Photos by Raphael Tognini

Try as we might to keep the different parts of our lives neatly separated from one another, the intrusions of politics and the demands of social movements have a way of insinuating themselves into everything. And well they should. There’s nothing that says conscience takes a vacation simply because it’s Christmas or Oscar season; in fact the opposite may be true: Huge events mean huge stages for social protest. Just ask Vladimir Putin or the head of the International Olympic Committee, both of whom spent the last two weeks hearing as much about the state of homosexual oppression in Russia as they did bobsledding or figure-skating. Wish as we might that the concerns of the world would simply vanish from time to time and leave us free to enjoy human spectacle unburdened, any protestor worth his salt knows the best time to get the world’s attention is when the entire world is paying attention to one thing.

This fact raises all kinds of ethical questions for sports fans, who are oftentimes put in the position of choosing between their favorite pastimes and their ideological loyalties. The Winter Olympics bore me, so it was no skin off my neck to avoid them, and in doing so, withhold my support for the IOC’s decision to place them in Russia. But ever since Brazilians took to the streets in June to protest increases in bus fares, poor public services, and widening economic inequality even as the country was preparing to invest millions in the World Cup—protests that have become to a large degree about whether the country should be hosting the World Cup this summer at all—I’ve been torn between my affection for world-class soccer and my belief that countries probably shouldn’t be ignoring the economic and social needs of their people for the sake of a giant sporting spectacle, especially one that requires massive investment in soon-to-be-worthless infrastructure and the displacement of thousands of poor people through eminent domain. The answer should be easy, of course, but it isn’t, and recently things have gotten much, much messier.

In the past week or so, police in Sao Paolo have employed a new special unit to deal with anti-World Cup protestors in that city—Tropa do Braço, or Troop of Arms—140 officers equipped with no weapons, only three months of training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. According to military police spokespeople, the special unit patrolled a 1500-person strong protest this weekend, resulting in 262 arrests and far fewer police and civilian injuries than previous protests, which is a good thing. For months authorities in Brazil have been using tear gas, rubber bullets, shock grenades, pepper spray, and sound bombs to disperse crowds, so the threat of armbars, kneebars, and guillotine chokes at least sounds more humane.

That said, there’s something sinister in taking a country’s treasured sport (not quite soccer but still, a point of real Brazilian pride) and using it against that country’s people, especially the people of that country who are risking their lives to improve health care and other services for the poorest among them. The awful irony to this situation is that Helio Gracie designed BJJ specifically to provide smaller, weaker people with a means of defending themselves in fights against bigger opponents. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is by its very nature an art of the underdog, a weapon for the little guy. Just ask anyone who watched UFC 1: The takeaway lesson from Royce Gracie’s victory that night was that size and strength are less important than technique and training and craft. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is the great equalizer.

Yet here come the Brazilian government and the Brazilian military, blissfully and without any sense of irony, employing the tools of Brazilian jiu-jitsu to subdue the very people for whom Brazilian jiu-jitsu was developed: the weak, the vulnerable, the powerless, the many. Helio Gracie must be rolling over in his grave.

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