On Tuesday residents of Vila Autódromo posted the following statement on their Facebook page. For the original in Portuguese click here.
We would like to invite you to another resistance activity in our community. An Evictions Museum, an initiative uniting us residents with supporters who, in recent times, have contributed so much to our struggle to remain.
Since 2014 we have been suffering the erasing of our community due to forced evictions undertaken by the City of Rio de Janeiro. Over 550 families have been removed, leaving just over 20. Despite all this, our history hasn’t been erased. And this is why we are building this museum.
Faced with a context of economic, political, and social crisis, those who feel most deeply the effects of this segregating and oppressive administration responding to private interests, are the poorer members of the population. The violations and pressures against the community have intensified considerably over the past two years but we have managed to resist.
At the moment, we continue in negotiations to remain and for the upgrading of the community. Despite all the losses we have experienced (social, economic, and affective), this is a partial victory give the difficult current scenario for popular movements. We know that there is still a lot to be done (the upgrading and construction of new homes has not yet begun) and so we remain vigilant.
Given all this history of resistance over the last 20 years, we cannot allow our struggle to gain rights to the city and to stay on the lands where our lives were built to be forgotten. And so, in partnership with this group of supporters, we have decided to build this museum together.
Its purpose is to expose the rights violations which have occurred in different favelas across the city that also suffered forced evictions and whose lives have been irrevocably changed. There will be artistic interventions in the spaces where houses once stood and where today there are debris, building a true open air museum.
This action will take place during two distinct moments: firstly, via the recovery of residents’ memories of the history of the space; and secondly the interventions themselves. The recovery of memory will take place through an intense and fraternal dialogue between current residents, those who were removed and those who live in neighboring communities and always supported us. After this, we will organize a playful moment involving bands who support the community and a procession through the space, not only to demarcate it, but to recompose memories by projecting them onto the space and as a result involve everyone in the rebuilding collective life.
We invite everyone to take part in creating this beautiful initiative. The activities will take place Saturday April 23 beginning at 9:30am.
Join us! Vila Autódromo resists, insists, re-exists!