were stuck with us.  the air was mostly clear where we were, but the smell of tear gas kept wafting over, and the sounds of stun grenades and rubber bullets were loud and constant.

friends in the thick of the protest told us later that, although the cops were doing their best to gas and beat everybody into submission, they seemed to be making an especially concentrated effort to go after journalists.  jason o’hara, a canadian documentary filmmaker, was beaten up and had his camera stolen, and at least nine local journalists had their equipment broken or confiscated by cops.  cops also pursued protestors and a large number of totally uninvolved pedestrians (including several little kids) into a subway station, which they tear gassed thoroughly.  presidente, a homeless activist in his 60s, apparently bore the brunt of it.
  
the tear gas died down once the chanting had stopped and the protestors were sufficiently scattered, but the police barricades just grew.  no one could leave or enter the roughly one-mile radius cops had cordoned off, so all of us who hadn’t left the area at the very beginning of the march – pedestrians and protestors alike –  were essentially under temporary house arrest in the streets surrounding praça saens peña.  without  else anywhere to go, we congregated around the one bar that was open within the “safety zone,” occasionally breaking into chants, but mostly chatting in small groups, and trying to guess when the police would finally let us go. we stayed that way for over three hours; once the germany-argentina game ended, the barricades slowly began to open.

(the bar, of course, was showing the game on two big-screen tvs.  it was almost as though part of the punishment for protesting the cup would be to have to watch the final game with no chance of escape).

an sos for basic rights during our semi-imprisonment
it’s becoming increasingly clear that rio’s cops have protests mapped from the start:  they decide in advance when the tear gas will start to fly and when protestors will be allowed to leave, and then make arrests and use all available pretty much at random.  first, though, they’re working to break protestors and protests before they even begin.  “preventative arrests” is just a euphemism for taking political prisoners, and targeting journalists is an especially ugly and brutal way to make your power felt.  ironically, even the traditionally right-wing mainstream media – which has traditionally pretty much any police action against protestors – has started to criticize the excessive use of force, especially against its colleagues, as "martial law."  but it’s also clear that cops don’t care about bad press as long as they’re controlling and intimidating protestors. 

this is not a question of public safety: given the numbers, yesterday’s march could never have reached maracanã stadium, but it could easily have ended without the tear gas-heavy special effects show.  the new rules in rio seem to guarantee free speech and physical integrity only for protests conducted on the beachfront in copacabana during daylight hours; assuming, that is, that there are enough tourists nearby to keep make excessive force seem uncommonly newsworthy.

a camera belonging to the independent site linhas de fuga, destroyed by cops

everyone in rio has been hearing about the legacy of the world cup for years.  it was sold as the crowning achievement of years of economic growth that would show off brasil as a world player.  at the ground level, though, it’s become an excuse for police violence, censorship, and intimidation.  the games are (finally) over now, and daily life in rio will continue to be much more marked by the crackdown on basic rights in the city’s streets – unquestionably hastened by the cup – than by any of the goals scored in the stadiums. 


photo by guilherme carvalho

domingo, 13 de julho de 2014

human rights and the world cup: an update from rio de janeiro


on the first day of the world cup, i posted something on facebook about how i thought you couldn't watch the games and care about human rights at the same time.  a month later, i wish i had changed my mind.  i would love to say that i've gotten caught up in the spirit of togetherness or just the giant fan-driven street party in rio.  i would love to say that the beauty and emotion of the games had helped me see the light.  but as the cup has gone on, police have gone on killing indiscriminately in rio's favelas; victims include a 3-year-old named luiz felipe who was shot in the face, and a 15-year-old who was killed execution-style (another teenager played dead and escaped).  and protestors in rio have been subject to increased police violence (including live ammunition), arbitrary arrests, and intimidation.  as the games have gone on, the human rights situation in rio and throughout brasil has continued to go downhill, and the cup is directly to blame.

rafael marques lusvarghi, an english teacher in são paulo, is pepper sprayed while immobilized during protests on the first day of the world cup.


