City of God
Kathleen McCaul Moura
The interim president of Brazil, Michel Temer, didn’t win the bid to host the Olympic games in Rio or organise the event. But he could regard the opening ceremony as a personal triumph. All over Rio last Friday there were protests against his leadership, which many are calling the result of a coup d’état. The words ‘Fora Temer’ – ‘Temer Out’ – could be seen on the beach, outside the Maracanã Stadium, painted on people’s bottoms. But the billions of viewers who tuned in to watch the beginning of the Olympics did not see this outcry, and the booing which accompanied the president's official opening of the games wasn’t obvious over the television.
The impeached president, Dilma Rousseff, and her predecessor, Lula da Silva, who was in charge when the city won the Olympics, were nowhere to be seen. Instead it was Temer, leaning back, cross-legged in a sharp grey suit among other international leaders, who presided over the national anthem led by the Samba superstar Paulinho da Viola, over Gisele Bündchen's catwalk, and overjoyous crowds singing along to Jorge Ben Jor's rendition of his famous song, ‘País Tropical’, which details how great it is to live in such a beautiful country as Brazil.
It is unsurprising that the creative director of the ceremony, Fernando Meirelles, would want to gloss over the country's troubles. Representations of Brazil's history of slavery and of Rio's favelas were stylised and idealised, even though Meirelles directed City of God, the 2002 film based on Paulo Lins’s searing account of the racism, violence and poverty which often characterise life in a favela. But for so many of the country's most famous stars to perform as if it were business as usual looked like a tacit acceptance by the artistic establishment of a new status quo, despite the serious corruption and anti-democracy charges that Temer and his team now face.
There was one small symbol of protest in the ceremony, however, right at the end, when the actors Fernanda Montenegro and Judi Dench read from a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, ‘A Flor e a Náusea’. The verses, about a flower growing in a polluted city, were part of the event’s ecologically themed finale. But the poem is about political as much as environmental distress. The opening verses, which were left out last Friday but have been studied in Brazilian schools for years, describe a working-class man sickened by the society around him. He sees ‘grimy eyes’ (‘olhos sujos’) looking down on him from above and knows 'the time of full justice has not arrived’ (‘o tempo não chegou de completa justiça’). The narrator is disillusioned with his country and his city. He realises that nothing, whatever the newspapers say, has changed for the better. 'Forty years,' he says, 'and not one problem solved' (‘Quarenta anos e nenhum problema/resolvido’). It’s a sentiment shared by many Brazilians today.
Drummond was born in 1902. ‘A Flor e a Náusea’ was written during the Estado Novo era of 1937-45. The president, Getúlio Vargas, had launched a coup d'état, shut down Congress and turned the country into a dictatorship. ‘The poem was meant as a protest against this,’ the poet Noemi Jaffe told me. ‘It was used in a different context in the opening ceremony,’ the writer and editor Ana Rüsche said, ‘but in an era of political uncertainty in Brazil, with controversies over the legitimacy of the government, the poem works very well.’
Drummond is often described as Brazil's best-loved poet. His verses have appeared on banknotes. There’s a statue of him on Copacabana Beach (above), facing not towards the sea, as some locals would like, but inland – the critic Angel Gúrria says this is more fitting. The mood of ‘A Flor e a Náusea’ is typical of Drummond’s poetry, with its combination of hopelessness and romanticism, acceptance and repulsion.
Brazil's turmoil has not receded because of the games. A man holding a 'Temer Out' sign was ejected from an archery event by three soldiers. Nine spectators whose T-shirts spelled out ‘Fora Temer’ were removed from a football match in Belo Horizonte. The federal judge João Augusto Carneiro Araújo issued an injunction against demonstrators being removed for waving signs or chanting. Whether the strained atmosphere is to blame or not, Brazilian athletes have already suffered terrible humiliation. The national football team was booed by its supporters after a 0-0 draw with Iraq.
But, as in ‘A Flor e a Náusea’, there have been small signs of hope breaking through. For the Carioca poet Mariano Marovatto, the 'flower' of the games is the judo champion Rafaela Silva, who won Brazil's first gold medal on Monday. ‘Despite the corrupt, decrepit white men that have stolen the government there is this flower, Rafaela, a woman, black and gay, from the famous City of God favela,’ Marovatto said. ‘The City of God is no longer Fernando Meirelles's business – it's Rafaela's from now on.’
Comments
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11 August 2016
at
2:18am
nztab
says:
Pretty astounding really that while we are all drowning in a sea of Rio-tinted hogwash, here is a post that tells you all you need to know about Olympic politics:thank you Kathleen.
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11 August 2016
at
7:19am
cufflink
says:
Now you've done it, I must make shelf room for Brazilian poetry.
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11 August 2016
at
1:01pm
Pennywhistler
says:
I imagine the only interesting question here is - did NBC collude in keeping the protests out of their coverage, or was that managed by Brazil or the Olympics people?
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11 August 2016
at
1:03pm
Pennywhistler
says:
@
Pennywhistler
Also, how does the Carioca poet know that the "white men" are decrepit?
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23 August 2016
at
2:15pm
wlvr
says:
@
Pennywhistler
Carioca is everyone born in Rio de Janeiro. Comes from the indigenous nation of Kary Ocas, meaning Home of Kary.
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23 August 2016
at
10:46pm
Chico Cornejo
says:
@
wlvr
Calling Drummond a carioca poet is close in terms of literary felony as calling William Morris a Geordie.
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23 August 2016
at
4:31pm
lfsaldanha
says:
"The serious corruption and anti-democracy charges that Temer and his team now face."...which many are calling the result of a coup d’état."Are you kidding or are you completely blind of the political reality in Brazil? President Dilma will be ousted later this month by the Brazilian Senate in a jury with the due process of Law, presided by the Chief of the Supreme Court, according to our Constitution. Millions of Brazilians went to the streets in the past several months to protest against her, the former president Lula and the Worker's Party they represent. Her overall approval rate is an abismal 8%! Widespread corruption at the high levels of her's and Lula's government has led to the indictment, prosecution and imprisonment of several prominent cabinet and party members. And the jury is still out for many more key elements of this incompetent and corrupt leadership. Do not let your leftist hue blindfold you of what is happening in Brazil. Just wait for the results of the upcoming elections later this year and you and I will hear the voice of the people and the demise of the Worker
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23 August 2016
at
4:33pm
lfsaldanha
says:
Worker's Party
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23 August 2016
at
6:55pm
Ze Brown
says:
Absolutely correct, Ifsaldanha! What is amazing is the recalcitrant failure of the so-called "Left", which in the words of Tony Judt no longer describe a political allegiance of most citizens in democratic societies, to acknowledge that the Brazilian Worker's Party morphed into an excrescence, more like a reunion of thieves.
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23 August 2016
at
7:12pm
Ronaldo de Noronha
says:
If Temer and his team are despized by many Brazilians (count me on this group), Lula and Rousseff are even much more so. The Moura's mock biography of Drummond,our geat modernist poet, is a shame.
Read moreThe names fall off the tongue with an avid wish to know more.
Welcome Carlos Drummond de Andrade to my book case.
And what IS a "Carioca poet"?
Of course this is another effort of The Worker's Party to sell its narrative of ehat is going on here.