Brazil: Rio Gives Its 'Favelas' a Pre-Olympics Makeover

[ocpagu]

There have been a lot of unusual sightings recently in ChapÉu Mangueira, a small favela, or shantytown, on a hillside overlooking the iconic white sands of Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach. Technicians from a local cell company, once utter strangers to ChapÉu Mangueira, are showing up. So are vans delivering home appliances and officials from the government housing agency. Even electricians from the local power utility, Light, have been spotted poking at the heavy cables atop lamp posts.

While those sorts of visits might seem normal to most people, they were until only recently rare to the 3,500 residents of this favela, one of hundreds once controlled by Rio's violent drug gangs. Now, as the government slowly ousts the traffickers and regains the upper hand - part of an organized cleanup ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro - companies are starting to understand that there is cash in what was once chaos. Taking products, services and jobs back into the pacified favelas is the latest challenge facing a city hoping to reverse decades of neglect as it prepares to host not just the Olympics but also the soccer World Cup final in 2014. "Now we feel valued," says ChapÉu Mangueira resident-association president Valdinei Medina. "Life has clearly got better." (See how Rio is making headway against its drug gangs.)

Since October 2009, when it won its bid to hold the Olympics, Rio has unveiled a host of projects that will build modern arenas and museums, as well as metro and bus lines, improved housing and a revitalized port area in the geographically spectacular but socially troubled city. The most unexpected changes, however, are taking place in its favelas, the almost 1,000 hillside slums that for decades were plagued by the stray bullets and bloody turf wars that often spilled out into the city below. Over the past few years, authorities, spurred on by progressive Mayor Eduardo Paes, have retaken control of several high-profile favelas, sending in battalions of special-operations police to remove the traffickers and then installing a community-based presence called Pacifying Police Units, or UPPs by their Portuguese initials.

Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/rio-gives-favelas-pre-olympics-makeover-033408983.html

[ocpagu]

1. Not a bad report...

... but it title is a bit misleading.

Indeed, "make over" is an expression that can be applied to some projects going on in Rio, but there's a wider context too, that is not directly linked to the Olympic Games. For the first time since the favelas appeared in Brazil (late 19th century, when slavery was abolished and the former slaves, having nowhere to go, occupied the hills with improvised houses) their number is being reduced (number of people living in favelas dropped by 16% in the last 10 years). Public housing projects and private low-income apartments are popping out in every large city. I really hope that Brazil has finally started paying its debts with the favela's dwellers, who have been neglected for so long and that it keeps it after the Olympics are gone.

Two notable example I've met personally: the former favela of Prosamim, in Manaus (Amazon) is being transformed into a regular neighborhood.



And a former favela in Alexander Mackenzie neighborhood, in São Paulo

[Judi Lynn]

2. This is wonderful. Thanks so much for adding the photos! Very cool. n/t