Kai and Paula and I went to see Santa Marta, a favela, on Thursday. At first, the idea of touring a favela seemed immensely tacky to me, and to be honest it still feels a little tacky, but that being said, I’m glad I did it. Our guide was a man who lives in Santa Marta with his wife and children. He was very kind and charismatic and seemed genuinely glad that we wanted to see and learn about Santa Marta. He told us that he trained for years to be a guide. When the favela was first pacified, the government asked residents to volunteer to train to be guides, and Jose completed enough training that he is now qualified to be a tour guide anywhere in Latin America. His wife, also a guide, gave Joe Biden a tour of Santa Marta when he was in Rio de Janeiro.
The favela rises and rises steeply on top of itself. The dwellings at the very top were the first to be built and have incredible views of the whole city. However, since they are the farthest away, they were never urbanized with concrete reinforcements like the rest of the favela was, so they have a huge landslide risk. Many of the houses are painted vibrantly due to a Dutch paint company that donated paint to the residents. We walked up many stairs and also took a lift, basically a mini tram, which operates to help the residents up and down the favela without having to take so many stairs. For the most part, the favela was clearly overwhelmingly poor. The residences were very small, many haphazardly constructed, and there was trash everywhere. Chickens roamed up and down many of the stairs and we often had to step over dog poop. However, our guide told us that the prices for space in Santa Marta have been going up and up, primarily because of speculation that the land will be developed in the future and will then be worth quite a lot.
Santa Marta was the first successfully pacified favela. Pacification of the favelas means that all weapons were removed. There may still be drug trafficking occurring in the favela, but there are no guns besides the pistols carried by the police who routinely patrol the area. The pacification of Santa Marta was successful because, unlike other favelas, corrupt police captains were not stood for and were immediately removed. The city of Rio de Janeiro hails Santa Marta as a model for all favelas, but its residents seem to scoff at this claim, as a banner strung across one house read: FAVELA – “model” of what?
We also visited the Michael Jackson square in Santa Marta, named so because part of the music video for “They Don’t Care About Us” was filmed there. There is a huge tile mosaic of his face, along with a life-size bronze statue of the man himself, arms raised. Jose, our guide, told us that the square used to house a clinic where a doctor from Rio would come to give free health services to the favela. The square has a placard with Michael Jackson’s name on it, along with the date of the filming, and Jose told us that he would have preferred a placard with the doctor’s name on it, honoring him instead.
On our way down, we passed an area that had a lot of anti-world cup graffiti. “FIFA go home” was painted on the stairs and “Cup for whom? Copa pra quem?” was painted on a wall. Jose told us that all of this anti-world cup graffiti was done by one man and that he feared that foreigners who came and toured the favela would take pictures of it and spread it around and the world would think that the opinions of this one man were felt by the whole favela. For this reason, I have not posted any pictures of that graffiti here. Jose told us that he benefited from the world cup. Brazilians had first access to tickets to the games, and for much lower prices, so Jose bought thirty tickets. He and his family used some of them and the rest he sold at higher prices, so he ended up making a profit. Furthermore, the cup brought more tourists to tour the favela, so he made more money. I was glad to hear his perspective and it was nice to hear that not all Brazilians disliked having the games here. At the very bottom of the favela, as we walked out, we passed a wall beautifully painted with bright colors and music symbols. Written across the top was, in Portuguese, “The rich want peace to stay rich. We want peace to stay alive.”
I like Rio. Much of it is a lot like New York, with big avenues and tall buildings and lots of cars and people, but other parts feel smaller, with less tall buildings and quieter atmospheres. I love that the city is surrounded by mountains of granite and has the ocean on one side and the bay on the other, even if I would never go in the water. Rio has followed suit with the rest of Brazil by being the most self-esteem boosting place ever for a petite white girl like me. I get “ai que linda” (how beautiful) from men passing by at least a few times a day. After we said goodbye to Jose at the foot of Santa Marta, we made our way back home to the world’s least sound-proofed apartment, picked up Sofia, and went out for pizza.
Keep it Crunchy 