yesterday, two of my friends were taken into police custody where they will be held for the next five days, and another has a warrant out in his name for similar treatment, all because of their association with past protests in rio de janeiro. they are musicians, students, public school teachers, and all around good folks, and they were charged with possessing gas masks, or anti-cup pamphlets, or t-shirts connected to local protest groups.  in the last 24 hours, local police have issued at least 60 "preventative" arrest warrants that will let them detain activists for 5 days with no charges, keeping them off the streets and attempting to demoralize and scare the rest of us away from participating in protests scheduled today's final game.

the judge's decree that permits all that is right here.  i don't have time to translate it all, but it authorizes these illegal and unconstitutional arrests for anyone that cops decide is capable of carrying out "extreme violence."



before getting locked up, my friends have been tear gassed, pepper sprayed, beaten up, and dragged by cops.  kids in favelas have been executed execution-style or by stray bullets.  tomorrow marks exactly one year since amarildo went missing, and though we pretty much know for sure that he was tortured to death by a group of "pacifying" cops, his body has never been recovered.  yet activists, not cops, are accused of "extreme violence," and now at least 20 of the 60 warrants have been served, taking activists off the streets for five days to prevent them from carrying signs and chanting.

(meanwhile, a british executive for a fifa-licensed ticket agency who is suspected of perpetrating millions of dollars in fraud was released on a decree of habeus corpus 12 hours after rio cops took him in).

i'm writing this en route to today's protests, so i don't have time to make it polished or especially well-written.  but my point is this:  the world cup has been a fiasco for human rights in brasil since the planning stages, and it's only gotten worse in execution.  the poor and disenfranchised continue to be the prime targets of state-sanctioned violence, and free expression and freedom to assemble - both guaranteed by the brasilian constitution - are arrestable offenses these days.  i wish our experience here had been different, but it's increasingly clear that the beauty and drama on the field can only be maintained by a crackdown against anyone that fifa or the police perceive to be a threat.

so if you're watching the final, i hope you think of my friends who are being held in jailhouses and prisons to prevent them from marching today.  i hope you're thinking of luiz felipe.  their freedom is the price of your spectacle. and i do hope the whole thing leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, because living through the cup has certainly left a bad taste in ours.

quarta-feira, 9 de julho de 2014

not so sad in brasil

there's this idea circulating in the states that everybody in brasil spent yesterday crying.  this implies that the power of soccer to bring people together has wiped out popular opposition to the cup, that it was the magic of the game - rather than the tear gas, live ammunition, and arbitrary arrests - keeping people away from protests, and that yesterday, the entire country looked more or less like the pictures on the sadbrazilians tumblr (which, incidentally, was also a huge hit here).



só que não,  which is to say, not so much.  plenty of people were hoping brasil would stay alive in the cup long enough to be humiliated by argentina in the final, especially after the interview in which rio's mayor, eduardo paes, told the guardian that he'd kill himself if this happened.  but there are a lot of folks who loved seeing the brasilian team go down so absolutely and embarrassingly.  there's still plenty of cup left to go - major protests are scheduled for the final game, which may have much larger turnout now that brasil's out of the cup - and depending on today's semi-final game, brasil could still lose to argentina in the consolation round for third place.

i'll write more about this as it unfolds, but in the meantime, here's what my facebook wall looked like in yesterday:

before the game, neymar's recent injury, and the nation-wide trauma it was about to evoke, was compared to the police brutality which even the mainstream media hasn't ignored recently:


as well as the overpass in belo horizonte - the city that hosted the germany-brasil semi-final - that collapsed last week, killing 2 people and injuring at least thirty:


in light of neymar's injury, facebook was full of reminders of the 1962 cup.  when pelé was injured that year, he was substituted by a player named amarildo, who helped lead brasil to a victory.  last year, "pacifying" police in rocinha, rio's largest favela, tortured and [presumably] killed amarildo de souza local 47-year-old construction worker and father of four.  his body still hasn't been found, but people have been pointing out that amarildo can't save brasil this time around.

during the game, people joked about germany's uniforms, which were inspired by flamengo, the most popular team in rio.  the idea of flamengo beating the shit out of the national team was huge, as were the messages reminding us of all the workers' movements that have been clamped down on before and during the cup.  as the score crept up, someone posted:  "going on strike is a right for all workers.  ALL OF OUR SUPPORT GOES TO THE BRAZILIAN NATIONAL TEAM'S STRIKE!"

after the game, facbeook was full of reminders that investing heavily in soccer instead of more pressing social needs looked especially stupid after a loss in the semi-finals.

today we learned that germany, aside from having schools and hospitals, can also score goals.
see you later, folks.

