RIO DE JANEIRO — How do Brazilians feel about their big Olympic moment?
First there’s the anger: Rioters pelted the Olympic torch relay with rocks as it approached Rio de Janeiro, while bumper stickers have rearranged the Olympic rings into a four-letter word.
Then there’s the anxiety: With gallows humor amid a crime wave and fears of terrorism, a bingo game is circulating for people to wager on which day during the Games an attack will occur.
And the indifference: The media giant Globo won’t even bother to broadcast the Olympics during the coveted Sunday afternoon slot, opting instead for domestic soccer. A sizable number of hotel rooms here remain unreserved, forcing travel agents to slash rates in a desperate attempt to entice Brazilians to come.
“Just thinking of the Olympics leaves me revolted,” said Ana Caroline Joia da Souza, 21, a street vendor who sells sweets in front of a Rio metro station. “Our politicians want to trick the world into thinking things are great here. Well, let the foreigners see for themselves the filth we live in, the money our leaders steal.”
It is something of a ritual in countries that host the Olympics to engage in soul-searching on the eve of the Games. And Brazil is no exception, unleashing a withering exploration of the country’s political, economic and ethical troubles ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday.
Nearly two-thirds of Brazilians — 63 percent — think hosting the Olympics will hurt the country, according to a recent survey by the polling company Datafolha. Only 16 percent said they were enthusiastic about the Games, while 51 percent said they had no interest in them. (The poll, conducted on July 14 and 15 in interviews with 2,792 people, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points.)
The grim mood stands in stark contrast to the ebullience shown in 2009 when Rio landed the Olympics. At the time, Brazil was basking in its triumphs — including a growing presence on the world stage, the lifting of millions of poor people into the middle class and the maturing of its young democracy after 21 years of military rule that had ended in 1985.
Continue reading the main story But, today, the Olympics are competing with both a harrowing recession and Brazil’s other public spectacle: bare-knuckled political dysfunction.
The country has not one, but two presidents: Dilma Rousseff, who was suspended to face impeachment proceedings that will continue to unfold during the Games, and Michel Temer, her interim replacement. Both Ms. Rousseff, a leftist, and Mr. Temer, who is shifting to the right, are deeply unpopular around the country. In fact, voters are fuming about the entire political establishment.
The leaders who envisioned the Olympics as an opportunity for Brazil to swagger in the international spotlight, including Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president who has been one of Brazil’s most influential political figures, are mired in scandals.
Mr. da Silva, universally known as Lula, is about to go on trial on charges that he tried to obstruct the investigation of a colossal graft scheme at Petrobras, the national oil company.
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