2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia

UPDATE 2: France wins the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, defeating Croatia 4-2 on an own goal by Croatia's Mario Mandzukic (18') , a penalty kick by Antonine Griezmann (38'), and two beautiful goals by Paul Pogba (59') and Kylian Mbappé (65'). Croatia's goals were by Ivan Perisic (28') and Mandzukic (69'), who leapt on a major snafu by France's goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. Croatia dominated the game from start to finish, but France pounced on several chances it got, ensuring itself a championship and giving fans a glimpse of the immense talent the team possessed this year, and will have for a few more World Cups to come.

***

UPDATE: England won their match against Sweden 2-0, so the quarterfinals are nearly set: France against Belgium, and England vs. Croatia, which went down to the wire, i.e., penalty kicks, against the wily Russian team!

France's Kylian Mbappé (right) controls the ball
against pressure from Uruguay's Lucas Torreira
(AFP)

As we near the end of the first week of July, the major tournament, the 2018 version of the FIFA World Cup, for the world's reputedly most popular sport, soccer--or (association) football outside the US--also approaches its end. Taking place across the vast nation of Russia, it has been a smoothly run and mostly scandal-free set of matches thus far, beginning with the opening group games that pitted 4 teams each against each other to decide who would advance to the knockout round. Although there were questions about Russia's efforts to secure the World Cup, much akin to previous financial controversies that have plagued FIFA, this World Cup has run perhaps more smoothly than the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which seemed to be in danger of featuring unfinished venues and the target of potential attacks right up to the moment when they went off without a hitch, or the 2014 edition in Brazil, which unfolded as the country was entering a several economic crisis.

Antoine Griezmann & Kylian Mbappé of France
(TASS via Getty Images)

For the first time in several World Cup meetings, the United States did not qualify, but neither did a few of the world's perennial soccer powers, including 4-time (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006) prior winner Italy, nor Chile or the Netherlands. FIFA's ranking tables included most of the entrants numerically, in descending order (skipping the teams that did not make it): Germany (1), Brazil (2), Belgium (3), Portugal (4), Argentina (5), Switzerland (6), France (7), Poland (8), Spain (10), Peru (11), Denmark (12), England (12), Uruguay (14), Mexico (15), Colombia (16), Croatia (20), Tunisia (21), Iceland (22), Costa Rica (23), Sweden (24), Senegal (27), Venezuela (33), Serbia (34), Australia (36), Iran (37), Morocco (41), Egypt (45), Nigeria (48), Panama (55), South Korea (57), Japan (61), Saudi Arabia (67), and host Russia (70). Fortunately for fans--well, soccer fans in general--the rankings often correlate to teams' presence in the World Cup, which they achieve by winning regional association matches, but they do not guarantee success at the World Cup.

A distraught Neymar Jr.,
after Brazil's loss to Belgium
(AFP/Getty Images)

In the first round matches, this World Cup provided a few shockers. First, in Group F, South Korea's and Mexico's victories over Germany knocked the top ranked team and the 2014 World Cup victor out of the tournament; other top ranked teams that failed to advance included Costa Rica, Peru, and Poland. First time participant Panama also was sent off the pitch, as were the scrappy footballers from Iceland, who became fan favorites in part because of the tiny size of their country compared to many of the other competitors, and the Super Eagles of Nigeria, who carried the hopes of their country and much of sub-Saharan Africa on their shoulders, but only finished with three points, or one win and two losses. (What was not known was that Nigeria's captain, Jon Mikel Obi, was playing the Argentina match while keeping silent about the fact that his father had been kidnapped in Nigeria and ransomed for $28,000; his father, thankfully, was released several days later.) On the other hand, standout teams were Uruguay, Croatia, and Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, and France all advanced to the knockout round, as did host Russia, which was in the weakest group, A, yet played quite well, amassing 8 goals, the second-most of the round, tying it with England, and playing with forceful enthusiasm. Both Spain and Portugal showed signs of vulnerability, yet both also went onwards to the round of 16. Argentina, with its superstar Lionel Messi, barely did so after tying Iceland, losing 3-0 to Croatia, and slipping past Nigeria 2-1.

Belgium's Kompany (in air at right),
heads the ball which ricochets off
Brazil's Fernandinho (17), for an own goal
(Frank Augstein/Associated Press)

The second round proved to offer more shockers; France dispatched Argentina 4-3 on two decisive goals by its 19-year-old shining light Kylian Mbappé, thus sending the Albiceste back to Buenos Aires,  perhaps concluding Messi's World Cup career. Uruguay beat Portugal, perhaps closing out the career of the Portuguese Selecção's world famous Cristiano Ronaldo. Belgium played a lethargic match against Japan, which shone for nearly the entire time, yet the Diables Rouges came back to send the better team packing with a stoppage time winner and 3-2 score. Mexico, another fan favorite, lost to Brazil 2-0, and up through this game, the Brazilians displayed their trademark jogo bonito, showing brilliance at times in their passing and footwork, though they did not seem to be as eager to score as some of their opponents. Another huge surprise with the large number--three--games decided by penalty kicks, which aided the lower-ranked Russia to knock off Spain 4-3 in PKs, which sent shockwaves through the stadium. England triumphed over Colombia 4-3 in PKs after its goalie's heroics, and Croatia, the tournament's sleeper team, defeated Denmark 3-2 in PKs after 1-1 score.

Colombia's Yerry Mina (13) celebrating with
teammate Dávinson Sánchez (23) after scoring
against Poland (Thanassis Stavrakis/AP)

We are now in the quarterfinals, and so far, France and Belgium are giving every sign of providing the side of the draw that will produce in the eventual victor. In France's case, in addition to Mbappé, its veteran goalkeeper Hugo Lloris has been stellar, and shut down an evenly matched Uruguayan team to preserve the 2-0 victory achieved by defender Raphaël Varane heading the ball in (on a beautiful pass by forward Antoine Griezmann) and by Griezmann on a pass by forward Corelin Tolisso. So evenly matched were the teams that both France and Uruguay took 11 shots, with 2 of les Blues on target vs. 4 from the Uruguayan side; each team had nearly the same number of fouls (17 for Uruguay, 15 for France); and each received 2 yellow cards. The difference was France's control of the ball, at 62% of the match, and the skill of its defense (Lucas Hernández, Samuel Umtiti, Varane, and Benjamin Pavard) in shutting down Uruguay's threats, while maximizing its few opportunities. Mbappé, Griezmann, Varane, Tolisso, and the rest of the French team constitute one of the best squads the country has fielded since its World Cup victory in 1998, and if they get past Belgium, they could and should win it all.