...and full of digs at ronaldo, former cup star and current bloviating airhead who told the press last year that a world cup victory was worth prioritizing stadiums over hospitals:


it really would have been better
to have built hospitals

meanwhile, the attitude of inevitable victory was summed up by one unfortunate tattoo:

sixth-time champion 2014

and amid all the comparisons of national character, there was this:

- god is brasilian
- god is dead
finally, this poem was written in 1978 and has been popping up on facebook for at least a year, but it had a major resurgence last night.





is the cup over? it's no big deal.
farewell to kicks and systems.
now we can finally
take care of our problems.

there wasn't enough point inflation?
real inflation continues.
we'll stop being so foolish
if we kick at the right target.

in another tournament, the people,
if they're tenacious, 
will win a strong and full victory,
in the freedom cup.

- carlos drummond de andrade


brasil's cup dreams are over, but the protests it spawned are not.  stay tuned...








quarta-feira, 25 de junho de 2014

“the party in the stadium isn’t worth the tears in the favela:” world cup protests, day 12

on monday, the favela came down the hill.  this is both immediately newsworthy and not at all new: the idea of favela residents leaving their communities (many of which are located on hillsides) and heading down to the city streets en masse to engage or defy the middle-class norms of life in the “asphalt” has been generating headlines and clichés in rio de janeiro for at least a century.  it’s been used to describe everything from the spread of samba’s popularity in the 1920s and 30s to shows of force by drug cartels in the early 2000s to the daily commutes of the maids, office workers, and the growing numbers of teachers, lawyers, and doctors who live in the favelas.  it’s also pretty much the de rigueur image associated with favela-related protests, which more often than not address the state-sanctioned violence that’s been disproportionately directed at favela residents for at least the past century (usually through police or army actions, although historically there have been several of instances of arson and other semi-official strategies to displace or “tame” favela residents).

pictures of favela kids killed by police violence.  photo by gas pa hampton
monday’s march was no exception: as we walked along the beach at copacabana, heading from chapeu mangueira to pavão/pavãozinho and cantagalo (all “pacified” favelas), one of the main chants was “ih, fudeu!  a favela desceu” (very roughly, “oooh, you’re fucked!  the favela came down!”)  the chant both mocks and plays into the common fear of favelas as lawless, violent places eternally on the verge of descending to upend the rest of the city, shutting down businesses and enforcing a reign of terror through small armies of coked-up adolescents with machine guns.  in this case, though, the “hills” came down to the “asphalt” with giant banners and photos of some of the hundreds of favela residents killed or disappeared by rio’s police in recent years.  (if you imagine that rio’s cops don’t enforce their own reign of terror – especially in the city’s favelas – you haven’t lived here long enough to get questioned and searched at gunpoint by a coked-up post-adolescent with an ar-15 and a uniform).

the march, called “a festa nos estádios não vale as lágrimas na favela” (the party in the stadium isn’t worth the tears in the favela), was sponsored by a coalition of social movements from favelas throughout the city.  it began monday morning in chapeu mangueira with hip-hop, poetry, and capoeira presentations before heading down to copacabana, where tens of thousands of soccer fans in face paint and green-and-yellow shirts (both locals and tourists trying to soak up brazil’s world cup vibe) were waiting for the start of brazil’s final preliminary game against cameroon, and where a massive, mostly foreign, press corps was waiting to capture anything out of the ordinary.

