Political Report # 1170 The Broken Promise of the Rio Olympics

A slum in Rio de Janeiro Sergio Moraes / Reuters By  The Atlantic

The Rio de Janeiro you see advertised in videos promoting the Olympics is the iconic one everyone knows: Ipanema, Sugarloaf Mountain, the statue of Christ the Redeemer. But that's just a tiny slice of this sprawling metropolis of 12 million people, most of whom live miles from the beach. You can see the other Rio, their Rio, as you drive into town from the international airport, past the walls enclosing the freeway: a sea of red cinderblock shacks stacked precariously atop one another, with narrow roads snaking in between. One in seven Rio residents make their home in so-called favelas like these. When Brazil won the right to hold this year's Summer Games back in 2009, it seemed ready to vault into the club of developed nations. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then the country's wildly popular president, pitched the Olympics as an opportunity to develop Rio's infrastructure, and remake the city into a new world capital. But this was also a rare moment of Brazilian self-confidence-one ultimately undone by hubris.

Political Report # 1162 Terrorized by Police Raids and Mass Displacement, Rio Prepares for Olympics

A girl stands in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo: Aldo Santiago) By Renata Bessi and Santiago Navarro F.,  Truthout

At least 77,206 people have already been displaced from Rio de Janeiro as the city prepares to host the Olympic Games on August 5-21, and police raids -- predominantly against Black youth in favelas and working class neighborhoods -- have intensified. According to Larissa Lacerda, a member of the Rio Cup and Olympics Popular Committee, since the start of 2016, police raids in the favelas have provoked mass killings of poor, Black youth. Lacerda's organization is a collective that brings together unions, NGOs, researchers, students and impacted communities. She said she expects the situation to only get worse in the final days before the start of the Olympic Games, just as abuses worsened before the Panamerican Games and the World Cup. "We are seeing an increased militarization of the city, in the context of a violent and racist security policy that particularly impacts Black youth who live in working class neighborhoods and favelas," Lacerda told Truthout. "These youth are murdered on a daily basis by police. But everyone is impacted by these policies that are based in fear, that create walls, both visible and invisible, and promote the social and spatial segregation of the city, and the increasing criminalization of social movements."