Editorial: The 2014 Calendar and Slaying Dragons

Editorial, by Stone Korshak

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The calendar this year in Brazil is all messed up, both for the country and The Rio Times. Today is Dia de São Jorge (Day of Saint George), another semi-public holiday and Brazil or at least Rio seems to be on another optional ‘don’t do any work’ day.

Every foreigner who spends enough time here will notice the high number of holidays, which is great if you work for the government or the bank or some other massive institution. If you are trying to get anything done though, it can be a little frustrating.

Since Thursday of last week the “Semana Santa” started, Easter week, rolling right through Monday I thought, but turns out I was wrong, with the holiday today, why would anyone do anything until tomorrow?

We are very lucky to have enough reporters and people who care enough about The Rio Times to get the 257th Weekly Edition out last night. Yet with all these holidays, how can anyone be surprised that the World Cup preparations and Olympic infrastructure efforts don’t stay on the aggressive schedule.

Public holidays are good, and it seems they are a throwback to the oppressive exploitation of the working classes here. In response, or eventual retribution, to the tiny wages the workers were paid, they figured out other ways to compensate, it’s just part of how Brazil came up.

Still, it would be nice if things like that could evolve, but I’m not going to solve the countries woes in this article so let’s look at this calendar that was passed around social media at the beginning of the year. For those that don’t speak Portuguese April is “Feriados infinate” which means infinite holidays, and by golly it seems they were right.

Of course here at The Rio Times we don’t really take holidays, as the news doesn’t stop. As close as we come is dealing with our weekly news schedule which means we occasionally miss breaking news that happens on Tuesday night. For example last night there was a protest at the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela community that spilled into Copacabana’s main throughway streets.

A young dancer was killed by police apparently (he was mistaken for a criminal?), and the residents were not going to let it get swept under the rug, so they caused a ruckus, the police were called in force, city traffic in Zona Sul (South Zone) was shut down and next thing we know they are reporting about it on BBC… and we missed the story.

The Rio Times can’t do it all, but we try. and regarding the calendar we changed our Print Edition schedule a little to best work around the World Cup. We decided it will be best to put an issue out just before the tournament, and then just after.

The other thing on the calendar is that tomorrow night we will have our fourth Rio MixUp event, and it’s the third one dedicated to writers in Rio. The Rio Writer MixUp : Blogger Edition will go from 7PM – 11PM at the Gringo Cafe and we have some great co-hosts and drink specials so if you are in Rio we hope to see you.

A last note is following up on my most recent editorial about the Army coming, and we’re also seeing it in Salvador now with 5,000 troops. With more police strikes brewing and public unrest and protests expected, seems we will see a lot more. A bit prophetic today, given that the holiday, Dia de São Jorge, celebrates the soldier priest who mythically killed the dragon.