This time last year, in an article entitled “Bom Senso F.C. & a battle for the soul of Brazilian football”, published on Brasil Wire, I wrote about the potential for a breakaway of Brasil’s major clubs from the Jurassic power structure that controls Brazilian football, headed by national and state federations. In 1992, England’s largest […]
Brasil’s streets have been filled with protests in the last few weeks, evoking similar events taking place earlier in the year. Most of the demonstrators are supporters of the defeated presidential candidate Aécio Neves who have collectively paraded across several parts of the country chanting for the removal of Dilma Rousseff, the sitting president who […]
Chances are you have passed by one of Eduardo Kobra’s street art murals. His kaleidoscope style images have transformed city walls and sidewalks across the globe into colourful sights that pay homage to some of the world’s most influential figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Dalai Lama. But, in his native city of São […]
Não vai ter golpe! (You won’t have a Coup!). Brasil’s ‘Silent Left’ did indeed show themselves, across 25 cities. Did the international media show them showing themselves? For the most part, no. U.S. & U.K. newspapers, which have received criticism for their coverage of political demonstrations across Latin America, were conspicuous by their absence. Going against narrative […]
SESC Pompeia is a cultural centre in the east zone of São Paulo, designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi, and opened in 1982. The site is one of the world’s great democratic spaces in a city often lacking in them. The level of thoughtfulness and sense of place is on par with great buildings like […]
In mid-2013, just before large street demonstrations rattled São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities, news broke of Edward Snowden’s leak of secret internal documents from the NSA, GCHQ and allied FVEY surveillance services. Early observers in Brazil paid particular attention to a map which measured the intensity of surveillance in the ‘Boundless Informant‘ programme. On this map, […]
Back in October 2014, a thirty-something, upper-middle class couple carry a large red flag towards a demonstration a few kilometres away, having walked the length of São Paulo’s leafy Rua Oscar Freire – an affluent area lined with boutiques & international chains. By the time the pair reach main artery Avenida Reboucas they are visibly shaken from what […]
During a year in which the Brazilian Military Police claimed that the São Paulo gay parade somehow shrunk from its regular crowd of 2.5 million people to 20,000 with no discernible difference in size it’s hard to treat crowd estimates seriously, especially coming from traditional anti-PT media oligarchies who own Veja Magazine, O Globo and […]
Last week, members of the Landless Workers Movement or MST, occupied 13 regional offices of the Brazilian federal finance ministry to protest the federal government’s new austerity measures. It was one more in a series of union and social movement protests against the way that the Federal Government is handling the economy. A new research paper […]
“E.S. talks too much and isn’t funny,” a 13 year old Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “people say she can’t stand me but I don’t care because I don’t like her much either.” She was talking about her classmate Nanette Blitz. Despite these early problems the two girls became friends and Nanette became one […]