Brazilians conflicted over Olympics
Ask Brazilians how they feel their country is doing hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, and you’ll get a very Brazilian answer: It’s complicated.
The Games were originally supposed to be a celebration of the progress Brazil made throughout the 2000s after its economy boomed, millions of poor Brazilians rose to the middle class and the country became the darling of the global financial industry.
But the tenor of the Olympics changed after the country suffered a series of epic collapses, from a sharp economic recession to an ever-growing corruption scandal to political upheaval that led to suspended president Dilma Rousseff being indicted by Brazil’s Senate last week.
No longer were these the Games to showcase Brazil’s promise, but to salve the nation’s collective wounds.
“Brazil needed something like this because of all the bad things we’ve been going through,” Rodrigo Monteiro, 24, a chemical engineer from São Paulo, told me this week. “We needed to be proud to be Brazilians again.”
What they’ve gotten has been an often frustrating display of the contradictions that plague this South American country.
After an opening ceremony that stunned and impressed viewers around the world, the water in the Olympic diving pool turned a gag-inducing green.
TV shots of Olympians competing under Rio’s glorious, green mountains were interrupted by news that an overhead camera in Olympic Park had come crashing to the ground, injuring seven fans.
Journalists claimed their bus came under gunfire, while delegations from Australia to China to Portugal have been mugged.
As the Games wind to a close, Brazilians can recite each of those instances with ease.
Renato dos Santos Faria, a urologist from Rio, says each new report of a mugging or a malfunction at an Olympic venue stings him.
“It’s not good exposure,” he says. “It’s sad.”
Some Brazilians still chafe at how little access they have to an event that was supposed to be designed largely for them.
Luis Philipp, 24, an engineer in Brazil’s merchant marine, took a stroll with his girlfriend along Copacabana Beach on Tuesday night to soak in some of the Olympic fervor. They stopped to watch a TV screen showing a Brazilian boxer collecting a gold medal, strolled past street merchants hawking Olympic trinkets and listened to a band singing a Portuguese version of Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.
Philipp, who took a bus and a train from a far western suburb of Rio to reach the beach, couldn’t even dream about getting into any of the actual events. Even as athletes compete in arenas that are noticeably empty, ticket prices can start at $30 for less popular sports and balloon into the hundreds for more popular sports such as soccer and basketball.
“It’s too expensive,” he says. “This is the Olympics for you, not for us.”
If I’ve learned anything about Brazilians from my multiple trips here, it’s that they can find a silver lining in just about anything.
Faria says the Olympics forced the Brazilian government to finish a light rail system from the domestic airport to the city center and a desperately needed fourth subway line to the western corners of the city. He points to Rio’s port district, a once-des- olate area that has been been revitalized with waterfront walkways and a new science museum dubbed the Museum of Tomorrow.
“If we didn’t have these Olympics,” he says, “this final deadline, it would’ve taken the government 30 years to finish all of that.”
Carolina Bueno Tereza, 31, an English and Spanish teacher from the interior city of Pereira Barreto, took a break from her hectic schedule of Olympic events to explain to me why she’s happy with the Games.
Building Olympic Park and other venues generated construction jobs for thousands of Brazilians. All the hotels and restaurants that usually wait until late in the year, when Brazil’s summer season begins, to hire additional workers have bolstered their staffs, adding employment.
She says the glitches at venues and the muggings — none of them violent, she noted — are pretty much to be expected after 350,000 tourists descended on her picturesque yet chaotic country.
“All the world is learning at least a little bit about Brazil,” she says. “For 20 days, the eyes of the world are here, and overall, it’s been good.”