Whilst the Brazilian authorities try their very best to promote the 2016 Olympics in Rio in the media worldwide, some Brazilian citizens (or Netizens) have decided to remind everyone, via Facebook, that Brazil is far from being the paradisal place their leaders try to portray.
When the clichés cover the disturbing reality… Brazil is an emerging country where street children can no longer be hidden before the two major sporting events it organises in 2014 and 2016.
(Watch Rio 2016’s official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBXeuVHFmlY)
The legend of the photograph (found on a Facebook page called “Quero o Fim da Corrupção“ – which means “I Want the End of Corruption”) reads:
“This is what Brazil’s World Cup, Brazil’s Olympics, Brazil’s corruption and more than 20 years of the “Criança Esperança Programme” (a campaign for the children’s rights in Brazil) looks like!
The photograph, taken by Oliveiro Pluviano, shows streets children (boys) trying to warm up on a winter morning with the heat coming from the underground vent in Sao Paulo.”
.
.
The photograph was actually taken in Avenida Sao Luis, in the centre of Sao Paulo. In a article published in the magazine Carta Capital, Oliveiro Pluviano explains: “this is a very sad picture that symbolises the misery that afflicts Brazil,” before relating the calm and disturbing feeling that comes out of it to the ‘beauty’ of a psalm written by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri in the 1630s called “Miserere mei, Deus”(“Have mercy on me, O God”).
.