it wasn’t an especially big march, but there were more people there than at recent protests (around 300 when i reached it near the beginning of the beach, and over 500 after another activist coalition joined us about halfway through), and the glut of tourists and photographers with press credentials helped keep the police fairly benign. we were surrounded by cordons of riot cops that grew as we made our way down the beach, and an imposing line of them blocked our initial approach toward the entrance of pavão/pavãozinho, but they didn’t let off any tear gas or stun grenades, even when the march changed course to reach pavão/pavãozinho down a series of side streets.  the protest finished without the ass kicking that’s become customary, although cops did rough up and arrest "spiderman", a well-known local activist, apparently for carrying an unfurled banner on a public sidewalk after the protest ended. 

controlling and “taming” favelas has long been the holy grail of governance in rio de janeiro.  in part, that’s because of what a major force favelas are in the city: somewhere between 15 – 30% of the population lives in them, depending in largely on what any given researcher considers to a favela to be.  the most recent initiative to bring favelas in line has been “pacification,” which is a pretty major misnomer for armed occupations by police and army forces.  i’m not much for statistics, but a local paper showed that the number of favela residents killed and disappeared by police – which has always been outrageously high – has increased in “pacified” favelas.  the cases of amarildo de souza and cláudia ferreira silva, which i’ve mentioned before on this blog, are recent examples of police killings that have gotten the most media attention for their sheer heinousness.  two weeks ago, cops kidnapped a teenager and killed him execution-style after picking him and a friend up for an alleged robbery (the friend, who they shot in his legs and back, played dead and later managed to escape).  

missing amarildo at the world cup
the current regime of pacification and the violence associated with it is specifically intended to make the city tourist-friendly enough to host megaevents like the olympics and the world cup.  that’s not to say, though, that if the world cup were to miraculously leave us alone tomorrow, the favelas would return to being peaceful urban utopias.  they never have been, and the very real link between recent police killings and the world cup shouldn’t overshadow the fact that these communities have always suffered the brunt of the city’s officially-approved repression and brutality. the contrast between the party in the stadium and the tears in the favela is not just a question of emotional opposites; it’s also a question of time and permanence.  this stupid cup will end on july 13 – exactly 365 days after amarildo was disappeared – but the favelas’ tears will undoubtedly continue.  in coming months, the powers that be will start to steamroll into preparation for the olympics, and local real estate developers who are also major political contributors are already eyeing beachfront favelas as prime targets for the next big deals.  (david beckham recently bought a mansion for 1 million reais – a little under us $500,000 – in vidigal, on the other side of the hill from the where amarildo was disappeared, and currently under the command of the same “pacifying” police unit).


i’m not at all an expert on favelas or on the daily experiences of people who live there:  at most, i’ve visited friends’ houses, or gone to concerts or dance parties or protests.  i’ve seen firsthand a few of the changes that have led up to the world cup, like the large-scale destruction of houses in providência and manguinhos, but i’ve missed the worst, like the massacre in maré on june 24, 2013.  still, i’ve been in rio long enough and seen enough to know that, although the world cup is by no means the sole cause of violence or excuse for police violence in the favelas, both fifa’s demands and local government’s desire for a city prepared to host the cup has undoubtedly led to a significant increase in the violence to which favela residents are so frequently subjected.  monday’s protest highlighted their resilience, and their resolution to speak out and to stand for themselves in a city where the fleeting presence of the international press keeps them much safer than the presence of the local police ever has.

photo by gizele martins

quinta-feira, 19 de junho de 2014

this is not what democracy looks like: world cup protests, day 6

five close friends of mine were arrested at a protest on tuesday night in downtown rio, apparently becomes they were wearing facepaint and carrying empty paint cans to use as percussion instruments.  they were in the streets with the latest installment of an ongoing performance/protest that many of us have been working on for the past three years.  they had already been frisked twice at police checkpoints on their way to the protest, and cleared to go ahead both times, but within ten minutes of arriving outside candelária church, they were surrounded by a squad of riot cops, marched away from the protest, jammed together into the backseat of a sedan, and driven to a police station in the north zone, thirty minutes further up the highway (despite the plethora of police stations around rio’s downtown).  they weren’t charged with anything, but they were photographed for a registry of “people directly or indirectly involved in protests”and questioned without being allowed to speak to a lawyer present (in obvious violation of their basic rights).  more to the point, they were taken off the street for the night (they were released after about 3 hours), and warned ominously that there would be trouble if they were picked up again at any protests in the future.

