Blog written by Rodrigo Brandao, director of publicity, Kino International

While thousands of cheerful Brazilians celebrated the historical selection of Rio de Janeiro as the host city for the 2016 Olympic Games, many in Chicago, Illinois (USA), were relieved to have the losing bid.

More than 18 months before The International Olympic Committee selected Brazil’s postcard metropolis over other three finalists (i.e. Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo), Chicago residents were already organizing (together with leftists organizations and progressive urban planning institutions) to fight against the Olympic fever -- and protect the housing rights of low-income dwellers threatened by the city’s Olympic ambitions.

“I am afraid that if the city wins their Olympic bid, it would displace many of us poor, Black folks,” said Cathy Weatherspoon, 88, in an a article that appeared on the New America Media website (www.newamericamedia.org) on June 7, 2008. She continues: “My building is three blocks from the Olympic Village site, and I can’t see the city spending all that money to build the darn thing knowing that welfare folks live a few blocks away.”

Weatherspoon’s fears aren’t unfounded, of course.

A year before, in June of 2007, the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), a U.N.-funded agency, released a report confirming what many have long feared: that the Olympic Games is one of the world’s top causes of displacements and real-estate inflation around the word.

The report, titled “Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights,” revealed that gentrification and soaring real-estate prices linked to the Olympic games have displaced more than 2 million people in the last 20 years.

And while a great number of these forced evictions happened in Seoul, South Korea, and in Beijing, China, low income African Americans were also strongly affected by the 1996 Olympics.

Almost 300-pages long, this respected study has identified key housing issues that result from the staging of Olympic Games. Here are some of them, in a direct quote from the document (the document is available for download at the end of the article; page 196):

• Displacement and forced evictions (particularly of tenants) arising from significant increases in housing costs related to the hosting of the Olympic Games;

• Escalation of housing costs having a significant impact on the local population’s access to affordable housing;\

• Reduction in the availability of social and low cost housing in the pre- and post- Olympic Games phases, as well as during the event itself;

•  ‘Cleaning operations’ to remove homeless people from sight before and during the Olympic Games, as well as the criminalization of homelessness;

• Introduction of other ‘special’ legislative or policy measures to facilitate the preparations for or staging of the Olympic Games: for example, measures allowing for expropriation of private property, the targeting of the homeless or minorities, increases in police powers, or restrictions of freedoms such as assembly and movement;

• Discriminatory and disproportionate effects on marginalised groups, including the poor, low income earners, those without security of tenure, the homeless, ethnic minorities, inigenous peoples, the elderly, the disabled, street vendors, sex workers, migrants and other vulnerable groups;

• Limited transparency and participation of residents and civil society in decision making affecting housing issues.

It goes without saying that Olympic Games represent a unique chance for Brazil and Cariocas (i.e. Rio’s dwellers) to improve their city as well as their standing among the international community. Brazil is by large, open to both foreign cultures and markets, and this event could be an opportunity for the world to strengthen its connection with South America’s largest nation.

Yet, it is important to point out that Rio de Janeiro has a history of class and racial discrimination that goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, and the preparations for the Olympic Games can not exacerbate this problem.

Now more than ever, it is important that NGOs, community organizers, artists, politicians, architects, and engaged citizens attempt a radical re-thinking of the city’s infrastructure, which is still divisive and discriminatory. Historically, poor people have been renegaded to less desirable locations, and the famous favelas in Rio de Janeiro are, in fact, the direct result of large populations being displaced from other parts of the city -- and even, from other parts of the country. 

As such, it is crucial that Rio officials and politicians go against this trend and turn the preparations for the Olympic Games into a rare moment of positive state intervention into public spaces (both in the Favelas and in the “asphalt”). This is a chance for the state to redeem itself, and to establish a different relationship with a new generation of Brazilians which will inhabit the streets of Rio in the decades to come. This is also a chance for the state to ask for forgiviness from its citizens -- forgiveness for decades of exploitative behavior towards its own people.  

The budget for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro is set at approximately $14.4 billion, and there’s little doubt that such massive investment in the city can help its habitants live much more fulfilling lives. But for such a revolution to take place, the Olympic Games has to be seen as an opportunity to re-think the city’s structures and core principles -- and not as an opportunity to cement the city’s discrepancies and alienating prejudices.

Yet, it is important to remember that when Rio de Janeiro hosted the Pan-American Games in 2007, politicians failed to deliver on promises of infrastructure improvements (including building additional highways and cleaning up Guanabara Bay). And after the party was over, there was little to show for, besides a debt that was much higher than the projected $177 million that was initially suggested.

Therefore, it might be a  good idea for Brazilians to start working on (and organizing around) ways to make politicians and city officials accountable for the huge responsibilities they fought so hard to inherit.
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Blog written by Rodrigo Brandao, writer and director of publicity for Kino International

The notion that Latin America exists as a clearly defined space and as a positive identity seems to be the status quo in our day and age.

