Brazilian football star Romario supports the protesters by saying FIFA is the real President of Brazil

While this video is in Portuguese, you can turn on the captions function in the information bar of the video screen and change the captions to your desired language.

Signs of Protest: Brazilians and their DIY placards

Click here to check out this great series of images showing the variety of signs Brazilian protesters have cobbled together--many of them showing facets of Brazilian sarcasm and wit:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/21/world/americas/brazil-protest-signs.html?smid=pl-share

Dilma's Worst Nightmare: The Great Unraveling

As a former political protester who was tortured during the "Years of Lead" of Brazil's military dictatorship in the early 1970s, Dilma Rousseff now finds herself trapped in what must be the most vexing conundrum of her administration.

Despite riding high in popularity polls, President Rousseff is now embattled: Brazils' largest cities are in flames and the the poor and middle class are revolting. People have climbed upon the roofs of Oscar Niemeyer's elegant government buildings in Brasilia and brazenly threatened the inhabitants of the Planalto. While crowds have resorted to violence and vandalism, heavily-armed cops have reacted disproportionately in several cases--as they did in the photo taken above by Victor Caivano of an unarmed student, Liv Nicolsky Lagerblad de Oliveira being pepper-sprayed on a relatively deserted street (not only was she taken to the police station, she had to pay her own bail of 2000 reals, which is approximately USD$885).

As I write this, I am staring at live video of the human chain of police that have encircled the poshly-situated Leblon home of Sergio Cabral, Rio's governor, while an angry mob is baying for the blood of the "cowardly" cops. Barra, the massive Rio shopping mall has been looted and BOPE, the elite SWAT-team equipped with more firepower than many countries' own militaries, is driving convoys of their skull-logoed armored vehicles down Avenida das Americas towards Ipanema.

Rousseff has been walking a tightrope since she took office. She has to tread carefully as both the protege of the wildly popular former president Lula da Silva and the inheritor of the cronyism and corruption rife within their shared party networks; she has to contend with sexist sniping and undermining maneuvers from Brazil's macho industrialists and opposition politicians; she has had to appease the military while upholding democratic principles in pursuing freedom of information legislation that would reveal the ugly truths of its time in power; and she has had to reconcile her past as a guerilla and a Marxist with the free-market liberalism and fiscal rigor the world expects of her as the leader of the world's sixth largest economy. But now this? How does she appeal for calm among protesters who are as enflamed as she once was over the state's failure to serve the people's needs now that she IS the state?

This is not the Arab Spring, nor is it Taksim Square. Like the Occupy movement, this movement's roots lie in the discontent of middle class students who have turned a jumble of grievances into a form of kindling. Leaderless and lacking an agenda, one mob in Sao Paulo quickly multiplied into multi-city mobs--their protests at first aimed at a rise in bus fares, but now ranging across a spectrum of ills, including the expense of building stadia for the World Cup and the Olympics, police brutality, and the lack of quality in healthcare and education.

Dilma has diverged from other leaders similarly under attack, like Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by refusing to negatively characterize the protesters. Instead she has taken an affirmative position, exclaiming how such unrest is the proof of Brazil's democratic vibrancy. She has not threatened crackdowns or military action--Brazils' police forces are perfectly capable of taking the initiative to crack some heads if they see fit, which history has shown, they always do. And are doing, as evidenced by the appalling photo shown here.

But despite her soothing platitudes, Dilma and her associates have effectively confessed their bewilderment over the strength of the discontent and what a useful proposal might look like. The reversal of the bus fare hike that incited the fury in the first place--a limp gesture by any measure--has not sufficed to quell the rioting. Rousseff has just unveiled a reform package with promises of all oil revenue going towards education and a mass drafting of foreign doctors to address the need of medical services. In the past week, the chaos has become more entropic by the day, with a million people marching through this past night. And while the reform package Dilma and her emergency cabinet have offered suggests that Dilma hasn't entirely run out of ideas, it's hard to see how any of these promises can be implemented quickly enough to please the enraged masses. Her proposals are long-term concepts, rather than short-term fixes, many of which require acquiesence from recalcitrant  politicans who see Dilma's undoing as their opening for advantage.