confiscated cans at tuesday's protest.  photo by comitê popular rio copa e olimpiadas.
being slathered in paint and banging cans are not usually arrestable offenses in rio de janeiro, especially on empty downtown streets. actually, being slathered in paint and making too much noise seem to be hallmarks of the soccer fan experience, especially at world cup.  my friends were arrested at a march that had at most 50 other protestors and at least 200 cops, about 3.5 miles away from maracaña stadium.  during the abbreviated protest, no property was damaged, no businesses were disrupted (nothing was open downtown), and the only people on the street were drink vendors and a few facepainted, air horn-honking fans watching the game at kiosks and pushcarts.  still, cops managed to arrest at least 15 of the protestors, including all of the passengers who boarded a bus through the back door after cops insisted that the driver open it.

the cops’ conduct was arrogant, authoritarian, and also just plain stupid:  if they had just let the protestors march, entirely surrounded by several columns of police, the mainstream media would have ignored the protest or laughed it off, and everyone would have been able to go home sooner.  but individually and as an organization, the police here want to crush any and all dissidence.  in this sense, the arbitrary arrests go with the gun-waving and warning shots we saw on sunday night near maracanã:  they’re meant to scare protestors off of the street.  and it seems to be working (although it’s worth pointing out that calling a protest for downtown an hour after the brasilian team’s game began was a major scheduling fuck up).

i’ve written about police brutality before on this blog, and true to form, there were plenty of other police actions throughout brasil in recent days that completely overshadow the arbitrariness of my friends’ and other protestors’ arrests. in cidade de deus, a “pacified” favela, cops shot and killed an unarmed 13-year-old on sunday (officially he was killed in a shoot out, and no responsibility has been assigned yet, but this usually signals police culpability).  this happened again in manguinhos, another "pacified" favela, on wednesday night, this time with a 25-year-old victim.  meanwhile, in recife, in northeastern brasil, military police wounded dozens of young people occupying land at the center of a development debate.
 
comparatively, my friends had it easy:  five costumed performers getting picked up by cops is not nearly as worrying as young people getting killed, and watching high armored robocops squint carefully into paint cans in a desperate effort to invent some sort of criminal intent was at least as funny as it was infuriating.  our network of friends operated quickly enough so that there public interest lawyers waiting for them by the time they got to the police station, and 10 more of us – mostly in costume, or covered with tattoos, or both – came to support them, pass around snacks, and wait for their release.  a combination of all this attention, the fact that all of my friends are college graduates, and the flimsy logic that riot cops gave the station police to justify the arrest (that my friends’ facepaint and the single bandana among them qualified as hiding their identities, and that the paint cans they were drumming on were actually intended as projectiles) meant that the police went easy on them:  apart from the illegal interrogation, the illegal photo registry (which is apparently part of an international database), and a constant stream of harassing and provocative questions, they came and went without major problems. but the fact that the rights to free expression and free assembly, both guaranteed by brasil’s constitution, are being actively and meticulously undermined in the hopes that everyone will shut up and get back to watching the games isn’t just annoying and intimidating from where we stand:  like so much about this world cup, it ought to be alarming to anyone who cares about basic human rights.

being censored is obviously not the same as being tortured or killed, but suppression and violence go hand in hand:  both are vital to creating an atmosphere of obedience based on fear.  and policing based on personal tastes, criminalizing anything that looks wrong, is a guarantee for continued brutality in the future.  the cops who decide that costumes and paint can drums don’t belong on an empty street are relying on the same sort of logic that justifies killing young people of color in favelas.  it’s all uniformed vigilantism based on appearance, and in rio de janeiro - and throughout brasil - it seems to be getting worse.

