Chaos in the Brazilian Airports

SAO PAULO AIRPORTS
Sao Paulo, "Guarulhos" airport, 5:45AM, and my bags haven't arrived in the baggage claim. The Copa Air representative looks at my ticket stubs and leads me to a pair of cute, flowered small bags, announcing, "Aqui estao suas malas." Aha... so I ended up with my 3 year old niece's bags. There is dire need to rendezvous with my sister-in-law and niece, who were boarding a connecting flight to southern Brazil at 8:00AM... in a different airport - "Congonhas". So I race on a 30 minute cab ride, whose driver was better educated about politics and world affairs than most Californians, and arrive just in time for their check-in. Baggage transfer was successful, frenzy in airports as usual; but nothing like we'd witness the next day, on the connecting flight to Rio de Janeiro.


BRAZILIANS LOVE SCANDALS
There's always some sort of crisis in Brazil to incense public imagination and that common reverberation, "See! that's what's wrong with our country." Last time a priest associated with the ruling political party was caught with barrels of dollars in his underwear, as he boarded a flight. A week later another US$200K was found in a politician's briefcase on a private jet. The corruption scandal nearly brought the whole government down.

This time the crisis is in the aviation industry, which is doing a precarious pitchpole after a private American jet collided with and brought down a 150 person Brazilian airliner in the Amazon jungle. There were no survivors from the airliner. The flight traffic controllers immediately went on strike, perhaps in fear of being scapegoated, especially since their safety procedures are tremendously flawed. Media reported on de-classified aviation documents of multiple "near-misses" of large planes in the last few months.

CHAOS IN GUARULHOS
On top of all this, a severe storm hammered all of southern Brazil on the evening we spent at one of Sao Paulo's all-you-can eat sushi houses, for US$10 a person. Outside our raw fish heaven, lightning and gale winds wrought havoc. Dozens of flights were cancelled.

The following morning my brother and I walked into a madhouse at the Guarulhos airport. In an otherwise empty airport, a frantic crowd was gathered at a check-in counter, shouting and chanting in unison, a company representative standing ontop of the counter screaming back at the people. We managed to wiggle towards our gate; the angry mob followed half an hour later. "We've been waiting for thirteen hours!" These were the folks that had flights cancelled in last night's storm.

They got hold of a microphone connected to the PA system and began to proclaim their revolution: "We've waited long enough with no word! We're working people, we've got jobs to go to! We don't want no stinking hotel and lunch now! We want justice! Everyone without a flight, let's go back to the check-in counters and take over, cause we won't stop until... we have revenge!!!" In another airport, angry mobs actually went into the airplane runway and prevented departures. Our flight only delayed 2 hours; we considered ourselves lucky.

RIO FINALLY
Thence my brother and I arrived in Rio de Janeiro, cidade maravilhosa, rented a budget car without A/C or handholds, and headed towards the statue of Christ overlooking my aunt's apartment and the rest of the city.