The Pacification Reality: Bullets, Bombs and Angry Bosses

It’s been cold the last few days in Rio. It even rained. In fact, it rained a lot. Today the sun returned to the sunny shores of the marvellous city. Today I had plans to get up and go to the beach to draft this post.

Plans changed, though.

At seven am this morning, I woke up to the sound of fireworks. They do like to throw a party here in the continent’s largest favela, but this wasn’t a party. For a start, it was seven am.

Within thirty, forty minutes, the fireworks began to fade and the sound of bullets began to pierce the crisp, morning air. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, bullets in a favela are the norm. No one bats an eyelid. In the words of the secretary for public security here in Rio, “a bullet in the favela is one thing, a bullet in Copacabana is another”.

This, however, wasn’t just a bullet. When you can still hear bullets at 10am – three hours after you heard the first one – you know something isn’t right, you know this is more than just the odd bullet.

So, I turned on my computer. The trusty community Facebook page, Rocinha em Foco, will surely be able to fill me in on what’s happening?

“Intense gunfire in various locations across the favela”, “Do not leave your house, the police are carrying out an operation”, “Intense gunfire on street 2, street 4, Cachopa and Ropa Suja”

So, intense gunfire everywhere then. Watching movies, reading the news, studying the impact of police interventions in favelas and even spending seven months living in favela had given me – at least I thought – a pretty good idea of what it’s like to live in a favela in the face of such confrontation. I was wrong.

To hear the sound of rifle fire and grenades at the end of your street is different. To have to explain to your friend on Skype that you can no longer continue your conversation because your head is so confused is different. To get word that the side of your friends house is covered in bullets and a young boy suspected of being involved in the traffic has been murdered because he wouldn’t cooperate with police is different. Everything about this day was different.

Today I was introduced, first hand, to the realities of state intervention in favelas.

Probably the most shocking thing – aside from the three hours of gunfire, bomb echoes that felt like they were coming through my bedroom wall, and strangely empty streets – about the whole incident was the look on one man’s face as he hung out of his window and gestured towards me. The man is around sixty years old. He is the kindest, friendliest and most approachable person I think I’ve ever come across. Yet, as bullets battered the morning air, my old aged neighbour could do nothing but smile and laugh as he hung from the window of the house he built.

This man had internalised his community’s violence long ago. Locked it up and thrown away the key so the violent reality of the divided city he lives in could no longer get in the way of his day. Fair play to him. Fair play to the hundreds of thousands more people like him across the city who have done the same.

I was later told by another friend that peoples’ bosses are getting annoyed because the many residents of Rocinha were arriving to work late or not arriving. I mean, what a joke! How dare they not pass through the crossfire to ensure a punctual arrival at work – the bloody cheek! I’m sure there are many bosses without this attitude, the fact that some do have this attitude is, nevertheless, disheartening.

The Government set out with an ambitious target of re-taking areas previously controlled by drug gangs in time for the World Cup and upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Games. They called it “Pacification”. They promised a more inclusive city. They pledged social and public services, tranquillity and peace.

Instead, they’ve brought bullets, bombs and created angry bosses.

A gringo’s views on violence in Brazil

The last time I was in Brazil, in 2013, a story that encapsulated the very darkest side of this magical country went viral. In the northeastern state of Maranhão, football fans stormed the pitch at the Pius XII stadium to stab, quarter and behead a referee. This might sound like a scene from Game of Thrones, but it wasn’t.

This was Brazil, the country of the future; the country that staged arguably the most gripping FIFA World Cup of all time; the country with the seventh largest economy in the world; the country that will, next year, host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

No one can deny that Brazil is a violent country. Boasting a nationwide murder rate of 25 per 100,000, there are few places on earth as developed, yet as dangerous, as Brazil.

In Rio – historically one of the country’s most violent cities and the place where I have spent the vast majority of my time in Brazil – the murder rate is 29 per 100,000. The rate for people aged between 19-24 is 100, and this increases to 400 if you happen to be young, black and living in a favela, according to leading human rights expert Silvia Ramos. These statistics not only highlight the violence apparent in Brazil, they put into perspective the discriminatory manner in which violence occurs here.

Throughout the last week a series of incidents have occurred here in the marvellous city that have reignited age-old discussions about violence, human rights and citizenship, also. The death of doctor Jaime Gold in Lagoa and the stabbing of Loren Tristão in São Conrado were heinous, tragic crimes. People in the city are on edge. Just two days ago I was sat in a café in Ipanema and it wasn’t long before I overheard the fate of Jaime Gold being discussed on the table beside me.

