On Tuesday afternoon, the Latin American and Iberian Institute of UNM held a lecture, where journalist and author Alex Cuadros discussed international media coverage of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil leading up to the 2016 Olympic games.
Cuadros, an Albuquerque native, is the author of “Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence and Hope in an American Country.”
He has also written for several prominent publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Time among others.
Most recently based in New York, Cuadros spent six years on assignment in São Paulo, Brazil, covering the lives of some of the country’s wealthiest inhabitants for Bloomberg News. This reporting laid the foundations for what would become his book, “Brazillionaires.”
Cuadros’ work in Brazil began in 2010, the year after Rio de Janeiro was elected to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
DL: What was it like writing about Brazilian billionaires?
AC: It was a really fascinating job. I got to learn about very powerful people that very few people have access to. It was also an interesting and unique angle on Brazil, which is such an important country in the world.
DL: How did Brazilians initially react to news that Rio de Janeiro would host the 2016 Olympics?
AC: The initial response was very positive. It was a time when Brazil’s economy was booming and there was incredible optimism about the country’s future, and the Olympics seemed like a chance to show off Brazil’s progress. So when the result was announced in 2009, thousands of people crowded the beaches in Rio and it was a party.
DL: Did those attitudes change?
AC: Well, in those seven years, the optimism faded away. The economy started going downhill, and it no longer looked like Brazil was going to imminently join the “club” of developed nations. People started looking at the way the public money was being spent on Olympic projects and questioning if that was the best use of money, to invest in sporting facilities when so much of the population -- which is largely working class or poor -- has such urgent needs, such as basic sanitation. So the mood on the Olympics really soured.
DL: Can you talk about the relationship between this largely working class, poor population and those “Brazillionaires?” How does it compare to the American conversation surrounding wealth inequality?
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AC: Inequality is very deep in Brazil, much worse than in the United States. It’s one of the most unequal countries in the world. I think it’s one of the most urgent problems for Brazil. I think the connection you’re making is apt because the inequality in Brazil, and the relationship between billionaires and the government in Brazil, where the very rich have a lot of power, is kind of an extreme version of a dynamic that we see in the United States.
DL: How do the Olympics factor into the situation, and is it getting better or worse in the eyes of Brazilians?
AC: I would say that the issue of inequality is more urgent than ever in Brazil, because the economy is going downhill. But the people who are being asked to pay for it are the poor, far more than the rich. There’s a lot of resentment in Brazil.
The mood in Brazil in general is really gloomy, people don’t have a lot of hope about the future. The dominant feeling about the Olympics among Brazilians is that the event was going to be bad for Brazil because of all the money spent on projects that were not the most urgent projects for ordinary people. In Rio, people were eager for the Olympics to be over.
DL: The end of this year’s Rio Olympics nearly coincided with the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. How much of a coincidence is this? What do the people think?
AC: It’s definitely more complicated than that. But I would say that it’s a reflection of people’s disappointments with the government that has been in power for the past 13 years, and also a reflection of the opportunism and hunger for power of the political establishment that has taken a back seat during that time, and has taken advantage of the recent chaos to reassert itself by engineering the impeachment of the president.
A majority of Brazilians wanted President Rousseff to be impeached, but they also wanted her vice president (acting president Michel Temer) to be impeached, and that is not what has happened.
Instead her vice president turned against her and empowered a political class that most Brazilians would like to see out of power. So I guess you could say that the public will has been partially fulfilled, but in a way that is convenient to the political elite.
DL: What’s the importance of doing news coverage abroad?
AC: I think it’s important to learn about other places. I think it enriches one’s understanding of the world and one’s own country as well. You see the United States from the perspective of people from another country. It’s useful for challenging one’s own assumptions.
