Rio de Janeiro, 26 October 2018

Over the summer of 2018, City Mine(d) was invited to work in Rio de Janeiro, second city of Brazil and sixth largest of the Americas. Overwhelmed by the experience, and urged on by this coming Sunday’s elections, we are attempting to put our impressions to paper. Here part I that grapples with the context.

PART I:

On 14 March 2018, in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte, a silver coloured car levelled up with a white one with blacked out windows. The silver one had been following the other since its departure in Lapa 30 minutes before. From that same car, nine bullets were now fired into the white car, killing two people on board. One was driver Anderson Gomes, the other was councillor Marielle Franco. Marielle described herself as women, black and favelada, sometimes adding sociologist, single mum or LGTB-activist, not aware of the fact she would also become a global symbol against racism and discrimination.

There is no doubt that her death was linked to her political activities. Less than a year and a half before, she had been elected to the Rio city council with a staggering 45,000 votes, the fifth most votes in the whole electoral college. She had shown herself a vocal defendant of black, gay and favela rights and opponent to the policy of sending the army in to quench the violence in Rio de Janeiro. Not only was the latter a drastic measure not taken since the end of military dictatorship in 1985, it would simply not solve the problem, according to Marielle. The fact that she was born and raised in a favela, but also her master’s thesis in public administration gave her remarks a lot of legitimacy. Her thesis was entitled “UPP: The Reduction of the Favela to Three Letters” and looked into the law enforcement programme UPP, which aimed at reclaiming favelas back from gangs and drug dealers in the run up to the 2016 Olympics. Unfortunately, she would be proven right: 6 months into the programme of sending troops, 738 people were killed in confrontations with police, a third more than in the same period a year before.

Her murder caused a global outrage. Spontaneous protest emerged in New York, London, Paris, Munich, Stockholm, Lisbon and Madrid; Marielle was honoured on the floor of the European parliament; “Marielle presente!” became an international slogan of defiance; and the Washington Post reported that even Naomi Campbell tweeted “Come on Brazil stand up” (allegedly all in caps). In Rio Centro, close to the town hall where she had taken up her seat as a councillor, her supporters changed the name of Floriano Square to Rua Marielle Franco. While first of all a tribute to the fallen politician, it also engaged with the broader history of Brazil. The Floriano in question was a hero of the Paraguayan War, a 19th century territorial dispute that became the bloodiest interstate war in Latin-American and that cost the life of 70% of Paraguay’s male population. To win the war, Brazil had to mobilise vast numbers of troops from the poorer rural parts of Brazil. After the war, these soldiers went to the then capital Rio de Janeiro to claim their salaries and settled in front of the Ministry of War on a piece of unused but inhospitable land. Their stay extended from weeks into months into years, finally giving rise to a form of informal settlement typical for Rio de Janeiro and referred to as favela. Replacing the Floriano Square street sign with that of Rua Marielle Franco was also a form of historical vindication: the favelista taking the place of the Marshal.

Four days before the first round of the October 2018 elections, two candidates from the PSL party led by the Jair Bolsonaro took down the sign and symbolically broke it in two, flexing their muscles on social media as they did it. They called it “doing their civic duty, removing depredation and restoring the honour of the great marshal”. Ending their statement with: “Preparem-se, esquerdopatas: no que depender de nós, seus dias estão contados.” Which translates (inasmuch as it translates) as:”Prepare yourselves, leftists: as far as we are concerned, your days are numbered.”

This story illustrates the violence and polarisation that is currently taking over Rio de Janeiro. It seems a far stretch from the city that in September 2006 won the bid to host the 2016 Olympics. At that time, Brazil was enjoying an economic boom: the country surfed on the wave of China’s global spending spree, it was the proud B in the BRIC emerging economies and it opened an off-shore oil-rig that would make the country completely independent of foreign oil.

Introducing, let alone winning the bid to host the Olympics, is generally a sign of pure masochism. Like with other mega-events, it illustrates that a city has adopted the ideology of “global city” that aims to attract investors and capital to transform from the top down, rather than strengthening the urban tissue and constructing a city from the bottom-up. This was not different for Rio. It is a fallacy to think that mega-events can be financially profitable to the host city. They are to certain business interests in that city, but in the end public authorities pick up the bill. In hindsight the Rio Olympics have cost $20billion, of which less than $2billion came from private investors, and revenues were limited to $3billion, with no marked change in the number of tourists visiting. The Games literally bankrupted the state of Rio, which was bad enough in itself, but also coincided with a global recession that did not leave Brazil untouched. Result was a stark reduction in social support programmes, particularly in the favelas law enforcement programme UPP. Adding insult to injury, economic and social crisis were joined by a political crisis. Kickbacks turned out to be regularly involved in the allocation of construction work, and even the Brazilian Olympic Committee President was suspected of paying bribes to secure the bid. Investigations into crime and corruption played out like a telenovela, landed former president Lula da Silva in prison, and cost sitting president Dilma Rousseff her job.

