Il calcio è anche alla base del patriottismo brasiliano, che durante i mondiali si innalza. La bandiera nazionale diventa oggetto d’adorazione. E sventola nell’aria.

Ma nel 2014 è diverso. Slogan come “La Coppa del Mondo non Esiste” abbondano, ci sono proteste e l’opinione pubblica si divide sull’impatto dell’evento. Le persone interessate dalle preparazioni hanno scritto una lettera aperta e, il quindici di maggio, c’è stata la Giornata Contro la Coppa del Mondo, che ha spinto migliaia di persone nelle strade in tutto il Brasile.

È stato il risultato prevedibile delle politiche adottate nel paese, politiche che hanno promosso l’uso massiccio di denaro pubblico e il pugno d’acciaio dello stato per mandare via la gente dalle loro case (espropri discutibili anche secondo i traballanti standard legali brasiliani) e costruire pachidermi bianchi per usarli soltanto per un breve periodo. I principali beneficiari sono la FIFA, le ditte di appalti, le grandi aziende alleate tra loro e lo stesso stato.

Per schivare la concorrenza, secondo la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo, “la Legge sulla Coppa del Mondo istituisce zone di esclusione per un raggio di 1,25 miglia (2 chilometri) attorno alle aree della FIFA e gli stadi, e aree per i fan dotate di megaschermi, aree in cui soltanto gli sponsor possono vendere.” I venditori ambulanti, che muovono miliardi ogni anno, sono esclusi da grosse porzioni delle città.

Si potrebbe dire che viviamo una “situazione sportiva d’eccezione”, ma è un fatto che le preparazioni dei mondiali abbiano mostrato tutte le disfunzioni e le ingiustizie dello stato brasiliano. Le grandi imprese hanno ricevuto grossi aiuti economici tramite la banca pubblica BNDES, imprese che si sono alleate tra loro per attaccare coerentemente la proprietà dei poveri. C’è stato l’impulso irresistibile a controllare l’accesso dei poveri alla terra, per non dire della repressione generale dei venditori ambulanti in un paese in cui le leggi dicono di difendere la classe lavoratrice.

Questo incubo sportivo è la realtà quotidiana del paese, una realtà che punisce i poveri più di ogni altro, ma che oggi appare più evidente che mai per via dell’associazione con uno degli eventi mondiali più importanti per i brasiliani. Questo stato di cose è sempre esistito, ma oggi c’è un pretesto. Il paese del calcio ha capito che i campionati non sono semplicemente sport. Hanno a che fare con il denaro, le influenze, i mezzi politici, non lo scambio volontario.

Niente serve meglio ad illustrare la differenza tra mezzi economici (lavoro, produzione, scambio) e mezzi politici (forza, costrizione), per dirla con Franz Oppenheimer. Un’altra Coppa del Mondo è possibile, un mondiale senza espropri, repressioni, soldi pubblici, ma sarebbe una Coppa del Mondo senza il potere dello stato, fatta da persone che fanno a meno della forza.

Nel 2007, il governo disse che la Coppa del Mondo sarebbe stata pagata interamente dal settore privato. Con lo stato che ci ritroviamo oggi questo non accadrà mai. Nessuna società è disposta ad accollarsi il rischio di investire in un mondiale politicizzato come quello brasiliano. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, la mette così: “Ecco com’è lo stato. È stato inventato per fare quello che un privato non si sognerebbe di fare, il che significa che probabilmente non c’è alcuna ragione di farlo.” Lo stato fa questo, ma fa anche cose che fanno pendere l’ago della bilancia a favore di certe imprese private.

“Speriamo che la nostra storia non sia soffocata dall’urlo goal,” dice la Lettera del Primo Incontro delle Persone Interessate dalla Coppa del Mondo. Se dovesse prevalere la coscienza, l’ingiustizia dello stato nel nome dello sport non potrà essere dimenticata.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Soccer is also one of the foundations of Brazilian patriotism, that reascends during the FIFA World Cup. The flag colors come to be worshipped, the flag itself is flown.

