Accidental Democracy in Brazil: How the 2014 World Cup Led to an Empowered Citizenry

Q & A with Maria Amália Souza, executive director of Fundo Socioambiental CASA (Socio-Environmental Fund CASA). CASA originated as Global Greengrants’ regional grant advisory board in Brazil, and with the leadership of Amália and other Brazilian environmental activists, became a fully independent grantmaker in 2005. CASA is currently Global Greengrants’ grantmaking advisory partner in Brazil.

The 2014 World Cup has created an enormous amount of controversy in Brazil. What is your take on it?

Everyone in Brazil wanted the World Cup—we thought it would leave benefits, like better cities, health systems and transport. And that’s what should have happened. The problem is, Brazil is still a fragile democracy. We gave away all our autonomy to a foreign company—FIFA. FIFA calls itself a nonprofit, but it’s essentially a big, multinational company that comes here and sucks everything that you have, and is not accountable. And large construction schemes are ideal to foment corruption. One must realize that the billions spent that left so much undone cannot have met another end.

Unfortunately corruption is nothing new in this country, but nobody expected the extent to which that happened. Enormous amounts of money were poured into infrastructure projects that never materialized. They destroyed cities, took out the pavement and the main roads. They removed people. And they put nothing in its place. Nothing! What they are having to do now, is cover up holes with grass, like cosmetics, so foreigners won’t see the mess. There were houses destroyed. It was like a warzone. They’ve had all these years to do something, and didn’t do it. One only wonders where all that money went.

But the biggest thing is, 250,000 people were threatened with forced removal.

Wait a second. Two hundred and fifty thousand people? How is that possible?

It wasn’t just to make way for the 12 new stadiums. It was for other infrastructure, transportation, and new tourist activities. The tourists need something to do once they arrive.

The effect on people has been devastating. We don’t know exactly how many people were removed in the end—it’s not in the government’s interest to track and release such figures, so they don’t. But we do know that the number is in the tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands. And we also know that some communities successfully resisted the threat.

How did people resist, and what role did your organization, CASA, play?

In partnership with Both ENDS, [which, like CASA, is a member of the Alliance of Funds], we funded 16 communities. The focus of the funding was on helping these communities to tell their stories powerfully in order to get public exposure.

We brought in some of the best storytellers in the nation—award-winning filmmakers, writers, and journalists. They donated their time, and trained these communities to put out their best story to the world. They taught them how to pick a protagonist who had a strong story, and to tell the whole story, the whole context, from that person’s point of view. And then, how to cut their story down to two minutes and record it, that sort of thing. This training had a big impact.

For example, one of the groups we funded in Rio de Janeiro that got the most visibility was a community in the Santa Marta favela. Santa Marta is a slum surrounded by a huge rainforest on a steep mountain. The community at the very highest point of the favela—a group of about 150 families who have lived there for five generations and in fact founded the favela—was being threatened with removal. We suspect they wanted that area to build high-end hotels or whatever. Because it’s at the top of the hill, the views are phenomenal. The local families had lived there for generations, and their homes were close to their work, so of course they wanted to stay. But for the powers that be, a new paved road to the top, the presence of the “pacifier police,” and the view couldn’t be a better combination for profitable development.

We funded them to tell their story. They created a historical trail in April—a trail through the favela. They took photos along that trail and created a historic photo exhibit on the top. They generated some publicity. And they were successful—they weren’t removed.

Or, in Porto Alegre, we funded a community to protect a piece of Atlantic Forest. We had already been funding them to protect that area, so they were already organized. That enabled them to take a strong stand when the World Cup put them in the crosshairs again. We helped them to produce videos and documentaries, to give visibility to their struggle, and they won.

Another one of my favorite success stories is about a small, traditional fishing community in the state of Rio. They’ve lived and sustainably fished there for generations and have rights, according to Brazilian constitution—but FIFA wanted to establish a big tourist attraction, and so legal procedures were put in motion to strip this community of their traditional fishing rights.

So with our support, they organized and trained themselves to be the tourist guides themselves, instead of big tourism companies! They organized, told their stories, and participated in the popular committees organized in response to the World Cup. They were able to prepare themselves to comply with FIFA’s regulations. And so they protected their rights.

What do you see as the legacy that Brazil will be left with once the World Cup is done and gone?

Well as I said before, we expected the legacy to come in the form of improved cities and transport. But that hasn’t happened. And people know it. Normally, people would be painting the streets green and yellow everywhere, months in advance. But today—you don’t see anything. This shows we’ve woken up to real injustices. São Paulo stopped for the last three days. Subway systems were completely shut down by a strike. The busses were on strike, too. The garbage collectors went on strike. Because this is the time they have to negotiate—the country has to be pretty. So this is their opportunity to draw attention to economic inequalities and injustices. The demonstrations that are going on in cities—we’re going to be seeing a lot of them and a lot of violence from military police. Brazil spent huge amounts of money on equipment like tear gas bombs, pepper sprays and armaments, just for World Cup. But people will not stay home—the people who lost their homes—they’ll be out there, demonstrating.

But some good has come of it all, also. In each city where infrastructure was going to be built, citizens came together to discuss it. Brazil Human Rights Fund was the first funder to support these committees; we [CASA] joined them because we saw that no one was looking at the environmental impacts, at the ways that removal of people to enable deforestation and construction, for example, hurts the land as well. We were able to bring that up by funding these projects and insisting that we include the environment. (Together, Brazil Human Rights Fund and CASA—with the support of our partners, like the Ford Foundation in their case and Both ENDS for us—were pretty much the only funders supporting people to protect their rights and their environment. We made about $650,000 in grants, together.)

So the improved infrastructure didn’t happen, but what did happen is of incredible value: we took the next step toward building democracy. There has been a surprising, unforeseen new awareness of our power as citizens, and diverse sectors of society have united to demand their rights. It created an informed, critical opinion about the World Cup, which had never before been questioned by the vast majority of Brazilians.

Some communities, that at first seemed doomed to become invisible victims, were able to present their demands, many of which were met, others of which minimized their losses. They won the sympathy of public opinion by sharing their moving stories of resistance. And they refused to give up: even as authorities ignored their rights, they stood up and demanded that existing laws and international conventions be fulfilled to guarantee their rights.

And so—clearly without meaning to do so!—the World Cup has assisted Brazilians to take the next step toward democracy.