on monday, the favela came down
the hill. this is both
immediately newsworthy and not at all new: the idea of favela residents leaving
their communities (many of which are located on hillsides) and heading down to
the city streets en masse to engage or defy the middle-class norms of life in the
“asphalt” has been generating headlines and clichés in rio de janeiro for at
least a century. it’s been used to
describe everything from the spread of samba’s popularity in the 1920s and 30s
to shows of force by drug cartels in the early 2000s to the daily commutes of
the maids, office workers, and the growing numbers of teachers, lawyers, and
doctors who live in the favelas.
it’s also pretty much the de rigueur image associated with
favela-related protests, which more often than not address the state-sanctioned
violence that’s been disproportionately directed at favela residents for at
least the past century (usually through police or army actions, although historically there
have been several of instances of arson
and other semi-official strategies to displace or “tame” favela residents).
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| pictures of favela kids killed by police violence. photo by gas pa hampton |
monday’s march was no
exception: as we walked along the beach at copacabana, heading from chapeu
mangueira to pavão/pavãozinho and cantagalo (all “pacified” favelas), one of
the main chants was “ih, fudeu! a
favela desceu” (very roughly, “oooh, you’re fucked! the favela came down!”) the chant both mocks and plays into the common fear of
favelas as lawless, violent places eternally on the verge of descending to
upend the rest of the city, shutting down businesses and enforcing a reign of
terror through small armies of coked-up adolescents with machine guns. in this case, though, the “hills” came
down to the “asphalt” with giant banners and photos of some of the hundreds of
favela residents killed or disappeared by rio’s police in recent years. (if you imagine that rio’s cops don’t
enforce their own reign of terror – especially in the city’s favelas – you
haven’t lived here long enough to get questioned and searched at gunpoint by a coked-up
post-adolescent with an ar-15 and a uniform).
the march, called “a festa nos estádios não vale as lágrimas
na favela” (the party in the stadium isn’t worth the tears in the favela),
was sponsored by a coalition of social movements from favelas throughout the
city. it began monday morning in
chapeu mangueira with hip-hop, poetry, and capoeira presentations before
heading down to copacabana, where tens of thousands of soccer fans in face paint
and green-and-yellow shirts (both locals and tourists trying to soak up
brazil’s world cup vibe) were waiting for the start of brazil’s final
preliminary game against cameroon, and where a massive, mostly foreign, press
corps was waiting to capture anything out of the ordinary.
it wasn’t an
especially big march, but there were more people there than at recent protests
(around 300 when i reached it near the beginning of the beach, and over 500
after another activist coalition joined us about halfway through), and the glut
of tourists and photographers with press credentials helped keep the police
fairly benign. we were surrounded by cordons of riot cops that grew as we made
our way down the beach, and an imposing line of them blocked our initial approach
toward the entrance of pavão/pavãozinho, but they didn’t let off any tear gas
or stun grenades, even when the march changed course to reach pavão/pavãozinho
down a series of side streets. the
protest finished without the ass kicking that’s become customary, although cops
did rough up and arrest "spiderman", a
well-known local activist, apparently for carrying an unfurled banner on a
public sidewalk after the protest ended.
controlling and
“taming” favelas has long been the holy grail of governance in rio de
janeiro. in part, that’s because
of what a major force favelas are in the city: somewhere between 15 – 30% of the
population lives in them, depending in largely on what any given researcher
considers to a favela to be. the
most recent initiative to bring favelas in line has been “pacification,” which
is a pretty major misnomer for armed occupations by police and army
forces. i’m not much for statistics,
but a local paper showed that the
number of favela residents killed and disappeared by police – which has always
been outrageously high – has increased in “pacified” favelas. the cases of amarildo de souza and cláudia ferreira silva,
which i’ve mentioned before on this blog, are recent examples of police killings that have
gotten the most media attention for their sheer heinousness. two weeks ago, cops kidnapped a teenager and killed him execution-style
after picking him and a friend up for an alleged robbery (the friend, who they
shot in his legs and back, played dead and later managed to escape).
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| missing amarildo at the world cup |
the current regime of
pacification and the violence associated
with it is specifically intended to make the city tourist-friendly enough
to host megaevents like the olympics and the world cup. that’s not to say, though, that if the
world cup were to miraculously leave us alone tomorrow, the favelas would
return to being peaceful urban utopias.
they never have been, and the very real link between recent police
killings and the world cup shouldn’t overshadow the fact that these communities
have always suffered the brunt of the city’s officially-approved repression and
brutality. the contrast between the party in the stadium and the tears in the
favela is not just a question of emotional opposites; it’s also a question of
time and permanence. this stupid
cup will end on july 13 – exactly 365 days after amarildo was disappeared – but
the favelas’ tears will undoubtedly continue. in coming months, the powers that be will start to steamroll
into preparation for the olympics, and local real estate developers who are
also major political contributors are already eyeing beachfront favelas as
prime targets for the next big deals.
(david beckham recently bought a mansion for 1 million reais – a little under us $500,000 – in vidigal, on
the other side of the hill from the where amarildo was disappeared, and currently under the command of the same “pacifying” police unit).
i’m not at all an
expert on favelas or on the daily experiences of people who live there: at most, i’ve visited friends’ houses, or
gone to concerts or dance parties or protests. i’ve seen firsthand a few of the changes that have led up to
the world cup, like the large-scale destruction of houses in providência and
manguinhos, but i’ve missed the worst, like the massacre in maré on june 24, 2013. still, i’ve been in rio long enough and seen enough to know that, although
the world cup is by no means the sole cause of violence or excuse for police
violence in the favelas, both fifa’s demands and local government’s desire for
a city prepared to host the cup has undoubtedly led to a significant increase
in the violence to which favela residents are so frequently subjected. monday’s protest highlighted their resilience,
and their resolution to speak out and to stand for themselves in a city where
the fleeting presence of the international press keeps them much safer than the presence
of the local police ever has.
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| photo by gizele martins |
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