South Korean players (in red) in shock after defeating
Germany (in green) (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

While Belgium played without brio against Japan, it came out in full force against Brazil, whose star, Neymar Jr., had begun to spur memes because of all of his histrionic diving and flopping around, though he was legitimately being pushed around during Brazil's opening match against Switzerland. The referees seemed to be averse to calling any penalties against Belgium whenever Neymar and his teammates ended up crumpled on the field, so Brazil would have to recalibrate and deploy its dazzling skill work to manufacture goals. Unfortunately, despite putting on a clinic in the first half, the Brazilian team could not seem to convert chances, and found itself down 2-0 on an own goal by defense Fernandinho, one of the goats of the 2014 tournament, offer a header by Belgian star Vincent Kompany, and a stunner by Kevin De Bruyne that Romelu Lukaku had set up. Brazil led in shots, 27-9, shots on target 9-3, in possession 59%-41%, and in corners 8-4, yet repeatedly failed to follow up on loose balls or potential scoring opportunities. Renato Augusto finally did score in the 76th minute on a pass from Philippe Coutinho, but it was too little, too late, and now the objectively best remaining team heads home. For its part, Belgium stretched Brazil's defense wide open enough on quick runs up field to create the opportunities that gave it the 2-0 lead, and looks to be a danger in the France game and if it heads to the finals. Brazil's exit was not as shameful as 2014, but once again, despite its impressive talent, the Seleção seemed less interested in winning than in putting on a show. The two, I hope someone reminds Brazil, are more than compatible and what many a soccer most wants to see.

Nigeria celebrate after scoring a penalty
kick against Argentina (Reuters)

The remaining match-ups, on the weaker side of the draw, are intriguing: both England and Sweden have played above their rankings,  but the Three Lions' squad has the edge in talent and defense, with the x-factor striker Harry Kane, who has been the team's standout player and converted a number of opportunities so far. It also has some of the better younger players in the tournament, chief among them midfielder Dele Alli, defender Harry Maguire and goalie Jordan Pickford. If England can stay on the attack and open up Sweden's defense, the game is theirs. Russia's host nation fairy-tale effect has taken it quite far (cf. the US, South Korea, France, etc. in past tournaments), but Croatia has shown itself to be of the best teams in the tournament and will put the home field Sbornaya to the test. The Blazers have played unflappably so far. Russia's play has been a bit heavy-handed, so one question will be whether the referees decide to call fouls and dole out yellow cards--or in some cases, red cards that should have come but remain in pocket--which they've seemed reluctant to, which could work in Russia's favor in knocking Croatia's scorers off their game. I should add that given the tensions now besetting the Russian-US relationship, and all of the mounting evidence in the alleged Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, Croatia has my support in this match-up.

Brazil's players stretch Danilo during a training
session on July 3, 2018 (Andre Penner/AP)

A few final points I want to make are that at a time of increasing ethnonationalism across Europe and the US, as well as across the globe, it has been encouraging to witness once against the more racially and ethnically diverse "national" squads perform with aplomb, belying the discourse, promulgated by far-right and anti-immigration parties like the British National Party, Alliance for Germany, National Front, League of the North, etc., that cross-racial and ethnic diversity are a bad thing, that unity and cooperation, even temporary, is not possible and that their their teams are somehow weakened by "impurity." Former colonial and imperial powers France, Belgium and England (UK) would not be where there are in this tournament without their Black, Arab, and mixed-race players. There have been articles about the anger anti-immigration and white nationalist soccer fans have felt about the mixed-race cast of their teams, so it has been especially satisfying to see those teams--save Germany, which crashed out early--kick and shoot their way to the trophy. These teams' successes may be mostly symbolic, and does little to dismantle the underlying structures and systems that enable racism and white supremacy, nor do they provide any answers to the economic and political crises fueling the international migration flows, yet they do represent a publicly visible and global counterweight to the illiberal discourse that is increasingly sweeping across the West and other parts of the globe.

A victorious Belgium celebrate their
defeat of Brazil (AFP)

A second point is that the US, when it reappears in the World Cup, will have to overcome a considerable gulf in terms of coaching, development and skill levels to be competitive. This year's top teams, most European other than Brazil, have played with a sharpness I don't see the US yet able to achieve, but given the depth of US soccer talent, with the right coaching staff and the best players, the US could conceivably go as far as it dreams. The same is true for the African squads, and, as Japan displayed, Asia's best teams too, but between national developmental programs and the European leagues, European teams still have the advantage for the time being.

Poems + Translations: Arnaldo Antunes

Last year I had the pleasure of translating a small cache of poems by Arnaldo Antunes (1960-), a Brazilian musician, composer and writer, who is very famous in his home country, but not as well known on these shores. A former member of the rock & roll  band the Titãs (Titans) and an extensive collaborator with the Brazilian singer Marisa Monte (1967-), Antunes has been publishing his poetry since the early 1980s, and, like his music, it has the capacity for being both seemingly straightforward and accessible, while also proving quite playfully complex. One of my favorite of his musical works is Os Tribalistas (EMI/Phonomotor), a 2002 project with Monte and Bahian musician Carlinhos Brown (1962-).

One challenge with Antunes's poetry is the magic he wields with apparently simple elements combines into challenging verbal artifacts. I am thinking for example of a poem I translated entitled "Pedro de pedro," whose title may seem easy enough, but which is actually quite difficult to render into English. Why? Because "pedro" means "stone" or "rock" and that "de," meaning "of," adds layers of nuance, creating in English the following possibilities: "Stone's stone," "Rocky stone," "Stony stone," "Stone made out of stone," etc.

Of course I can't write all of these into the English translation, which demands that I pick one (I did), but I nevertheless want and need to to give a sense of what a native Portuguese speaker would pick up and puzzle over, yet understand, seeing the title alone. The polysemous nature of such poetry, which abounds in Antunes's work, deeply fascinates me, leading me to attempt to translate the untranslatable, but then, isn't that what all translators at some level are up to? Na impossibilidade fica possibilidade, não?

Antunes also has played with concrete and digital poetics over the years. You can find a variety of examples if you search online. You also can view an array of his musical and visual artistry at his personal site. In 1993, shortly after leaving Titãs, he released a collaborative LP, Nome (Name) guest-starring Monte, João Donato and Arto Lindsay, which was a multimedia music-and-poetic project with a computer-animated video that later traveled to various art museums and galleries. He has continued exploring poetry's materiality, and its nexus with visual art and the digital, and after a bit of scrounging about online, I found three examples of his poems, on Brazil Escola and  that merge the poetic and visual, emphasizing language's materiality and multiplicity.

 The first poem feels very appropriate to the political and social situations in Brazilian and US society today:

    PER

    DER

    BER

LI       TA




    LOS

    ING

    BER

LI        TY

The second involves a little visual play, with the flying upside down once the wing(s) come(s) out (or off, in which case the upside flying also signifies falling!)--and, I should note, the pronoun-less verb is both (2nd person informal in Brazil) imperative and (3rd person) indicative, so "spread" or "s/he/they spread/open):

TIRA
A ASA


E VOA



SPREAD
YOUR WINGS



AND FLY

or

S/HE/THEY SPREAD/S
OUT HIS/HER/THEIR WINGS



AND FLIES/FLY

This third piece is a quartet (or, thinking of visual art, a tetrych) of poems, one partly in English, one the same in the both languages, the other two in Portuguese, and all together forming a kind of crossword puzzle when viewed from afar:

IMAG
IGAB
YBTES

IMAG
IGAB
YTES

(Or "Imagigabytes," a neologism, but really what we produce with every creative thought)

***

IN-
VENTO
VENTO
DENTRO

I IN-
VENT
WIND
WITHIN

This one needs no explication; even if you speak no Portuguese, if you say it aloud it you can here the rhyme, and the inward sound of "dentro" (within, inside) vs. "vento" (wind); is it that "r" that does the trick?

