A youth longing for opportunities and an economy needing more qualified workers

Jefferson Luís, creator of one of the "rolezinhos" 

After reading some more about the "rolezinhos" phenomena I have to acknowledge an error in my previous post. As it seems and as some more protests in favor of the initial movements showed throughout this week, the initial events were not intentioned to raise some level of theft. They were instead just meetings from teenagers that long for more spaces of socialization, and that too like the safe and fresh environment of the country's biggest shopping centers.

It is true that Brazil's shoppings often stand out as an immense contradiction even when compared to their surroundings. Particularly on the one shopping in São Paulo (the Shopping Metro Tatuapé) that hosted one of the rolezinhos, there is a considerable contrast between the security inside and outside the building. It is one of the many contradictions that still persist in Brazil as I pointed out during this week. Today O Globo has a story about movements this time made to support the rolezinhos.

Newspapers were also not short of articles trying to understand the phenomena, listed by sociologists heard by O Globo as a protest of an apolitical youth that also want to be included in the consuming society. During the week one of the organizers from the movements, 20 year old Jefferson Luís, was interviewed by O Globo, O Estado de S. Paulo, TV Record, G1  and Vice websites. Working as a full time helper in a company on Guarulhos, on the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Jefferson is a funk singer that has 2.5 thousand Facebook followers and wanted just to have a good time with his friends in a shopping, but things got out of control.  El País Brazil also posted a nice article underlining the meaning of the rolezinhos and how poor young people in Brazil are constantly mistreated.

The three biggest Brazilian newspapers all came with different cover stories this Sunday. O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo with more economic stories, the first bringing to attention the lack of intermediate qualified workers in Brazil which contradictory as it seems forces industries to hire more qualified technicians and graduated workers to execute simpler tasks and the second showing how the 23 billion tax benefits conceded by the Federal Government for automakers has undermined local governments to pay their expenses.

Folha de S. Paulo on the other hand explored the political side of the 2014 World Cup in yet another scandal: a 870 million reals bill that local governments payed for the event, that should, by contract, be paid by the Brazilian Fifa's subsidiary.

Country's economy will be highlighted this week
It will be the first time Dilma will attend Davos as a president. In another effort to reduce the malaise between the government and the rating agencies, the president is supposed to address markets to show the existing opportunities in investing in infrastructure in Brazil. All of this one week after Brazil's Central bank raised interest rates from 10% to 10,5% a year. It seems the government decided to be serious about the economy in the beginning of the electoral year.