I have been asked by a number of friends over the past couple of days to discuss the conditions of the military occupation of 9 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. In my life, I have lived 5 years in Rio, and dedicated a tremendous number of energies into trying to untangle its weave to look at its fabric. I have not succeeded, and frequently, when addressed with questions as to “why?”, I can only respond with a feeble attempt at “how”.
How can Rio allow such radical stratifaction, both class and race, be so evident and yet do little to resolve or address it? How can Rio celebrate a 2.5 million reais (US$750,000) Rolling Stones Concert on the beach and allow and encourage the federal military to occupy its favelas again (yes, the military has had a presence in Rio’s streets a number of times in the past years)? How can a supposed left Lula, seen here with Tony Blair, support such action? How can anyone live in such an amazing state of contradiction and celebrate it with carnival?
The answers I usually attempt are fairly simple, and hardly complete:
Rio is Raw. It is not a total core and periphery model of a city, as in Europe or many US cities (and São Paulo). The socio-geography puts its slums right next to, and quite literally on top of, some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It is not Tokyo. It is not New York. It is Rio. And it is exposed.
But if you began to expose each of these cities to itself, you would find, on a different scale, many of the exact contradictions that are lived every day in Rio. It isn’t to excuse Rio, but it is to situate it as unique in its raw exposure of the contradictions of global capital flows and corruption that dominate our current time.
Rio is an exceptionally corrupt city. Rio is an exceptionally beautiful city. Rio is a divided city (Zona Norte, the workingclass and poor region, and Zona Sul, the wealthy). It is the heart of Brazil, the country of the “future”. It is the heart of messianism and the heart of utopianism (more so than Brasilia, which tried and always already failed). Rio believes in the future, and in itself. It is the greatest city I know, and the worst. But it is fundamentally not neutral. There is almost no middle ground in Rio. You have, or you don’t. You can, or you can’t. You are, or you are not. But, some day, if you believe, or try hard enough, you always could, you always might be. It is a city of faith in itself.
When the military, or the police, occupy the favelas, it is because Rio, like many cities in Brazil, is a city of civil societies. The federal government is fairly weak compared to the local rulling forces, both militarily and socially. Everyday life in Rio is regulated by neighbohoods and implicit cultural rules coming from a mutual (mis)understanding of social norms. Common sense, in the Gramscian sense, rules, and common sense is much more flexible than federal law.
When the government steps in, it is to impress, to leave an impression, and should come as no surprise that when Lula, wishing to appease Tony Blair and the international community, stands by his decision to exhibit control and force over his people, he is doing so to imply conditions of rule that do not, and cannot, control the people of Rio. Just as Tony Blair cannot control his own people with a terrorist Police force that killed Brazilian Jean Charles Menezes in the subway, Lula will not control Rio, nor its favelas. But he may have succeeded in leaving an impression, which was, most likely, his original desire (do you think that he actually cared that a few weapons were stolen from a barracks?).
Aside from my vague comments, I can suggest one film and two directors to that I find understand the conditions that reproduce the violence and corruption that form the fundaments of Rio (and many cities– like Washington D.C.–around the world).
Historias de Uma Guerra Particular, by Katia Lund and Joao Moreira Salles, 1999. This film comes bundled with Cidade de Deus (City of Gods), a film based upon a much more amazing book of the same title by Paulo Lins. Joao Salles is an incredible director and the foundational force behind VideoFilmes in Rio, a committed, though sometimes pedantic, production house dedicated largely to PBS and HBO style documentaries. Both he and Katia came very close to serious jail time for this film for their involvement with Marcinho VP, a druglord and self-proclaimed revolutionary.
The other documentary source I can recommend are films by Eduardo Coutinho. Titles such as Edificio Master, Santo Forte and Babilonia 2000 are key for any discussion of the social conditions of Brazil, as well as the 2/3 world in general.
I can recommend any music by seu jorge, bezerra da silva, Racionais MC’s, Xis, and many others, but I will talk music later…
I have some remorse and sadness when I see Lula’s military ‘invasion’ of the favelas. I feel just as much hope, though, as that finally the international press has begun to pay attention.
The inherent contradictions that encapsulate much of our everyday activities are apparent in Brazil, on the surface, raw in Rio. It seems to me that the more we address those contradictions so visible in Brazil, the more we will be forced to begin to address those that surround us everyday, wherever we are.