***

MIRA
NA ESTRELA
E ASSOPRA

AIM
AT THE STAR
AND BLOW

This is quite simple too; my translation misses the visual design of the poem, in which the "blowing" is clearly attenuated; stars are far away, as we know.

***

YOU CAN THINK EVERYTHING
TUDO PODE SER PENSADO

VOCE PODE PENSAR TUDO
EVERYTHING CAN BE THOUGHT

With this one I reversed the translations, so that his English becomes Portuguese and vice versa. As we human beings steadily learn, almost anything can be thought, though that does not mean we need to act on it.

All translations and commentary © Copyright John Keene, 2018.

Annotations, Soon In Portuguese

Annotations, my first book, appeared 23 years ago, when New Directions published it in the fall of 1995. In the intervening years, the brief, dense, lyrical novel--or poetic memoir, if you like--has, I'm thankful to say, attracted a steady readership and remains in print. Until recently, however, neither the book nor any portion of it has ever been translated into another language, as my other work has. An attempt shortly after the book was published in the US failed because the foreign publisher felt Annotations was perhaps too culturally specific. For my part, based on my own experience as a reader and translator, I have long wondered if the dense web of allusions, and the intricate, often lilting quality of the prose was the barrier. But unless you hear from the publisher and potential translators, you may never know what is or was going on.

A few years ago, however, I learned that a planned publication of Annotations in Portuguese, or Anotações, was going to go forward. The publisher is A Bolha Editora, who co-published my translation into English of Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer in 2014 with Nightboat Books. Guided by writer, editor and genius Rachel Gontijo Araújo, A Bolha Editora is one of Brazil's exciting small presses, publishing both domestic and international authors, and have been based in the downtown Botafogo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro since their founding (though I believe they may have recently moved to Brasília, the federal capital). Among the other authors and artists on A Bolha's roster are a number of prose and poetic experimentalists, including Claude Cahun, Kammal João, Bhanu Kapil, Tove Jansson, Douglas A. Martin, Adriano Motta, Jesse Moynihan, Nathanaël, Virgílio Neto, Gail Scott, and Studs Turkel.

Anotações' translator is Daniel Lühmann, originally from Poço de Caldas, Minas Gerais, Brazil, and now living in Lisbon. Daniel has previously translated the noted graphic novel, Snowpiercer (A Perfura de Neve) by Jacques Lob, Benjamin LeGrand and Jean-Marc Rochette, and Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly (Um Reflexão na Escuridão), into Portuguese, and also makes intriguing performance videos, under the title "Pasarela" (Catwalk), which you can view on YouTube. If you read Portuguese, you can enjoy Mayra Azzi's short, informative profile of him on Revista Trip (the same site that featured the Thiago Borba images) going about his morning routine, with accompanying photos. Or if you are feeling especially tl;dr, you can see Azzi's photo series "Despertando com Daniel Lühmann" (Waking Up with Daniel Lühmann) at Cargo Collective.

Anotações, from A Bolha
Editora (image © A Bolha Editora
and Rodrigo Martins)

In terms of the translation process, he was a pleasure to work with, possessing not just a fine ear but a subtle eye, and we resolved some thorny issues involving vernacular terms and syntax, assonant, consonant and rhyming prose, and obscure references that American readers might be able to guess but Brazilians probably could not. (As was the case with the original version, it will have a glossary, though much expanded from the one I provided at the request of James Laughlin.)

Daniel even devised a solution to "Scaredy cat, scaredy cat, too scared to know where your shadow's at" that mirrors but is hardly an echo of the original. In the process, he even reminded me that I'd invented a few words in that text. His version will be of incalculable help to anyone translating Annotations into any other language, and, like the best translations, he creates a music akin to the original, but distinctively (Brazilian) Portuguese. To him, publisher, author and visionary Rachel Gontijo Araújo, and everyone at A Bolha Editora, I offer my deepest abraços e obrigadões.

The volume is slated to be out later this year, I think, and I think it's OK to show part of one of the covers (there may be two), which uses a original painting by Rio native Rodrigo Martins (cf. above).

Carnaval in Recife (AfroPop Worldwide)

Carnaval in Recife, 2018

It's that time of the year: Carnival in the Caribbean, Hispanophone Latin America, and Europe, Carnaval in Brazil and Portugal, Mardi Gras in parts of the US, all marking the rise of the Lenten season. Over the years I've periodically blogged about Carnival celebrations, with the last such post, a search tells me, coming in 2012, my final year in Chicago. Those snowy Midwestern winters often provoked thoughts of getting far away and celebrating at a Carnival celebration, but the scheduling has never panned out. Glancing through news sites during the last several weeks, I've begun noting photos of preparations for Carnival and the big events themselves, fermenting once again my desire to attend one.

In lieu of doing so this year, I am posting a few photos from a Carnaval celebration in Recife, one of the oldest and major cities in Brazil's northeastern region. The Recife Carnaval is an important and culturally distinctive Carnaval in Brazil (the other key ones are in Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro), with the ethos that all attendees are participants, an Afro-Brazilian religious performance, Maracatú, at its core, and a drag parade to open it. Recife's local frevo music also serves as one of many soundtracks for the Carnaval blocos.

Since I'm in cold--and snowy (sigh!)--New Jersey and not Recife, the photos are courtesy of Banning Eyre, and are featured on AfroPop Worldwide.  I'm only going to share a few of the photos, all of which are copyrighted and belong to AfroPop Worldwide and Banning Eyre, so please do head over to AfroPop Worldwide's blog to see the rest. Banning Eyre says a bit not only about the Carnival events, with a bit of background about Recife Carnaval, but also notes how Brazilian's faltering economy is effecting the celebration.

If you have photos of Carnival or Carnaval celebrations, in Recife or anywhere else, please do share the links in the comments section here!

Side street maracatu!

Frevo on parade

No means no, My body is not
your plaything. Women's empowerment
is surging in Brazil, as elsewhere.

Brazilian Notes: Quilombo Decree Upheld + Borba's "Black is Beautiful (#BLVCKSBTFLL)"

The signs read, "Brazil is quilombo residents;
not one less quilombo"

All over the Americas, when fugitive slaves had the opportunities to escape and set up maroon (marrons in French, cimarrones in Spanish, maròn/mawòn in Kreyol/creole, etc.) communities, beyond the administrative and military grasp of the settler-colonial and slave system, they did so. These communities took different forms in different parts of the hemisphere, but their legacies continue, sometimes in name (palenques in Spanish, maroon towns or free towns in English), sometimes in traces and foundations that are mostly forgotten but still inspire the descendants. In Brazil, these communities were often known as quilombos, the most famous of which remains Palmares, in the interior of the northeastern state of Alagoas, north of Bahia, established by a group of fugitive slaves and warriors led by the great Imbangala (Angola)-descended Zumbi (1655-1695).

