Favela and Futebol VI: its not only about winning
Socrates, a great player with a political conscience (1954-2011)
June of 1982. The Seleção directed by Tele Santana enchanted the world with their beautiful soccer. I clearly remember the first game against the USSR (it happened on my birthday, as it very often do). The soviets scored first and Brazil spent the whole game on attack. The equalizing goal came only at 30 min of the second half. With 3 minutes left Paulo Isidoro crossed from the right before the penalty area, Falcão opened his legs for the ball to continue its transversal to Eder who shot one of his cannon balls into the goal. Brasil 2×1 against a strong Soviet team. Paulo Isidoro and Eder (plus Luizinho and Cerezo) being from my beloved Atlético Mineiro I could not get a better birthday present. Three weeks later they lost to Italy and entered history as the another great Brazilian that deserved to win but did not.
June 1982. The same day that Brazil played the Soviets marked the cease fire at the Malvinas (or Falkland) islands. Argentina’s war adventure had failed and the result is that they broke their own treasury, accelerating the end of the dictatorship. As dominos falling, that year would see defaults in Mexico and Brasil. By the end of the year all major Latin American countries were in economic trouble. By the end of the decade all dictatorships had fallen: Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.
Redemocratization brought new hope for the favelas. Social movements were now part of the political process and not underground organizations. Newly elected governments in Rio de Janeiro for instance started to recognize the favelas not as a problem (to be extirpated) but as cheap solutions to an enormous housing shortage. Oscar Niemeyer started designing the CIEPS, full time schools built on the periphery of Rio to educate, feed and entertain kids. The largest Brazilian cohort ever was born that year (1982) and is now turning 30, certainly enjoying the best labor market ever since.
But the same crisis of external debt that helped bring the dictatorships down also ensured that the 1980s would be the “lost decade” in Latin America. Brasil, Argentina and Mexico saw their economies stagnate during the 1980s. The effect on the favelas was that the new political liberties were not matched by parallel investments for absolute lack of money (supported by IMF stringent guidelines). Later in 1986 Diego Maradona won the World Cup almost by himself while at home the fresh (and still financially broke) democracies of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were cooking Mercosur, starting a collaboration that changed the region’s geopolitics.
Sometimes loosing here helps you win further down the road.
Favela e Futebol V – people’s opium
scene from the movie “Cidade de Deus”, Fernando Meirelles, 2002
In June of 1970 all of Brazil went out to celebrate in the streets. The seleção won its third championship. Pelé, Jairzinho, Gerson and Tostão were not only playing well, they were playing beautiful and it helped that for the first time the World Cup was broadcasted live and in color.
The images of Carlos Alberto scoring the fourth goal against Italy in the final or Tostão scoring twice the day I was born (4×2 against Peru) were inscribed forever in everybody’s memory and are repeated ad nauseum by the Brazilian tv in the last 40 years.
However, the late 1960s and early 1970s in Brazil are not much cause of celebration. A brutal military dictatorship Read More…
Favela and Futebol IV – the golden years
Cover of Diego Inglez's book about Cajueiro Seco
It would take 12 years after the Maracanazo of 1950 for the “mutt complex” to be buried once and for all. After the dramatic loss at home the Seleção changed its uniform (never again dressing white jerseys) and did much better. In 1954 it played quite well until crossing path with the fantastic Hungarians led by Puskas.
It was in 1958 that everything started to change. The 18 year-old Pelé and the misaligned legs of Garrincha took the world by surprise, not only winning the World Cup for the first time but doing so with an elegance and a parlance that turned every game of that campaign legendary. The rough video tapes of those time cannot quite capture the magic of Pelé doing hat tricks before scoring at the very final game against the mesmerized Swedish hosts.
Four years later in Chile they would repeat the performance. Here I should correct myself: Garrincha repeated the performance for Pelé got injured. The Brazilian mulatos had won not one but two consecutive championships and by doing so inscribed themselves into the soccer pantheon.
At home things also seemed to be going well. The 1950s was Read More…
Favela and Futebol III: 1950′s maracanazo
For the first time since the advent of World War II the soccer world reconvened in Brazil in June, July 1950. With the Maracanã as the larger stadium in the planet, the country that played well in 1938 (3rd place) was galvanized around its Seleção that seemed unstoppable. In the first phase Brazil beat Mexico (4-0), tied with Switzerland (2-2) and beat Youguslavia (2-0). With a couple of nervous appearances the Seleção was not as exuberant in its first 3 games. The biggest surprise of all was the amateurish team of USA beating England (1-0) in Belo Horizonte, sending the favorite British Team back home.
The second and final phase between the hosts, Sweden, Spain and Uruguay would see the Brazilian splendor that all 50 million Brazilians were waiting for. The first game was an elastic 7-0 win over Sweden, followed by another “goleada” of 6-1 over Spain. Meanwhile, Uruguay struggled to tie with the Swedes (2-2) and beat the Spanish (3-2) on a very tough game.
