The 2016 Olympics in Rio were a showcase for the tremendous athleticism of Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Simone Biles, and a long list of other competitors. The games also served as a jumping point for a much larger discussion about poverty and progress in Brazil. As was the case with the Brazil’s 2014 World Cup foreign correspondents visiting Rio jumped at the chance to report on the problems in the favela neighborhoods outside of the stadiums. Many Brazil-based correspondents also published thoughtful articles about the struggles that Rio as a city and Brazil as a whole continue to face.
On August 3 I tweeted this article from Stephanie Nolan for The Globe and Mail. In the article Nolan explains:
Rio was awarded the Summer Olympics in 2009 – on Brazil’s fifth attempt to get the Games – an international mark of recognition for how much the country had achieved. Its economy had grown to be the world’s sixth largest, and Brazil had made impressive progress on reducing the inequality that had bedevilled it since the colonizers landed here 516 years ago. Some 35 million people had been moved out of poverty into a fragile but ambitious lower-middle class, through a mix of expanding economic opportunity and progressive social policy. Brazil was flexing growing international influence, and winning the Games – the first country in South America to do it – cemented a new image.
But the Brazil that prepares to play host this week is an almost unimaginably different country than the one that won the bid.
A lot of media coverage of Brazil’s Olympics focused primarily, however, on entrenched poverty and inequality, and has mostly ignored Brazil’s impressive track record of implementing progressive social programs and working to reduce poverty. As a rule, Latin America is the most unequal regional economy on the planet. In countries throughout the region an immense gap between rich and poor has persisted for centuries. In the twenty-first century, no large country in the region demonstrated more commitment or achieved a better track record when it comes to reducing poverty than Brazil.
On August 4 I tweeted this article by Paul Farhi for The Washington Post.
The essay cites a blog post by American Olympic rower Megan Kalmoe about the questions she receives from the media about the contamination in Rio’s water. Kalmoe wrote:
What purpose does it serve to dwell on this? What benefit can we possibly gain from drilling athletes on their position on the water quality in Rio? None. Or nothing good, anyway. What it seems like to me, is that the media is yet again working really hard to smear the host city, the [International Olympic Committee], and the Olympics as an institution as part of the hype leading in to the Games.
Why do we insist on indulging this negativity when there is so much potential for a culture of optimism and positivity in and around the Games? . . . At every turn it seems we are choosing to be jerks.
On August 11 I tweeted a link to this piece for The New York Times. In my tweet I wrote, “This is a great article, but why don't we see the same coverage of poverty near the NBA All-Star Game? The Super Bowl?”
On August 17 I tweeted this article about New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony visiting a low-income favela neighborhood in Rio. The videos and photos of the pick-up game he played at a small fenced-in court with a few local kids are some of the coolest images to come out of the Games.
On August 19 I tweeted this article from The Economist. The article explains:
For many Brazilians, the high point of the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro came in the rain-drenched Engenhão stadium on August 15th. That was when Thiago Braz won an unexpected gold medal, and set an Olympic record, in pole vaulting. Brazil’s beaten-down economy is nowhere near performing a feat that would remind anyone of Mr Braz’s jump. But it may be starting to pick itself back up.
The signs are still tentative. Manufacturers are investing again: imports of capital goods were 18% higher in dollar terms in June than in the same month last year, the first year-on-year rise since September 2014. Industrial production increased in June for the fourth consecutive month after two years of nearly uninterrupted decline.
With the games now over, it remains to be seen if the event will ultimately help or hurt Brazil’s image around the world.
On August 21 I tweeted this op-ed from Luis Eduardo Soares. In his essay Soares explains that with the games over:
It is now that the residents of Rio de Janeiro begin to wonder: what will the legacy be? As we present ourselves to the world, have we revealed our faults? Or has the power of our cultural creativity come to the fore? Therein lies the contradiction of Rio: the combination of beauty and poverty, hedonism and inequality, a carnival atmosphere and bloody violence.
In short, at the 2016 the world got to see a glimpse of Brazil, the country’s problems, but also its promise.
On August 22 I tweeted this Q&A I did with Andrea Murta, the Deputy Director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, a Washington D.C.-based think tank. Murta told me:
Predicting the future of Brazil is a tricky business, but I expect that we are entering a period of more stability. Politically, it is likely that the current interim government of Michel Temer will be confirmed in place before the end of the month. Although this brings many questions about the health of democratic procedures in Brazil, it also ends a period of high uncertainty that has been extremely harmful to our economy.
There are already positive signs emanating from the Brazilian economy. Confidence in the economy is on the rise among both consumers and businessmen. This could bring a breath of fresh air to the markets and help spur the beginning of a recovery, with more investment and reignited production.
Brazil’s economy may even start to grow again in 2017. Overall, the Olympics spurred a lot of interesting coverage both of the games themselves and also the surround political and economic milieu. On Friday August 19 the NBA announced that the 2017 NBA All-Star game will be held in New Orleans.
We can only hope that the same level of scrutiny that Brazil’s poverty and persistent inequality received will now be turned to the economic periphery of New Orleans.
Additional Reading: Trump Nation: Does Income Inequality Now Define The U.S. Economy?