Quilombos, from the Kimbundu word kilombo, dot rural areas far from the major metropoles across northern and northeastern Brazil. As anti-colonial and anti-imperial, black-centered zones of resistance, they were targets of the Portuguese and later Brazilian governments in the colonial period, and the state's administrative, bureaucratic, legal, social, and economic war against them has not relaxed in the 20th and 21st centuries. From attempts to seize title to quilombo land to the murders of quilombolas (residents of the quilombos), these communities have had to engage in continual struggle to stay whole, and free. A ruralist coalition of lawmakers, some allied with agribusiness and other powerful interests, has repeatedly attempted to gain control of the increasingly valuable quilombo territory. In 2003, however, then-President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva signed a decree that expanded the quilombolas' rights to title and demarcated their land, empowering the residents to gain legal title in order to keep them.

Brazil's current president, the profoundly unpopular Michel Temer, took office after a soft 2016 coup in which he and the Brazilian Congress impeached and ousted popularly elected president Dilma Rousseff, Lula's successor, over technical budgeting violations. Temer subsequently began instituting a range of neoliberal policies, under the aegis of pro-market rhetoric, yet Brazil's economy has continued to sputter, and the once expanding lower middle class of the Lula years has increasingly tumbled back into poverty. Among Temer's actions that threatened the quilombos was an order to suspend the titling process for the quilombos, which are supposedly protected by the Brazilian Constitution, until the Brazilian Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal, or STF) could rule on the validity of the decree Lula signed, which the conservative Democratic Party challenged.

After over five years in court, an overwhelming majority of the justices voted, 10-1, to uphold the decree, finally leading the Democratic Party's leader, Senator Agripino Maia, from the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, to end his opposition. The STF ruling represents a major victory for the quilombo communities and Afro-Brazilians in general, as well as for indigenous Brazilians, who have seen their lands seized and rights threatened, and a significant defeat for the powerful conservative rural interests, and their allies, including overtly racist, homophobic leading far-right presidential contender Jair Bolsonaro (of Rio de Janeiro state), who have strongly supported Temer.

As Black Women of Brazil blog reported (translating a report from the Brazilian media site iG):

Members of the National Coordination of Articulation of the Quilombola Rural Black Communities (Conaq) celebrated the [decision].”This is a first step in the recognition of the debt that the Brazilian State has with the quilombolas, as it also has with the natives,” said Denildo Rodrigues, a member of the association at the end of the trial.

Conaq was one of many associations engaged in lobbying the STF in voting. Among other actions, it organized the undersigned “Not one less quilombo”, which had more than 100 thousand signatures requesting the maintenance of Lula’s decree.

“There is no motive, reason or circumstance today for the policy of titling quilombos to be or remain paralyzed. What is expected now is for the public administration to continue and complete the regularization processes,” said Juliana de Paula Batista, a lawyer at the Socio-Environmental Institute, also involved in the case.

It would be foolhardy to believe that this successful ruling will completely halt outside interests' attempts to gain control of the quilombolas' land, but it does give them an even stronger legal foundation to defend themselves in the courts, even as they battle ongoing violence and other forms of predation.

* * *

Photo © Thiago Borba

Black Women of Brazil Blog (BWBB) is always a trove of current, informative news about Black Brazil. One recent article I enjoyed featured the work of Bahian-born and based photographer Thiago Borba, whose current project, "Black Is Beautiful," so appropriate for Black History Month, is featured at Revista Trip. On that site, in an article entitled "A coisa tá preta" (The thing is black), writer Giulia Garcia discusses Borba's route to the project, which uses the respective English title and hashtag Black is Beautiful (#BLVCKSBTFLL). After turning to photography in 2006 and studying in Spain, Borba could find no jobs in Bahia, so he pursued a commercial career in São Paulo to make ends meet.

Photo © Thiago Borba

In 2016, however, he reconnected with an earlier interest in exploring the topic of blackness in relation to beauty, still so fraught in Brazil, and started a photographic project entitled Paraíso Oculto (Hidden Paradise), melding images of black beauty in human form and natural landscapes. As BWBB regularly points out, contestations over beauty, and valorization of Eurocentric standards, constantly play out not only in interpersonal and intrafamilial spaces, but in the Brazilian public sphere. A number of spectacular, overtly racist incidents, involving denigration of Afrobrazilians' hair, features, color, style, and intelligence, have occurred over just the last year. One irony in all of this is that Afrobrazilians now constitute a numerical majority in the country, with sizable populations in Brazil's north, northeast and southeast.

Photo © Thiago Borba

He returned to Bahia from São Paulo last year, and began focusing on images of Afrobrazilians, particularly darker-skinned ones, who remain the most discriminated against in Brazil--not unlike in the US, where colorism within black communities, and within the larger US society, persists. Bahia is the traditional African heart of Brazil, with the highest percentage of self-identified black ("negro") and brown or mixed race ("pardo") residents, but hierarchies of color, class and ancestry exist there as well. As the Brazilian saying goes, "Quanto mais preto, mais preconceito sofre" (How much blacker you are, the more prejudice you suffer"), as true in Bahia as in pats of Brazil far smaller black populations, like Santa Catarina, in the far south.

Photo © Thiago Borba

Photo © Thiago Borba

The new project centers "pretos retintos" (dark-skinned blacks), those people who are "mais preto," amid a range of hues; Borba draws his subjects mostly not from the ranks of models, but from his personal and broader social network. (Looking at the photos, though, any of these subjects could or should model, and some, like Vanderlei Nagô, clearly are modeling!) Borba began posting the images on his Instagram page, and from there they gained wider notice and were selected for the state of Bahia's Novembre Negro (Black November) campaign. (November 20 is Dia da Conciência Negra, a holiday celebrated since the 1960s and officially established as a legal holiday in 2003 to honor the death, in 1695, of none other than Zumbi do Palmares, mentioned above. In Bahia, the entire month is beginning to assume the cast of honoring black Brazilian history.)

Photo © Thiago Borba

According to BWBB and Revista Trip, one of the images was even promoted on billboards, on buses and in the metro, among other public spaces. For Borba, this expanded reach was important in helping to amplify, in the eyes of minds of Afrobrazilians and all Brazilians, the representation and representativeness of black people in Brazilian society. It is a battle we continue to fight in the US, in similar and different ways.

Photo © Thiago Borba

Photo © Thiago Borba

The Coup in Brazil II: Rousseff Is Ousted

Dilma Rousseff defends herself before
the Brazilian Senate
(Independente)

It is now official; after the two-week façade of the Rio Olympics allowed Brazil to project a positive international image of itself, its sidelined Dilma Rousseff, democratically elected in 2010 and 2014, has been ousted from her post. This past Wednesday, August 31, according to the dictates of Brazil's post-dictatorship federal constitution and by a vote of 61-20 in Brazil's Senate, she has been officially removed from office. A second vote failed to reach the majority required to bar her from running for office again. Rousseff's former vice president, now acting president Michel Temer, of the opposition PMDB Party, assumes the mantle of power. Temer was sworn in two hours after Dilma was out, and now will hold office, unless he too is impeached, on far more solid grounds than Rousseff, given his alleged involvement in multiple corruptions schemes, resigns or falls ill, until 2018.

