The Blame Game

Part 5 in a 6-part series on the removal of Vila Autodromo

While at first glance, the apparent community-razing culprits are Eduardo Paes and the Municipal Housing Office (SMH), all of the blame cannot be placed on Rio’s government. FIFA, which spearheads the World Cup, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), responsible for the organization of the Olympic Games, are equally guilty of fueling the comunidade removals. The involvement of municipal government in the razings is motivated largely by FIFA and the IOC’s need to ensure revenue from their respective events, as well as guarantee their continued marketability once the events are over. Both of these goals are complicit in the municipal government’s decision to remove certain communities and relocate residents with little or no compensation.

Eduardo Paes and FIFA's General Secretary Jermome Valke.
Photo Credit: O Globo

The ultimate goal of profit generation is the most obvious scapegoat. After all, FIFA and the IOC are, at heart, private enterprises which have the shared goal of walking away from their respective mega-events with a hefty profit. As Alan Maiden, a South African professor of urban planning recently explained in a debate on the impact of mega-events on host cities, FIFA pocketed over $3 billion from last year’s World Cup - nearly half the total profit of the event. In order to guarantee an equally attractive profit in 2014 and 2016, FIFA and the IOC impose strict prerequisites on host cities which ensure a positive consumer experience. Namely, the organizations mandate that a certain number of hotels, tourist venues, stadiums, and transportation hubs be in place prior to hosting the mega-events. In order to execute the massive infrastructural overhaul that these events require, it follows that some residents might have to be relocated. Again, however, it is by and large low-income and informal areas that are the most adversely effected by event-related development. In the much rarer case of forced removal of a “legal” housing unit, compensation is ample and delivered in a timely manner. As Dr. Christopher Gaffney, a visiting professor of urbansim at Rio’s Universidade Federal Fluminense explained to me in a recent interview, “Eduardo Paes has promised to personally deliver monetary compensation to residents with government-honored legal tenure.” In many cases, these residents will emerge with a profit.

The second tie that FIFA and the IOC have to the removals is the desire of both entities to operate within a city which appears clean, non-violent, and poverty-free in international media coverage. This need is almost certainly the rationale for the municipal government’s creation of the aforementioned “security perimeter”, which now serves as the explanation for the removal of Vila Autodromo and countless other comunidades. Even in Atlanta and Vancouver, two Olympic host cities with far lower crime and poverty rates than Rio, security concerns prompted the government’s’ criminalization of poverty and curtailment of human rights as thousands of homeless were driven from the streets in the weeks prior to the Games. In Beijing, a city with a socioeconomic landscape which more closely resembles that of Rio, no less than 800,000 people were reported as having been forcibly evicted during preparations for the 2008 Olympics. It doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination, therefore, to comprehend the scope of mega-event-related evictions that will take place in Rio given the city’s deep-seated global reputation as a hotbed of “squatters”, drug trafficking, and homicide.

No less than 2,800 comunidade evictions have already been reported, most of which have resulted in little - if any - financial compensation for displaced residents. In a city where real estate speculation and an overvalued currency have combined to drive housing prices through the roof, it is difficult to imagine that the maximum reported compensation (roughly US $24,000) will buy an evictee anything short of a cramped tenement incapable of accommodating larger families. Factor in the opportunity cost of missed days at work and moving expenses, and the price of relocation becomes even more out-of-reach for evictees in a city where the minimum wage lags behind the burgeoning real estate market.

In a way, FIFA and the IOC assume the role of a joint, de facto government which encourages Paes’ martial law-style tactics to ensure event revenue and successful legacy marketing. The municipal government - willingly or unwillingly - finds itself at the mercy of these procurators of international sport, lured by the dangling carrot of profit-sharing.