Drinking white wine, eating bruschetta and mulling over the dangers of living in Rio’s glamorous South Zone, preconceptions that I had about the persistence of violence in Brazil were reinforced by the people sat next to me on Saturday. To me, it seems as if the residents of Rio’s wealthy neighbourhoods are oblivious to the violent reality of large parts of their city. Either that, or they simply choose to ignore it, preferring to see it as a stain on the margins of the marvellous city as opposed to an integral part of it.

Last Sunday, on the other side of the Two Brothers Hill in Rocinha, I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Luckily for me it was occurring in the Rua 2 area of the favela. For those that reside in Rua 2, Rua 1 and Ropa Suja, excessive violence, exposure to heavy-duty weapons and being caught between the crossfire is almost commonplace.

The idea that these two worlds can live side by side without one spilling over into the other is, in my opinion, ludicrous. According to Secretary of State for Security in Rio de Janeiro, José Mariano Beltrame, ‘a bullet in Copacabana is one thing. In the Favela of Coréia it’s another.’

Referring to the contrast between last week’s deadly shootings in the Favela of Coréia and the murder of Jaime Gold in Lagoa, Betrame’s words epitomise, for me, one of the root causes of violence in Brazil – those that live in favelas are not entitled to the same rights of citizenship as those in the middle and upper classes.

Whilst the killing of Jaime Gold seemed unique in its gruesomeness, these two atrocities on the asphalt don’t seem to be isolated incidents. Some of the initial comments I heard when I arrived in Brazil on this trip were “don’t go the beach alone at night”, “there are many assaults happening in Central”,” be careful when you are out alone” and “things have changed here”.

Last time I was in Brazil I slept on the beach alone, I worked out on the beach alone at night and I walked around the centre of the city at all hours. While there was still a certain degree of risk with all of the afore, it seems that risk has intensified over the last two years.

In 2014, the police killed 563 people in the state of Rio de Janeiro, a 35 per cent increase on the previous year. Although not necessarily related to street crime, this proliferating use of violence on behalf of the state supports my observation that Rio has become more violent since I was last here.

As long as 30 per cent of the city’s residents’ principle interaction with the state is through the barrel of a rifle, I see no end to the violence playing out across this beautiful city. Factor in a congress littered with ex-law enforcement personnel, and cries for more police to address rising violence will no doubt be heard.

Yet, as a foreigner that has spent over seven months living in a pacified favela in Rio, the notion that problems of violence in Brazil can be tackled through the expansion of an institution which is complicit in the country’s violence seems regressive, to say the least.

When I was last here it was, for me at least, far safer to walk around Rocinha than it was to be alone in other areas of the city. While I still did the latter, I did, admittedly, feel far more at ease inside the favela. There seems to be, or at least there seemed to be, an unwritten rule that here on the hill no one would steal.

As with my observations outside of Rocinha, this too has changed since 2013. Since my arrival I have noticed that a local news outlet, Rocinha em Foco, is increasingly warning residents of thieves on the loose in the community. In the picture below you can see a homemade warning written on the side of a property.

A typical response to this from people within the community is that this did not happen when the traffickers were in control. Seemingly the punishment would have been too brutal to justify stealing the contents of a till or a handbag. Now, with the community in limbo between the power of the UPP and the traffickers, dealing with petty crime is of far less importance for the UPP officers – whom there also seem to be far less of now than in 2013.

I was asked to write this post about violence in Brazil from my perspective as a gringo. There are no doubt countless reasons for the existence of violence in this huge, 200-million-strong country, with each violent incident having its own specific cause and effect. However, until the rights set out in the 1988 constitution are shared by everyone, I see no sustainable solution.

The day an innocent person shot dead in Complexo do Alemão receives the same news coverage as a person shot dead in Leblon. The day the police arrive outside PUC on a Thursday evening and arrest all those smoking marujana as they would those stood on Estrada da Gavea in Rocinha. The day the public education system equips the masses with the skills needed to pass the vestibular. That will be the day that the violence begins to subside.

Life begins the moment you step out of your comfort zone

Well, what a day yesterday was.

After popping up yesterday’s post, I went down on to the main street to locate a shop to print out some surveys. Admittedly I was a tad nervous. A group of blokes stood around the counter at the small shop, all perfectly able to see all the questions on the survey. I had no idea who they were. They had no idea who I was.

