Paulo Ito, a street artist, painted a mural of a hungry kid crying for food, but the only thing he has on his plate is a soccer balloon, in a school in Sao Paulo on May 10 and a photo of the artwork has since been shared more than 50,000 times on Facebook alone, reports The Independent. The city has been at the centre of repeated and sometimes violent protests against the government’s £6.5 billion spending on the World Cup when the money is so badly needed elsewhere.
‘People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling,’ he told slate.com.
‘The truth is there is so much wrong in Brazil that it is difficult to know where to start,’ he said.
‘I didn’t mean [to say] nobody is doing anything against poverty but we need to show the world or ourselves that the situation is still not good.’
Mass street demonstrations against poverty, political corruption, underfunded public services and Brazil’s creaking urban infrastructure started last June during the Confederations Cup.
And the World Cup has galvanised Brazilians’ weariness over the failures in parts of their society, boiling over into violent clashes with the police at protests in Sao Paulo.
Thousands of teenagers from working-class suburbs have been invading middle-class shopping centres in so-called ‘rolezinhos’, sparking a heavy-handed response from police and legal attempts by malls to stop them entering.
As the discontent continued, the government was planning to launch a feel-good publicity campaign to convince locals of the benefits of hosting the World Cup.
-With New Age input
