Decentering São Paulo: The Prefeitura’s Master Plan

São Paulo’s new mayor has a plan for the Augean Stables of one of the world’s most automobilistic sprawls.

Source: Brasilianas.Org.

By: Wanderley Preite Sobrinho
Translation: C. Brayton

SÃO PAULO — With its Arch of the Future and “urban corridor” plans, the city government intends to revise the Strategic Master Plan by increasing the supply of jobs on the periphery of the city without having to restrict the circulation of automobiles.

The administration of São Paulo mayor Haddad is betting all of its chips on revising the city’s Strategic Master Plan in order to reduce traffic congestion without the need to restrict traffic in the central districts, as it has since 1997 with the rodizio, the  once-a-week rotating restriction of automobiles based on license-plate numbers.

In this way, the city will also have no need to challenge the federal government’s industrial incentives program, responsible for an increase in the purchase of personal automobiles — the principal villain of traffic congestion in the city.

The city government’s strategy is to use the Master Plan to realize one of the principal promises of mayoral candidate Fernando Haddad (PT): the Arc of the Future, whose aim is to reduce the circulation of vehicles in the expanded urban center by urbanizing and attracting jobs to the periphery, where most of the city’s population lives.

Rio | The Return of the New Van Plan

Black-market van stuffed with 10 armed, ninja-style black-clad corpses, December 2007, Rio de Janeiro

Source: O Globo — Portal ClippingMP.
Translation: C. Brayton

A follow-up to Rio Has New Man With Plan for Van, from 2007.

That year, fierce feuds over turf and market share broke out among the militias and drug traffickers who shake down independent operators of vans and mototaxis for «tolls» and «insurance».

It makes you wonder: are such measures also aimed at undermining the economic base of the milícia — cohorts of current and ex-police who invade territory neglected by the state and impose a mafia-style discipline — in these areas.

Probably. Ferraz, the special secretary of supplementary public transportation, made his bones pursuing the militias of Rio. He is also the author of the novel that formed the basis of the film Tropa de Elite |  Elite Squad 2.  The official announcement, from December 2007:

On December 5. Rio de Janeiro mayor Eduardo Paes announced the creation of a special office of supplementary public transportation, led by state judicial police official Cláudio Ferraz, former commander of the anti-organized crime bureau that has pursued the militias of Rio.

The Ban on the Van

Militia in the Volta Redonda

Source: Diário do Vale, a regional newspaper for a portion of the Vale do Paraíba.

On the occasion of his swearing in, the newly appointed federal police official for Volta Redonda, Elias Escobar, promised to combat the militia in the region.

Escobar said that criminal organizations composed of bad cops are to be found everywhere in Rio de Janeiro state, and that they  tend to engage in such black-market businesses as illegal gambling and pirate Internet access and cable TV.

— I am going after the militias. We fear no one and we will spare no one. Although these groups operate discreetly, I believe their crimes are worse than those of common criminals, because these are groups of men with law enforcement credentials and a state-issued weapon. These are to be used to defend citizens, but somewhere along the line these cops went bad,” said Escobar.

Escobar added that Macaé, where he worked before this reassignment, was already taking action against militia organizations.

— We conducted Operation Roubo S.A in 2009 and arrested 32 policemen — he said. Roubo S.A. was carried out in September 2009 and sought to combat bank robberies and load jacking.

This action received zero googleable search results and only a desultory mention on the public affairs site of the DPF.

Along with the militias, Escobar, 56, with 17 years in the service of the PF, intends to go after financial crimes such as embezzling federal funds from the budgets of federal aid recipients, as well as to crack down on the market for drugs and weapons. To this end, Escobar says he will work jointly with other institutions.

— We will work more closely with the judiciary and the public prosecutor, and we will avail ourselves of synergies with other law enforcement agencies, such as the military and state judicial police, the Municipal Guard, the Federal Highway Patrol, and municipal secretaries of public safety and order,” he said..

Objectives

Escobar says he means to procure more human resources, mostly in the area of intelligence. The Volta Redonda office currently houses 20 federal police agents.

Escobar also says he intends to raise funds to erect a new building for the office. The feds currently occupy a rented building, but the land needed to build the force a headquarters of its own has already been acquired.

The superintendent of the Polícia Federal in Rio de Janeiro state, Valdir Lemos, says that personnel transfers within the organization are common.