In 2014, however, it feels different. Slogans such as “There Will Be No World Cup” abound, there are protests and public opinion is split regarding the event’s impact. There was an open letter from those affected by the preparations and, on May 15, the Day Against the World Cup, that pushed thousands of people to the streets everywhere in Brazil.

It was a predictable result of the policies adopted in the country, that promoted the extensive use of government money and the iron hand of the state to remove people from their houses — in expropriations questionable even according to the dubious legal standards of Brazil — and build white elephants that will only be used for a short while. The greatest beneficiaries are FIFA, the contractors, allied corporations and the government itself.

To sidestep competition, according to the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup, “the General Law of the World Cup establishes zones of exclusion of 1.25 miles around FIFA’s areas, stadiums, and fan areas with large screens, where only official sponsors will be allowed to sell.” Street sellers, who move billions every year, yet again, are excluded from large swathes of the cities.

One could argue we are living under a “sporting state of exception,” but it is a fact that preparations for the World Cup have amply shown the disfunctionality and injustice of the Brazilian state. There have been huge subsidies to large enterprises through state bank BNDES, and the uncompromising defense of the property of big corporations allied to the consistent neglect to the property of the poor. There has also been an irresistible impulse to control the poor’s access to land, not to mention the repression of the street sellers all over a country in which the laws claim to defend the working classes.

This sports dystopia is always the reality in the country — a reality that overwhelmingly punishes the poor — but now it seems clearer than ever because it is closely associated with one of the most important world events for the Brazilians. This state has always existed, but it now has a pretext. The soccer country has learned that Cups are not only sport. They are about money and influence, about the political means, not voluntary exchange.

There is no better illustration of the difference between the economic means (labor, production, exchange) and the political means (force, coercion), as Franz Oppenheimer put it. Another World Cup was possible, without expropriations, repression, subsidies, but it would be a World Cup without the power of the state, made by free people forgoing the use of force.

In 2007, the government stated that the World Cup would be paid for entirely by the private sector. However, that would never happen with the state we have nowadays. No company would ever take the risk of investing in a politicized World Cup like the Brazilian one. Neil Stephenson, in Snow Crash, put it like this: “[T]hat’s how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn’t bother with, which means that there’s probably no reason for it.” The government also does stuff that allows private enterprise to tilt the table in their favor.

“We hope that a shout of goal won’t suppress our story,” states the Letter from the First Meeting of the Affected by the World Cup. Should conscience win, state injustice in the name of sports can’t be forgotten.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Il Brasile Ha Capito che i Mondiali non Sono Solo Calcio.

We may harken back to Henry David Thoreau. He used to criticize the idea that we should expect the majority to change a law or an unfair government action, because man should live according to his conscience, not by the majority’s will.

Because of that, “when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer.” He referred to slavery and the Mexican-American War, which led him to stop paying taxes.

Lysander Spooner, on the other hand, teaches us how to resist the state peacefully, in the market. As a jurist, he argued for the unconstitutionality of the United States Post Office monopoly. Like Thoreau, he didn’t stop at words and wait for the majority to take action.

Spooner, in 1844, opened up a competitor, the American Letter Mail Company, much more efficient and charging lower prices than the government monopoly. Despite the government’s determination to close it, which it was finally able to do in 1851 with the approval of a more stringent law that closed the legal loopholes that Spooner had been exploiting, the action was successful: Government was forced to lower its prices by pressure of competition of a civil resistant!

How can we do something similar during the World Cup?

We can trespass the zones of commercial exclusion created for FIFA’s benefit, giving their partners a selling and advertising monopoly in a given area. We can also record with our cell phones every instance of police abuse against free protests during the World Cup.

As Augusto de Franco said about the occupation and reconfiguration of public spaces by free commerce:

Each one of those activities reconfigures hierarchies dominated by autocracies toward more networking (more distribution, connectivity, interaction) and freedom. There is no other way of doing that besides civil and political disobedience.

If this “entrepreneurial civil disobedience” happened in a large scale, we would be making a large step toward liberty from the coercive institutions of the state. Because the occupation of public spaces by markets and free exchange, challenging the territorial monopoly gifted to FIFA, would reverse the mentality that allowed our freedoms to be taken away and weakened the liberating potential of voluntary cooperation networks.

