{"id":1508,"date":"2011-07-25T22:08:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T01:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=1508"},"modified":"2016-05-19T08:49:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T11:49:45","slug":"my-heart-stayed-in-jatoba-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=1508","title":{"rendered":"My Heart Stayed on Jatob\u00e1 Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>On my first visit to Morro da Provid\u00eancia I met a man with several names including Seu Mangar\u00e1, Mango do Forr\u00f3, Manga Verde and finally Jos\u00e9 Pedro. He proceeded to begin a conversation with me about his grief over the cards which life had dealt him. He was referring to a specific time, 11 years, 5 months and 21 days ago, when his wife passed away.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Pedro, or Mangar\u00e1 as he is better known, has enjoyed playing forr\u00f3 and attending barbeques with members of his community, even when there were drug traffickers controlling the community. He explained to me that he arrived in Rio de Janeiro on May 21st, 1974 and lived for 11 months with his brother in the house beside the one he lives in today. Though this first house still has not been targeted for removal, his current home has been marked by the Municipal Housing Secretary (SMH). At the time, this first house was being rented by Mangar\u00e1’s brother, Ant\u00f5nio Pedro, who today owns his own property in the community. When I interviewed Mangar\u00e1, his brother was not home because his jobs are based on contract work and so he was currently working in Maca\u00e9 in Rio’s Lakes Region.<\/p>\n

Originally from Cear\u00e1, where his four sisters still live, Mangar\u00e1 has in Rio de Janeiro the company of his brother, a construction supervisor, and his own children. Seu Mangar\u00e1’s son lives in the Provid\u00eancia community and his daughter resides in Vila Canoas, a community in S\u00e3o Conrado, in Rio’s South Zone.<\/p>\n

Seu Mangar\u00e1 suffers from diabetes, which he believes is the result of the excessive use of medication he needed to take after an accident in 2001 that left him blind in his left eye. Mangar\u00e1 says: “diabetes is a degenerative disease” and he explained to me that everything in his body, from head to foot, has grown. Today, he can no longer walk and so depends on the community’s children to help him buy bread, meat, etc.<\/p>\n

“It’s great to have friends”, he says about the children and young people who know and respect him. But ultimately, his desire is to return to his hometown to die close to his sisters whom he has not seen since the 1970s. “I do not want to be a burden for anyone, I just want to rest.” concluded seu Mangar\u00e1.<\/p>\n

During our visit to Provid\u00eancia, a man stopped by and asked if Mangar\u00e1 could fix his fan. He responded yes but as he looked at the state of the fan continued, “you can take it. This one is gone.” The guy laughed at Mangar\u00e1’s joke, mentioned the fan’s brand and then offered it to seu Mangar\u00e1 as a donation. Mangar\u00e1 thanked the guy and then he left.<\/p>\n

I proceeded to ask him for how long he has been fixing fans and he replied: “I don’t fix them, I just make them work”, as he pointed to a pile of fan grids. He continued: “This pile is made out of fans that were thrown away because they didn’t work anymore. He also showed me an electric racquet used to kill mosquitoes that he had fixed for a guy once who then, in return, gave it to Seu Mangar\u00e1.<\/p>\n

Seu Mangar\u00e1 continued to tell me: “I want to leave this house, I wasted a lot of money on this home buying brick for it. I paid for this entire slab and it is not even pre-cast, I spent all of my money there. This slab is 17 meters and 51 square meters from top to bottom, more than 100 square meters in all. The floor was also purchased by my wife, my old lady.”<\/p>\n

Asked if he needed the deed to his house in order to receive compensation from the city, seu Mangar\u00e1 responded: “no, because the people here have nothing and they want to remove our homes but the thing is we are a democratic country so if they want to kick me out of my home they will have to give me money or, give me a place to live. But this is not what I want. What I want is money so that I can return to my home”.<\/p>\n

“I had already bought a house there, but my sister wasn’t doing well so I gave her the home at 571 Jatoba Street”, he told us.<\/p>\n

“I’m eager to return to my home
\nTo see once again the sierra and the people that I left there
\nThere is no remedy that can end my pain
\nMy heart stayed in Jatoba Street.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On my first visit to Morro da Provid\u00eancia I met a man with several names including Seu Mangar\u00e1, Mango do Forr\u00f3, Manga Verde and finally Jos\u00e9 Pedro. He proceeded to begin […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,336],"tags":[184,1261,185,179,11,144],"writer":[98],"translator":[143],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interviews-profiles","8":"category-violations","9":"tag-ceara","10":"tag-central-rio","11":"tag-diabetes","12":"tag-evictee-profile","13":"tag-forced-evictions","14":"tag-morro-da-providencia","15":"writer-valnei-succo","16":"translator-sarah-de-rose"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}