For the final on July 16th 1950 the Maracanã stadium was at full capacity (200,000) waiting for Brazil to continue its winning strike and take the FIFA World Cup for the first time. Brazil would be champion with a simple tie and actually scores first. But Uruguay’s dangerous counter-attacks worked twice. End of the game, Uruguay 2-1 Brazil. The biggest loss Read More…
Favela and Futebol II: the not so belle époque
Leonidas da Silva, 1940s.
In the first decades of the twentieth century the capital city of Rio de Janeiro went through drastic transformations. Appointed mayor in 1902, Pereira Passos got absolute powers to literally “sanitize” downtown Rio. Inspired by Hausmman Parisian reforms, Passos opened a series of new avenues downtown, helping connect the port and the commercial center with the bourgeoning zona-sul, the ocean front areas of Rio being occupied by the wealthier. In the process, thousands of humble structures (cortiços) were demolished, its inhabitants simply pushed out.
A significant portion of the 5,000 people displaced, having nowhere else to go, got their few belongings and moved up the hills helping fuel the growth of the favelas. The “sanitation” project used real public health concerns to push forward another kind of “cleaning”: to eradicate the mostly black and mulatto poor population from downtown Rio and make it look as European (meaning white) as possible. The belle-époque was not so belle after all.
Racial undertones were so pervasive in Brazil that even a modernist prophet like Lucio Costa wrote in 1928 about “this anonymous crowd that take the trains (…) making us ashamed everywhere. What can we expect from such population? All is a result of race. The race being good the government will be good and good will be the architecture. Say what you may, our basic problem is selective migration, the rest is secondary, will happen by itself.” (Costa in O Pais, July 1st, 1928).
No wonder that dark skinned athletes had to powder their faces and make their skin lighter-colored in order to play. Fluminense, one of the great soccer teams of Rio is still called Read More…
Favela and Futebol I – 1894
Demolitions in Rio, 1904
When Charles Miller arrived from England in 1894 with two used footballs in the luggage Antonio Conselheiro had already gathered thousands of followers at the village of Canudos in Bahia. Conselheiro’s preaching gave hope to destitute rural workers and ex-slaves, and his religious community in the backlands of Bahia started interfering with the local labor market. With the excuse that he was a danger to the nascent republic (he was indeed against the separation of church and state) the “authorities” sent armed men to quest the “rebellion”. The three first ones were defeated, the last and larger one, with 3,000 soldiers and heavy artillery finally managed to kill every man standing in 1897. Canudos was the first war of the Brazilian republic against its own people, as chronicled by Euclides da Cunha (Os Sertões, 1902) and Vargas Llhosa (La Guerra del fin del mundo, 1981), and sadly would not be the last.
As if in another planet, Charles Miller was born in São Paulo of a Scottish father and sent to study in England. When he returned in 1894 he brought two leather spheres in his luggage, allegedly the first footballs to arrive in Brazil[1].
By the turn of the century there were several football clubs functioning in Brazil, all formed by white men of middle and upper middle class. The traditional clubs of today: Fluminense, Botafogo, Vasco da Gama, Corinthians and Atlético Mineiro were all founded before 1910. Futebol conquered Brazil from the top down.
Meanwhile, the soldiers (mostly black) sent to the Canudos expedition had nowhere to live when returned to Rio de Janeiro after two years of military campaign. The War Ministry allowed them to camp on a hill downtown which they named Morro da Favela because the place looked like a hill full of favas (bean sacks) in Canudos were they had camped during the assault. Ever since, the term favela applies to settlements built Read More…
Favela and Futebol
Intro Post by Fernando Luiz Lara
Two of Brazil’s most famous characteristics, futebol and the favela have its roots intertwined from way back. After the British brought what is now most popular sport of the planet to South America about 115 years ago, it was initially adopted by the elite. Around the same time, in the first years of the 20th century’s, the occupation of a hill in downtown Rio created its first favela. Once the game reached the Brazilian peripheries, it broke away with the European formalism and transformed itself in the exuberant game now well known. Soccer and favelas are the highlights of the famous (or infamous) Brazilian informality.
The histories of Brazilian soccer and Brazilian favelas go hand in hand throughout the century. As Brazil prepares to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014, those histories have become more intertwined than ever. As I write these lines I am afraid that decades of participatory processes and community empowerment are being pushed aside with the excuse that Brazil is in a hurry to build the infrastructure for the World Cup ( in 14 different cities) and the Olympic games in Rio.
What I propose here is to chronicle the history of Brazilian informal settlements in parallel with the history of the Brazilian Seleção (national soccer team). From the first years of the 20th century, to 1938, the great disaster of 1950, the redemption in 1958, the marvelous team of 1970, the loss in 1982, pragmatism winning in 1994 and again in 2002…
All of this, in 10 installments, to be able to explain why I am so worried that the World Cup and the Olympics are being used to dismantle decades of progressive engagement in the favelas of Brazil.
Adriana Navarro Sertich
Lubaina Rangwala
Jennifer Renteria
Kirsten Larson
Proyectos Arqui5
Tucker Landesman
Namrata Kapoor
Paula Restrepo-Cadavid
Andrew Carman
Jose Antonio Ramirez
Fernando Luiz Lara
Bethany Opalach