Again, as Augusto de Franco said, social revolution “is not that taking of some Winter Palace nor electoral victory against ‘the elites!’ It is not just a change in the people who make up the state, but something that happens at the very core of society, altering the interaction flows of social life and changing people’s behaviors.”

Individual freedom and liberation from poverty and political exploitation will only be achieved through the widening of the social cooperation networks and markets. As Thoreau would say, that’s the counter-friction that should stop the machine and break its injustice.

It’s a shame that Mezzomo isn’t willing to call what he defends by what it is: The violent expropriation of the favelas’ inhabitants of their legitimate property. Favelas are “irregular” only by a judicial formality. Outside a few efforts of urban regularization, favelados are still considered invaders and criminals almost by definition, although they homesteaded previously unowned and unused land.

That should explain why Mezzomo isn’t so anxious to leave his own house and go live in a favela, even though their dwellers are “superior citizens”: The truth is that there’s no privilege for those who live in the favelas. They are considered second class citizens, unworthy of basic guarantees, excluded from property rights and deprived of individual liberties.

Favela dwellers live with daily oppression by the police, with constant danger brought by drug dealers, with the threat of eviction (be it for “safety” reasons, against floods, for instance, or for urbanity reasons), with unhealthful environments (from trash and sewage), and with overall poor services. Living in favelas is clearly not the dream described by Mezzomo. Favelas don’t pay land tax, but I’m willing to bet few favelados consider the benefit worth the cost.

It’s symptomatic that Mezzomo mentioned the Tijuca neighborhood as an example of “devaluing” after the growth of favelas. Tijuca had been an upscale area, that decayed with the arrival of the favelas and, presumably, of the unwanted. The problem is that favelas, as irregular developments, are not a result of urban freedom, but rather the cruel consequence of years and years of violent intervention, urban zoning and the ban on the occupation of perfectly viable land.

The attempt to expropriate the poor who live in the favelas adds insult to injury, and is especially criminal because it removes citizens from the urban centers, where there are economic opportunities, and dislocates them to the periphery, far from the eyes and sensibilities of the rich.

For Mezzomo, “removals” are a taboo subject in Rio’s and Brazil’s politics. Complete lie. Removals are sanctioned and practiced as a consistent state policy, supported by the middle class. Evictions from the favelas are the modern enclosures.

In Rio, over 20,000 families have been evicted since 2009. It’s estimated that 250,000 people will be removed in preparations for the World Cup, though there are no precise data.

Minha Casa, Minha Vida program (“My House, My Life”), by the federal government, works diligently to enrich real estate developers and send the poor off to the urban outskirts.

I know I won’t convince the middle class or the rich with the above arguments, so I came up with a proposal that should make everyone happy: Let’s remove the rich and the middle class from the noble neighborhoods, put them on the periphery and give the poor their old houses and apartments in Leblon, Ipanema, and Copacabana. How about that?

The government is generally not as straightforward in trying to protect corporations from losses. It seems that this time, the state didn’t try to be very roundabout and just funneled money directly from the pockets of the tax-paying poor to those of the tax-eating rich.

The consortiums that control other World Cup stadiums have similar sweetheart deals, with “investment” money generously coming from BNDES, the largest tool of upward wealth transfer in Brazil. President Dilma Rousseff appears frequently on TV to assure us that the total spent on stadiums was “only” $4 billion, whereas total overall is around $11.5 billion, most of which should actually be “recouped” by the public, because they were “loans.”

Rouseff forgot to account for subsidies and concession contracts. She also forgot to account for evictions and urban make-up projects intended to hide our poor from fearful tourists. Not to mention the cost of the police state that has wreaked havoc since the World Cup and the Olympics were announced to be held in Brazil.

We’re less than a month from the World Cup and yet we see few flags hanging from windows, few paintings of the tournament’s mascot on walls. The announcement of the national team was met with little anticipation or surprise, and very little positive speech is heard about the championship at all.

