Brazil and the Olympics: trouble on the horizon

Festive music, thousands of dancers and a wide range of both Brazilian and international celebrities: the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro is guaranteed to be a spectacular event. However, behind all these festivities we find a city that has already collapsed under financial and political pressure.

When Brazil got assigned the 2016 Olympics in 2009, no one could have predicted that Brazil would ever be in the state that it is in today. While the rest of the world was suffering massively from a severe economic crisis, Brazil and its economy were flourishing. Under the reign of the beloved president Lula, the GDP was rising rapidly and poverty was quickly decreasing. Although Rio de Janeiro was not yet ready for the Olympics, their government had a promising agenda. Among others, they had planned to build the world’s largest harbor and invest 4 billion dollars into cleaning up the waters of Rio. Brazil seemed more than capable to live up to international expectations.

In the beginning of 2014, however, this seemingly perfect Brazil is slowly starting to collapse. Disappointing oil extractions cause the Brazilian market to collapse and as a result, the government is no longer able to pay back the money they loaned from Brazilian banks. In addition to the largest economic crisis in seventy years, Brazil has to deal with yet another crisis, when a huge political scandal is unveiled in 2015. Several members of congress, as well as President Dilma Rousseff, are being accused of using the state’s oil company Petrobras to award themselves millions worth of bribes. Only a few years prior to this, Brazil was seen as the country of the future. Now, it has deteriorated into the country of economic and political crisis.

Today, just one day away from the start of the Olympics, it has become evident that the idealistic image that was painted in 2009, has turned into a disaster. The Olympic Village is filled with workers hired by other countries, because the village has been called unfit for occupancy and the Brazilian government has no money to fix it. Marathon swimmers have to swim through chemical waste, sewage and dangerous bacteria, and the street children that were occupying the streets of Rio only some days ago, have been violently removed from the city. Meanwhile, most of the government, including the president, is out of office, because they are on trial for possible impeachment and police forces are not being paid because of governmental debts.

One would hope there is still a silver lining. However, even if Brazil brings the Olympics to a good end, the future isn’t all too bright. No amount of Olympics-related tourism will be enough to make up for the debts the Brazilian government has made in organizing the Olympics, and the large amount of bad press hasn’t helped the image of Rio de Janeiro either. Not to mention disappointing ticket sales, an epidemic of the Zika-virus and a government that is bound to collapse. The future of Brazil is an unstable and worrying one.

Sources: The New York Times (1) (2), de Groene Amsterdammer.

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