I haven't had much to say about the 2016 Olympics being awarded to Rio because like any natural-born Carioca, I'm filled with pessimistic trepidation. Tell anyone from Rio that you know someone who just visited there, and the first reaction you get will be, "Oh god - please tell me they weren't mugged or worse."
As a kid, I remember going out one night - somewhat rebelliously - with my friend Julio. We wanted to get something to eat, there was nothing in my dad's apartment, and so we just went out. This was not often done at our age for some reason. We didn't know why. It was 9:30 on a Sunday or something. And we were a certain age and a certain size: the street kids who could have mugged us a few years back were 3, 4 inches shorter than us now. We did pull-ups and some lifting. We felt pretty bad-ass, even knowing that in Rio, the concept of a good neighborhood or good street is awfully fluid. But going out was a statement of normalcy, I guess, or something like that.
So out we went. And no, this story doesn't end in a mugging or a robbery. It ends with us - two skinny teenagers wearing t-shirts and flip-flops, feeling invincibly middle class - scaring two older women. They heard us walking, heard us talking tough like characters in Rio's version of a Bruce Springsteen song or something, and turned, frightened to death, convinced that we were the very bad guys that our posturing was meant to hold off. As we passed them, Julio sighed and said, "This is what I hate about Rio. You hear someone behind you, in flip flops, when it's late at night, and you're afraid."
There was a recent New Yorker article about the gangs of Rio. I can't link to it, but the author has a pretty captivating two-minute audio slide show here. The keeper line in the article to me was a quote from Alfredo Sirkis about the disparity between rhetoric and actions:
It's all Scandinavian talk in an Iraqi reality.
I thought about the line as I read part of an email from my dad:
I'm not much for giving advice advice these days because I am completely disappointed with life in Riode Janeiro. Everything seems wrong. This civil war is developing an unpleasant momentum as the confrontations escalate. And I find that life is ever more restricted, as we have to choose carefully where to go, and at what time to go out. But this has been more pertinent for me than for Laila. She leaves anytime, to go anywhere, even very late at night. Me, I need a few months away next year.
And that is as good a reminder I can summon as to why life in Rio is beautiful and impossibly difficult. The news continues to be bad. Helicopter shot down, more-dead-than-a-bad-month-in-Gaza bad. The city that, goes the song lyric, greets you with open arms in postcards, but with clenched fists in real life is waiting for its time to shine. Brazilians also like to say that Brazil is the country of the future - and it always will be. Here's hoping that the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games are what helps Rio finally turn the corner.
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