— Our goal is to give the office a thorough airing out. Escobar, born here in the Sul Fluminense and knowledgeable about the region, is being moved out of Macaé to replace Carla de Melo Dolinski in Volta Redonda. Our objective is to assure the continuity of our case work,”  Lemos said.

In October of last year — election season — Rio governor Cabral warned of the expansion of militia groups outside their traditional -quasi urban milieux .

 Sérgio Cabral (PMDB) said he was extremely concerned about the runoff round in Rio, which takes place on Sunday.  Cabral says that persons from the  Baixada Fluminense, with ties to militia groups, are coming to the city to work as canvassers.

Cabral said he had already alerted the state secretary of public safety to what was going on. Cabral’s remarks came during a visit to Volta Redonda, accompanied by  federal vice-president Temer and Rio mayor Eduardo Paes. All three announced their support for the reelections of mayor Antônio Francisco Neto (PMDB).

— I am very concerned. One hand I have support of Neto, Temer, president Dilma, ex-president Lula. On the other hand, ex-governor Anthony Garotinho is running for mayor after making a hash out of his time in lower house of congress, despite his complete lack of skills for such a job.

Garotinho is bringing in people from Baixada Fluminense to serve as whips and canvassers. These are professionals at what they do, and include persons with militia involvement.

During the election, the election authority ordered law enforcement to be vigilant for signs of illegal conduct.  The item dates from July 17, 2012.

Security is being tightened for the elections so that candidates that are not well regard [sic] by paramilitary groups will not be prevented from campaigning in certain areas of the city. .

Another objective is to prevent attacks on candidates like state deputy and would-mayor Marcelo Freixo (PSOL). Freixo presided over the state legislative commission of inquiry into the militia phenomenon and inspired the character of an engaged  politician  in the film “Elite Squad II.”

The order was ratified in a meeting between justices of the elections tribunal and representatives of federal police forces, the Army, the elections prosecutor and the state public safety secretary.

Volta Redonda is a crossroads city, connecting Sampa to Rio along the Vale de Paraíba, among other connections.

 

Vatican.va(cant) | What Next?

Who is Who in the Papal Succession?

By: Gilberto Nascimento, Viomundo
Translation: C. Brayton

The German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger earned the nickname”the Rottweiler of the Pope”during the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, he presided over the all-powerful Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, formerly known as the Holy Inquisition. An influential advisor to John Paul II — whom he would later succeed, in 2005 — Ratzinger was a fierce defender of episcopal power and a  return to orthodoxy.

Ratzinger mobilized his forces against liberation theology, playing a role in the decimation of a Catholic Church dedicated to the poor, based on Vatican Council II (1962-1965) and principally applied  in Latin America. Ratzinger served as symbolic executioner of the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, a former student of his, on whom Ratzinger imposed “obedient silence” in 1985.

As pontiff of the Holy See, Benedict XVI has surrounded himself with conservative cardinals, reinforcing a line of action inherited from the papacy of John Paul II. He has also empowered Catholic movements of an authoritarian and ultraconservative bent.

Infiltrating the fabric of the Roman Curia, these groups launched a fierce dispute for power and control. A number of Vatican officials were accused of financial wrongdoing and other scandals, such as pedophilia among the priesthood.

Unable to control this situation, Benedict XVI — on the eve of his resignation — discovered too late that it is not possible to govern alone. In the midst of so much intrigue, vanity and ambition, he lost his power to command. He found himself with no loyal soldiers to carry out his orders.

Papal nominations that failed to follow common practice also provoked a strong response. The recruitment of former collaborators for key posts under Benedict XVI ran counter to deeply rooted special interests inside the Church.

Before the 1990s, for example, the divide within the Church was conceptualized as a struggle between so-called converatives and progressives. In the present, Benedict has been sabotaged by members of right-wing groups whom he has angered.

After announcing his resignation, the Pope spoke out against “divisions in the body of the Church” that “distort the true face of the Church.” He denounced “religious hypocrisy” and the vanity of those who revel in public exposure, seeking “applause and approval.”

Benedict XVI did not, however, identify what he meant by these “hypocrites” who lust shamelessly for power inside the Holy See.

Key participants in these power plays, however, are powerful conservative movements such as Opus Dei, deemed a veritable “Army of the Pope.”

Another high-profile group is the Communion and Liberation Movement, whose members came to be known as “the Stalinists of God” and “the Rambos of the Pope.” During the papacy of John Paulo II they were known as “Wojtyla’s monks.”

