Asia Times Online : : World Affairs
▻http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-120614.html
And yet, and as usual with all things Brazil, all things World Cup got incredibly messy - a running metaphor of the typical assortment of ills faced by the struggling Global South. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been forced to appeal to the historical stereotype of the Brazilian “cordial man” and stress tolerance, diversity, dialogue and even sustainability, as well as condemning racism and prejudice, to exhort the population to forget about their troubles and welcome an army of foreign visitors.
That’s a given, considering the average Brazilian is heartwarming and exceedingly friendly; the devil is in the details - as in, for instance, at least 200,000 poor people evicted from their places or at least threatened with eviction, to make way for major works bound to increase “urban mobility”. Well, only 10% of these works were finished, due in most cases to massive corruption. In Rio, not a single real was invested in a chaotic transport system serving the proletarian peripheral sprawl.