i got news of my friends’ arrest on tuesday as i was arriving at the protest, and i stopped on a street corner to trade phone numbers with mutual friends in order to get more of us to the police station as quickly as possible. as soon as i’d said hello, a middle-aged guy with big arms and a yellow-and-green t-shirt approached me, yelling for me to move on before he beat the shit out of me.  i explained that i was on a public sidewalk, and he yelled back that he didn’t like me, that my friends and i deserved to die, and that i should get the fuck away.  (i assume this had to do with my fabulous protest outfit, which involved glitter and a raggedy red dress).  30 cops approached us, sensing a possible fight, but they weren’t about to keep the peace; they only came to shout at me and egg him on.  i got the fuck away.  (at sunday night’s protests, cops stood by calmly while local bar patrons in the vila isabel neighborhood beat two protestors bloody).


so:  i’m sorry to sound like a broken record, but as i’ve been writing for a while, this world cup is a travesty for human rights.  as you watch the games, some of us in brasil are being silenced in the name of order and good sportsmanship, and others are being beaten up or killed in the name of progress, “pacification,” and public safety.  as we welcome the world to celebrate, those who don’t fit into the idea of what a “country without poverty” (part of the federal government’s official motto) is supposed to look like are being subject to policing that recalls the military dictatorship of the 60s and 70s.  this may be what a world cup demands, but it’s not what democracy looks like.

photo by comitê popular rio copa e olimpiadas.

terça-feira, 17 de junho de 2014

whose public security? world cup protests, day 4

you may have heard that cops in rio are using live ammo at protests now.  there are a few cases of uniformed military police firing warning shots at protestors on sunday night during the official opening of maracanã stadium, as well as footage of an off-duty civil police officer aiming at protestors.  police also dropped tear gas canisters from helicopters, and several protestors mentioned that the gas felt stronger than during previous protests (possibly a switch to military-grade stuff, which also happened in seattle in 1999). 




throughout brasil, the cops are cracking down:  in são paulo, on the first day of the cup, a schoolteacher who was hit twice with rubber bullets was pepper-sprayed in the face while he was already immobilized and in a chokehold, and in belo horizonte, a member of the midia ninja collective was arrested and tortured by cops, who also threatened to kill him and his colleagues.

there weren’t that many of us at the protest in rio on sunday night: i would say 300, friends say 400, the mainstream media here says 150, and you can choose your own source.  but it felt especially energized, and not only because everyone was on edge even before the cops started pulling out the guns.  maracanã has become a major symbol of everything that’s gone wrong with world cup preparations and rio’s “reurbanization” in general: it’s a public stadium that was rebuilt at a cost of R$1.6 billion (about US $600 million) before being sold at bargain basement rates to a group of private construction firms. indigenous folks living in the defunct museum right next to the stadium – land that has been deeded to indigenous people since the nineteenth century – were evicted twice over the course of a year to make way for more parking spaces.  and in the midst of these preparations, ticket prices have skyrocketed, leaving most local fans to afford tickets to games, a factor that’s not physically violent but still deeply felt hereabouts.

from the time we gathered on sunday afternoon at praça saens pena, about a mile away from maracanã, it was clear that with 300 (or 400 or 150) people, we weren’t even going to reach the stadium, let alone affect the game in any way. but it was also clear to everyone at the protest – and plenty of other people who weren’t on the street with us – that maracanã couldn’t debut as though everyone had just given in and accepted the inevitability of the world cup.  the first game in rio couldn’t just be business as usual.
  
this goes against pretty much everything written in most mainstream media sources (at least in english and portuguese) since the cup began.  even the guardian, which has been good at covering protests and public debate in brasil in the past year, ran an article contrasting protest to public security, as though protestors have been a principle cause of violence in the build-up to the cup, as though protests have disrupted what would otherwise be a happy party in a more-or-less calm city.

the problem with that, of course, is that “business as usual” in rio has been defined by truculent policing and other forms of officially sanctioned violence since long before the protests started getting really big last june. and although rubber bullets and “civilian-grade” tear gas seem to be giving way to live bullets and military-grade stuff at the protests, all of that is still a walk in the park compared to what policing looks like in the favelas and outside of the public eye. 

