Our speaker at Glover Cottages on Tuesday 2 August was Dr Jorge Knijnik, a senior lecturer at the University of Western Sydney.  A Brazilian, Jorge has undertaken extensive research and field experience on urban slums in his home country and has won prizes for his community and pedagogical work.

Jorge’s assertions about Brazil and the impending Rio Olympics were rather grim. Modernisation since the 1960s has led to huge cities and riches for the fortunate few, but poverty for the country’s vast and growing number of poor. Social resentment was stirred up in the Rio favelas by intrusive demolition and construction of structures for the Games. Reactive police responses to demonstrations were brutal. The pattern had been the same in the lead up to the 2014 World Cup. Football is the panacea of the masses, but it valorises male dominance, and the social disruptions which always result tear at the fabric of society. Jorge thought that despite problems of urban pollution, the Games themselves will be seen by participants as successful and will be represented as a triumph by the State, while the social problems they exacerbated would be covered up.

At a broader level, Jorge had a further criticism. Ever since the end of military dictatorship and promulgation of a new Constitution in 1988, human rights have been eroded and right-wing political groups have been gradually capturing the governments of many of Brazil’s 27 federated states (unidades federativas). This is reflected in growing repression throughout the country by the military police, a 450,000 member auxiliary force of the Brazilian Army.  Jorge’s view was that current impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Roussef reflect growing right-wing political repression. Behind the impeachment is the issue of deep sea offshore oil. President Roussef wanted Brazil’s proven but as yet unexploited reserves in the Campos Basin, especially the Lula Field in the Santos Basin, to be developed by Petrobras, Brazil’s semi-public multi-national oil company. But United States and other international oil interests had covetous plans of their own. Such plans and actions stemming from them, Jorge noted, are all too familiar to political observers in Chile or the Central American Republics.

Prior to Jorge’s address, the Institute received from the Brazilian Embassy in Canberra a document explaining the impeachment process in Brazil and how in President Roussef’s case, it was being followed strictly according to Brazilian law. The Embassy’s view was put to Jorge, but time did not permit a detailed debate on the issue.

Richard Broinowski