El hombre un ser social

Cuiabá faced considerable competition in securing the right to host the World Cup. Altogether 18 cities bid to be hosts: Belo Horizonte, Florianopolis, Campo Grande, Goiania, Rio Branco, Belem, Maceio,

119 Brasilia, Cuiabá , Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Sao Paulo. FIFA released a bid inspection report on 20th October 2007 (FIFA, 2007) which evaluated current infrastructure and amenities in the country and stipulated that Campo Grande, Cuiabá ,

Florianopolis, Maceio, Natal and Rio Branco did not have sufficient infrastructure to become host cities. Nevertheless after a confidential process between Secopa and FIFA, the host cities were announced on the 31st May 2009 during FIFA’s annual congress in Nassau, Bahamas.

Figure 9: Brazilian states. Mato Grosso do Sul was seen as too close to Sao Paulo to be a World Cup host. Source: (Brazil- help.com, 2012)

Cuiabá is the capital of Mato grosso and it is the power base of the ruralisats. It was selected as a host city and although a relatively small capital city with a population of 500,000, it is of central importance to the agricultural sector of mid-West Brazil. My personal experiences with tourists and residents in Rio de Janeiro, when learning of my residence in Mato Grosso, were always derogatory. One football fan from Argentina said that Mato Grosso was cowboy country and no one cared about football, he also thought the people there were backward. Arguably, Cuiabá’s main rival was Campo Grande, the state

120 capital of Mato Grosso do Sul which has a population of over a million. On the Pantanal tourist route, Cuiabá is the gateway to the Northern Pantanal, whilst Campo Grande is seen as the entrance to the Southern Pantanal. With Mato Grosso du Sol’s close proximity to Sao Paulo (Fig 12), established

transport infrastructure to the coastal cities and professional top flight football team and Campo Grande was perhaps a more likely candidate for a World Cup host city. Despite the feasibility report, Cuiabá was chosen as the host city, mainly due to political manoeuvring. In 2009 Blairo Maggi was the Governor of Mato Grosso, and also a large fundraiser for President Dilma’s Workers Party (PT), commentators accused him of playing political games and have questioned the legitimacy of the bidding process (WIlson, 2014, Savarese, 2013). An interview with Blairo Maggi fromLuiz Acosta Da Redação, on behalf of MidiaNews, reveals how he secured host city status through personal networks. Clientalism is exemplified in the following excerpt:

Maggi-In 2007 I went to Zurich, Switzerland, [as part of Brazil’s bid to host the World Cup], after Brazil was chosen as the World Cup host country for 2014, we held a meeting between the 10 or 11 governors who were there. After we had another meeting with the president, the president of the CBF, Ricardo Teixeira, and FIFA president Joseph Blatter and told them we wanted the World Cup to show a little more than people are used to seeing, not just Rio-São Paulo-Minas Gerais, carnaval and football. MidiaNews - and that was the decision to decentralize the biggest event in world football? Maggi - Yes. We said we should use football to show that we have the Amazon, the Pantanal, the Northeast, which has good cities and who want to show their potential. This was the winning thesis of the time and, therefore, FIFA chose 12 cities and established that the North, the Midwest and the Northeast, South and Southeast would be represented in this Cup. Well this was the decision and practically it was decided that one of the venues of the World Cup would be in Cuiabá or Campo Grande so we could show the Pantanal. I called Yuri [Bastos Jorge] at the Department of Tourism, and Yuri began working professionally around this

project. We knew Cuiabá was a weaker city and we had little chance to convince the Brazilian Organising Committee to select Cuiabá . Anyway, we knew there was someone who could positively influence the decision makers and we planned to go

back. MidiaNews - it was then that entered the figure of Agripino Bonilha Filho, the connection he has with former FIFA president Joao Havelange? Maggi - Exactly. For those who still do not know, Bonilha, lived in Cuiabá for many years and has provided numerous services to the state and Cuiabá, and is a childhood friend of João Havelange, who in turn is the father-in-law of the president of the CBF (Brazilian Football Federation), Ricardo Teixeira. So we went there personally, I, Yuri and Bonilha, to talk to Ricardo Teixeira and asked for his support for this endeavour. This is just one example. We did this with several people who had some kind of relationship or knew someone connected to the CBF and FIFA. We were doing a siege, a political job very well done, well-articulated and which culminated in Cuiabá chosen as one of the venues of the World Cup in 2014. Mato Grosso do Sul only woke up to the situation on the day that the FIFA announced the cities.

121 it was not only the politics of the decision making which was the subject of criticism. One blogger for a Russian travel site wrote ‘there is virtually nothing to see in Cuiabá. Today, the city is one big

construction site’ (Krasnov, 2013). The public spending needed to build the infrastructure led a doctor from Cuiabá to suggest:

‘It is sad because Cuiabá will gain immensely from the World Cup, however, this is at the detriment of the surrounding rural communities. The money for the communities has been taken from them and given to the city, or worse, given to the greedy companies’ (interview HP2).

Blogger and journalist Mauricio Savarese said:

‘Of course people worry about stadia, but the stadium is going to be there anyway. But if you think about the surroundings and how the structure was prepared Cuiabá is by far the least prepared out of all of them’ (interview CS8).

However, the stadium was not seen as a bad thing by all:

‘it is better to have the stadium than not have it. At least we now have the potential for big games and concerts here, before we had no chance. We would never have anything here, but now, maybe, we could have more events in Cuiabá ’ (interview C4).

The host bid package was prepared by Mato Grosso based architectural firm Castro Mello who were also contracted by the Mato Grosso government to produce architectural drawings for the new stadium. The three main infrastructure projects which formed part of the bid package was characterised by impunity from the start and will now be explored. The bid package is not publically available; the data gathered in this section is from secondary media outlets and interviews with local residents.