So, as an icebreaker, I just asked the guy behind the counter if he would be interested in doing a survey. Initially a bit confused, I explained to him what it was about and reassured him it was anonymous. He said sure, told me to relax, and his friends began asking me more questions: “Are you with the Government”, “oh cool, what university”, “is it going to be published?”

Before I knew it, three guys were filling out the survey: the owner of the printing shop, a local football coach and a well known ex Vice-President of the community’s surf association. Next came the most random question I’ve heard since my arrival. “Você gosta do Ronnie Sullivan” (Do you like Ronnie Sullivan) To which my response was obviously, yes! Next question: “do you know how to play snooker?” Quickly followed by, “are you busy?”

Barely fifteen / twenty minutes after arriving at the printing shop, I had not only printed twenty-five copies of the survey, I had got three completed and ended up in the most incredible house I’ve seen in Rocinha yet playing snooker on a full size professional table.

From one in the afternoon until almost seven in the evening, I spent the whole day in the man’s house. We talked about his fifty-four years in the community, the impact of Pacification, what life was like in Rio during the military dictatorship and much, much more. In true Brazilian fashion, my mug was full of coffee from arrival till departure and I was shown all around the house – including the stunning roof top view.

Both my new friend and his wife completed the survey and agreed to a follow-up interview in the coming weeks. What yesterday taught me was that good things always happen to people who get out there and get on with things. For a few of the days here I have been approaching the research from behind the screen of my laptop. Now, although this has been productive, nothing compares with chance encounters like what happened yesterday at the printing shop. My good friend and founder of Podstellife.com is forever saying step out of your comfort zone and good things will happen. He is right.

If starting the day with five survey responses, a game of snooker and some amazing favela hospitality wasn’t enough, things got really good when I got home and turned on my computer…

The last time I had checked my Survey Monkey account – the software I am using to administer the online version of the survey – was the previous evening. At that point there were eight responses. When I returned yesterday evening there were forty-six, this morning there are fifty-eight. Leaving me with a total of sixty-five already, thirty-five short of what I thought was an ambitious target. It seems the new target will be two hundred rather than the initial one hundred.

You’re probably wondering how this happened, no? Well, a new friend here in Rocinha is the founder of a community Facebook page and website which shares information with residents – a little bit like the organisation who posted the status I showed in my post yesterday. With over 4,000 followers, of which over 80% are Rocinha residents, getting in touch with these people was always going to be priceless. Leandro – a man of many trades and founder of FavelaDaRocinha.com – informed the site’s followers of my questionnaire and within three hours the responses increased six-fold.

 

The view from a rooftop in Rocinha’s Rua 3 (Steet 3). About five minutes from the Estrada da Gavea.

Full-size, professional snooker table! Needless to say I lost.

All in all, a brilliant, insightful and productive day. Tchau for now.

It’s fine; all the gunshots were over there!

The last few days have been a real wake up call as to what life is actually like in one of Rio’s largest favelas. Although I spent six months here in 2013, I have to admit that I feel like it was perhaps a sheltered six months at what was most probably the height of the Pacification process.

The police were in almost full control of the vast majority of the sprawling 200,000-strong community, there was a buzz of optimism around the place, and it seemed – at least to me – that the installation of Police Pacifying Units was having a slow but positive impact on the community.

Yesterday I woke up at 9am to the sound of gunshots. It is not uncommon to wake up –either in the morning or during the night – to the sound of fogos (fireworks) here, as I mentioned in a previous post. The sound of gunshots, however, is somewhat different. It is a louder, sharper and more sinister sound. It is a sound that no family should have to wake up to on a Sunday morning.

Yet now, with the main streets of the favela only loosely controlled by UPP forces and great swathes of territory back under the control of the community’s former rulers, residents are increasingly caught between these two vying armed groups. From what I can see, the only losers in this situation are the residents.

Below is a picture of my Facebook newsfeed from yesterday morning. The group, Rocinha em Foco (Rocinha in Focus), is a community-based organisation that shares information about community happenings. From public meetings to new services, missing people and upcoming cultural activities, the group is one of a number of organisations working to promote communication and community cohesion in Rocinha.

The status reads “Attention, we received information that three people were shot on Street 2. We don’t have information of their identities. People, please take care when leaving the house”.

I came here to assess the impact of Pacification on social inclusion here in Rio de Janeiro. To wake up on a Sunday morning to the sound of three innocent people being shot made me realise just how little I actually understood. This is not Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan: on the other side of the hill, a mere five / ten minute drive away, the neighbourhoods of Leblon and Gavea are more akin to South Kensington and Notting Hill.