(I should note that Chamber of Deputies also called for Temer's impeachment in 2015, but that lower house's former president, Eduardo Cunha, who was third in line to the presidency, blocked the push. In April of this year, a Supreme Court Judge, Mello, ruled that the lower house vote to impeach Temer could proceed. The likelihood of that is slim unless significantly more information about Temer's links to corruption receive a public airing. In any case, other parties would have to ally with opponents of his ruling PMDB party to push through a vote. Cunha, for his part, was suspended as Chamber President in May of this year because the Supreme Court ruled he intimidated fellow lawmakers and obstructed investigation into his receipt of bribes; he also has been linked to money laundering schemes involving Petrobras.)

Before the final vote, which required a total of 53 senators to strip her of her position, Rousseff delivered a passionate self-defense outlining how the entire impeachment process was not simply an attack on her, Brazil's first woman president and representative of the Workers' Party, but also a major blow against democracy itself in Brazil. She cited predecessors such as Juscelino Kubitschek, the visionary president behind the construction of Brazil's third and current capital, Brasília, who was nearly toppled several several times, and João Goulart, whose overthrow led to two decades of dictatorship. Her lawyer, José Eduardo Cardozo, underlined in his written defense of Rousseff that the main aim of the impeachment was not to punish Rousseff for her budget manipulations, which a Senate report found did not amount to an impeachable crime, but rather, as wiretaps released by the Folha de São Paulo made clear, to push her out in order to eventually quash the ongoing and metastasizing Lava Jato corruption investigation involving the state oil company Petrobras, construction firms, lobbyists, and a sizable number of Brazil's elected Congressional politicians, including, it must be said again, the new president Temer himself.

I will not reprise my prior post from this past May on the coup, which describes the process by which the impeachment unfolded, but what's clear is that the structures and systems of a functioning constitutional democracy were abused in Rousseff's case to expel her from office. The coup plotters harnessed the public's rage at the country's economic crises and disgust at the rampant corruption swirling around the Lava Jato scandal, the Workers' Party, and politicians in general to get rid of the main obstacle to implementing what they could not achieve electorally: a conservative, neoliberal regime. It is probably the case that had Rousseff decided to take the unethical route and protect Temer and other members of the PMDB Congressional delegation, such as Cunha, she might have continued to receive public condemnation and cratered in popularity, which fell to as low as 8% last year, but she also would still be president. When Temer officially broke with her, however, the die was cast.

What also appears clear is that this coup was poorly covered by the US media--and here I am pointing to The New York Times in particular. Though it did repeatedly point out that Rousseff had not benefited in any way from the Lava Jato corruption or and had not been accused of corruption herself, the Times did fail to note more than once that she had been exonerated in a report by the very legislative body that was voting to impeach her. In a complete flip off to critics of the flimsy basis for impeachment, Brazil's Congress has subsequently ratified into law the very budgetary "pedaling" that Rousseff, like many of her predecessors, had engaged in. Whether Temer and his allies will be able to halt the corruption probes without public unrest is unclear, but so long as he remains in power and retains the support of Brazil's powerful media conglomerates, he and the right can continue to shape the narrative and downplay, to the extent possible, the narrative.

The vote to oust Dilma Rousseff:
Blue was Yes, Gray Abstain,
Yellow Absent, and Red was No
(Image courtesy of Veja Abril)

As it stands, allegations of corruption involving the 81 members (3 per state) of the Brazilian Senate and Chamber of Deputies keep filling the news. In addition to Cunha and Temer, who is barred from running for office for eight years, four major Senate figures linked to Rousseff's ouster are under investigation. They include Senate President Renan Calheiros, formerly fourth and now third in line for the presidency, and Minas Gerais's Senator Antônio Anastasia, who prepared the impeachment vote in the Senate. In total, out of the 81 Senators, 49 are under investigation of some kind. 60% have charges of bribery, money laundering, and other crimes looming over them. Brazil's Supreme Court is investigating 24 of them. 5 face criminal charges outright. One of Temer's strongest supporters, Brazilian Senator from Minas Gerais state, Aécio Neves, the grandson of Brazil's first democratically elected post-dictatorship president, Tancredo Neves, who died shortly before he could assume office, has been named by four different people under investigation in the Lava Jato corruption case. Neves lost to Rousseff in the last presidential election, 52%-49%. Another figure who voted for her, disgraced former president of Brazil and current Senator from Alagoas state, Fernando Collor de Melo, is also under investigation because of his links to the Lava Jato corruption case.

Another deeply disturbing aspect of this episode has been the US government's tacit approval of what was clearly the overthrow of a standing government. As I had previously pointed out, the current US ambassador to Brazil had served in Paraguay when a strange, quasi-democratic coup drove out a leftist leader there. Also, as Wikileaks revealed last year, the US had been monitoring the Brazilian government's phone lines, including those of President Rousseff, as well as many of Brazil's economic officials, and, in a recent revelation that should surprise no one, new president Temer allegedly served as a US informant. Secretary of State John Kerry in particular was mostly silent as Rousseff was put on trial, and has spoken favorably of conservative the former ambassador and now Foreign Minister, José Serra, who lost to Rousseff in the 2010 presidential race and also allegedly has ties to the US government.

Although both Dilma Rousseff and her Workers' Party predecessor Lula oversaw macroeconomic policies falling within the rubric of global neoliberalism, they also expended far more than their predecessors on social programs that helped reduce poverty, increase school enrollment, and increase the size of Brazil's middle and working classes. Afro-Brazilians, who constitute a majority of Brazil's population (roughly 51%) and the majority of its poor, were especially empowered economically by the range of programs Lula and Dilma Rousseff implemented. (One need only look at the success of the medal winning Afro-Brazilian athletes like Rafaela Silva and Isaquias Queiroz, who took up sports and received support via Lula-Rousseff sponsored program.) On multiple levels, these changes were anathema to Brazil's mostly white elites. It was not merely happenstance that Temer's acting--now permanent--cabinet is and remains all male and all white (according to Brazilian standards).

As Brazil became more powerful, it also represented a beacon for other Left-leaning regimes across Latin America. Its support of Venezuela, in particular, as well as the governments in  Bolivia and Ecuador, was stalwart. By pushing Rousseff out, Temer's government will now not only be able to impose a range of neoliberal programs, ranging from privatization of state enterprises and contracting out government services to private companies, and impose government austerity overall, and slash ministries and programs as much as it pleases, popular protests be damned, but it provides a bulwark to the conservative regimes in Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia, as well as the USA, which would like to bar Venezuela from chairing Mercosur, but also which may support a coup, particularly a non-parliamentary one, in Venezuela. Having witnessed a near coup there when George W. Bush was president, I don't doubt that plans for one are sitting on someone's desk in Washington.

