Brazil :Why Riot against the World Cup?

Few days left before the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, an interview with an anarchist comrades 
in S?o Paulo about the demonstrations that are unfolding. In a wave of unrest emerging on 
the heels of last year?s riots against proposed transportation fare hikes, thousands are 
once again flooding the streets and clashing with police in hopes of disrupting the games. 
We anticipate more unrest in the coming weeks. ---- What is your analysis of the situation 
surrounding the World Cup? Why are so many Brazilians opposed to it? ---- There are many 
reasons to oppose the World Cup in Brazil. Since 2007, popular committees like the Comit? 
Popular da Copa have been organizing protests and campaigns against the social costs of 
the World Cup, with the participation of many anarchists.

First of all, 250,000 people have already lost their houses in the cities that will host 
the games, without a fair repayment and under operations reminiscent of what the former 
Nazi government did with Jews, immigrants, and others: they painted a number on their 
doors one day, and evicted them the next. Those people were forced to sign papers 
accepting these bad conditions, or else lose everything with no hope of repayment at all.

Second, there are thousands of workers who earn a living from informal work on the 
streets, and they will be forbidden to work inside the FIFA-imposed perimeter during the 
days of the games. This perimeter extends for two miles around the stadiums and the area 
of the Fan Fests, where the games will be shown on the streets via giant screens. In 
addition, prosecution will target those who sell products that FIFA has been given a 
monopoly over, such as the products of sponsors.

The families of the ten workers who died during the construction of the stadiums are also 
waiting for reparations.

Alongside all this, FIFA is imposing a state inside of the Brazilian state. The whole 
population can see how corruption is increasing with these structures for the mega-events, 
while our lives are being destroyed. In 2007, the government said that no public money 
would be used, yet we have seen approximately $4 billion spent on infrastructure to host 
the games. That includes mega-stadiums and roads, and lots of other buildings that won?t 
even be finished for the games and will not be useful in the future, while hospitals, 
schools, public transportation, and work remain precarious for most of the population. 
Strikes are taking place everywhere in a way we have not seen in a long time, including 
teachers, students, bus drivers, and subway workers.

Nor have the other struggles in Brazil disappeared. The homeless movements, indigenous 
resistance, the black and women?s movements, and LGBTTT organizations are all getting some 
attention now, fighting for their rights and intensifying their struggles. The MTST, a big 
movement for housing in S?o Paulo, organized an occupation with a thousand families, 
including those who lost their houses because of the World Cup, near the Itaquera Stadium 
where the first match will take place.

The expected profit for FIFA in Brazil is greater than the last two World Cups put 
together. To ensure this, state repression has increased against social movements and all 
manifestations of dissent?criminalizing strikes and demonstrations that block the street, 
persecuting leaders and collectives, attempting to pass anti-terror laws and other 
oppressive measures. They are using vague terms that leave a great deal of room for 
interpretation to the courts. For now, nobody knows exactly what is a crime or what can 
land you in prison during a demonstration or mobilization. During the games, there will be 
a state of exception and special courts to condemn people.

Another $1 billion has been spent on training and weapons to repress demonstrations. 
Israel is providing training to the police and the army, and is selling drones and other 
anti-riot weapons and devices. The military police are being trained by the French police 
as well as the former American mercenary company, Blackwater [which has changed its named 
to Academi]. Rumors that the huge organized criminal groups in Brazil want to repeat the 
actions of 2006, when they brought all of S?o Paulo to a halt, are being used to justify 
these operations.

All the police forces and the army are working together in a way we have never seen 
before. Probably the biggest legacy of the World Cup will be the growth of state 
apparatuses for governance and repression. These apparatuses will keep this country a 
perfect place to exploit cheap labor and resources while a growing economy grants enormous 
profits to international Capital.


Is the struggle against the fare hikes, which took places last summer, related to this 
struggle against the World Cup? What lessons have been learned and what are the new 
obstacles that must be overcome?

Yes, they are related. First, because many of the movements, collectives, and autonomous 
militants that composed the struggle against the fare hikes are involved directly or 
indirectly with the uprisings against the World Cup. Second, and maybe most importantly, 
they are related because they question a project of a society based on the logic of 
capital. Remember, the fare hikes were attempted in a country that has one of the most 
expensive public transportation fees of the world, relatively speaking (consuming 
approximately a third of the average household income), and a very precarious, overcrowded 
transportation system owned by a small group of businessman. This is a place where the 
urban fabric nearly collapsed due to lack of planning, where public space is being 
hijacked by the private sector, where roads and highways are controlled by the automobile 
industry, where the distribution of the city geography is dictated by real estate speculation.

In this scenario, the fare increase was much more then 20 cents: the hike would interfere 
directly in the mobility of people and, in a city like S?o Paulo which has 28 million 
people, it became an issue of depriving the population of basic rights such as school, 
health care, or home ownership. With that context in view, we can see that when an 
international company such as FIFA puts on a huge enterprise such as the World Cup, the 
whole country is submitted to the same immiseration as the fare hikes would produce. This 
is a matter of the privatization of the public sphere with the collaboration of the local 
government.