One’s ability to move freely and securely in and out of the family home is a human right. There are almost 1,000 communities like Rocinha in the state of Rio, but until the rights of those living in these communities are respected to the same degree as those in Leblon and Gavea, this struggle, this division, this war will not end.

 “That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race, Dis a war.” — Bob Marley

Perhaps the most surprising thing for a foreigner is just how calm residents remain in the aftermath of such an event. “It’s ok, it was in rua 2, the other side of the favela”, “yeh, I heard them, they woke me up” and “shiiiit, it’s like the Gaza Strip” are but a few of the comments I heard when chatting to friends here yesterday afternoon.

It has not just been the security aspect of Pacification that has changed here since 2013. With the arrival of the state in Rocinha also came grand promises of public service improvement, formalisation and development. Since being back I have discovered that the part-Government-funded NGO Fabrica Verde, where I was teaching some of my classes, has been closed due to a delayed license renewal. The open-air sewage, which was the focus of a protest I attended in 2013, remains open and is a symbolic example of the failure of the Pacification process; and, despite the recent installation of dustbins along Estrada da Gavea (the favela’s main road), you still see people rummaging through large open-air rubbish points at all hours.

Though construction has yet to begin, the authorities – with funding from the second part of the federal Growth Acceleration Program (PAC-2) – remain intent on spending R$1.6bn (£400m) on a state of the art cable car system despite residents’ calls for improvements to water and sanitation provision. This is a controversial topic and one that has been on the tips of peoples’ tongues here since early 2013. What I find hard to believe, though, is why this question is still at the exact same stage as it was two years ago. The typical answer I get to this question is, “this is Brazil, things move more slowly here”.

Perhaps the most interesting comment I have heard on this topic was from a close friend the other day; “why can’t we just have both, we probably need them both.” With various social projects being funded by three different tiers of government at a time of high interest rates and rising inflation, I imagine the answer to this question lies somewhere between the reality of an increasingly tighter fiscal policy and a lack of political will.

I will pop up another post about progress with the research a bit later. Thanks for reading J

The Ball is Rolling

Following the last post on Sunday, progress has been made. On Monday, over an acai and then a cold beer, my friend Eric and I laid out our plan of action for the project. We finalised the questions for stage one of the research – the questionnaire.

With just over twenty questions, this aspect of the research aims to get a broad idea of the kind of impact that Pacification is having on the community. It will be distributed online and in person. As of yet, five people have responded. Still 95 off target, but not a bad start at all. The responses so far have been mixed and have certainly provided some food for thought for the interview design.

Eric – who I will write a separate post about in the next day or so – is going to write up a shortlist of twenty people in the community he thinks have a good understanding of what Pacification means here in Rocinha and would thus be ideal interview respondents. The list will include community leaders, teachers, vicars and other well-respected residents from all around the favela. From this list we can begin contacting people, distributing the research information sheet to them and finding out who is interested in sharing their thoughts.

I don’t envisage the interview stage to start for a short while yet, yet the planning is well under way. I already have three people who have agreed to a full interview; so, alongside those that leave contact details on the space provided on the survey and the names Eric puts forward, I have a strong pool of people to carry out the full interviews with.

While still rusty, my Portuguese is improving every day. Spending almost all day everyday surrounded by Brazilians is helping massively. It can be frustrating when a discussion kicks of at the kiosk – the place where we generally sit and relax at night – about the political, economic and social situation here in Brazil and I can’t understand everything. The odd word will throw me off track completely while the discussion has moved on. Anyway, here are a few more things I picked up about life here whilst chatting away with friends over the last few days:

One of the things that really shocks me, culturally that is, about life here in Rocinha is the age at which the youth begin behaving like adults – or at least try to. On Sunday I was sat at the bottom of the favela with my friends as usual. What shocked me, though, was the sheer amount of teenagers there at gone midnight on a Sunday. When I say teenagers, I mean twelve, thirteen and fourteen year olds dressed like women on a hen night in Newcastle all intent on pairing up with boys.

To try and make sense of this, I asked my friend if it was always like this here. He said to me, “no, not at all, when we were kids, we used to go to the beach, we’d play football, do kid stuff, y’ know. Some of these kids are only twelve and they are already [hand gesture] y’ know”. It’s no secret that Brazilians mature at a young age, and to a certain degree, in places like Rocinha you have to. But I can’t help but feel that these kids are missing out on being young. They’re rushing into being grown up. It’s a little sad to see.