Before her impeachment, millions of Brazilians took to the streets to protest Rousseff's government, which was deeply unpopular, even among people who had voted for the Workers' Party. As a number of commentators have pointed out, a large portion of those participating in the anti-Rousseff rallies, which were championed by media conglomerate Globo, were middle and upper middle class Brazilians, particularly in the central and southern parts of the country, and the images of white Brazilian couples marching with a black nanny or maid behind them pushing their children in strollers have. become iconic. Yet what was less covered in the US mainstream media were the millions who also marched against Rousseff's removal and who have consistently called for the ouster of Temer ("Fora Temer") as well. So unpopular was the acting president that he was booed at the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony. Since Wednesday, Brazilians have not taken the coup lightly, with rallies and marches underway all over the country. Given Temer's military support and the leaked wiretap suggesting collusion between some of the people seeking to impeach Dilma, members of the judiciary, and military officials, violent repression of anti-coup protesters is probably coming, especially the further we get from the media spotlight on the coup.

I think Rousseff's ouster should send a warning sign to Hillary Clinton should she win the presidency in November, which appears likely. I doubt that Brazil's administration would or could provide any material support, but the template they've established is one the GOP could replay, without need for a special prosecutor, as they required when they impeached Bill Clinton. Between the endless Benghazi investigation, which showed that Hillary Clinton was no culpable, to the private email server imbroglio, which the FBI stated did not warrant criminal charges against Clinton, to the current uproar, aided and abetted by the mainstream press, swirling around the Clinton Foundation, a GOP House could easily gin up a pretext from any of these as a means to launching a trial against Clinton. Her opponent, Donald Trump, has already spurred outright calls for Clinton to be tried and jailed, and chants along these lines occurred repeatedly at the GOP Convention in Cleveland. Over the last few years both Clinton and her boss, President Barack Obama, have backed Latin American coups and ousters, including the one in Paraguay and the 2009 Honduras coup, which she has admitted she supported. Let us hope, at least for our US democracy's sake, that the impeaching chickens do not come home to roost with the Clintons again.

The Rio Olympics Won (Or Did They?)

Jamaica's Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of
all time, winning his 200m final race
with ease over France's Christophe Lemaître,
who received the bronze.

(Wally Skalij/LA Times)

Yesterday marked the final day of the two-week 2016 version of the summer Olympic Games, held this year for the first time in Latin America, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's second largest city. On many levels, the Rio Olympics succeeded; despite concerns before the games began of the federal political crisis marring the global spectacle, the spread of the zika virus, inadequate preparation and shoddy construction, the potential for international terrorism and domestic crime, grave health threats from Rio's extremely polluted bodies of water, and financial constraints so severe that the surrounding Rio de Janeiro State declared it was out of money and could not fund basic functions, the games took place, with only a few obvious hitches. Rio residents' and international critics' concerns, which included public protests about gentrification and displacement; police and state violence; fiscal waste, misuse of funds and corruption; and so much more, received flashes of coverage before the games began, but mostly vanished, particularly on NBC, which mostly limited its focus to shots of Rio's breathtaking landscape, coverage of half a dozen sports--including swimming, diving, beach volleyball, athletic gymnastics, track and field, and synchronized swimming--, treacly redemptive stories about athletes's backgrounds, and events in or near the bustling Olympic village. Thankfully NBC's streaming options were numerous and, though intercut with commercials, mostly fail-safe.

Americans Tianna Bartoletta, English Gardner,
Tori Bowie, and Allyson Felix celebrating
after winning the gold in the women's 4x100 relay
(Wally Skalij/LA Times)

Despite multiple tocsins before the games began, the Olympic events unrolled in a nearly flawless fashion, barring the weather, when and where scheduled. There was no domestic or international terrorism, and crime against visitors, which received some coverage, though it occurred, was nowhere near predicted. Outside of a few reported illnesses during the games, no athletes grew as ill as envisioned based on testing of Rio's toxic waterways. The Opening Ceremonies lacked some of the pyrotechnic dazzle of prior Olympic welcomes, but the skillful use of visual projections, coupled with Brazil's decision to highlight its rich history and  diverse cultural traditions, made up for the technological squeeze. Amidst the usual display of music and dancing, historical pageantry, national chauvinism, and the parade of athletic beauty, viewers encountered the special treat of Tongan flag bearer and taekwondo participant Pita Taufotatua, shirtless and sporting a sheen of coconut oil; unsurprisingly, he created an international sensation, even if he did not win a medal a week later. Brazil's acting president, Michel Temer, earned boos opening night, but he and the country's political situation mostly remained hidden, even if intrepid local and international reporters did not slack on keeping anyone interested knowledgeable about the impeachment proceedings against elected President Dilma Rousseff.

There were a few incidents that represented cause for alarm. One example was the bullets piercing a tent at the equestrian eventing headquarters during the cross country races, though no one was injured; neither the military nor local police could ascertain or explain where the fusillade came from. A man attempting to run onto the women's marathon course was stopped before he could create havoc. There also were robberies on and around various beaches and in the athletes' village, including the theft of the Australian delegation's electronic equipment and some of its mascot-bearing shirts, right before the games began. The most outrageous imbroglio resulted not from imagined threats, however, but from lies told by American swimmer Ryan Lochte and three fellow swimming teammates, who participated early one morning in an act of vandalism at a Brazilian gas station, after which Lochte repeatedly and publicly lied about it. Claiming he and his teammates had been held up at gunpoint and stripped of their wallets and other goods, he sent a chill through the media about participants' safety. Security camera footage, scanning technology and eyewitness testimony revealed Lochte's tale to be just that. Before he could be questioned he fled the country, and now faces criminal charges.

Multiple medal winner Simone Biles carries
the US flag into the Olympic Stadium during
the Closing Ceremonies
(Wally Skalij/LA Times)

The ongoing problem of doping, which had been in the news before the Olympics started, popped up occasionally. A Kyrgyzstan weightlifter was stripped of his bronze medal after tests revealed the presence of strychnine in his system, while athletes from India, Moldova, China and host Brazil were disqualified because of pre-games tests or challenges. Most in the performance enhancing drug spotlight was Russia, whose athletes on prior Olympic and world championship teams had had their reliance of PEDs exposed by a whistleblower earlier this year, and thus sent a reduced squad to Rio, yet still finished fourth in the medal total. Throughout the two week span, The 2008 host, China, finished second in total medals, and the 2012 host, the UK, though still dealing with the aftermath of its withdrawal from the European Union, finished third.

