VivirLatino

I’m just a futbol fan, no expert pero there sure are a ton of people looking at Brazil as one of the potential winners of the World Cup. In Brazil, as in much of Latin America, soccer is a a religion not just a sport pero leave it to the latest Newsweek to turn Brazil’s love of the sport into an economic concern.

From pg. 10 : [In Brazil] Banks close for the games. If the national team makes the playoff round, many schools suspend classes (Kindergarten included). And good luck finding an open church on game day. Even the warring drug traffickers on Rio’s hillsides will likely call a truce when the ball is rolling…That kind of passion has a cost…Brazil would forgo $1.2 billion [if just half the workforce in contending nations knocks off on game days].

No word on the positive community of futbol fans watching the games. Everything has to be monetized and have a value placed on it (as if the futbol industry in and of itself weren’t lucrative enough). This perspective is no accident, Brazil and Chile both have been centered in South America as examples of democratic and dconomic success following years of military dictatorships. This doesn’t erase the reality of the widening gap between rich and poor in either place.

And I am especially thinking of Brazil now that floods in the Northeast have killed at least 41 and disappeared at least 1,000. About 100,000 have been left homeless.