Opus Dei and Communion & Liberation are the two most powerful forces in the present-day Catholic church. Other conservative movements are on the rise as well, such as Focolares, Neocatecumenals, and the Legionaries of Christ

Opus Dei, founded in 1928 in Spain by the priest Josemaria Escrivá — canonized in 2002 —  grew in power during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, from 1936 to 1975. Today, Opus Dei is present in 90 countries, with some 89,000 followers worldwide.

Its mission, according to leadership, is to disseminate the Christian way of life.

Certain practices attributed to its followers are criticized, such as the supposed practice of auto-flagellation. Followers are obliged to reveal their innermost thoughts to their superiors.

A significant number of Opus Dei adherents occupy positions of social leadership and popularity. The organization includes 2,000 priests, along with cardinals and bishops. Opus maintains centers of higher education such as the University of Navarra (Spain), a seminary in Rome, 600 high schools and 17 business management post-graduate programs.

Among these academic programs, the Masters em Jornalismo program — now affiliated with IICS. the International Institute of Social Sciences– and the transnational networked IESE.

Opus and Navarra were also early users and developers of new media as a strategy for propagating Catholic precepts in a world without frontiers. The pioneering and highly influential Innovation Mediaconsulting, for example  is the brainchild of Navarra professor Juan Antonio Giner, among others. ECuaderno, the personal-professional blog of Navarra professor J.L. Orihuela since at least 1998, is a good example of the movement’s networking style.

The business education arm of the order is the IESE Business School, which has a campus in Brasília and plans to offer courses in — among other subjects — media management to 500 students per year. Prominent Brazilians with ties to Opus Dei include legal scholar Ives Gandra Martins and communications professor Carlos Alberto Di Franco among others.

Di Franco consults with a number of major media groups — the NY Times, for one — and runs a journalism-slash-public-relations course, the Masters [sic] in Jornalismo. Any number of local journalists have earned their M.A. there, including a good chunk of the staff at O Estado de S. Paulo.

São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin once revealed in an interview that Josemaria Escrivá’s “The Path“was on his bedside table. He says he admires the ideas of the Spanish priest, but denies being a member of Opus Dei.

In a surprising interview during the 2006 campaign, di Franco claimed to be Alckmin’s supernumerary, or spiritual adviser.

Present in 80 countries with 200,000 members worldwide,, Communion & Liberation has in the Cardinal of Milan, Angelo Schola,  its most distinguished exponent.

Scola has close ties to Benedict XVI. Communion & Liberation was founded in 1954 by the Italian monsignor Luigi Giussani and is led today by the Spaniard Julián Carrón. The group’s members view culture as “a key to the reading of history.” Social conflicts, in their view, should be analyzed in terms of culture and not in terms of class struggle or economic doctrine.

Founded in 1943, in Italy, by Chiara Lubich, the Focolares movement today has 100,000 members. One of its most principal adepts is the Brazilian cardinal João Braz de Avis, prefect pf  the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Lofe and Societies of Apostolic Life.

Braz de Avis is much discussed as a potential successor to Benedict. A former Archbishop of Brasília, Avis is also a member of the Pontifical Committee for International Eucharistic Congresses.

The Focolares movement is considered “an association of private, lay individuals whose  practicioners say they are “consecreted by poverty, chastity and obedience.”.

With a presence in 15,000 communities and 105 nations, and a membership of a million persons, the Neocatecumenal movement emerged from Madrid, during the 1960s. It was created by the Spanish painter Francisco Argüello. Its object was to help parishioners evangelize the faith in societies becoming less and less oriented by Christian values.

Another religious tendency is the Legionaries of Christ, founded in Mexico City in 1941. Its founder, the Mexican priest Marcial Maciel, was accused of sexually abusing underage seminary students.

After a special commission, nominated by Benedict XVI, was sent to look into the charges, the Holy See intervened in the organization.

Entangled in so many webs of competing interests and visions, the Roman Curia could only watch as conflicts grew. In the search for power, religious offices are hotly disputed..

When the Pope names a representative of one group to an important post, he displeases others. Tensions were high, for example, after such nominations as Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, an Opus Dei adept, to the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), known as the Vatican Bank. Tedeschi took over in 2009 and was fired last year for mismanagement.

A personal friend of the Pope, Tedeschi may have been the victim of a plot on the part of bank board members in order to undermine him. Behind this apparent campaign was Cardinal Tarcísio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, according to documents made public during the so-called Vatileaks scandal. The bank is charged with receiving funds from dubious sources.

