Arrival in Brazil

It’s Sunday, and I’ve been gone for a week today. It feels like it’s been a year. The program I’m participating in, CIEE, started on Friday, so I had a few days to see the sights before it started. My flight was fine, and I arrived in Sao Paulo on New Year’s Eve morning.

That day, I met up there with Kim, a girl in the same program from Milwaukee, and, per instructions from the lovely people at the front desk of our hotel, we found ourselves that night on Avenida Paulista in downtown Sao Paulo. It’s similar to Times Square in that a lot of people meet in the street, there’s music, and you count down from 10 at midnight. For Kim and me, it was some of the best people-watching of our lives. Beginning at the metro station where we got onto the street, we walked well over a mile toward the main stage and stopped another 1/6 mile short of the stage when there were just too many people to keep on. The paper the next day estimated that 2.3 million people at the celebration!

On the afternoon of the first, Kim and I boarded a bus for Rio de Janeiro where we stayed until the program started Friday morning of the 4^th. We met up there with Milton, another student in the program from Texas, and had an even more eventful time than in Sao Paulo. The first morning, we took a guided tour of the largest (and nicest) favela [slum] in the city. Brazil and especially Rio de Janeiro are known for huge slums in their cities controlled by gangs and which the police can’t enter. At 300,000 residents, Rosinhas is the largest favela in Latin America (according to the tour guide). The intent of the tour is to show a more rounded and positive view of the favelas. Obviously, they get a very bad rap which has been widely disseminated by movies such as City of God, a great film about another of the favelas in Rio, Cidade de Deus.

I was actually surprised during the tour by how the favela is similar to any city. My expectation was for it to be smelly, to have trash in the streets, to see lots of people sitting around looking stoned and for all the buildings to be tattered shacks which barely stood up. All to the contrary. Though extremely narrow, all the streets and passages were clean of trash and smelled roughly like the rest of the city. It was lively with shops and songbirds hanging from windows. Though extremely haphazard and patch worked, all the structures were of concrete. Of necessity, since Rosinhas is built into the side of a mountain, most buildings have around 4 floors – all of them seemed to be standing up just fine.

Rather than some great swelling of passion for the poor of Rosinhas, what struck me more is how it’s organized. Let me note, I did not say how well it’s organized. As I mentioned before, the police do not enter Rosinhas, and no one pays taxes there. A few government capital investments have been made but very few. In a city slum of 300,000, we were told there is one public elementary school. Students are bused out if they want to attend high school. All of the residents are squatters so formal property rights do not exist. In short, the government of Brazil does not exist in Rosinhas; it is its own state. The functioning government of the favela is its gang whose revenues come from drugs it sells within the favela. Its functions are to (rigidly) enforce the favela’s borders and law and order. The tour guide informed us that the last time a rape was committed in Rosinhas, 20 years ago, the offender was cut limb from limb, and the pieces were displayed throughout the favela as a warning – she says she feels completely safe.

Clearly, the government is very limited and primitively formed. The formation of the favela is organic, formed by a juncture of the invisible hand and poverty. Very little pre-planning is evident. Each structure and pavement is patched onto the last. The buildings are usually built floor by floor as residents sell the space on their roofs to those moving in. Apart from main streets which are normal width, the streets are anywhere from a few meters to a meter wide, sometimes only allowing 1-way flow of pedestrians. There is no feeling that anything is owned by an external government; the people of Rosinhas own Rosinhas and take pride in it as such. Norms have clearly been established, some similar to a normal city and some completely different. A shop window in Rosinhas is just as you would expect in a poor section of the main city. Basics such as respect for other’s safety and private property thrive. Though the formal legal system may view the whole favela as squatters, a healthy market to buy and rent apartments is evident, with “For Sale” signs posted periodically throughout. In summary of the organization of a place like Rosinhas, it seems that on scale of rigidity some points may include: (1) Communist government (2) U.S. government (3) Large corporation (4) Favela (5) Anarchy.

Of course, I received a very brief (a few hours) and perhaps positively skewed view of Rosinhas. Many of the smaller, newer favelas are more dangerous with less established norms and rival gangs vying for control – they’re more anarchical. Beyond that, my tour group had somewhat of a special “pass” to enter the favela as being led by a resident. Normally, outsiders are not welcome. It was a great experience though and shed a little bit of light on one of the more exotic concepts for me in Brazil.

Beyond the favela, we got to experience lots of the great tourist attractions in Rio. Some highlights were Copacabana beach and the Christ statue and hanging onto the outside of a loaded trolley as it wound its way through one of the neighborhoods. Friday, the 4^th, Milton, Kim, and I were back in Sao Paulo and have been doing orientation for our program since. Yesterday, I met my host Mom who seems great and has lots of experience hosting students. Right now, it’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m happy as a clam sitting in a Starbucks in a shopping mall. A little bit of imperialism can go a long ways! ;) I will make sure to post pictures when I have a chance.