downtown protest compared to favelas.  cartoon by carlos latuff, 2013

as protests were picking up steam throughout the city last year, a group of cops descended on maré, a complex of favelas, and indiscriminately killed 11 people, some with bullets and others with bayonets.  and this march, cops shot cláudia ferreira silva, a hospital custodian and mother of four who lived in the morro da congonha favela, and then dragged her to death after she fell out of the trunk of the police car.  i’ve already mentioned the disappearance and torture of amarildo silva.  my point is that, like school shootings in the us, these are not isolated incidents:  they represent a widespread “kill ’em all, let god sort ’em out” attitude in local policing that the world cup has both encouraged and provoked.

just to be clear, my own brushes with violence are incredibly minimal by local standards.  i may sometimes be a witness to all of this stuff, but i’m never really the subject of it.  the closest i come is the occasional gassing when shit really gets out of hand during protests, but i never bear the brunt of it, and i tend not to be a target. a friend joked on sunday that i have an invisibility cloak:  between my white skin, the colorful clothes i was wearing, and a hundred other factors, i could basically walk right past cops if i was by myself and keeping calm.  it worked twice that night, when i passed dozens of riot cops milling around back streets as i headed away from the helicopters, the clouds of gas, and who knows what else around maracanã.  i fit into a vision of public security that considers protestors to be a major threat, and considers favela residents, indigenous people, and people of color in general to be an even bigger one.  it’s a vision that depends on a whole lot of live ammunition and an ever-present threat to use even more of it.

protests and protestors are not the main problem with the world cup;  intimidation, displacement, and violence are.   and i’m sorry to say that if you’re hosting world cup parties and posting about the game on facebook, i think you’re part of the problem.  i’m not going to delete you or stop being friends with you in real life or even look at you funny, but you’re buying into a very well-produced spectacle, a spectacle that maintains itself locally through a belligerent cop culture that spent sunday night aiming guns at my friends.  this is not a good time to pretend that everything's ok and that the show must go on.


of course the world cup didn’t introduce this vision of "public security” to rio:  it’s been going on for a long time, and it will continue long past this particular megaevent and the long slog toward the next one (the 2016 olympics).  and of course it’s not just rio:  security and “public safety” throughout brasil, latin america, the us, and most of the rest of the world has come to mean making spaces safe and comfortable for a primarily white middle and upper class with the resources to generate enough money to keep the public safety machine running. in rio – and pretty much everywhere else – “reurbanizing,” “pacifying,” and generally making the city ready for the world cup, the olympics, and the future installation of mega-businesses or mega-events, has meant that the city’s most vulnerable residents have become targets of an official violence that keeps spreading and amplifying.  what we saw on sunday is only a small taste of that violence, but it highlights something we’ve known for a long time:  that even questioning this paradigm of “public safety” and order is an act that will continue to be met with increasingly violent intimidation and repression.  and as long as that’s what it takes to keep “business as usual” going, we’ll be out in the street.


- using pepper spray against an immobilized man
- injuring foreign journalists with bomb shrapnel
- if the military police aren't afraid to act this way when the whole world is watching,
- imagine what it must be like when no one sees.  (pirikart)



sexta-feira, 13 de junho de 2014

what do we have to celebrate? inside the world cup protests, day 1

the first thing i want you to know is that, at least in rio, yesterday’s protests started out beautifully.  in the morning, about 2000 of us met up at candelária church before taking over rio branco, the main downtown commercial drag, and marching to lapa, a little more than a mile away.  (foreign news reports i’ve seen said there were about 500 protestors, which means gringo journalists are relying on official police numbers, otherwise known as “total bullshit”).  a few hours later, there were another 800-ish of us in copacabana, walking the length of the beach, next to the giant screen showing the opening game and the theoretically-open-to-the-public-but-actually-mostly-closed-and-very-heavily-guarded “fifa fan fest.”