The nomination of Bertone as Secretary of State may also have angered some. The reason for this dissatisfaction is that Bertone is not a career diplomat, whereas Papal tradition is to elevate a career diplomat to the post. A former secretary to Ratzinger in Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, Bertone is a Salesian.

Benedict VXI also dismissed Vatican spokesperson Joaquim Navarro Valls, an Opus Dei follower who was quite close to John Paul II. Valls has occupied the post for 22 years and was replaced by Jesuit father Federico Lombardi.

Also raising eyebrows was the 2011 transfer of Cardinal Angelo Scola, primate of Venice and holder of various offices inside the Roman Curia, to the Archbishop of Molin.

Scola, a member of Communion and Liberation, is pointed to as one of the favorites to succeed Benedict XVI. His transfer to Milan may indicate that he is Pope’s own preference as a successor, sources inside the Vatican say. The Pope also transfered a Brazilian bishop Filipo Santoro, from Petrópolis to a diocese in Italy so that he can participate more directly in the Communion and Liberation movement.

A former aide to the National Council of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) and a Vatican scholar, father Manoel Godoy, currently executive director of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Institute in Belo Horizonte, warns that the next pope will have to bring about major changes if he is not to be held hostage to current power structures. According to Godoy, emeritus cardinals who remain at the Holy See are forming conspiratorial groups with the aim of destabilizing the papacy. “The retired cardinals are still present. They have plenty of time on their hands in order to elaborate plots and plans and will not allow the Pope to govern.

Some of these emeritus archbishops such as the two Italians — Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and Giovanni Batista Ré — the Slovak, Josef Tomko and the Colombian Dario Castrillón Hoios, are said to be sympathetic to the interests of Opus Dei.

The Bicho and The Bingo | Hurricane Update

O Dia Online:

Rio de Janeiro, 18 February 2013 —  José Januário de Freitas 10 other state judicial police have been dismissed by Rio de Janeiro state public safety secretary because of their involvement with numbers and gambling machines racketeering.

The adminstrative ruling comes six years after the initial indictments in the case. See also

• Brazil: Hurricane Blows Up the Toga
• Hurricane Aftermath: Rio Bicheiros Lobby for Top Cop Slots

Dutifully noted.

The Ruralist | Potemkin Villager or Hero of Soviet Labor?

«Chemicals are the true friends of agriculture! They will provide us with centuries of grain!» —Soviet propaganda poster, 1965

I read it in the Folha de S.Paulo and used it to practice the WordFast online and Java editions.

I am surprised not to read more about this issue in the mainstream press. Carnaval is something of a sacred cow, obviously, despite worrisome ties to the underworld.

Columnist, lobbyist and federal Senator — all at once! — Kátia Abreu explains the importance of Vila Isabel’s victory in this year’s Carnaval parades in Rio.

Who is Kátia?

Kátia Abreu is a federal senator (PSD-TO) and leader of the rural benches of the Brazilian congress. She serves as president of the lobbying group CNA, the Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil. She writes a weekly column in the Saturday edition of the  ’Market’ section.

Recalling the background: 

Bicho + Globo + LIESA = RICO?

Source: O Globo.

RIO — Sunday, as the spotlights fell on the Special Group at the Sambadrome, an operation by state judicial police internal affairs launched 9 days ago found irregularities inside LIESA, the  League of Independent Escolas de Samba.

Entering the office of LIESA president  Jorge Castanheira, police served search and seizure warrants for evidence reflecting the participation of military police officers — among them, majors and colonels — in the provision of internal security for the festivities, contrary to a ruling by the state secretary of public safety.

Among the documents seized during Operation Finger of God II was a spreadsheet listing 37 names of security personnel hired to control access to the passarela in 2012.

At the time, state secretary Beltrame had already issued an order forbidding the involvement of police personnel in this capacity. In defiance of this rule, six colonels, five majors and a captain are listed in the document as security personnel in the employ of  MJC Eventos. The company has a services contract with Liesa and includes reserve colonel Celso Pereira de Oliveira among its partners.

O GLOBO was provided with exclusive access to some of the materials collected from Castanheira’s office. Seized at the location were two laptops, a CPU, a pen drive and a number of documents.

Give My Regards to the Big Turk

The discovery of police personnel moonlighting as Sambadrome security was not the only problem uncovered by the operation.

