Months in advance, I had made reservations for us to take a private walking tour today of Rocinha, Rio's largest favela or shantytown. We had read that in many ways, the favela is "the heartbeat of Brazil's cities, a hotbed of musical talent, and the home of its most creative talents. The Carnival would not exist if it were not for these communities as any of the main samba schools come from or are named after the favelas. All Brazilian cities have favelas but those in Rio are the most visible."
They sprang up as a response to the chaotic expansion of the city. Property prices exploded, making it impossible for a poor family to buy or rent a house downtown. At the same time, all the available work was downtown and it was too expensive for poorly paid workers to take the two or three buses required to travel in from the cheaper suburbs. So, in the early 1900s, families began to build illegally on Rio's steep hillsides.
In the intervening time since making the reservation for the tour, we had heard more frequent reports of increased violence in Rocinha including a murder of a tourist back in September. As a result, I was in frequent contact with Zezinho, our half-Portuguese, half-American tour guide, getting updates on how safe it would be for us to visit the Rocinha favela. Our walking tour guide from several days ago and a staff member at the Rio hotel where we stayed both cautioned us not to take any chances and to stay clear of the favela because of ongoing safety concerns. However, we decided to stick with our original plan and meet Zezinho as he assured us he would have been the first to cancel our tour to protect us and also not to put himself in harm's way.
When we met Zezinho, a resident of Rocinha which meant Little Farm in English, he told us there were about 300,000 people living in the poor working class favela and more than 80 other favelas around Rio. Rocinha was the largest favela in Brazil. As we took a shared minivan aka along Rocinha's only main street (the people live in a maze of narrow alleys off the street), from the metro station where we'd been met, Zezinho stated how sad it was that people can allow others to live in such depravity and that there was no wonder there was so much anger with the lack of opportunity for Rocinha's residents.
I remarked in the previous post about the terrible traffic conditions we'd witnessed already in Rio but it was infinitely worse in Rocinha with very few cars but a gazillion moto taxis instead zipping up and down the street, blocking the van's movement and oblivious of any rules of the road. The moto taxis were unique to the city's favelas, according to Zezinho. He joked if you could drive in Rio, you can drive anywhere in the world and I had to agree with him!
I was surprised to learn that in Rocinha there were 2 radio stations, 2 papers, 2 surfing schools, 3 forms of transportation and 51 internet companies. According to Zezinho, it had everything you needed. There were also three health clinics in the favela - one at the bottom of the hill, i.e. where we'd met our guide at the metro station, one in the middle where we were then and one at the top of the hill. Free health care was available for all but some residents chose to pay 300 reals or $80 per month for private insurance. The average monthly salary for those in Rocinha was between 800-1,300 reals - $215-$350. The minimum wage set by the government was 900 reals, about $240, per month, not by hour as in the US.
The three forms of transportation in the favela included two public bus lines, moto taxis and private vans which is what we had used to travel up the hill from the metro station. Zezinho explained that five or six families generally band together to buy a van that then picks up and drops off passengers anywhere along the one road. He preferred using the vans instead of the buses because the money goes right into the hands of people living in the favela and not the government, plus it keeps local people employed.
Zezinho talked about the moto taxis that we'd noticed ever since arriving in Rocinha. Drivers, wearing a vest that cost the equivalent of about $270, needed two licenses: one to drive the motorcycle and another one for transporting passengers. Below, moto taxis were all lined up waiting for fares.
I found it fascinating when Zezinho pointed out the mediation center but shouldn't have been surprised at the need for it when there were so many people living in such close proximity to each other. Most residents try and work it out by themselves if they can but otherwise seek mediation, Zezinho added.
While we sat in a cafe, Zezinho told us how Rocinha was first settled in 1928 but electricity was only brought in by the Catholic church forty years later. People used candles and kerosene before that. During the military dictatorship from 1964-1985, the government declared people couldn't build homes and offices with concrete and bricks. The inevitable result, sadly, was lots of fires in the close quarters of the favela.
The Catholic Church, which was closely allied with the government, complained about the intolerable living conditions affirming the people living in the favela needed assistance. Furthermore, the law stated that the government must provide services such as electricity, etc if there were a certain number of residents. Finally, as a result of the church's intervention, electricity came but only to the main street where it was then dispersed to other parts of Rocinha.
Zezinho only talked briefly about the 2016 Summer Olympics, indicating that Rio had had a bad image and Rio and the country thought hosting the Olympics would improve their international stature.