poor batman, a local protest icon, is crucified on one of the missing beams that "disappeared" during rio's major construction projects last year. image by carnavandalirização




it was sunny and the chants were loud.  people danced, and at each of the parades, there was music from a couple of different percussion groups.  maybe it’s just my leftist romanticism talking, but the marches was noisy and vibrant and colorful, and it seemed like people who actually give a shit were coming together, not just assembling; it felt like, however briefly, a kind of community was being built.  there were communists, anarchists, hipsters, homeless people, high school students, and striking teachers coming together.  and we weren’t together only out of shared frustration at the increasingly impossible cost of living in rio, or outrage at violent cops on the streets and in the favelas, or despair at a city that kowtows to megaevents and business interests while shooing away its most vulnerable residents or using them as collateral. we were out in the street because we share a commitment to do something about it.

i know this all sounds idealistic and naive, and i’m definitely guilty as charged.  since last june, experience has reminded everyone in rio that it’s much easier to bring people together for a protest march than it is to figure out how to take that energy forward.  it’s easy for a diverse coalition to fracture along ideological lines. on that note, the second thing i want you to know about yesterday’s protests is that it’s easy for the hundreds of riot cops who followed us at both marches to fracture this diverse coalition physically using tear gas, pepper spray, and nightsticks.  at the first march, it happened almost as soon as we’d made it to the central plaza in lapa.  at the second, it took longer:  there were tens of thousands of loyal soccer fans packed along the beach, and it would have made for pretty bad press to tear gas them along with the black bloc kids.  both times, i was too far away to see exactly what happened and how it started, but past protest experience and yesterday’s video footage makes it pretty clear who got violent and how (spoiler:  it was pretty much entirely the cops.  also, if you don't understand portuguese, the commentators are pretty transparently reactionary).  things got especially nasty in são paulo, where a journalist for cnn broke her arm after apparently being hit with a stun grenade.  protestors don’t have those. unfortunately, taking a cold, hard, cynical look at the situation, the cnn producer’s broken arm might wind up helping local protest movements if it generates enough negative coverage to force someone in power to warn the cops off being quite so belligerent.

but stepping away from my cynicism and back to my naive idealism, the momentum that i sensed waning at protests a couple of weeks ago feels like it’s back in a big way.   in addition to being inspiring, yesterday was also a lot of fun.  in spite of – or in opposition to - the jeering muscleheads in soccer jerseys, the robocops and their tear gas, or even the glass that a woman in a fancy copacabana restaurant apparently threw at protestors, there were plenty of moments yesterday that felt like a street party.  it’s such an enormous cliché to compare public gatherings in brasil to carnaval that it’s become a cliché just to mention what a cliché it is.  (there must be some german word that describes this phenomenon).  yesterday really didn’t feel like carnaval:  there were some costumes and some music, but there were also way too many cops, and besides, we were all much too sober.  but as fifa, along with the state and city governments, mandate more and more what can and can’t happen in the public space, it felt good to share our own exercise in community without corporate sponsors or even an official color scheme.  and it felt really good to have fun while we did it.

as we were walking along the beach front at copacabana, folks at the front of the march saw the brasilian team score the first goal of the world cup against itself, giving croatia a brief 1-0 lead.  most of us aren’t planning on watching the cup, but we couldn’t help cheering and chanting “croatia!  croatia!”  the own goal felt like a perfectly good metaphor for all of the preparations that have put fifa’s financial benefit ahead of the wellbeing of so many people here. of course, pissed-off local fans immediately attacked a couple of protestors who were cheering the loudest.  it makes perfect sense:  this world cup has been built on a foundation of violence, and the local goons were just defending it the same way the police do, wearing green-and-yellow uniforms instead of black-and-grey cop gear, and using their fists instead of tear gas and clubs.


the cup that we said wouldn’t happen has begun, and it will be with us for another 30 days.  the cops and their hooligan counterparts will presumably be with us for much longer. it’s still very unclear where the protests will go from here:  where they’ll be, who will be there, and what other forms they might take.  my hope is that this cup won’t be business as usual, and that the repression that has made and continues to make it possible will become harder for everyone – especially fans and the media – to ignore, or to defend with trite, simplistic explanations. i’ll be out in the street, hoping to help keep things stay loud, colorful, and critical.  in the midst of fifa’s aggressively omnipresent party, those of us trying to stay resilient and keep standing against it deserve a celebration of our own.

the party in the stadium is not worth the favela's tears