Protests and criticisms have abounded, however, culminating on May 15 in the International Day of World Cup Resistance (15M). People took to the streets in many Brazilian capitals, accompanied by teachers, public transportation workers and, in Pernambuco, police strikes. Also worthy of note was the manifestation of the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), comprised of people who have the biggest reasons to complain: The World Cup caps off a model of urban development that evicts the poor from the city centers and pushes the value of their labor even lower.

The government, as always, tries to paint the Worker’s Party (PT) administration as the halcyon days of neverending development, but the honeymoon is over. No matter who conquers the World Cup, the real winner is corporate capitalism.

Nothing illustrates this better than the gentrification of Maracana stadium, once a hub for the people, but now a place attended exclusively by the elite, where fans are supposed to watch the game sitting down, taking off your jersey is forbidden, fireworks are “unsafe” and the flags you take are strictly regulated according to FIFA’s rulebook. If not even soccer is like we used to do it, we can only ask the biggest question from 15M: World Cup for whom?

Questa è la stessa Rio de Janeiro in cui migliaia di famiglie sono state espropriate delle loro case per fare spazio alle strutture dei mondiali di calcio 2014. Non solo sono stati sloggiati, ma mediamente hanno ricevuto un risarcimento minimo e sono stati trasferiti in zone molto lontane. Secondo il Comitato Olimpico e dei Mondiali di Calcio, che si è lamentato al proposito, gli espropri, che vanno oltre il necessario, spazzano via intere comunità povere per lasciare spazio a progetti di sviluppo urbano a beneficio delle imprese immobiliari.

Nel frattempo, l’Aneel (l’ente nazionale per l’energia elettrica) ha approvato l’esproprio di territori indigeni per la costruzione della diga di Belo Monte. Una lamentela fatta alla Commissione Inter-Americana sui Diritti Umani ha spinto quest’ultima nel 2011 a chiedere che lo stato brasiliano “garantisca subito il completamento del processo di regolarizzazione dei territori delle popolazioni indigene del bacino del fiume Xingu, adottando misure efficaci per la protezione delle terre, considerata l’occupazione e appropriazione illegittima da parte di popolazioni non indigene e il loro sfruttamento e spreco di risorse naturali”. Ma il governo ha fatto finta di nulla: Nel 2012 è stato formalizzato l’ultimo esproprio, che autorizza lo sfratto delle popolazioni lungo il fiume, nativi e piccoli agricoltori, per via amichevole o giudiziaria.

A vedere con quanta “efficienza” è stata restituita la proprietà alla Oi, uno potrebbe pensare ingenuamente che il governo brasiliano è un grande difensore della proprietà privata. Ma è lo stesso governo, e controlla la stessa polizia, che ha espropriato gli indigeni senza dare loro la possibilità di difendere effettivamente i loro possedimenti. Con il pretesto del “bene comune”, si fa carta straccia del diritto alla proprietà e ad una casa.

In un’intervista, il sindaco di Rio de Janeiro disse che non avrebbe permesso “privilegi agli occupanti abusivi”, che lui contrappose a quelli che sono in lista d’attesa in programmi come Minha Casa, Minha Vida (“La Mia Casa, la Mia Vita”). Questo è solo un piccolo esempio di quanto il governo brasiliano sia determinato a controllare l’accesso ai terreni edificabili.

Come nota Pedro da Luz Moreira, presidente regionale dell’Istituto Brasiliano di Architettura, “Minha Casa, Minha Vida viene promosso nelle periferie, molto lontano dal centro dove è il lavoro. La sopravvivenza delle famiglie dipende da questo. Non ho informazioni precise sull’occupazione del palazzo Telerj, ma so che si trova vicino al cuore della città, dove sono le opportunità di lavoro.”

Questo è un esempio di quello che l’anarchico individualista Benjamin Tucker chiamava “monopolio territoriale”. Scrivendo verso la fine dell’ottocento, Tucker si concentrò sugli aspetti rurali del problema, descrivendo il metodo usato dal governo per “garantire titoli di proprietà su terre che non sono né occupate né coltivate”.