Among the papers seized was a handwritten letter of two pages, signed by a certain João Luis, which suggests that  the LIESA president is not exclusively busy with organizing the Carnaval parade.

The author says he is involved in a dispute with bicho banker José Caruzzo Escafura, aka Piruinha, and asks Castanheira to intercede on his behalf with bicho banker Antônio Petrus Kalil, aka The Big Turk.

Piurinha and the Rio Police

Piruinha I have heard of only in passing. The federal police union published the following anecdote.

The federal police investigations that resulted in Operation Black Op show that Haylton Carlos Escafura — the son of  José Caruzzo Escafura, a top Rio bicho banker  — relied on the protection of 10 state judicial police patrol cars during a transfer of automobiles belonging to the agency Euro Imported Cars, in Barra de Tijuca, in which he is a partner.

The security scheme was placed at the disposal of the racketeer by a ranking judicial police officer on November 24, 2010, on the eve of the invasion of the Complexo do Alemão. Wiretaps show that  Haylton was afraid that his auto agency would be targeted by rivals in the “nickel-hunter” gambling machine racket.

The intimate ties between Piruinha and state police may explain the fact that Haylton remains at large. He was one of 22 persons ordred arrested by a Federal court in October, when the federals kicked off Black Ops.

GLOBO has had access to excerpts of the wiretaps in which Piruinha’s son discusses the transfer of vehicles with Fábio Dutra Souza, his partner in the business, located on the Avenida Ministro Ivan Lins.

We, The Wise Guys

Returning to the most recent report by O Globo, and the letter leaked to it.

The author of the letter, dated 29 de setembro de 2011, begins by apologizing for pestering the LIESA president, then suggests that  Castanheira is fully aware of the rules imposed by the senior leadership of the bicho rackets of Rio.  “You and the other racketeers, with the exception of José Escafura, who for years now has not respected or enforced the rules of the mafia to which he belongs …”

Bills Were Paid by Bicho Bankers?

This was not the only connection to the bicho racket uncovered by police. During the same operation, police internal affairs, which visited another 13 addresses, discovered seven electricity bills in the name of Castanheira at a bicho operations center belonging to «Captain Guimarães». The discovery suggests that the LIESA president had his bills paid by the Captain.

Sought for comment by GLOBO, Jorge Castanheira denied any involvement with the bicho rackets and said he knows nothing about the letter discovered by police. He also denies that his electricity bills were paid for by “Captain” Guimarães.

— This proceeding is confidential. I have not had access to its content, but the press has. I cannot understand it. I have no ties to the bicho bankers. Today, I am president of LIESA, but for the last 28 years I have worked [as a general assistant]. During those years, I received a degree in economics. I receive hundreds of letters as president of LIESA, but none of them have anything to do with the bicho racket. I have nothing to do with any criminal conspiracy and I don’t know whose electricity bills these are.

Castanheira added that the only electricity bills on which his name appears are related to the offices occupied by LIESA from 1987 to 1995. Regarding the hiring of police to provide security, he said he had asked MJC to give preferential treatment to reserve officers.

Rule Applies to Police Reserves as Well

Despite what Castanheira says, reserve officers of the military police are not exempt from the disciplinary provisions of Decree 6579/83 …  According to this rule, military police must respect the police hierarchy both as current and off-duty or reserve police agents. Thus, Beltrame’s decree applies to retired PMs as well.

The public safety secretary said that it is looking into the irregular provision of services by its personnel during Carnaval. In a note, the department said that since 2008, more than 1,393 state judicial and military police have been expelled by the three internal affairs departments … for various misdeeds.

Finger of God II grew out of an analysis of data obtained during Finger of God I in December 2011. During the second phase, starting on 31 January 2012, the police applied for arrest warrants for bicho bankers Capitão Guimarães and Luiz Pacheco Drumond, aka Luizinho Drumond, both of them former  Liesa presidents.

Their warrant applications were not granted, however.

LIESA, The Untouchable Monopoly

Why not? This is the question that demands an answer when it comes to understanding how for nearly 18 years LIESA has dominated Carnaval in Rio from start to finish, from lighting to ticket sales, from the sound system to every other aspect of the festivities.

Including broadcast rights, which LIESA has ceded to the Globo network despite the best efforts of the state legislature to put an end to its rein.

Bicho + Globo + LIESA = RICO?

I posted a note on that general topic in 2007.

• Rio: “Why Does Globo Monopolize Carnival?”

