I Need to Talk About Rio
As someone living in New York, it sounds weird when I say I'm building a platform for people in Rio. It's a bit awkward every time I try to schedule a talk with a potential partner or an interview for a story. "How do you want to talk about Rio being in New York?" I've heard this question many times. I've asked myself many more.
But wait. How could I not talk about Rio?
Last week I published a story about Cosme Felippsen, a tourist guide and favela resident who created guided tours that challenge people's thoughts about the place where he lives. He told me that he had never seen the favela the way others see it until the day he left it. Then, he realized all of its meanings. And he wanted to show people who don't live in a favela what it really means.
"People start to see themselves better when they leave where they are," he told me.
Like Cosme, I started to better see Rio when I left.
I had always been in love with this city, but in a way I also wanted to escape it. The culture, the lifestyle, the music, the nature — these are easy to fall in love with. The violence, the inequality, the prejudice, the corruption, the traffic — these are much easier to despise. But the mixture of both sides brings up the best of Rio: its people. Most of all, their creativity to overcome all of this city's problems and thrive.
After the excitement of hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics, the city fell into a deep depression. The state is completely bankrupt, its previous governor Sergio Cabral is in jail, and many other politicians are involved in Operation Car Wash, the largest anticorruption investigation in the country's history. Crime has spiked, and so has unemployment.
In the middle of all this, the middle class is moving abroad (we saw a similar exodus in the 1990’s, when Brazil was also in deep economic and political crisis). But what about those who can't escape? They create. Activists, artists, musicians, video makers, writers — they are all finding ways to bring back the proud of being carioca, working to make our economy and self esteem revive after the depression.
I've decided that I want to document that with my project, Do Rio. More than just look for solutions, I want to bring light to the solutions that people are developing — not because they want, but because they desperately need it. And in this journey, I'll also write about the Rio that I am starting to see better: the one of resilient people, full of contradictions and creativity, that is proud of itself enough to shine even during dark times.
I could not write about anything but Rio. And I would never realize that if I hadn't left.
