Political Report # 1179 Gentrifying Rio

Wei Han Frank Lin / Flickr By Brian Mier, NACLA

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have put the city's controversial "arts-led" gentrification initiatives on full display. With the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, entering their second week, the issue of how the city's urban landscape has changed since winning its bid to host the Olympics is more relevant than ever. Faced with a weak economy and ensnared in political scandal, the state and city governments of Rio de Janeiro have faced harsh criticism for their immense spending on the 2016 Rio Games. But government decisions have also changed the face of Rio itself. These have included transportation improvements that mainly benefit white, middle-class sections of the city's west side and the carrying out of the largest public-private partnership in Brazilian history: an "arts-led" gentrification project in Rio's port area. Arts-led gentrification has in recent years become a popular tool for neoliberal mayors to strengthen real estate speculation in blighted neighborhoods around the world. Today the process is repeating in Rio de Janeiro's port region, where an artist's colony, supported by the Rio de Janeiro Mayor's office, coexists within the context of a mega project called Porto Maravilha (Marvelous Port)-part of a network of public works projects associated with the 2016 Summer Games. In a move patterned after similar processes in the Global North, the Rio de Janeiro city government has used the Olympics as an excuse to target the port region for gentrification while at the same time attempting to theme the area as a vibrant neighborhood for Brazil's "creative class."

Political Report # 1177 The Brazil you won't see at the Summer Olympics: Women on the Frontlines

By Global Fund for Women, Champions for Equality

The 2016 Summer Olympics are about to come to an end in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And while there's been talk about risks in Brazil from water contamination and the Zika virus, there's a far larger threat that's gone largely un-reported: the threat to women's rights from the current political and economic crisis. As the world looks to Rio for the Olympics, it's time to look more deeply at what's going on for women in the country. Women activists are tackling unprecedented rollbacks in human rights, silencing of women's voices, especially in government and public life, and an administration that is turning a blind eye to, among other things, Zika-a public health crisis that disproportionately impacts women. Women's groups have been on the frontlines, leading demonstrations opposing the removal of President Dilma Rousseff (which many characterize as a coup), and denouncing the damaging new policies of the interim government led by Interim President Michel Temer.

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.