Historically linked to the bicho numbers racket, LIESA has monopolized the organized Carnaval celebration since 1995. Year in and year out, promises of a competitive public auction have failed to pan out.

Rio mayor Eduardo Paes scheduled such an auction on various occasions and succeeded in conducting one for 2010, but the proposal as passed failed to meet certain requirements of the TCM, the city accounting tribunal.

This year, as I noted recently, TCM justices lost their free access to a Sambadrome sky box on the grounds that the justices should not be benefiting from a contract on which they will eventually have to pronounce judgment.

Unlike what the bicho bankers claimed, the terms as stated were not valid; the auction would have to be redone, but there was not enough time left. Thus did Carnaval 2011 fall back into the hands of LIESA.

Last year, alleging lack of competition in the auction for Carnaval 2009, a Rio court froze the assets of former mayor  Cesar Maia, who hired LIESA R$ 5.3 million.

And therein lies another tale.

Samba-Rock and Rio Revelry

“Roll the drums in the Avenida
South Korea celebrates Carnaval!

Source:  Folha de S.Paulo

Tonight at the Rio Sambadrome, the Special Group of the city’s elite samba schools kicks off with an homage to South Korea … whose relevance to Carnaval tradition is a little difficult to understand.

As it turns out, a São Paulo samba society — the Unidos da Vila Maria — also commemorated Korean emigration to Brazil.

The theme, adopted by the Innocents of Belford Roxo, is not the only one to raise eyebrows.

Suffering lean times due to the international financial crisis and to police actions that have cut off of funding by the jogo de bicho numbers bankers, the samba schools have been frantically searching for private sector sponsorships.

An example is the theme adopted by Salgueiro and sponsored by the Grupo Abril’s Caras magazine [ -- think of it as a Brazilian People —Tr.] … The theme: humanity’s eternal quest for fame. …

Vila Isabel received subsidies from international pesticide company BASF and produced a theme relating to agriculture and country life.  The reigning champion, Unidos da Tijuca, is supported by German companies promoting the project Alemanha+Brazil 2013-2014.

The four samba societies just mentioned are the royalty of Rio Carnaval. They have the best infrastructure and can draw on the biggest budgets —  between US$4 million and US$10 million budgets — to mount their parades.

Question: how much of the revenue earned by Globo thanks to its monopoly on worldwide broadcast rights is plowed back into the escolas de samba?

«É a samba-hroque meu irmão»

Outside the elite group, meanwhile, Mocidade has received support from Rock in Rio and is using recycled materials in an innovative way to produce its  rock and roll-themed parade.  One of its floats is made of 15,000 used CDs.

Caption: Vila Isabel member puts the finishing touches on a float. The carnaval society will present the history of agriculture and the life of a simple agricultural laborer.

Some schools have worked to create a “sponsorable” thematic concept, but without result.

With the support of oil companies, Grande Rio will present the history of the oil industry and the dispute over royalties, taking the side of the Rio state government in the dispute. It has received no other funding from private industry or the state government — even though the insistent chorus of its samba-enredo insists, “Without them [i.e., royalties] there will be chaos.”

Inocentes, meanwhile, in its first appearance as part of the Special Group, was itself left empty-handed. A group of Korean businessmen promised Inocentes funding if it featured the country in its parade. The promise was not kept.

Also scheduled to appear tonight is Portela, with a  classic, old-school homage to the Madureira neighborhood,where it was born. Mangueira will celebrate the city of Cuiabá. União da Ilha will pay homage to the poet and composer Vinicius de Moraes, while São Clemente presents the world of telenovelas, the popular soap operas..

We look forward to seeing these mighty, mighty cultural juggernauts out on the Avenida. Our physical involvement will probably not amount to more than going to see off the local G.R.E.S., Pérola Negra.

Judging from its site, Pérola has obtained modest corporate sponsors ranging from a VW franchise, Brahma beer, a manufacturer of electric fixtures called Radial, and a local towing service.

Its theme is the auto da compadecida — a 1955 theater piece by Northeastern writer Ariano Suassuna.

To come: and what of the heavyweights of samba paulista?

Post Mortem Ergo Propter Mortem | Citizen Journalist Down

How much has changed since the Globo reporter’s 1992 exposé on São Paulo’s Maluf-era “police who kill”? Not much.