It is not surprising then that the residents of Rio, referred to as Carioca, are dispirited. The prospects of economic prosperity, which for some even became real for a short while, vanished abruptly due to the combination of a failed gamble on the Olympic bonus combined by an economic recession; the physical security they were hesitantly getting used to disappeared without a trace with homicides at more than 2,000 per year at a par with cities in war-torn countries like Syria or Iraq. Just a week ago in the favela Chapéu Mangueira in Leme, a father was picking up his children from school. Because of the unusual weather Rio has been having over the past weeks, the man was carrying an umbrella. Unfortunately, a patrolling police squat mistook the umbrella for a fire arm, and shot the man 3 times, killing him instantly.

In addition, the corruption scandals that rattled through the political elites wiped out all trust in the institutions. Take for instance the vast number of those who supported President Lula da Silva at the time he embodied a new leftist movement in Latin America and even beyond. There are those who now believe the allegations against him are false, and they no longer trust the rule of law; there are those who used to believe in him but are disappointed in him and the political class in general. And then there are those who have become indifferent, who no longer vote at all, or are prepared to accept any strong leader who promises to put an end to the chaos. The same holds true mutatis mutandis for all political affiliations. In other words, Cariocas disengage, direct the faith they have left to religion, or are prepared to experiment with an authoritarian leader.

But there is a world outside the political arena. Leadership in resistance to the dictatorship in the 1980s did not come from the traditional opposition Communist Party either, because its leaders were in prison or dead. It erupted in social movements throughout the country, in factories, squares and assembly halls. Grassroots movements were able to organise, and in the end got their demands taken up in the 1988 constitutions. 30 years on, that constitution is being tested as never before. A candidate who speaks out against human rights and achievements that are taken as fundamental in every modern state is likely to become president. And the opposition candidate who is a mere Stellvertreter (a stand-in) for the imprisoned Lula does not carry the moral weight to offer an alternative. Change will have to come from the bottom up.

And sparks of hope there are. There are people in business and culture who carry on with their progressive agenda despite the imminent political deadlocks or road blocks. There are human, environmental and political rights that have become so universal that even if used us bargaining chips to win power, they won’t be able to wipe out completely what has been achieved.

Between the two rounds of the presidential elections Rio’s Museo do Amanhã -a Santiago Calatrava signed UFO- was the location for a discussion of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Rio has shown a particular interest in sustainability ever since it hosted the Rio Earth summit in 1992. Interest is making way for a serious concern ever since the Brazilian Institute of Space Research published figures that show that in certain part of Brazil by 2040 temperatures could rise by 2,5ºC and rainfall would reduce by 60%. This is all the more worrying for Brazil’s energy supply which depends for 88% on hydroelectric dams. During the conference, a panel was asked about the risks of a new government pulling out of the Paris Agreement, a threat posed by candidate Bolsonaro. Santander’s Sustainability Manager, Carolina Learth, pointed out that this would be giving up business opportunities. “We respect the intention of the voters, but we cannot go back on achievements already obtained. We have already taken a very big step in the fight against climate change.” Her “Não vamos voltar (we will not go back),” was welcomed enthusiastically by the audience.

The next day actor Gilberto Gawronski opened the Performing Arts Festival Tempo in Rio de Janeiro with a monologue called Ira de Narciso. The play by the French-Uruguayan writer Sergio Blanco is set in a hotel room in the city of Ljubljana where he is invited to give a lecture on the myth of Narcissus. It combines elements of a conference with an investigation following the discovery of a blood-stain in the hotel room and reflections on artistic creation. After the performance which had captivated the audience for almost 2 hours, Gawronski was given a minutes long standing ovation. While receiving the applause, Gawronski pulled out a street sign that read “Rua Marielle Franco” then pointed his fingers to the sky. Marriele presente!

What we have heard Cariocas ask for repeatedly, is a new social contract. A new balance between rights and freedoms that sets out to what extent the surrender of certain freedoms is justified by the rights guaranteed in return. In the current situation there are a number of statutory rights which public authorities are unable to enforce due to lack of resources or moral legitimacy following corruption scandals. As a consequence, an increasing number of para-state actors — drug gangs but also militias armed with weapons of war rather than hand guns– guarantee a number of entitlements by force in return for payment. And they don’t just guarantee physical safety; utilities like water and electricity, even telecom services are on their supply list. The arbitrary character of this form of mob rule obviously escapes all forms of democratic control, legal recourse or universal rights. It is not surprising that a population fed up with it, uses its only democratic tool left, that of casting a vote, for those who promise to fix it. Even if those promises are empty and unfounded. Though pushed to its extreme in Rio de Janeiro, this reaction holds lessons for other countries who seek salvation in strong leaders or simple solutions. A new balance between rights and freedoms is unlikely to come from the barrel of a gun.