Brazil is the land of jogo bonito, of soccer played with an attacking verve that bounces to a samba beat, of one-named icons like Pele, Garrincha and Ronaldo who defined greatness on the field. England might have created the modern game, but few would dispute that Brazil is soccer's spiritual home.
And yet the buzz around this summer's FIFA World Cup in Brazil — kicking off Thursday — isn't about the host nation's glorious history in the world's most popular sport. According to an April poll conducted by Brazilian polling institute Datafolha, just 48 percent of Brazilians believe hosting the World Cup is a good idea, down from 79 percent in 2008.
Rather, the talk centers on continued unrest in the mammoth South American country, frustration that first boiled over last June with widespread protests by millions across the country over a range of grievances, from suspected government corruption to allegedly inadequate social services, and has simmered ever since.
"From time to time, Brazilians wake up," says Severino Albuquerque, a native of Brazil and professor of Portuguese and director of the Brazil Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This mural, created by Brazilian street artist Paulo Ito last month in São Paulo, quickly went viral on the Internet. (Photo courtesy Paulo Ito, Flickr Creative Commons)
Increases in transit fares provided the initial spark for last summer's protests, but the movement quickly absorbed years of anger over issues such as health care, education and public security — compounded by the lavish spending on the World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Public funds have covered the majority of the $3.6 billion cost for new and renovated World Cup stadiums — and that's just a slice of the total cost of staging the tournament, which government estimates put at $11 billion. Once-touted infrastructure projects, from airport terminals to railways, have lagged or stopped entirely. Much of the work that has been completed took longer and cost more than originally expected, while workers are racing to finish several of the stadiums in time for the start of the tournament.
"The population began to realize how much money was at stake – their money, I suppose – [and] they compared that with their daily experience," says Albuquerque, noting the notoriously high tax burden Brazilians shoulder. "It doesn't match."
Brazil boasts a growing middle class with growing expectations, thanks in large part to government efforts to reduce poverty, and the scale of income inequality in the country has declined since the late 1990s. But the gap between rich and poor remains troubling: the richest 10 percent of Brazilians holds 42.9 percent of the country's income, while the bottom 80 percent holds 41.4 percent, according to the latest data from the World Bank. The CIA World Factbook ranks Brazil 17th in the world in highest levels of income inequality (the United States, by comparison, checks in at No. 40).
"It's a country that's built on notions of patronage. Patronage drives the system," says Jim Sweet, the Vilas-Jartz Distinguished Achievement Professor of History who has taught a course on the history of Brazil. "There's a sort of embedded, deeply-etched social disparity."
— Jim Sweet, professor of history
Sweet says the culture of corruption in Brazil goes all the way back to the country's colonial period, when the Portuguese government often overlooked the shady practices of its public servants in the colony. There is "an exasperated acceptance of the way in which things just function" in Brazilian society, he says.
"You have these moments where people are prosecuted, but, generally speaking, there's no institutional or structural transformations happening," Sweet says. "I think that's the key element that's missing out of this: There are no attempts to reform the system in a way that would make the entire system accountable to the electorate, particularly to the majority who are really poor and still suffering in profound ways."
Last June's protests in cities from Manaus in the Amazon to São Paulo on the southeast coast were spontaneous, and a combination of a lack of leadership, organization and unified message and the outbreak of violence curbed the mass movement. But demonstrations by hardline factions, including "Black Bloc," a violent, anarchist group, and worker strikes have continued over the past year. President Dilma Rousseff has pledged robust security for the World Cup, which kicks off less than four months ahead of the country's general elections.
There is the notion that, should star forward Neymar and his teammates deliver Brazil's sixth World Cup title, Rousseff is a lock to win re-election to a second term in October. But Noam Lupu, an assistant professor of political science and a Trice Faculty Scholar who studies Latin American politics, doesn't believe Brazil's performance on the field will determine Rouseff's fate.
"It has an impact, certainly Brazilians care about it a lot, but it's hard to imagine that it's going to make an enormous impact," says Lupu, who adds that how any protests play out during the tournament will likely be more significant to Rousseff's campaign.
Rousseff
Despite the anger — not to mention a sluggish economy that's tempered international investment — Rousseff is still favored to beat challengers Aécio Neves and Eduardo Campos, though she will likely need to endure a run-off with one to do so. Brazilian presidents are elected by absolute majority in a two-round system.
Neither Neves nor Campos is a grassroots, political outsider or the sort of left-wing option that working-class protesters would seem to be seeking, Lupu says.
"In the abstract, you could say change vs. continuity, but then what does change look like?" he says. "Even if people do feel alienated by the current political system or they would like to see some major change, it's not obvious that these two other guys are offering a dramatic kind of change."
On the field, Brazil is widely seen as the favorite; economists at Goldman Sachs, based on statistical modeling, have predicted the hosts will win the Cup. Should that happen, mass celebrations will likely replace any protests — temporarily, at least.
"I think, in the end, because it's their beloved sport, even people that are very bothered by the corruption and everything else, no one will stop rooting for Brazil, nobody," Albuquerque says. "And they will not stop watching the games."