It didn't matter what color you are in the favela as there are 26 designations of race in the country. Most people who grow up in the favela never leave it; more importantly, 80% of the people don't want to leave Rocinha. Zezinho, who lived in Toronto and San Francisco for six years, commented he liked to live in Rocinha because the community is so friendly, there's a sense of freedom there, no sense of stress, no need to show documents for everything, business can be transmitted on the basis of a handshake, it was easy to rent an apartment, etc. It was hard to hear about the idealized picture he was drawing of life in Rocinha when earlier he'd talked about the five days of shooting violence in Rocinha.
When we spotted shoes tied together and hanging over wires high above the street, he said that was simply done as part of the culture when a tournament is won and wasn't gang related as is normally the case in the States.
The flyer advertised people could safely receive their mail. People used the shop on the main street for their home address.
Zezinho said there were two non-profits in the favela: Viva Cred and Cred Amigo. They were focused on helping people to open up businesses in the favela by offering interest rates as low as two to three percent. An astonishing 95% of businesses in Rocinha were owned by favela residents. One of the sources of pride in the favela was opening up one's own shop. Since the overwhelming majority of the favela's residents had little education, most worked in the service industry in salons, small shops, etc.
Zezinho walked us to the back of a furniture shop so he could show us some great views of the favela and other areas of Rio in the distance. Rocinha is located in between the two richest communities of the city.
The mountain on the left was Two Brothers.
Since 1985, the water pumping station responsible for providing water and run by the government has been Cedae. Zezinho remarked that he had a 1,000 liter tank on the roof of his apartment building that provides water for his toilet, doing dishes, washing clothes, cooking, etc weekly.
This gives you a sense of how incredibly cramped Rocinha was and almost unimaginable that only one street went through the community of hundreds of thousands of people! People don't own the land their homes were built on - the government does. The policy of uscpiao was in effect which meant that if someone finds a piece of public land, build on it and then prove you've lived there for five years, you can't be kicked out.
Growth of the favelas occurred as a result of lack of investment in Rio's poor communities so that residents were forced to build their homes on the open available land on the hillsides above Rio. Visible in the photo below were the high rises in the adjacent wealthy suburb.
We were talking on the furniture store's tiny balcony when all of a sudden we heard gunfire in an adjacent alley. I had never heard the sound before, except on TV, but Steven, who had lived on a kibbutz in Israel almost 50 years ago, knew immediately what the sound was. Zezinho rushed us off the balcony and into the interior of the store where we took refuge. As the favela was shaped like a bowl, every sound echoed around us.
Zezinho's phone lit up immediately as people communicated via What's App to find out what was happening and where it was safe to be. It was a shocking few minutes for us as recent gunfire in the favela was exactly the reason why people had warned us not to go on this tour. Zezinho kept asking how we were as he had felt it had been safe for us to be in Rocinha. He was also very concerned that our perceptions of his home, his favela, would be forever changed by what we had just witnessed.
When we peeked out the store's door, the total absence of people, cars, moto taxis, the shared vans, etc was positively eerie, especially, as just minutes before, the favela's main street was a hive of activity and very noisy. We heard no one screaming, there was no sense of panic we detected; rather, it was just like time stood still for about 15 minutes. Thinking back on it now almost six months later, it appeared that people in the favela were sadly accustomed to the sounds of gunfire and knew immediately to get off the street and seek refuge somewhere.
As we walked down the steps to reach the lower part of the favela, Zezinho pointed out the vibrant murals that were painted by an artist called Kify.
The 'flower art' on the poles was made of bottle caps.
Zezinho explained the houses were located at all different levels as they were built to the shape of the hill.
At 11:45 we heard more gunfire but it seemed much farther away than it had been previously so we didn't alter our walking tour. I felt honored and very special when this young man, an acquaintance of Zezinho's, came up and began rapping to me about life in Rocinha. That had never happened before and likely will never again!
In 2008, Rio's mayor and governor began what Zezinho called a 'slum upgrading program' or what the guidebook called a 'pacification program.' Nine apartment buildings were constructed in Rocinha, each with 210 units; the first floor in each building was designated for handicapped people.
A municipal daycare for 300 children was established as were a health center and a sports community center. Zezinho was happy the government did something but it wasn't enough. He said that to get anything done, it was always linked to an election promise where politicians tried to 'buy' votes by promising X, Y and Z. "It was the same political nonsense everywhere," Zezinho stated.
