Rocinha: An Introduction
I have been living in the marvellous city of Rio de Janeiro since the onset of the Southern summer, November 2014. The city has countless foreigners captive; lost in its vibrant streets, stranded on its white sand beaches, delving into the dense jungle of its surrounding hills, or merely sidetracked at a local boteco (bar). For me however, it is a different, less frequented place that will forever spring to mind on sight of the name ‘Rio de Janeiro’.
Rocinha is the largest and most famous of Rio’s favelas, and debatably the biggest in the whole of Latin America. It is also the part of theCidade Maravilhosa(wonderful city) in which I have spent the vast majority of my time. Wikipedia describes a favela as a ‘heavily populated, informal settlement characterized by sub-standard housing and squalor, within urban areas’. How hopeless some definitions can truly be. For thousands of others and myself, the word ‘favela’ — and furthermore, ‘Rocinha’ — has come to mean a whole host of wonderful things. A place so full of life and energy that it infects you as you walk amongst its streets. A place where public sector workers, artists, drug lords, children, musicians, students and all manner of others make up the diverse demographic of every day life. A place in which many of the branches of Brazilian culture have their roots — from samba to funk, capoeira to football, the favela, or morro (hill), is a place of cultural and artistic self-expression.
The word itself derives from the name of a plant that covered the hillside of Providência, the first favela community in Rio de Janeiro. When the infamous Guerra de Canudos (War of the Straws) drew to a bloody close late in 1897, thousands of ‘victorious’ soldiers arrived in Rio de Janeiro. Enticed here with promises of land in the wonderful city, they had fought on behalf of the government in order to crush the alternative community of Padre Antonio Conselheiro and extinguish the ‘threat’ of its poor and black population. With the government reneging on their promise, the men and their families set about installing themselves on a slope in the neighbourhood of Central, where they were soon joined by vast numbers of ex-slaves, finally liberated by Princess Isabel.
Rocinha, however, did not come into existence until the twentieth century. In the 1920s, only a handful of farms and dwellings lay in the valley between the mountains of Dois Irmãos and Pedra da Gavea, and it was from these very roças (farms) that the community got its name. Delicious fruit and vegetables were sold at a nearby market in the wealthy neighbourhood of Gavea, and the satisfied customers proceeded to spread the word of the excellent produce that came from the rocinhas (little farms) over the hill. Over the next few years, Rocinha would start to see the first signs of an influx of settlers, albeit on a significantly smaller scale than in the following decades. After the collapse of the coffee plantations, many trabalhadores (workers) left São Paulo for Rio de Janeiro in search of work, but it was another thirty years before things really started moving. In the wake of the expansion of nearby, affluent areas, such as Leblon and Ipanema, the favela began to creep up the hillside, with migrant workers flocking from the North East of the country. The new arrivals took up jobs in construction and used spare materials gathered at work to build their own houses, on the slopes of Rocinha. Such migratory journeys are still common today. Thousands of Brazilians choose to leave the relative poverty of the North East in search of work and a better life. Nearly all end up in the unofficial and unregulated settlements of Brazil’s Southern cities. Rocinha exemplifies this migration as well as any of Rio’s favelas. A huge slice of its demographic is made up of Nordestinos (people originating from the North East). Men, women and children from the northern states, such as Ceara, Paraiba and Bahia, flock southwards; some in pursuit of opportunity, others for merely a lack of an alternative.
The modern day phenomenon of Rocinha owes a lot to the construction and eventual opening of the tunnel Dois Irmãos and the Lagoa-Barra carriageway in the 1970s. The increased infrastructure brought a new intensity to the evolution of the morro and this growth soon became exponential. This coincided with the arrival of new social movements in Brazil and, through the 1980s and 90s, the arrival of residential organisations, community schools, health services and a more active social system within the community itself.
Through the years, favelas have come to be known as violent, dangerous places, where drug gangs run riot and murder is abundant. But to judge these communities in such a way is to forget about the vast majority of moradores (residents) who, while navigating the perilous path of living in such a place, also provide the backbone to cities such as Rio de Janeiro. They are the public sector workers; they are the people who make things tick and who keep the cities going. Before the 1980s, the favelas were marginalised, poor neighbourhoods, but were not places infested with drugs and criminal activity. As Brazil’s new democracy was born, the now infamous drug gangs of Rio began to emerge.Comando Vermelho (Red Command) is the most notorious of Brazil’s gangs, and it was this group that infiltrated the communities, all across the city, establishing themselves as parallel powers. Over the last few decades, until recently, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro were controlled by these totalitarian regimes, propped up by the huge drug and arms trade for which they are so famous. Young men patrolled the streets, armed to the nines, and drug lords, laden with gold and girls, ruled the roost. However, ask many a morador and you will hear that they ruled with respect. The police rarely ventured into these misunderstood and misrepresented communities, and crime, aside from the blatantly obvious drug trade, was strictly punished by a lei do trafico (the law of the traffic). The unforgiving gangs, not keen to attract the unwanted presence of the authorities, ensured that inhabitants respected the security of the community. I, nor this blog, will never condone or support this type of regime; these facts are merely relevant to Rocinha and Rio’s most recent piece of important favela related history.
In 2011, with both the World Cup and the Olympics looming, the Governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro decided that the time had come to act. Sergio Cabral, along with his contingent, launched a never before imagined assault on the rampant gangs of Rio’s favelas. The military police force was mobilised and installed within various favelas across the city, tasked with seizing control from the fearsome gangs and restoring peace to the communities just in time for the flocks of foreign visitors that would so soon be arriving on Rio’s sandy shores. An all out war was declared on the gangs. With the recapture of the favelas came the UPP (Police Pacification Unit), a key part in the ‘pacification process’. These units would serve to occupy the favelas, heavily armed, as a constant presence, both to liaise and interact with the community as never before, and to guard against the ‘return’ of the drug trade, which in truth never left.
The community of Rocinha however, is now more insecure than ever before. The success of the pacification process is widely debated, but the consensus from within this incredible community, is that promises in relation to education and sanitation have not been kept and safety and security have only deteriorated. The complexity of social, political and economic life in the favelas is something that will forever be discussed — but it is not the aim of this blog. With this brief rundown of the history and dynamics of Rocinha, I hope that readers will now be able to imagine and understand the posts that follow. I have created this blog in order to give an insight into the lives of the people that make up this beautiful community. What will follow, are stories; stories from the forgotten people of the favelas; stories of love and of family; stories of death, of youth; the stories of drug dealers, but also of bus drivers — nothing more or less than the everyday reality of life in Rocinha. With the help of friends and acquaintances, I hope to show the various sides to places like this, through the simple and wonderful medium of words. The tales and trials of the moradores da Rocinha (residents of Rocinha) will be based on real people, and real occurrences that have happened within the morro. The stories will be in all shapes and sizes, and I aim to express a true reflection of the people of Rocinha, by covering the stories of the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, the good and the bad. Eventually, I hope to publish translations in Portuguese, but for now, everything will be in English.
The history of Rocinha — which I have touched on in this post — is something publicised, and relatively well known. It is the stories that will follow that I hope will open both minds and eyes much wider. EDIT: I would like to thank, in advance, Ben Sadek, Will Jones, my auntie Cathi and my dad, Kevin, for the help in proof reading and the advice they have given me.