Ever since a group of military police riddled an entirely inoffensive neighbor of ours with bullets just a few yards from our front gate, I try to jot down other cases of this kind — the kind traditionally known as “resistance followed by death.”

To be fair, on January 9, the state trotted out a less Orwellian formulation: death as the consquence of an interaction with police, roughly. A note of mine from 2010 provides some of the context,.

• Post Hoc Ergo Non Propter Hoc: “Resistance Followed by Death Cases” Rise Sharply

True to form, the case of Mr. Aquino, our neighbor, has faded quickly from the headlines.

• The Aquino Case | Fallout Hits the PM
• The Aquino Killing | Policing Up the Brass?

Another receent case in point — one with a citizen journalism angle to it — was the posting of an amateur video showing a São Paulo military police officer shooting a visibly unarmed and compliant suspect in the back, somewhere in the Southern Zone.

As soon as that footage came out on YouTube,  an amazing coincidence occurred: across the street from the previous crime scene, there was an extreme-overkill execution in which something like 50 rounds were expended on a man claiming authorship of the video, as he sat with friends in the local bodega, across from where the original crime occurred. The assailants reportedly entered the bar shouting, “Police!”

So what next? 

Brazil | Building Out the Culture Industrial Complex

 

Source: Estado de S. Paulo »  Portal ClippingMP.
By: Sonia Racy
Translation: C. Brayton

Marcos Prado speaks out about the difficulties of producing films in Brazil, the challenges of distribution, and what comes next.

As the Oscars approach, Mar­cos Prado laments the rarity of Brazilian films among the nominees. Why does Brazil produce such a small number of films?

“I have no precise answer to these questions, but I know from experience how difficult it is to produce movies here,” says Prado, producer of the two Elite Squad films, the celebrated documentary Estamira, and the feature-length Artifical Paradises.

Is it a matter of inadequate marketing? “We lack domestic marketing, as well as strategies for foreign markets and government support,” Prado says.

While awaiting the results of Oscar night, Prado spoke to this column about what he says are exciting new projects.  The following are selections from that interview. .

After Paraísos Artifi­ciais | Artificial Paradises, what is your next project?

I will direct a film called Nó na Garganta | A lump in the throat – about football hooligans. We have already applied to BNDES and are raising other funds. Our budget is R$ 10 million.

We want to show why these young men identify so passionately with their team, their intense way  of life. There is a warlike aspect to this. I want to explore this underworld, which, while it generally involves young men of a more inferior social status, also attracts middle class youth to football violence. We are trying to understand, not to justify or to judge.

Any other projects on the way?

We are working on a screenplay on the life of Brazilian jiu-jitsu master Rickson Gracie — a story about his life, not about fighting, however.

We also plan a film about the invasion of the Morro do Alemão shantytown complex in Rio de Janeiro. Both will be directed by Zé Padilha. The film about the shantry we are provisionally calling The Invasion of the Alemão. The plot will deal with a book by Rodrigo Pimentel and Gustavo Almeida, to be published this year.

Invasion of the Alemão is a play on words: alemão is slang for the military police. Pimentel is a former military police captain and author of the novel Tropa de Elite.

Also emerging from our Pandora’s box: a TV series based on Elite Squad. We are still negotiating with channels interested in airing it.

Neuza was commenting just the other day that Brazil is in the initial stages of a migration from the ever popular novela — soap opera — to U.S. style one-hour dramatic series and half-hour situational comedies.

How did you and Padilha start working together?

We were always fast friends. Padilha was working in a bank. One day, he said to me: “Brother, the Age of Collor has let me down.”I answered: “Not me!”

Of course, the difference was that I had no savings to be confiscated, I was flat broke anyway! And then he told me he had long wanted to make documentaries, as I had been doing for quite some time, He proposed a documentary on coal miners. We eventually wound up make Elite Squad.

Was Elite Squad originally planned as a documentary?

It was, but we wound up producing a fiction because we could not find a way to document what goes inside the police forces. You cannot just sit there interviewing the talking head. That is boring. So Zé spent two years working on the screenplay. And it worked out well. .

Does Ancine work?

It works, but it is a bit slow and rigid.

And what about BNDES?

It helps.And there are other incentives as well, but all of them are expensive. The Brazilian film industry cannnot  become a true industry under the current rules governing Brazilian cinema.

Is it hard to arrange financing for films here in Brazil?

It is not easy. Ancine regulates the movie industry and limits the extent of federal subsidies to  R$ 7 million. There are also state and municipal incentives, which raise this ceiling some, but not very much. The problem is that this level of funding is too low for more ambitious productions.

