Brazil Will Be Ready in Time to Host the Olympics
Brazil Will Be Ready in Time to Host the Olympics
The Games present a historic opportunity to build Brazil’s national legacy, writes COA’s Eric Farnsworth for The Miami Herald.
Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, there they go again. As Brazil readies to host the 2016 Olympic Summer Games one year from now, international observers have begun the countdown clocks and a familiar litany of complaints that are aired out before virtually every major worldwide sporting event.
Venues that will not be ready to host events. Infrastructure that can never be completed on time if at all. Community redevelopment projects that will remain on the drawing board. Security concerns and police over reaction. Cost overruns, debt accumulation, and corruption. Environmental clean-up and pollution control measures that are failing, endangering the health of athletes and spectators alike.
Hosting the Olympic Summer Games is not for the faint-hearted. It is a massive, risky, hugely expensive undertaking with increasingly questioned benefits. For approximately two weeks, cities and the nations they represent draw the eyes of the world, bringing the attention and anticipated revenue they might otherwise not have other opportunities to attract.
In exchange, host nations sign up for heightened global scrutiny on everything from infrastructure to crime to human rights. If they are not careful, costs can spiral out of control potentially causing financial hardship.
When Brazil was awarded the Games in 2009, the nation was an international phenomenon. The economy was hot, growing at Asian rates. Millions of citizens were being moved from poverty into the middle class, and there was a sense broadly that virtually everyone was doing better than in the past. Along with other rapidly developing nations, Brazilian leaders were also finding their voice internationally, both contributing to and demanding more of a share of the global economic and political system. As much of the developed Western world faced deep recession and began to lose political luster, Brazil and like-minded nations seized on the opportunity to raise their own profiles and chart a course independent of traditional relationships. Brazilians saw the opportunity to host the Olympics as a means both to trumpet their arrival on the world stage while also using the Games to leverage the redevelopment of Rio de Janeiro that many had discussed but no one had yet accomplished....
