Where history and hysteria rhyme
That’s how the natives — the cariocas — pronounce the name of their beloved city, the transformation of the letter ‘r’ into ‘h’ presumably meaning that, down the years, they must also have paid homage to such revered national heroes as Honaldo and Hivaldo, not to mention Hoberto Carlos.
Last night, the focus might have been on Sao Paolo, where Brazil and Croatia were opening the 2014 World Cup, but in the run-up to the big kick-off, as this vast nation held its breath, Rio was certainly not of a mind to play second fiddle. Virtually the entire city seemed to have been turned into a fan zone — but by its own citizens, not Fifa — apartment blocks and even whole streets festooned in yellow, blue and green while everyone from toddlers to grannies paraded the most iconic strip in football.
Well, not quite everyone. On the way into the city from the airport — where a go-slow by striking workers had made for painfully slow progress through immigration for those of us who’d already hit the ground sleep-walking after an overnight flight from London — we passed an entire lane of traffic blocked by flag-waving protesters.
And such exhibitions of rage at social inequality, sharpened by the vast expenditure on the World Cup, is not the only counterpoint to the popular image worldwide of Brazil as the home of sun, samba and sexy football.
History also casts a baleful cloud over Copacabana and Ipanema in the form of a 64-year-old event which, in stark contrast to the Irish penchant for absurd euphemism that gave the world such delicacies as ‘The Emergency’ and ‘The Troubles’, Brazilians simply refer to as ‘The Catastrophe’.
And this is sporting history, mind — the now almost mythical 1950 World Cup decider in front of nearly 200,000 people in the Maracana when, against all the odds, Uruguay plunged a nation into despair and disbelief by beating the hosts 2-1. And when I say ‘against all the odds’, Brazilian confidence in glorious victory was so rock solid that, before the final result was known, the O Mundo newspaper’s early edition went to press with a photo of the national team beneath the headline ‘These Are The World Champions’.
The city’s mayor had also upped the ante somewhat before kick off with a stirring call to arms: “You players, who in less than a few hours will be hailed as champions by millions of compatriots! You who have no rivals in the entire hemisphere! You who will overcome any other competitor! You, who I already salute as victors!”
Now, that’s what you call a premature ejaculation.
And afterwards? The novelist Jose Lins Do Rigo, writing in the Jornal Dos Sports the following day, summed up the impact on Brazil of what came to be called ‘The Fateful Final’: “I saw people leave the Maracana with their heads hung low, tears in their eyes, speechless, as if they were returning from the funeral of a loved father. I saw a nation defeated. More than that — one without hope... It stuck in my head that we really were a luckless people, a nation deprived of the great joys of victor, always pursued by bad luck, by the meanness of destiny.”
The author died seven years later but, for others who experienced it at the time, the pain lingered much longer. In his brilliant Futebol: The Brazilian Way Of Life, Alex Bellos tells the extraordinary tale of the lengths one man was prepared to go to in an attempt to get closure on one of the nation’s darkest hours.
A child growing up in Rio in 1950, Joao Luiz regarded the defeat to Uruguay as “tragedy” and says he “carried the load for many years”. Finally, having grown up — if that’s the right phrase — to become a journalist and broadcaster, he realised the wizardry of new technology could help him shed his life’s burden. And so, by careful use of selective images, rewinding of tape and the dubbing of a new commentary, he reedited the 1950 final so that Brazil won.
In this new version, reversing the film made it look like Uruguay’s winning goal came back off the post. A Zizinho goal from Brazil’s earlier game against Yugoslavia — in which, crucially, no Yugoslavian shirt was visible — now became the winner in the final. Uruguay’s original tears of joy became tears of defeat. And, as proof positive that it had all really worked out fine in the end — because, as we know, newspapers never lie — that infamous O Mundo headline was pressed into service again, along with celebratory images filched from Rio’s carnival and even a New York ticker-tape parade.
Meanwhile, in a particularly inspired conceit, footage of public grief from Eva Peron’s funeral in Buenos Aires was used to portray Montevideo in mourning.
Happily, the whole madcap venture had the desired effect for its creator, Bellos quoting the inspired alchemist Luiz as saying: “The film was six months’ worth of psychoanalysis that I never did, that would have taken me 10 years, cost a fortune and I would have discovered that I hate my mother.”
Meanwhile, in the space of 24 hours, your correspondent has swapped a view of the Sugarloaf, Wicklow-version, for that of the Sugarloaf, Rio-style. But taking in the sights of this extraordinary place will have to go on the backburner.
Tournament accreditation having been secured in the media centre hard by the fabled Maracana yesterday, next on the agenda was going to be a six-hour flight from Rio to Manaus where England and Italy will do battle tomorrow night.
That’s about 1,700 miles as the crow flies and, right now, the crow seems the safer bet, as more industrial action at the airports is threatened.
From scorching Rio to sticky Manaus and beyond, the heat is on here in more ways than one.
