Aparência e essência da paisagem no contexto dos megaeventos esportivos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro: o estádio do Maracanã e seu entorno imediato

Abstract

Located in the northern part of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Mário Filho Stadium, popularly known as Maracanã, has established itself as the main Brazilian sports venue and one of the most recognized worldwide. Consecrator space for heroes and villains in sports and the stage for musical performances that have gone down in history, this architectural icon was designed for the 1950 World Cup and, more than half a century later, hosted three of the world's main mega sporting events: the Pan American Games, the World Cup, and the Olympic Games. However, the holding of these events promotes profound spatial and landscape transformations in the city, directly impacting the Maracanã stadium and its surroundings. An important tourist attraction, the stadium gains even more visibility in this context, being represented through photographic images that seek to sell this part of the landscape to investors and tourists. The apparent pacification propagated by tourist representations contrasts with everyday reality, marked by conflicts and oppression. In this sense, the general objective of the thesis is to analyze the distinctions between the appearance of the landscape composed of the Maracanã stadium and its surroundings, sold as a pacified tourist attraction based on representative images, and its essence, guided by a daily life full of conflicts, in the context of mega sporting events. Regarding the time frame, this covers the period between the selection of Rio de Janeiro in 2002 as the host city of the Pan American Games and the realization of the Olympic Games in 2016. The justifications for the development of the thesis are personal and academic, and it is worth mentioning the researcher's interest in the subject since his undergraduate course, as a result of discussions and readings promoted at UERJ, as well as the fact that he has been a regular at Maracanã for over two decades. A bibliographic survey was conducted, secondary data was obtained from agencies such as the IBGE and the IPP, in addition to consulting the digital archive of the newspaper O Globo and conducting fieldwork in the neighborhoods of Maracanã, Centro, Laranjeiras and Copacabana. The results show that representations through photographic images for tourist purposes hide groups considered undesirable, while public and private agents act spatially to remove and silence them. However, resistance movements are established in search of greater visibility in the context of mega-events.