In response to this, several organizations are coordinating actions to resist these works in order to avoid that “some take advantage of people’s passion for football to increase their profits and further marginalize thousands of people”, said Fernando Campos Costa, member of Nucleo (NAT)- Friends of the Earth Brazil.

While he was taking part in a public hearing on the Day of the Right to the City, on Friday 25, in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Fernando spoke with Real World Radio about the effect that these works would have on the cities and urban communities.

Only in the outskirts of Porto Alegre, Fernando says that nearly three thousand families would be displaced to carry out the works. These families have no information about them and ignore if their rights will be respected.

Also the twelve committees of resistance to these measures organized in Brazil met last week in Rio de Janeiro and coordinated actions and demands on behalf of the affected. “World Cup in Brazil: yes, but with respect to the community rights”, is the campaign’s slogan.

“Sport is used as something green, healthy, but it becomes a commodity and it is seen by the business people as a great chance to profit, besides having public funding”, said Fernando.

One of the main promoters of said works is the National Bank of Social Development (BNDES) of Brazil. According to NAT these works are part of projects to build hydroelectric dams, to promote agrofuels and other big projects of industrial capitalism and agribusiness in the country.

Criminalization of Poverty

A few months ago anoperative was launched to the world, shooting to kill at the ’favelas’ or slums in Rio de Janeiro purportedly against organized crime and as part of the preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the Olympic Games that will follow in 2016. As a result of this operative, the so called “Police Pacification Units” settled in the favelas.

This police and military presence has led to greater criminalization of poverty and according to Fernando, it is an action by the business groups to “recover” areas, which will acquire higher real estate value in the near future, as a result of the sports and tourism events that will be hosted by Brazil.

There is a longstanding struggle of urban communities to obtain a more sustainable and inclusive city.

“This will be a moment when communities will pose their questions and expose their demands and when the environmental movements will expose their demands for the construction of sustainable cities”, reads a newsletter of the campaign for the respect of the communities’ rights.

Meanwhile, the member of FoE Brazil emphasized: “we say that football is not a commodity and we call for a critical view of all the countries that are taking part of this World Cup so that the passion for football is not used to push people further into poverty”.