Another interesting observation I’ve made since arriving back here in Rocinha is the massive drop in police presence. When I was last here in 2013, I would see small groups of police almost everywhere. They would pass through my street, they would station themselves on the ends of strategically important roads all the way up the hill, and, you really would feel their presence. This time round though, I barely see them. Ok, at the bottom of the hill by the pasarella (bridge) you will see them the same as ever, but a ten-minute walk up the rua principal (main street) and they are almost hard to find.

When I questioned my friends about the reasons for this, the answer was simple. “The drug dealers have returned”. The powers that be have seemingly allowed this to happen. Now, if you walk for two minutes off a number of the main streets in the community, you will arrive in an area where Pacification no longer exists. You may see the metre-long rifle of a police hanging out of a car on its way up the hill, yet you’ll very rarely see it in a beco (alleyway) – the kind of street that makes up the vast majority of the favela.

While one friend thinks Pacification will remain here after the 2016 Olympic Games, another thinks that the drug faction will retain full control soon after. He went on to describe Pacification as an ilusão (illusion) or maquiagem (makeup).

Just a little taster of the current situation here.

Anyway, I’m off to the beach.

Até a próxima

A Slow but Successfull Start

Almost a week has passed since my arrival in Rio last Monday. As of yet, I have not received a completed questionnaire or carried out an interview. While this could be seen as a wasted week, I prefer to look at it as a week of preparation, laying the ground work for the rest of my time here, and discovering – from the people I will be addressing in the research – how best to go about it all.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with a friend in the community who (I’m hoping) will essentially be my partner in crime. His solid grasp of English, stature in the community and passion for the topics I will touch on make him the perfect person to help me make this project a success. I will be sharing with him my questionnaire, collecting his thoughts and making any final touches. As well as this, we are going to discuss the best way to carry out the interviews, and also how to make sure those selected for interview give a broad representation of the community.

Until I have chatted through everything with him and got his permission, my parceiro (partner) will unfortunately remain anonymous on the blog. Given that time is money – and in Rio money is hard to come by but easy to spend – I will be paying him for his help. This was not a cost I had factored in to the trip initially, but after spending a week here discussing the achievability of my research with Rocinha residents, I think it is absolutely necessary. If anybody reading this is feeling philanthropic please do get in touch – every little helps!

Ensuring that those selected to partake in the interviews are representative of the 200,000 people that live here is no doubt going to be one of the biggest challenges. While I aim to get the questionnaire to 100 people, the interviews will no doubt be far fewer – around 10, I hope.

The sheer scale, diversity and inequality of the community was summed up for me the other day when sat sharing a beer with some friends. “On my street, there, further up the hill, you have fully furnished buildings with wi-fi, people with cars and businesses; then, on the same street, you have sheer poverty, generations that haven’t studied and barely leave the area”.

Just yesterday, someone said something to me that made me think pretty deeply about why this is the case. When I asked why the community’s library was to be opened later and closed earlier in the coming months, I was expecting an answer that confirmed my pre-conceived idea about lack of political will to promote development in favela communities.

What was actually said made me really think: “No one wants to study here. I mean, of course there are some, but when you go to that library there’s two or three people there”. I accept this is one person’s view. In fact, I do know many people here who certainly do want to study and improve their lives. Yet, this comment made me reflect more about the thousands of people I see in the streets each day, drinking and taking each day as it comes rather than planning for tomorrow by sitting in the library.

For the first time I began to think about social development at the micro level. As in one person making their life better purely off their own back. There are no doubt huge obstacles for people who live here. Lack of sufficient sanitation systems; lack of good schools and medical services; and, mediocre, crowded public transport are all huge problems for people in Rocinha. What those comments did, though, was make me think harder about the huge differences between people here and how harnessing this diversity will be a fundamental aspect of my study.

Settling Back In

Following a generous lift from the airport off a friend of a friend, I spent my first night back in Rio in the city’s west zone. Vila da Paz, a small favela just on the outskirts of the Barra da Tijuca area, to be more precise.   A close friend of mine from the previous trip has recently moved there to escape the high prices, noise and hustle and bustle of the enormous Rocinha – the place where he’s spent the last twenty-four years living. It seems that despite the violence that has emerged in the community over the last year or so, the cost of living continues to rise. In fact, the mother of my friend told me that an average size, two bedroom apartment in Rocinha is now costing around R$1,200 per month. Now, to put that into perspective, the minimum wage here is around R$800-900. This ballooning cost of living is probably the one thing that has stood out the most since my arrival a couple of days ago.