Yet, the two largely diffused notions of Latin America (i.e. Latin America as comprising all land south of the US border with Mexico, or as a region made of all American countries shaped by French, Spanish and Portuguese colonial powers) can not easily co-exist. If the former notion was an absolute truth, Quebec would have to be considered part of Latin America. And on the same token, if the latter was the governing rule, English speaking countries like Belize and Barbados would have to be excluded from the “continent.”

My point in raising these somewhat conflicting notions of Latin American is neither to question the term's validity nor to highlight its obvious complexity. Instead, I want to make a case that the concept of Latin America demands both abstraction and historical precision, since the spaces in which Latin America exist are always caught between colonial times, with its traumatic uses of culture and identity as a subjugating force, and post-colonial realities, where identity itself has transgressed spatial and national boundaries. In other words, Latin America is both a geographical space and an identity grounded on the transgression of these very geographic spaces.

Personally, I believe this to be an asset. The fact that Latin America can never be as cohesive as a single national identity (i.e. the term Latin American will never “stand” for Brazilian or Mexican) or the fact that the entire area has not been romantically blended into a neoliberal identity (in the same way that Europe has) is something that leads to a gamut of positive ends.

Let's take for instance, the ways in which the Latino and Latin American identities intersect (or, fail to intersect) in the United States.

It goes without saying that the US Latino voting block is a somewhat self-sustained and coherent constituency – with unique priorities and alliances. But it is interesting to me that it is obvious to almost anyone paying attention that Latino interests don't necessarily represent (or align with) the interests of Latin Americans. And this ruptured intersection between two similar groups is, I believe, a very productive site of political discussions and negotiations. It allows for both notions (or categories) to bounce off each other and, therefore, discover their own political grounds/limits. 

But of course, not every fracture is productive: the latest significant development in Latin American politics seems to be the rapid and widespread increase in the region's military investment.

In what seems to be part strategic political approximation and part opportunistic military buying, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (currently in New York promoting an Oliver Stone film!) saw last year as just such a (rare) moment - and took full advantage of spoiled Russian and US relations.

Immediately after the end of the war in South Ossetia, Venezuela announced an unprecedented military and political partnership with the Russian government – largely sponsored by oil money and a $2.2 billion loan from Moscow. Chavez' argument comes on the heels of increasing American military investment in Colombia, which reached record-high numbers in 2008 – more so after the country's right-wing government granted the US government an additional seven military basis in their country.

Brazil didn't follow too far behind: Lula's government signed a $12 billion defense deal with France to buy 50 French EC-725 Eurocopter-helicopters and 5 submarines (one of them nuclear) – on top of a recent bid that has military giants Dassault (France), Boeing (US) and Saab (Swedish) competing to  a three or four billion dollar contract with Brazil - to renew the country's aging bomber jet fleet. The deal, however, seems to be also going to France's advantage, as President Lula “mistakingly” announced that Dassault had the winning bid days before the submission deadlines. A Biden-style confusion, or a sign of a much more intricate defense alignment between France and Brazil?

No matter what, Latin America has its shares of hot buttons, and an arms race only increases cross national tensions: Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela have been on the verge of larger scale conflicts for a long time now, and last year's Colombian excursion into Ecuadorian territory (to assassinate Raul Reyes) had the touch of a US-approved effort – since it was such an unprecedented move. Ecuador responded by buying 24 Brazilian jets and others arms from Israel.

But while many would say that an actual all-scale war in South America is still somewhat improbable, the region's social problems (I.e. widespread poverty and violence, combined with decades of a failed trickled-down social policy) has Latin Americans already at odds with their own local neighbors.

In Brazil, for instance, urban violence and social warfare has reached such high levels, that what was once referred to as a parallel powers (i.e. organized crime functioning as a parallel power structure) has now become much more incomprehensible; these days, not even organized crime offers a real articulation (i.e. a description and explanation) of the current levels of social exclusion and disparity.

Last week, while surfing the internet before I started my work day in New York, I ran into a web site streaming live footage of a kidnapping just blocks away from my family's apartment in Rio de Janeiro. The footage showed a man threatening a woman with a grenade just as he had two armed cops pointing guns at him. My heart went silent for a second: could this be someone I know?! Minutes later, I saw the woman's face, and once again, I had been “spared.”

Thirty minutes later, I noticed that the local police managed to kill the man holding the grenade without hurting the kidnapped woman – and at that time, I tried to remind myself that behind the flat low-res images, there was a man, a victim, a story and a logic.

But before I regained my moral compass, and right after I turned off the live-video streaming tab, I ran into a link to story about a Brazilian filmmaker and his wife, a famed film producer, who had been made hostages a day before, in similar circumstances. These were indeed my friends... Good friends of mine.

Suddenly, the feeling that one can forever dodge bullets and explain social disparity from a distance  completely disappears. What's next then?