Dilma's not the first politician in Brazil to use kicking the can down the road as an expedient substitute for political action. But Dilma now finds herself in a terrible trap, because the change that the crowds desire but are unable to effectively articulate is one that may be beyond any Brazilian leader's capacity to deliver. Such change would require an unraveling of the patronage and clientelism embedded in Brazil's political economy; it would require undoing the systems that allow the country's elite to hoard Brazil's resource wealth while the provision of basic services like sanitation, education, healthcare and equality in legal protection, while improved in the last decade, remains flagrantly inconsistent. Fundamental change that reverses a longstanding order that has been in place for centuries will not happen overnight or even within a generation.

Brazilians are going to have to dig in for the long haul and work together, but they will need to find common ground first, and right now the haves and have-nots could not be further apart.

A Return

It has been an excessively long time since my last post. Work and travel, as usual, have a way of intervening. But the shocking images outside the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria in southern Brazil today provided superior motivation. The scenes of bodies being carried through the streets and bystanders trying to hack down the walls of the building convey a tragedy made all the more devastating by its inevitability. An appaling toll of 232, mostly university students, is the latest fatality figure--and certain to rise in the coming days. The club's fire prevention certificate had apparently been expired; too few exits made the club a deathtrap; and a band's pyrotechnic show went awry--perfect tinder for a disaster, and one that we have seen before many times.

The Charlie Waterfall scandal and Brazil's entrenched bribery state

Brazil finds itself in yet another political bribery scandal, this time one that could have grave consequences for projects ranging from 2016 Summer Olympics and World Cup 2014 development to the massive public infrastructure elements of the government's Growth Acceleration Program (PAC).

In February, Carlinhos Cachoeira (translated as Charlie Waterfall) was arrested on charges of illegal gambling, money laundering, smuggling and corruption. In Brazil, such charges are not uncommon among white collar criminals, but Charlie Waterfall has unusually high-placed friends, including politicians within President Dilma Rouseff's ruling political party PT (Workers Party) and its main partner, the PMDB (Democratic Movement Party). Cachoeira is allegedly a kingpin behind under-the-table slot machine and bingo racketeering and "jogo do bichos," a longstanding Brazilian betting game that is illegal, but so widely-played that its existence precipitates a "look the other way" attitude from officials and public alike. Since the beginning of the year, an investigative sting called Operation Monte Carlo routed Cachoeira's activities and plunged its trail of paid-off senators, ministers and other political flunkies into a widening morass. A parliamentary investigation (CPMI) looking into the relationships between Cachoeira and government figures has begun to sniff out connections that lead directly to the highest office.

Yesterday, Fernando Cavendish and Carlos Pacheco, the owner and director respectively of Delta Construcoes, one of Brazil's largest construction companies with an estimated 195 public works contracts in 23 states, resigned their duties as federal police jailed a former company director, Claudio Abreu, and detained a rash of other company executives (as well as politicians and civil servants in Goias, Anapolis and the capital, Brasilia). Delta, whose known links include members of PT and the PMDB governor of Rio de Janeiro, Sergio Cabral, is suspected of being deeply enmeshed in Cachoeira's graft schemes. According to Brazilian newsweekly Veja, Delta's federal government business rose by an extraordinary 1635% in the last three years as it was handed such prized contracts as the refurbishment of Rio's Maracana Stadium, the TransCarioca rapid transit bus line and Petrobras' Comperj refinery complex. While officials have assured the smooth transition of Delta's responsibilities as doubters worry about on-time completion of World Cup and Olympic infrastructure, the reality is that the work, already far behind, won't be helped by having such massive swaths of public and private sector individuals embroiled in the scandal.

While Lula and President Rousseff met yesterday to formulate the official PT stance on the shenanigans, they must surely be formulating a response to the lurking problem of the former national director of infrastructure and transport, Luiz Antonio Pagot, who was forced out last year under suspicion of bribery. In an interview last week, Pagot insisted that he was made a fall guy to protect Charlie Waterfall and Delta's owner Cavendish. Surely more muck will rise to the surface in the next few weeks. Stay tuned...