Nella sua versione aggiornata al ventunesimo secolo, uno degli strumenti principali dello stato per l’emarginazione dei poveri è il controllo delle terre edificabili. Primo, con i regolamenti edilizi nega ai poveri l’accesso all’edilizia a basso costo (a Rio tramite il divieto di costruire condomini, che ha dato origine alle moderne favelas, e il divieto di entrare in possesso di una terra pubblica con l’usufrutto). Secondo, queste persone diventano soggetti dello stato quando si iscrivono in lunghe liste d’attesa per poter avere un terreno, fuori dalle aree urbane e sotto lo scrutinio attento della burocrazia.

Albert Jay Nock diceva che lo stato è stato creato con l’obiettivo criminale di creare una classe subordinata priva di accesso alla proprietà, a beneficio delle élite che hanno accesso alla terra. Lo stato brasiliano, con la sua difesa assidua della “proprietà privata” delle grandi imprese, combinata con lo sforzo costante di privare i poveri della loro proprietà e controllare il loro accesso alla terra, è la prova di questo obiettivo criminale. Dopotutto, a chi possono chiedere il risarcimento gli espropriati di Belo Monte e dei Mondiali di Calcio?

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

This is the same Rio de Janeiro where thousands of families had their homes expropriated to open up space for the FIFA World Cup 2014 developments. Not only were they forced to leave their homes, they generally received very little compensation and were relocated to very distant regions. According to the Popular World Cup and Olympics Committee, in a complaint from last year, there are even more expropriations than actually necessary, which sweep off poor communities to make way for upper scale housing developments, for the benefit of real estate enterprises.

In the meantime, in the Amazon, expropriations of indigenous land were approved by Aneel (National Agency for Electric Energy) to make way for the Belo Monte Dam. A complaint presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights prompted a request, in 2011, that the Brazilian state should “guarantee the quick completion of the pending processes of regularization of the indigenous people’s ancestral lands in the Xingu River basin and adopt effective measures for the protections of such lands, given the illegitimate appropriation and occupation by non-indigenous peoples and their economic exploitation and dilapidation of natural resources.” The government, however, just kept business going as usual: In 2012, the last land expropriation was formalized, authorizing the removal of riverside dwellers, natives and small farmers, amicably or judicially.

One could think, naively, that the Brazilian government is a great guardian of private property in observing the “efficiency” with which it enforced the property reintegration to Oi. However, it is the same government, in control of the same police, which expropriated poor and indigenous people without giving them any chance of effective protection of their possessions. Under the pretext of upholding the “common good,” the people’s right to property and to a home is worthless.

In an interview, Rio’s mayor stated that he will not have “squatters like those be privileged,” as opposed to people who are waiting in line for government programs such as Minha Casa, Minha Vida (“My House, My Life”). This is a very small example of the determination of the Brazilian government to control access to urban land in the country.

As Pedro da Luz Moreira, regional president of the Architects Institute of Brazil states, “Minha Casa, Minha Vida is being pushed in the periphery, very far from the city centers where jobs are available. The survival of the families depends on that. I have no details on the occupation of the Telerj building, but it is close to the urban spot and, therefore, to job opportunities.”

Hence, it is an instance of what individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker called “land monopoly.” Writing near the end of the 19th century, he focused on the rural aspect of the issue, describing it as “enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and cultivation.”

This analysis calls for a 21st century update, since one of the main tools the government has for the exclusion of poorer people is the control of urban land. First, it denies low costs to poor people through urban regulation policies (in Rio, this included a ban on tenements, giving rise to modern favelas, and the prohibition of the homesteading of public land). Then, second, those people become dependent on the government and enter a long line to be able to get any land they can outside urban areas, under close bureaucratic surveillance.

Albert Jay Nock used to say that the state was created for the criminal purpose of creating a dependent class without access to property, for the benefit of the elites with access to land. The Brazilian state, in its uncompromising defense of big corporations’ “private property” combined to its ever dedicated effort to deprive poor of their property and control their access to land, is proof of that criminal intent. After all, from whom are the all the World Cup and Belo Monte property-less going to claim restitution?

Translated from Portuguese to English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, A Chi Chiederanno un Risarcimento i Poveri?