World Cup: first impressions.

HelloHow are you? Hope fine. I’m fine. Winter started today in Brazil and I’m home. I’m sorry for my delay, but … so many things have happened! June is a month full of happenings, with or without World Cup. On June 12, for instance, we had our Valentine’s Day . And the June parties (festas juninas) are going on. They are typical Brazilian celebrations, pagan and Catholic at the same time. I really want to write a post about it, hope to do it before the end of this month! But it seems nobody is paying too much attention at the June parties or whatever, due to the World Cup! I thought it would be easier to me to write about it, since I’ve been watching the competition from the beginning. But … I have too many things in my mind, lately! Well. I don’t know if you all like football or understand something about it, but it’s a quite exciting sport! By the way, let me fix a mistake before I forget: on my previous post, I said that the World Cup would happen in Brazil for the very first time. I was wrong. I’m sorry! There was a World Cup in Brazil, in 1950, the final match was Brazil vs Uruguay, in Maracanã (probably the most famous Brazilian stadium, in Rio de Janeiro) and … Uruguay got the trophy! Some old people here still didn’t recover from that … But I was born in 1980, so, this is my first World Cup in Brazil! It has been a very surprising and unpredictable competition! Nobody would believe, a month ago, that Spain (current champion) would get back home so soon! Who would believe that Costa Rica would win the match against Italy yesterday? That’s why I’m enjoying this World Cup! We can’t be sure about anything! I must say that Brazil is far to be the best team on this World Cup. And I’m really supporting Brazil! But I need to be honest: our team was favored by the referee in the first match, against Croatia and the match against Mexico was hard! We needed a victory to go to the next stage without worries and got a draw. Things are getting harder, so, I worry about Brazil. Neymar (Pica-Pau) is our best player so far, in my opinion and I wonder what Fred and Daniel Alves are doing in our team, but … only Luiz Felipe Scolari (coach) knows (or should know) the answers!

When Brazil plays, we leave work earlier, which doesn’t work that much here in São Paulo, because everybody seems to leave work at the same time and we take a couple of hours to get back home (while the matches are running)! Holidays would be much nicer, but our mayor tried to turn the days of matches to holidays, but the congressmen didn’t agree. I can’t be sure, but have the impression that it has political reasons, since we will have elections this year and many congressmen belong to the opposition! … About the protests, they keep happening, all over the country. And clashes with police too. It’s hard to say, sometimes, who’s wrong, who’s right. As I said on my previous post, I support the protests, because I understand their reasons. But some people use the protests as an excuse to destroy, break everything they see. The media call them black blocks and there is really a … not exactly “social movement” but a group of people called black blocks who don’t use to be very peaceful to express their dissatisfaction. They usually dress black clothes and cover their faces. The problem is that the media use their violence to criticize every single social movement or protest. So, in the most of times, the media (and the most of the population) support the police repression, which I think is a mistake. At the same time, everything seems to work at the stadiums, supporters from all over the world seem to be pretty drunk, I mean, satisfied and I’m a little afraid that this country is being invaded by Argentinians. I’ve never seen so many Argentinians in my life! They seem to be pretty cheerful, noisy (a little too much, I must say), always singing and repeating that Maradona is better than Pelé, which everybody knows that is an atrocious lie! I can’t wait to say adiós to all of them! ^^ (I hope you know that I am kidding. Well … a little, but I am! )  If you still don’t know, my dear readers, Brazilians and Argentinians are rivals in football!

Oh, well. I’m managing to write this post, I’m impressed! I would write this post on June 13, first day of our June parties, dedicated to Santo Antônio, the Catholic saint responsible for getting husbands to desperate, I mean, single women. I would comment the opening ceremony. But it was good to wait. I didn’t wait purposely, many things happened, but I got very mad back then and wouldn’t write a nice post . And it’s hard to explain my dissatisfaction. I know my country. I know my culture. I couldn’t believe my eyes. If you didn’t watch the opening ceremony, believe me: it has nothing to do with Brazil! My country is much more than that. But, for a strange reason, FIFA wanted to show a Brazil very different from the one I live in. First of all, try to type on Google Images this: torcida brasileira copa 2014 estádios. Pay attention at the pictures. Try to find black, mixed or dark skinned people in general. This soundtrack would be appropriate:

I bet you didn’t find many. As I said on my previous post, FIFA doesn’t create events for the people. And the people of Brazil, the most of us are black, mixed or dark skinned. I am mixed, for instance. When I only saw white and wealthy people at the stadium, waiting for the opening ceremony here in São Paulo, I felt like I was in Sweden and fell asleep during the trip. Don’t get me wrong! My heart is open to good people from everywhere, no matter how do they look like . But the tickets, at least in São Paulo, for the opening ceremony and first match, were too expensive. And this says something about Brazil. It is a racist country, there’s a huge social inequality here and the material elite has an specific ethnicity. The real people from São Paulo watched everything at home or on a big screen, somewhere in the city. So (this is a personal theory, maybe a conspiracy one), if FIFA didn’t allow the real people to be at the stadium in the first day of the World Cup, why would they allow the real people to show Brazil to the world? So, we had an extremely bizarre and poor opening ceremony and journalists from all over the world had reasons to criticize it! IT WAS TERRIBLE!  My country creates a beautiful Carnival every single year and amazing, colorful, lively parties (like the June parties), we have an extremely varied culture! How can I explain that to someone who watched the opening ceremony?! A weird choreography, no rhythm, no energy, no real people (I have nothing against those poor creatures who were hired to embarrass themselves and the whole country, but, please!) and the worst: the horrendous theme, by Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez, both born and raised in Brazil! (This sentence contains sarcasm.) Oh, there was Claudia Leitte, too, Brazilian and … well … why??!! Maybe the opening ceremony is available on YouTube. So, if you didn’t watch it, you can give it a try. It doesn’t represent my country at all!

Of course, there are more things to say, but I’ll save them to my next post. I will try to post it soon! Anyway, stay tuned and watch the World Cup!

Hugs,

Luna

P.S.: I’m happy that Nigeria won the match, today! ^^ African people like football a lot, they deserve this joy! And a beautiful thing: Brazilian people supported Nigeria at the stadium! People from Cuiabá make me proud to be Brazilian!