Brazilian directors are beginning to work overseas. Padilha, for example.

They are going abroad because this is a dream they dream of fulfilling.  Padi­lha is becoming a director well known to the gringo audience and as a result will have more artistic freedom in the future. He is currently making a US$ 100 million film, Robocop 4. He has little artistic freedom, however..

In raising funds through the Rouanet Law, the maximum tax-free donation is R$7 million?

Correct. R$ 3 million of these  R$ 7 million go to distributors — the vast majority  of them subsidiaries of foreign companies. They are allowed by law to reinvest the percentage of box office receipts they would ordinarily remit to their parent company. Exercising this right, they become co-producers. For example: I am a film distributor,  I find myself interested in your project, and so I invest in your film, but only after you sign a contract with me. In this way, I have to give up the portion of the film rights that belong to me.

So that means that onlyh R$4 million in funding is available?

More or less, because this arrangement with the distributors is a common practice virtually everywhere in Brazil. And so you realize that you end up losing more and more of the own rights to your own film. A lot of producers also have to cede rights to investors and others.

For example: if you make a film without the participation of Globo Filmes, your film never gets launched. And so you concede 20% of your own rights and now, because 50% of ticket sales belong to the exhibitors, there is very little left of your share.

Producers have no way of making money off of Brazilian film productions.

On the rise of Globo Filmes, via Wikipedia:

In 1997, in a bid to enter the film industry, the Globo organizations created their own production company, Globo Filmes, a company that sought to rebrand all sectors of the national film industry. In a very short time, Globo Filmes would grow into a major monopoly that ruled the Brazilian film industry. Although its movie division was initially miniscule when measured against its TV networks, Globo successfully entered one of the culture industry’s most important niches, a niche it had never entered before.

Between 1998 and 2003, Globo was directly involved in 24 film productions and its supremacy in this area was definitively established in late 2003, when films produced by Globo Filmes took in 90% of the national box office earned by Brazilian films and 20% of all films exhibited in Brazil, foreign and domestic.

Brazilian box office sales for 2012. Disney leads the way, as it often does.

Is there any way out?

A lot of producers take it out of the salaries …  Along comes Ancine and says you are not allowed to do that. So you have to run an obstacle course to find some way to secure your funding. This is just plain wrong. The film industry has to be able to survive without resorting to such subterfuges.  But it’s not easy.

Did you distribute Elite Squad yourself?

Yes, we did, and we structured the finance in order to receive 70%. We set up a distribution company, called Nossa, in partnership with Conspiração, O2, Lereby and others involved in the industry.  The market liked the structure we came up with and market players cooperated on the creation of an option. The only problem is that this requires the producer to invest in the launch of the film, which the Rouanet law does not permit.  We are trying to reinvent a formula that would allow Brazilian cinema to become an economically viable industry.

What do you think of the competition between DVDs and movie houses?

Movie houses are declining, that much is true. The more purchasing power and technological savvy people have, the more they watch films at home. Still, the principal source of a producer’s income comes from ticket sales.

Government statistics on the market are optimistic, but quotas favoring national and international produtions seem to be slow to respond — judging the diet offered by our own cable TV operator.

The Brazilian movie market is the most vigorous of all the art forms. In 2011, according to an Ancine report, …  some 143.9 million tickets were sold and the gross revenue of movie box office was R$ 1.44 billion, both of them new national records that situate Brazil among the most important markets in the world.

Tickets sold represents a good deal less than one Brazilian per session.  U.S. box office for 2012 was 1.54 billion, or let us call it 5 movie tickets per capita.

“The number of feature-length films launched — 99 — was the highest in the last decade,. says  Ancine executive director Manoel Rangel. After the market began growing again in the 1990s, the Brazilian film industry has consolidated itself. The aesthetic values of its  productions and its alternative cinema are heating up. Competition remains fierce, of course. There were no Brazilian films among the box office champtions in  2012.

Brazilian cinema attendance ranks 13th in the world, with 80,000,000 tickets sold per annum, according to NationMaster. It also ranks 13th in films produced, with 81.

Brazil has 2,098 cinemas, half of them located in the Southeast.

The U.S. slipped to 5,697 in 2011 and has declined steadily since 1995, when it fielded 7,744.

Above: The Brazilian mass market suggests that very few national films obtain Hollywood levels of box office success at home.