US-Brazil Relations post-BRICS

I find it still puzzling that Brazil-US relations are as complicated as ever. The fact is, there are problems on both sides, and the avenues for understanding are not always smooth. I have just published a new think piece for Reuters, linking future energy concerns with President Dilma Rousseff's upcoming visit to the US (which is--embarrassingly--not being treated as a state visit by the White House. I marvel at how the US can possibly rationalize this rather shabby treatment of the first female president of the world's sixth largest economy.).

Above, if you have the time, check out this video of a speech made last month by His Excellency Mauro Vieira, the Ambassador of Brazil to the US. It highlights some important aspects of Brazil-US relations. But what is equally interesting is what is left unsaid about the relations between the two countries. The residual left-wing tendencies espoused by the Worker's Party brightest lights, former president Lula da Silva and current president Dilma Rousseff, are not necessarily in the best interests of the country with respect to its relations with the US and others; and the US' tendency to treat Brazil like its personal backyard and patronize it as if it were the 1950's and Brazil still needed lessons in developmental economics, can be spectacularly short-sighted.

What complicates this is the relative level of foreign policy ignorance among members of Congress, who often operate at cross-purposes to the American national interest. Now that the BRICS have held their annual get-together, and Brazil has announced its contentious South-South policy of taking the US dollar and European Euro economies to task, I suspect we will see a more fretful dialogue between the giants of the Americas.

The BRICS 2012 Summit

Brazil's Trade and Industry Minister Fernando Pimentel set the stage for a new global confrontation at the BRICS summit today. Gathering in India, along with the heads of state of India China,Russia and South Africa, President Dilma Rousseff and her government's delegation have offered sharp words about the dollar and euro liquidity glut that has driven hot money into Brazil's economy. A communique will be issued jointly by the BRICS stating the concern that American and EU economic policies are forcing rising powers to consider protective tariffs and action at the World Trade Organization.

The language has been direct. Said Pimentel: "Today's (problem) doesn't have to do with China," he said in a 30-minute interview on the eve of the summit in New Delhi. "It has to do with the dollar and the euro."

While such collective brokering seems to look askance at the years of Chinese currency manipulation, the implication of joint action would put pressure on US and EU trade. Watch this space as Brazil and China seek to shore up their current trade relations and amp up their protectionist policies...

Chevron and the Frade Oil Leak

Although minute in comparison to the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico last year, the leak in the Frade oil field 370km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro has turned that oil field's US drilling operator Chevron into Brazil's version of BP. Though the leak occurred last November, releasing approximately 2500 barrels of oil from 500m under the ocean floor and 1130m under the surface of the Atlantic ocean, Chevron has now been charged by the Brazilian government--forcing the US oil giant to close off its Frade field well, deactivate its oil rig, and face criminal indictments against George Buck (Chevron's head of Brazilian operations) and 16 other Chevron executives. Their passports have been surrendered and they are being forced to stay in Brazil, with the full indictments expected to be announced tomorrow. Couple this with the record $11billion environmental lawsuit being levied against Chevron for the leak and you have a fiasco that must have the oil company's directors regretting their $3billion investment into Brazil.

But Chevron's woes yield a worrying glimpse into the future: if leaks like these are possible at only 1200m below the sea, what happens if and when Brazil taps into the pre-salt oil reserves located at levels twice as deep? Worse still, what does this say about Brazil's oil policy when Chevron gets thumped for spills, but Brazilian national oil company Petrobras--responsible for several deep water leaks--gets away scott-free? As the potential for monumental environmental damage escalates with greater deep-water extraction ventures, Brazil's ability to manage not only the technical aspects of extraction but also the international partnerships required to execute the retrieval of oil must be judiciously aligned.

Pollution and environmental damage have a long and sad history in Brazil. But one of the country's saving graces is the innovative spirit of its people in spite of harsh conditions and blight. New York-based Brazilian artist Vik Muniz captured the essence of this in his 3-year quest to document the conditions in the world's largest landfill (in Rio) and turn it into something beautiful. His resulting film, Waste Land, is a must-see. I had the pleasure of working with Vik many years ago and was reminded of his spirit as I contemplated the current offshore environmental troubles Brazil now faces. Check out the trailer for his film below: