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.

"Rolezinho" and the Maranhão prison massacre

Warning in Iguatemi Shopping in a high class
neighborhood: protesters will bi fined 

The past week was a reminder of the immense inequalities existent still in Brazil -- despite the recent advances in income distribution and the low unemployment in the country. In São Paulo the "rolezinhos" -- Facebook events that started being created last december by periphery teenagers set to take place in big shopping centers intended to protest, create chaos and some level of theft -- aroused a reaction from the companies. After some discussion whether it would be legal to oppress the protesters, finally the main shopping centers were granted a justice injunction that allowed them to make a security check in every visitor and also the police to curb the events and fine in 10,000 Brazilian reals whoever is joining the movement. 

In the periphery slang "rolezinho" could be translated as a small hang out, which is ironic since one of the first rolezinhos gathered more than 6 thousand people in the Itaquera Shopping in the east zone of São Paulo. For me, this phenomenon is really interesting as it points out that social media is becoming a sort of political arm also for youngsters from the periphery, and not only the middle class. 

A worst reminder of how deep and critical is the current situation occurred on tuesdeay, when Folha de S. Paulo website published a video in which  three prisoners were decapitated (the scenes are extremely violent) int the Pedrinhas prison, located in the  Maranhão state, North of Brazil. Since december, 62 prisoners were killed in the institution, mainly in protests concerning the overpopulation of the prison. 

This instantly opened up a discussion about Brazil's prison system. The federal government immediately launched a plan to move prisoners and try to revert the crisis.  This also poses a doubts  about the future alliances for the election since Maranhão is basically a feud from the Sarney family (José Sarney, a former Brazil's president,  is a senator from the neighbor Amapá State and his daughter, Roseana Sarney is currently Maranhão's governor) and José Sarney is the main leader of the biggest situation party, PMDB.We are still about to see what will come out of this.