Evictions, Gentrification & Displacement: Three Short Docs on the Forces Shaping Rio Today [VIDEOS]
May 9th
Right now in Rio, favela residents across the city are being forced out of their homes and communities. Tens of thousands of families are having to leave their self-built homes, often of decades, due to direct state intervention where residents are told they are being removed for mega-event developments or because they are in “risk areas,” or due to the more subtle forces of real estate speculation and gentrification whereby residents can no longer afford to live in their own communities. Both types of eviction mean residents must move out to peripheral, underserved areas of the city, where land is cheaper, new favelas More >
Pensão Sabor de Ana: Providência Restaurant in Crisis
May 8th
The Pensão Sabor de Ana restaurant is near the bottom of Providência hill. But even if it were located at the top no doubt these flavors would be drawing people from all over the city for the great food and better price. For R$10, a customer gets access to an all-you-can eat buffet, with two selections of a wide variety of churrasco meats. With the menu changing every day, customers just seem to keep coming back. Chicken à milanesa with rice and beans–-a pretty standard Brazilian dish–-was all I needed to see how “flavor” worked its way into the restaurant’s name.
What is even More >
Does Citizenship have a Post Code? Collective Warrants and Illegal Searches in Pre-UPP Maré
May 6th
For the original in Portuguese by Cecília Oliveira on Arma Branca click here.
Does citizenship have a post code? This question may seem absurd for some, yet spot-on for others, and it is what favela residents are repeatedly asking about state powers.
Maré, a group of favelas situated between the Avenida Brasil and Linha Vermelha, two main highways in Rio’s North Zone, has been the target of six police operations in the past month. Residents are experiencing what they call “Pre-UPP Syndrome”, or TPP (Portuguese acronym).
Last Thursday May 2nd, residents of the favelas Parque União and Nova Holanda faced yet another operation, More >
Morar Carioca Stalled in 89 Favelas Before Construction Plans Finalized: The Case of Pica-Pau
May 2nd
Irenaldo, President of the Pica-Pau Residents' Association, strolls behind a cyclist on one of Pica-Pau's main streets.
Irenaldo Honório da Silva, president of the Pica-Pau Residents’ Association, is at a loss. The small favela where he has led community organizing efforts for over twenty years, slightly north of Maré along Avenida Brasil, has in the past eighteen months witnessed robust commitments to what will be the first large-scale public upgrades in its history, those from the municipal Morar Carioca program. Teams of architects, technical surveyors, and social scientists have visited, noting the locations of abandoned buildings that could be converted into schools and More >
Impacted Communities: Manguinhos Plays Host to Resistance Efforts from Across the City
Apr 30th
Manguinhos residents denounce a year's worth of standing sewage water in an area where PAC upgrading supposedly addressed infrastructure issues.
“Here we are, abandoned in the sewage!” two Manguinhos residents exclaimed, pointing to the flooded, mosquito-ridden streets encircling their homes that had been that way for over a year. They recounted that government programs such as the federal Growth Acceleration Program (PAC) and PAC II had promised infrastructure improvements to the community, but none of them had addressed the urgent sewage situation. “I have six children (including a newborn). Where I am going to go?” one woman explained, exasperated.
These complaints were voiced More >