After a quintessentially Brazilian breakfast of tapioca and sugary coffee, I jumped on the 550 bus to Rocinha, carried my bags up the hill and was soon reunited with seu Jose. Jose lives about half way up the hill and rents rooms in his house out to foreigners who wish to spend time in the community. I passed my first hour or so back in Rocinha chatting away with Jose about how things had changed over the last year, what the Pacification policy is achieving (or not achieving) and getting a bit of advice about how best to go about my research.

Next stop, the beach. Reunited with another close friend from back in 2013 who was coincidentally on his folga (day off), I took the opportunity to get his views on how things were developing in the city. We discussed his thoughts on the idea of a cidade partida (broken city) and talked for ages about each others career plans and ideas for the future. When I posed the question: ‘do you think this city will ever be united’, his response was simply ‘no’. While I will be digging deeper into these kinds of questions as the trip goes on, to get such a blunt response from a typically optimistic Carioca was interesting to say the least. I came here with the idea of doing a survey and interviews, I think that just living, learning and remembering what people say to me in informal discussions is going to be just as, if not more, useful.

This became even more apparent later in the day on Tuesday when I returned to what was essentially my local for six months in 2013. Sergio’s kiosk, situated right at the bottom of the hill just beside the community’s Oscar Nieyemer-designed footbridge, is quite simply the place to be. R$5 caipirinhas, good music and great company was always going to be the way my first night back here went. All my old friends were there at some point throughout the night.

Aside from the drinking, joking and catching up, I sat for over an hour and discussed the topic of discrimination in Rio with a young man in the community – again an old friend from the previous visit. A well-connected, intelligent, entrepreneurial and hard-working lad, my friend shared with me many of his opinions on topics of social cohesion, inequality and life in the favelas of Rio. He gave me some fantastic but honest advice about how best to go about getting answers to the questions that I have. He has also agreed to help me with some aspects of the research and put me in touch with community leaders.

All in all, a great start to the trip. The kindness, friendliness and openness of the people here is the same as ever. The weather hasn’t quite reached where I’d hoped yet though! Oh, and just as I finished writing this post, the sound of warning shots (usually from fireworks) just echoed around the place like a firing range. It’s only 11am!!!

Why? Where? When?

This blog has been created to share stories. To share my story. More importantly, though, to share the stories of the people I came to love and respect during my short, six-month stay in Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

 

During that trip, I lived and worked in Brazil’s largest favela -Rocinha. For those reading this that are unaware, a favela is an informal housing settlement. While definitions are contested in the legal and academic worlds, a favela is to Brazil what a barrio is to Colombia, what a slum is to India; a favela is a place of poverty, crime and underdevelopment. Well, that’s what you’d think if you followed the negative and unhelpful rhetoric that gets plastered around in the media.

 

To me, favela means colour, culture, hospitality and love. But hardship, too. A place where the excluded reside. A place where those that work hardest get tarnished with the same brush as those that don’t work. A place where someone earning minimum wage would give you the last bite of his salgado because you were a guest. A place where an open-air sewage flows past your doorstep, yet the local authorities are hell bent on resolving your community’s developmental problems with a state of the art cable car system.

 

Thanks to the Anglo-Brazilian society and Santander Bank, I am currently sat on flight BA20…something or other on my way back to Rio. Due to their generosity and belief in me, I will be back in the marvellous community of Rocinha for two months this May and June. This time however, I will be fully equipped with a Dictaphone (cheers Cone) and a Survey Monkey account. As part of my MSc at King’s College London, I will be conducting field research in the community.

 

The project will be focusing on what social exlusion means to people in the community. Is it a lack of well-paid jobs? A lack of public services, perhaps? Stigmatisation and discrimination on behalf of those in the ‘formal’ city, maybe? Perhaps none of these things. Perhaps all of them. Time will tell.

 

This blog will be my space to share stories with friends and family back home. It will be a space full of pictures, videos and tales for those that have generously funded this opportunity. For anyone else that ends up here: thank you! I hope that you enjoy the topics that will be discussed; I hope you get to see the real favela and, I’d love to hear what you think! So please do get in touch.

The next post about my opening two days will be up at some point today. Oh, and for anyone back home reading this, do the right thing and kick the Tories out today!!!

This is the view from my friends house in a small favela community in the west zone of the city. The community is called Vila da Paz and is close to the Barra da Tijuca area.

São Conrado – the local beach to Rocinha – on a cloudy, moody day.

When I was last in Rio in 2013 the bus cost R$ 2.70. It is now R$3.40. The cost of living here is rising fast.