The World Cup is not going to start on June 12. The World Cup already started in 2007, 
when Brazil was officially given the responsibility of hosting this massive capitalist 
spectacle. From that moment, people were being evicted from their homes in order to build 
stadiums and infrastructure for the Cup, workers were having their activities restricted 
by the government, and so on. This is the reality of the Cup for the poor and peripheral. 
These same people are not going to be able to go to the stadium to watch the matches, 
because the cheapest tickets cost more than the monthly minimum wage. In that sense, the 
Cup is a classist spectacle that the poor are not only unable to see, but they also must 
pay for.

So these struggles are related in the sense that they both confront a development project 
that has no place for the majority of the country?s population. And, not by coincidence, 
they both encounter the very same response from the state: the brutality of its police and 
army.


The Black Bloc is all over the news again. Are these actions bigger than in previous 
years? Are there other tactics that have spread in Brazil?

Black Bloc tactics are not really on the news right now as much as they were in the months 
following the victory against the fare hikes. They are still occurring on the street, 
albeit on a much smaller scale and without much coordination. But they remain a target of 
the state and the media; the Black Bloc appears on the news as a ?threatening 
organization? that is being investigated as a terrorist group. This is probably because 
the authorities fear that this reaction to (and intolerance of) state violence can spread. 
The police are looking for the origins of the black blocs, trying to find out who these 
people are, collecting information about those detained at demonstrations and from others 
who leave traces on the internet. They are performing a big lawsuit as if the black bloc 
were a national criminal organization. What bullshit.

But there are many people who have been introduced to radical thoughts and tactics for the 
first time through the black blocs in last year?s demonstrations. Consequently, many of 
them act without any other anarchist background, as if they were a movement, with 
?official? Facebook pages, calling demonstrations by themselves. This can facilitate the 
pigs? work of finding and identifying them. Also, we can see some of them acting as if 
their tactics are the best on all the earth, that they should always be used no matter how 
or when, and not trying to engage in dialog with the other movements that call for 
demonstrations. So these people sometimes act in a way that ruins the original plan for a 
march route, or that exposes others to more risks rather than protecting them?such as 
barricading other people into the same corner with the police, saving their own asses 
while others are trapped. Unfortunately, some other movements are avoiding them, and 
sometimes avoiding everybody with black or black and red flags. This is a moment to 
rethink the way these tactics should be used. But it is difficult for other anarchists to 
create dialog with this new generation. Maybe only experience will show us solutions.


Have the uprisings that followed last year?s Brazilian protests in Bosnia, Turkey (again), 
Ukraine, Thailand, Taiwan, or anywhere else influenced the struggle against the World Cup? 
And have the nationalists who caused so much trouble in the movement against the fare 
hikes returned to the protests in Brazil?

After the uprising in Turkey, we haven?t seen any other social mobilizations being 
particularly influential on the struggles here. None of these other movements have been 
discussed in the debates here.

Fortunately, middle class liberals and nationalists haven?t found a reason to come into 
the streets again. We saw only one attempt to recreate a march for ?Family, God, and 
Property??a reenactment of an event that took place during the dictatorship?but it was a 
true failure. But it is possible to feel that this tension with the nationalists persists. 
Recent events?including people publicly beating accused thieves or even locking them to 
posts, and lynchings that had the support of some journalists and authorities, usually 
against black and poor people?have showed that Brazil hides a monster that can emerge at 
any time.


The favelas have been severely affected by the development plans leading up to the World 
Cup. There have been evictions and raids and some deaths. How have people responded to 
this repression?

In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, we have witnessed the most offensive operations since 
2009 by the UPP?s?the Pacification Police Unit, a project that has the objective of 
seizing control of the favelas where the only state institution present is the police. 
This is like a new conquest of the West, with the excuse of ?fighting the drug market,? in 
which private capital supports this operation in order to explore the potential of these 
communities that until now use resources and services beyond the control and taxation of 
the state. Resistance to these operations has been strong, and these units are always 
attacked, particularly after the police commit murders.

We see this ?molecularization? of organized revolt when these frequent murders are 
followed by huge riots. In S?o Paulo, in January there was at least one bus burned every 
day in protests against police brutality or for better life conditions in the poor 
neighborhoods. This is even taking place in small cities like Paty dos Alferes, where all 
the police stations were burned and all the police were attacked by crowds after a girl 
died during an arrest.


What have comrades done outside of the protests and riots? Are there new participants, new 
spaces, new tools, new meeting points? When social movements end, it is typical for their 
partisans to become depressed as everything ?goes back to normal.? What, if anything, have 
people done to prevent this? What do you think comrades can do to build strength through 
these movements in Brazil?

After the uprising in Brazil during winter of June 2013, we already knew that other fights 
were about to take place against the World Cup. So during the rest of 2013, we saw radical 
tactics and also radical organizing taking place in all the struggles in which anarchists 
could be involved. We witnessed new occupations by the homeless movements, including 
buildings with hundreds of families. But we didn?t obtain any new spaces for anarchist 
projects, and anarchist squats and social centers are very rare in Brazil. The few that 
exist are threatened by serious repression.

At the same time, some of these spaces and collectives saw a huge groundswell of popular 
interest in participating in debates, organizing, study groups, and other forms of 
anarchist activity. It was good to see that people realize that the struggles of 2013 
emerged from an anarchist tradition and experiences from the anti-globalization movements 
of the preceding 15 years.

We should return to this question again after this new June, this new winter to come; we 
will see where we will be after that. But in this moment, it is important to test our 
abilities and the connections we can make. In this context, being in contact and sharing 
knowledge and support around the world is very important. Thanks a lot for this conversation.