The 2007 Pan American Games in Rio DE Janeiro had been considered a negative experience, as the Brazilian Audit Court (Tribunal DE Contas d União) found a troubling pattern of overpricing in the order of 1,000% (yep, one thousand percent) upon the accounts re the 2007 Games held in the same city. Nevertheless, the 2016 Summer Games WERE held in wintertime Rio. A budget of R$270 mi (roughly US$84 mi) from a billionaire public-private partnership allowed the event.
The organizers' idea was to focus on two current social issues, namely the challenge of individual differences, and the environmental concerns with Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW). Picture a beautiful, inventive nation of different peoples, beliefs and rhythms committed to provide the world with a message of... hope, legacy & egalitarianism. The most used resource throughout the ceremony was the projection of lights and videos on white sidings, filling the lawn of the Maracana stadium, and dramatizing the planned scenario. A choreography by Deborah Colker emphasized the national swaying and the typical waddling mode of pop swing, with dancers pushing metal structures into micro formats, designing the planet earth, and then the huge tropical green forest. Elastic nets hanged from a horizontal pole, handled by the soloists. An artistic ballet featuring Amazon Indians from Parintins, Portuguese explorers, African slaves and Japanese immigrants was shown on video projections that recreated the ancient agrarian touch of the country with its plantations under the open sky. The "growing up" from colonial rural to post-1960 urban was then projected video- graphically onto the center of the Maracana stadium, complete with CGI of dancers jumping from one terrace to another. Yes, the Rio Olympic Games managed to make us momentarily forget Brazil's more serious problems, and thus offer the world an exciting cycle of competitive moments. The show's routines, however, weren't as brilliant as those produced in past opening ceremonies such as Barcelona, Athens, Lillehammer, Salt Lake City, Moscow and especially Beijing.
Despite its natural beauty, Rio's urban landscape could hardly hide the local illnesses: the misuse of public money, the widespread thievery within the political control instruments, the glaring social distortions, the lack of a basic infrastructure, the organized gang violence, petty thefts, environmental negligence, insufficient security nets, the absence of a fair-play mentality and so forth. Therefore, the opening ceremony made a point of featuring "Indians, empowerment of blacks and women, transgenders and a warning against the risks of oil usage," according to its incumbent director & publicist Fernando Meirelles, who symbolized the poor and the oppressed by representing them as said native "Indians, blacks, women, and transgenders." Therefore, the Games sponsors and authorities (both municipal and federal) appeared before the world as concerned bulwarks opposed to the reactionary arrogance and certified interests of the macabre oil industry, which, they supposedly allege, is the main cause of AGW. It rather amounts, though, to a propaganda speech leitmotiv usually spread by a globalist elite engaged in - to quote Leon Trotsky - "alienating (workers, small farmers, micro-entrepreneurs, consequently a multitude of Indians, blacks and women) from progress."