Talking about life in the favela would be impossible without discussing education. One of the major issues for Rocinha was the lack of a quality education for its lower class residents. Zezinho stated he knew fewer than ten people throughout the favela (with a population of likely 250,000 plus) who had gone to university. Zezinho told us there were just four schools in the favela even though the community had about 300,000 people! There were only two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Students were only able to attend school half days, either 8-12 or 1-5 because there weren't enough schools. The teachers' curriculum, he stated, was not the same in the favela as in private schools. It wasn't surprising that only fifty percent of the favela's residents only received a middle school education.
In Rio, according to Zezinho, there was a formal economy and an informal or under the table economy. It was common, he said, to see kids working on the beach selling glasses or working at hot dog stands to help their families.
The oldest standing public landmark in Rocinha was this church built in 1937 by the Italians. Bells rang daily at noon. There were 30 different churches in Rocinha but Zezinho estimated only about thirty percent of the population in the favela go to church.
Having just seen Wark's angel mural and the one imploring people to Never Give Up, seeing the police officers wielding automatic rifles brought back memories of the gunfire we'd so recently heard.
It was a shame but we didn't feel like altogether safe or comfortable staying around as we weren't sure what might transpire with all the sudden police activity.
Three-quarters of the people in the favela were from the NE of Brazil so this and other travel agencies in Rocinha provide a service for residents to go visit their families.
Zezinho said he had been asked by the locals to provide private tours of Rocinha as he was like the favela ambassador, and locals were tired of the stigma associated with life in Rocinha when asked where they live. The residents were also frustrated with tour guides outside of Rio reinforcing the negatives of living there and providing incorrect information about Rocinha. Zezinho said how nice it was to feel welcome and part of something even though he had no family there.
Do you see the bracelets on the man's wrist on the right? Those had been given to him by Zezinho in the past. During our almost four hours with him that morning and early afternoon, Zezinho had made a point of giving out abut 50 or so rubber bracelets that he had had made that said, in Portuguese, 'I love Rocinha' to people we came across. Some were people he clearly knew and others were not. It was his way, he said, to help raise people's self-esteem living in Rocinha by helping people be proud of where they lived and a way to give back to the community. One man had been wearing his for four years, according to Zezinho. Steven and I were also each given one as a memento of our time with him and in the favela.
They sprang up as a response to the chaotic expansion of the city. Property prices exploded, making it impossible for a poor family to buy or rent a house downtown. At the same time, all the available work was downtown and it was too expensive for poorly paid workers to take the two or three buses required to travel in from the cheaper suburbs. So, in the early 1900s, families began to build illegally on Rio's steep hillsides.
In the intervening time since making the reservation for the tour, we had heard more frequent reports of increased violence in Rocinha including a murder of a tourist back in September. As a result, I was in frequent contact with Zezinho, our half-Portuguese, half-American tour guide, getting updates on how safe it would be for us to visit the Rocinha favela. Our walking tour guide from several days ago and a staff member at the Rio hotel where we stayed both cautioned us not to take any chances and to stay clear of the favela because of ongoing safety concerns. However, we decided to stick with our original plan and meet Zezinho as he assured us he would have been the first to cancel our tour to protect us and also not to put himself in harm's way.
On our ride up the hill, it had been impossible to miss the insane mess of electrical wires that crisscrossed the street at all the intersections. Zezinho commented that the only way to know the true number of residents in Rocinha was to understand its electrical grid and usage. He had talked to people in the local electrical company who told him that of the 110,000 units that receive electricity, 20,000 belong to shops. The other 90,000 units are used by residences with an average of two to three people in each.
An estimated twenty percent of favela residents 'steal' electricity, he said. Zezinho said the official count of the number of people in Rocinha is 100,000 but the census is only done every ten years. Brazil's population is 6.5 million and Rio's is 30 percent of that. Somehow, all the electricity works, he said with a smile, adding he wouldn't want to be the guy who had to find a particular wire! The government had a vested interest in not accurately determining the favela's real population as foreign investors wouldn't want to invest in a city with a significant population of poor people.
Zezinho talked about the moto taxis that we'd noticed ever since arriving in Rocinha. Drivers, wearing a vest that cost the equivalent of about $270, needed two licenses: one to drive the motorcycle and another one for transporting passengers. Below, moto taxis were all lined up waiting for fares.
The Catholic Church, which was closely allied with the government, complained about the intolerable living conditions affirming the people living in the favela needed assistance. Furthermore, the law stated that the government must provide services such as electricity, etc if there were a certain number of residents. Finally, as a result of the church's intervention, electricity came but only to the main street where it was then dispersed to other parts of Rocinha.