Team USA led all countries with 121 medals, including 46 golds, for which praise must go to US's women athletes, who were pacesetters in a number of sports. The first medal, a gold, of the games, came at the gun of Virginia Thrasher, who won in the women's 10m air rifle. In total, US women won 61 medals, which, if they were there own country, would have placed them fourth. Gold medalists earning praise included the women's gymnastics team, which finished their routines nearly 2 points ahead of competitors, and which included all around champion Simone Biles, who earned 5 medals in total, 4 of them gold (though hateful social media attacks on London all around gold medalist Gabby Douglas's hair and stance during the team medal ceremony marred what would been a coronation for the women tumblers); swimmer Katie Ledecky, who won three individual goals, as well as team gold; swimmer Simone Manuel, who became the first African American woman ever to win an individual Olympic gold in her sport; the US women's basketball team, which dominated, as did the US women's  water polo and eight rowing team; women's freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis, who finished first in the 117 lbs category; triathlete Gwen Jorgensen, who like all her fellow competitors deserved multiple medals for swimming in the stew of Rio's Guanabara Bay; and 165 lb boxer Claressa Shields, who repeated her pugilistic wins four years after her victory in London.

The US men's 4x400m team, which won the gold:
LaShawn Merritt, Gil Roberts, Tony McQuay,
and Arman Hall (David Verburg ran in
the qualifying heats as well.
(NBC streaming screen capture)

In other sports, although they did not win golds, US women still made a mark. New Jersey-based fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first woman ever to compete in Olympic fencing wearing a hijab. She and her teammates would go on to win a bronze in team sabre competition.  US cyclist Sarah Hammer won a silver in the women's omnium race, an event I'd never watched before but found enthralling, and Alise Post won a silver in the women's cycling BMX race, which was as wild and rugged as it promised. In some cases, US women's teams or athletes who had dominated in prior years faced stiffer competition this year, but still took home medals; this was the case for the US women's beach volleyball duo, indoor volleyball team, and some of the swimmers, though in the pool the US women and men repeatedly set the pace. (And yes, Michael Phelps, that natatory Methuselah, won two individual goals, one silver, and three relay golds, in his fourth straight Olympics, to raise his all-time total to an astonishing 23 gold medals, three silvers, and two bronzes, making him the most decorated Olympic athlete ever.)

In track and field, the US women shone like supernovas. Dalilah Muhammad became the first US woman ever to win the 400m hurdles, and her teammate Ashley Spencer earned bronze. In the 100m hurdles,  Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali, and Kristi Castlin swept all three medals. The 4x100m and 4x400m teams also won, with the former successfully protesting interference during a heat, which required them to re-run the race all by themselves on the track. They produced the fastest time among the semifinalists. US women won on the field, and their victory in the relay finale allowed Allyson Felix to win her 9th track and field medal, tying her with Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey, while also handing her the sixth and most gold medals of any competing women track athlete in history. On the opening night of the track events, Michelle Carter became the first American woman ever to win the gold in the women's shot put (and followed in the footsteps of her father, Michael Carter, a silver medalist in the same event at the LA Olympics in 1984). A few days later, in the women's long jump, Tianna Bartoletta and Brittney Reese finished first and second. Where they did not win gold, the American women nabbed silvers and bronzes in a number of events (100m, 400m, pole vault, 1500m, etc.).

US swimmer Katie Ledecky, outpacing
the field in her 800m race, in which she
set a new world record.
(Robert Gauthier/LA Times)

One of the pole stars of this year's track and field races, and of the entire games, was Jamaica's Usain Bolt, who won his third consecutive golds, almost effortlessly, in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m races. In fact, Bolt looked so dominant that the seemed never to be breaking a sweat. He will easily go down as the greatest sprinter of all time, a runner of power and panache, who reset the template for what was possible. Watching him, it struck me that if he decided to continue competing, rather than retiring, he might even trounce competitors in Tokyo 4 years from now. His fellow sprinters, including several young Jamaicans, Americans, and Bahamians, will thank the gods every day if he holds to his promise to speed off into the horizon. Jamaica's dominance in the sprints was evident as well in the figure of Elaine Thompson, who won the 100m and 200m, with a smile, dethroning her countrywoman Shelly-Ann Fraser-Price, the incumbent 100m champion, who took bronze. A third Jamaican, Omar Price, won the men's 110m hurdles, and was met, unfortunately, with homophobic commentary on social media back home. With the long distance races, Kenya again showed its mastery. Kenyan men and women medaled in the women's & men's marathon (both gold), women's & men's 10,000m (both silver), women's (gold and & silver) 5000m, women's (silver) and men's (gold) 3,000m steeplechase, women's 1500m (gold), women's (bronze) and men's 800m (gold), and, a first, the men's 400m (silver) and javelin (silver).

There were many great stories across a number of the competitions, perhaps beginning with host Brazil's Rafaela Silva, a native of the local favelas and an out lesbian, who received her country's first gold of the games in judo. Silva had competed in London, lost and received a bombardment of racist hate online, causing her to fall into a deep depression. She fortunately did not give up hope or determination, and ended up anchoring the 19 medals Brazil ultimately won. Another remarkable local story was that of Bahian canoer Isaquias Queiroz, known to Brazilians as "Sem Rim" (Without a Kidney). Queiroz won 3 medals, two silvers and a bronze, despite competing with only one kidney, and having triumphed over near-death three times, which included being kidnapped and trafficked and falling hard on a rock, splitting one of his kidneys in half, before he was 10 years old.  Brazilians also won golds in the pole vault, women's volleyball, men's beach volleyball, boxing, sailing, and, to national relief, men's soccer. To make it even sweeter, they defeated Germany, which had humiliated their hosts 7-1 in an elimination match at the 2014 World Cup.

USA's Kevin Durant and Jimmy Butler
celebrate after winning the gold medal
match. (Wally Skalij/LA Times)

Puerto Rico, facing one of the greatest social and economic trials in its recent history, was able to celebrate tennis player Mónica Puig, who defeated a raft of highly ranked competitors to take the women's individual gold medal, her country's sole prize in Rio. In the first Olympic appearance of rugby sevens, one of my favorites this time around, Fiji, which also won no other medals, finished first, with the inventor of the game, the UK, taking the silver, and a spunky South African side winning bronze. A black Ukrainian* Greco-Roman wrestler, Zhan Beleniuk, took the silver in the men's 85 kg competition. There was also the moving story of the Independent Olympic Athletes, who competed under no flag; one, Fehaid Aldeehani, won gold in the men's shooting double trap competition, while another, Abdullah Alrashidi, took bronze in men's skeet. Also moving was witnessing what might have been the final Olympic appearance of former gold medal winner Venus Williams, who did not advance in the individual competition or in doubles with her sister Serena, fresh off her Wimbledon victory, but did win a silver medal with mixed-doubles partner Rajeev Ram, losing to another US pair, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock.

(*Who knew there were black people in Ukraine? And they don't have an easy time of it, unsurprisingly.)

These games featured 53 out LGBTQ athletes, the most ever. Some, like British diver Tom Daley and US basketball star Brittney Griner, were famous as out gay pathblazers. Others, like her teammate Elena Delle Dona, came out publicly right before heading to Rio. 47% of the out gay athletes actually earned medals, and several, including British boxer Nicola Adams, won gold. Still others, who were not out, however, were nearly exposed, with dangerous consequences, when a British Daily Beast reporter decided to masquerade as a gay man, trawl for hookups, and then wrote a snarky, homophobic article that gave clues to the closeted and DL men he had connected with. After being widely denounced, he publicly apologized, and was eventually recalled home early.

