On August 12, Brazil’s largest news program, Jornal Nacional, interviewed presidential candidate Eduardo Campos. Of his 15 minutes replying to questions, he spent at least 10 of them touting the presence of his family in the state apparatus. He filled the remaining time with banalities such as “we can’t give Brazil up.” The following morning, Campos’s private jet crashed…

Twenty cents of real (roughly 8 cents of a dollar) brought millions of people onto the streets in Brazil in July 2013. Those twenty cents channeled all popular dissatisfaction, directed all anger to the streets and showed the government’s ineptitude in dealing with the Brazilian people’s problems. Only twenty cents. An increase in the bus fare from R$…

When the demolition of abandoned warehouses at the José Estelita Docks started in the city of Recife, Brazil, the ongoing mobilization since 2012 by the #OcupeEstelita movement proved its worth. On May 21, when real estate developer Moura Dubeux’s bulldozers got in position during the night to demolish the old sugar warehouses, several individuals, mobilized…

Il calcio trascende le classi sociali e quelle economiche. In Brasile è giocato ovunque da bambini e adolescenti di ogni classe sociale. Se si può improvvisare una palla, il divertimento è sicuro. Il calcio è anche alla base del patriottismo brasiliano, che durante i mondiali si innalza. La bandiera nazionale diventa oggetto d’adorazione. E sventola…

Soccer transcends social classes and economic backgrounds. Children and teenagers everywhere in Brazil, from every class, play it. Where a ball may be improvised, there will be fun to be had. Soccer is also one of the foundations of Brazilian patriotism, that reascends during the FIFA World Cup. The flag colors come to be worshipped,…

With the World Cup underway, the problem at hand is: How to fight state abuse during the World Cup? 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,…

According to Leonardo Dupin on journalist Juca Kfouri’s blog, Minas Arena consortium will have the right to operate the Minerao soccer stadium in Belo horizonte for 25 years, after their investment of about $300 million, $180 million of which was kindly lent by Brazil’s state development bank, BNDES. The agreement guarantees that the government of the…