Zezinho only talked briefly about the 2016 Summer Olympics, indicating that Rio had had a bad image and Rio and the country thought hosting the Olympics would improve their international stature.
It didn't matter what color you are in the favela as there are 26 designations of race in the country. Most people who grow up in the favela never leave it; more importantly, 80% of the people don't want to leave Rocinha. Zezinho, who lived in Toronto and San Francisco for six years, commented he liked to live in Rocinha because the community is so friendly, there's a sense of freedom there, no sense of stress, no need to show documents for everything, business can be transmitted on the basis of a handshake, it was easy to rent an apartment, etc. It was hard to hear about the idealized picture he was drawing of life in Rocinha when earlier he'd talked about the five days of shooting violence in Rocinha.
When we spotted shoes tied together and hanging over wires high above the street, he said that was simply done as part of the culture when a tournament is won and wasn't gang related as is normally the case in the States.
The Zig Zag store was akin to the Mailboxes, etc shop in the States because the post office only delivers mail to the main street in the favela. The 'community post office' accepts deliveries of not just mail but all item ordered by residents from companies, even including fridges, water tanks.
Packages awaiting pick up in the shop:
Zezinho's phone kept dinging with messages he received from other residents asking how he was and how we were as they knew he'd been conducting a tour of the favela that Saturday morning. The grapevine indicated the gunfire started when police officers entered some of the favela's alleyways trying to flush out gang members. There were two rival drug gangs trying to gain control of the favela: CV, known as Red Command, and ADA, known as Friends of Friends and also an offshoot of CV. The top of the favela was controlled by CV and the bottom by ADA.
Once he was able to ascertain via the 'grapevine' it was OK to leave the safety of the store, Zezinho led us into the favela alleyways to get a sense of what life was like there and away from life on the main street. He said there was no way bullets could reach us because there were 30 jam-packed buildings between the gunfire and where we were!
We stopped in a tiny shop that sold produce and other items. It also acted as a mailbox where people could regularly pick up mail that had been sent to them care of the store. The store didn't charge a fee for the service and was just filling a need for local residents, as Zezinho stated.
I didn't think of it then but wonder now how this mailbox or spot where mail was collected compared to the store on the main street where people paid to have packages delivered to as the post office only delivered to homes or businesses on the main street. How was mailed delivered here, I wondered?
There is no welfare system in Brazil but there is a definite class system. You can be black and successful in the States but there was no sense of that in Rio or the rest of Brazil, according to Zezinho. There were no black entertainment professionals for young people to look up to in Rio. It wasn't a case of racism but one of classicism as there were lots of white people in Rocinha. We stopped for a few minutes while Zezinho talked about the country's racial makeup. Fifty-two percent of Rocinha's population was black. The slave trade brought ten times more slaves to Brazil than to the US. They settled in Brazil's original state of Bahia. Being black was a source of pride, according to Zezinho.
The ADA marking was the first sign of any gang graffiti we'd seen in the last couple of hours in Rocinha.
Zezinho was one of the most unusual characters Steven and I had ever met. He was short and very plump, had a mullet haircut, had cat and other tattoos all over his arms and legs and an affection for cats unlike anyone I had ever met. When seeing people he knew, he'd generally greet them by saying "Meow, meow" and they would respond in kind! As we spent time in Rocinha, it was evident how well known and liked Zezinho was in the favela. Well after the gunfire had ceased, people kept coming up to him asking how he and we were doing. It was very apparent, and heartwarming, how much they cared and wanted to make sure we were all OK.
I felt there was a special connection between Zezinho and so many of the residents as they seemed to perceive he was trying to better the community they all lived in by bringing an awareness and knowledge of the people, their lives, the issues facing them but also the many positives there were in the favela to people like us who may have had only negative stereotypes of such a shantytown. It reminded me of the sense of community Zezinho had talked about earlier there in Rocinha.
In Rio, according to Zezinho, there was a formal economy and an informal or under the table economy. It was common, he said, to see kids working on the beach selling glasses or working at hot dog stands to help their families.
One of the most famous artists in Rocinha was Wark whose signature works included his angel pictures.
When Zezinho dropped us off at the São Conrado metro station at 1:30. we felt like we had a good understanding of some of the challenges facing people in Rocinha as well as a deep appreciation for the warmth expressed to us by so many after hearing the gunfire that was all too close. Thanks to Zezinho's heartfelt stories of life in the favela, we were left with a sense of hope for his community.
Next post: Just what we needed that afternoon, a relaxing boat trip and several hours on the car-free Ilha de Paquetá.
Posted on June 10th, 2018, from Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle.
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