The Dark Side of Brazil

[Potoooooooo]

http://www.survivalinternational.org/worldcup

Brazil: it conjures Carnival, Copacabana and the FIFA World Cup.

But scratch the surface and you'll find a darker side, because what's missing from the popular image of Brazil is the shocking treatment of its first peoples.

Its football stadiums are built on Indian land, and its new-found wealth comes from the dispossession of the Indians and the theft of their lands.

Now Brazil is planning a new assault on its first peoples: targeting the lands they have managed to keep.

 

[mopc]

boo

 

[bleubird]

FIFA sucks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I

 

[Derec]

Well first of all, sure there are big problems with FIFA governance (not least of all giving 2022 World Cup to Qatar) but having a host nation build/upgrade stadiums and improve infrastructure is hardly one of them. The violent protesters are completely misguided in my opinion. For one, public expenditure for the World Cup related construction is less than 1% of Brazil federal government annual budget. So to blame problems with education, healthcare or poverty on the World Cup is silly. Second, construction uses local companies and labor, which helps the local economy in much the same way a stimulus package would. Third, World Cup attracts hundreds of thousands of affluent visitors who will spend their money outside the stadiums as well again helping local economies. Fourth, the infrastructure built for the World Cup will remain and will be used by the local population in the future.

As far as the link in the OP, it is from an Indian activist site and hardly unbiased. Besides, I have yet to see Indian activists supporting any development projects (excepting their own casinos of course). In any case, it mostly talks about Indian groups 100s of km from the stadiums. The only group directly affected by the construction was the group "occupying an abandoned building" next to the legendary Maracana stadium. But a non-Indian owner would have to give up such a property (and I am sure that building wasn't the only one that had to make way for construction) for a larger development plan and I don't see why a group of Indian squatters should be treated better than that. I think Indians should have the same rights as everybody else but no more than that.