***

When Rio and Brazil won the opportunity to host the games eight years ago, the region's and nation's economies appeared to be on the upswing. Two economically vibrant, though corruption-ridden terms by Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil's first Leftist president since its return to democracy, led to the easy election of his chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, a former revolutionary turned technocrat, and under both, Brazil saw a sizable increase in its middle and working classes, aided in part by "Bolsa Familia" and other programs that Lula, Dilma and their Congressional allies implemented. The Olympics, like the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament, held across Brazil, were to be crowning events to Brazil's ascension to the first rank of the global community.

Though Brazil's leaders, and admittedly a great many people all over the world, including the US administration of George W. Bush, did not fully grasp what was underway, the ground, however, was about to fall out beneath them. 2007 through 2009 marked the worst of the global financial crisis and recession, which Brazil initially weathered, but the collapse of commodity prices, inadequate monetary policies, and Rousseff's and the Brazilian Congress's failure to trim spending--not slash, but readjust--sent Brazil careening towards a cliff off which it has since plunged. Inflation and now deflation, fiscal contraction, and a dense and intricate tapestry of corruption investigations, ensnaring politicians and business people from the acting president down to local officials, are today's baselines across South America's largest economy.

Brazilian canoeists Erlon de Souza and
Isaquias Queiroz, after their silver medal
race in the 1000m pairs

None of this boded well for a country, state and city that had agreed to spend billions to host the Olympics, which are a financial drain even under the best of circumstances. In the run-up to the Rio games, the governor of Rio State, facing a funding emergency, even appealed to the nation for money; the state, he claimed, was unable to pay for basic services, and needed help even finishing the Olympic projects underway. Additionally, right before the games started, policemen protested with signs warning visitors about the tenuousness of their safety, saying they were entering "Hell." In response, Rio and Brasília found a bit more money, and the city was able to deploy  85,000 security officers, who included federal military service people. Questions arise about what will happen now that the Olympics--and soon the Paralympics--have ended. Where will the funds for Rio State's necessary expenditures come from now? And what effect did the redeployment of military officials have on crime in locales away from the Olympic events? Given the horrendous pre-Olympics track record of police murdering Brazil's poor, particular Afro-Brazilian youth, how will these empowered state forces interact with Rio's impoverished communities once the international media are gone?

Rio's mayor Eduardo Paeswas quite pleased, however,  with how things turned out. A member of the centrist-conservative PMDB party, home also to acting president Temer, Paes has stated that the Olympics allowed Rio to push through infrastructure projects that would have taken decades or which would never have been realized otherwise. The new subway line to the city's southern edges, the enhanced network of bus lanes and routes, and the Olympic Village itself are among the projects that Paes can tout as proof that Rio dig gain something beyond fourteen days of visitors, exciting races and bouts, and international attention. In fact, the Olympics' apparent success will probably serve as the launching pad for Paes' presidential run, after a year's sabbatical at Columbia University though he may need to switch parties (as he's done repeatedly) if Temer and other PMDB politicians remain deeply unpopular. That most of these new structures, facilities and renovated areas will primarily benefit Rio's wealthiest residents and future tourists far more than the majority of the city's working class and poor was part of his and other organizers' vision.

Ukrainian wrestler Zhan Beleniuk
(NBC Streaming screen capture)

Authorities forcibly displaced favela residents from their homes and razed portions of certain neighborhoods, such as Vila Autódromo, in the southern sector of Rio. For the Olympics Media Village, developers utilized public land near Olympic Park that had long been the ancestral home of Afro-brazilians fighting for decades to claim it as a quilombo, and thus their own. The condominium built on this spot, Grand Club Verdant, will be sold to private buyers once the games end. The Athletes' Village, also constructed on public land, is slated to become luxury housing rather than lodgings for Rio's middle and working class residents. Organizers also filled in protected public wetlands to build the golf course, but once the games conclude nearby Cariocas who aren't rich will not have access to it. With regard to the billions of dollars that vanished on their way to rectifying Rio's waste disposal and water pollution crisis, no one can account for them. There will, however, be a new museum downtown highlighting Rio's role as a major slave port; when building the new port, construction workers discovered remnants of the original port, graves and artifacts dating to Rio's early history, and have grasped the potential touristic and historical value of creating an exhibit around them.

Rio's experience is only the most recent example of the International Olympic Committee's flawed approach to staging games that, at this point, very few countries can afford. For two weeks of athletic competition--providing thrills for viewers, a bit of pride for participating countries, future employment for physicians, chiropractors, and physical therapists, and new entries for the record books--host nations are expected to indebt themselves. In the case of the UK and China, the strain was great but not insurmountable; with Russia and the Sochi Winter Games, we may not learn for years what this exacted on the host nation's still staggering economy, or its politics and society, though it did give Vladimir Putin an electoral boost. As the host 30 years ago, Montreal, could attest, however, along with more recent host Athens, sometimes the costs are too high to bear.

US freestyle wrestler Helen Maroulis, winning the
gold medal by defeating Japan's Saori
Yoshida in the women's freestyle 53kg final.
(Robert Gauthier/LA Times)

Perhaps the answer is not to end the Olympics, despite their long history of cozying up to anti-democratic autocrats and greedy corporations, but rather to figure out another approach that will aid the cause of athletic, cultural and global engagement. One option I have seen suggested is to distribute the games across the globe, using sites already built; a virtual Olympics seems eminently doable. Countries with team handball arenas can vie for those contests; baseball, if it returns, could be staged in nations that play it. More people would be able to attend Olympic events as a result, and rather than having to build billions of dollars of new facilities, countries could spend far less to upgrade existing ones, but only if needed.

Another option that I also saw suggested recently would be to have a given country that agrees to host the Olympics do so for several repeated cycles. So Rio would again host the Olympics in 2020 and 2024. Or perhaps in round robin fashion. This does eliminate the challenge of a new country building all new facilities every four years, but it does not address the large-scale costs that the host would have to bear over a dozen years. Not only would Rio or any country have to keep the facilities it built open and functioning optimally for twelve years, but it would again have to find money for security, further extensive infrastructure upgrades, and so on.

US gymnast Danell Leyva, in his
silver medal performance on the men's
horizontal bar final. (Robert Gauthier/LA Times)

So post-Rio Olympics, I will be keeping an eye on Rio, and Brazil, to see what the hangover and recovery periods bring. Beyond Brazil, I will be curious to know whether the debates that always arise around the Olympics and their future go beyond the theoretical stage. If things run as smoothly as I imagine they will in Pyeongchang in 2018 and Tokyo in 2020, any serious talk of reforming the Olympics will be placed on the backburner for decades to come. That is, if the IOC can find anyone to host the 2024 Summer games and Beijing doesn't decide, given its economic struggles and the environmental toll more building will require, that the Winter Games in 2022 are not such a good idea.

Rio Olympic Village, with the nearly
completely razed Vila Autódromo immediately
to its left