{"id":22273,"date":"2015-06-16T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=22273"},"modified":"2017-01-07T18:56:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T21:56:46","slug":"touring-santa-marta-through-the-eyes-of-activist-guide-vitor-lira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=22273","title":{"rendered":"Touring Favela Santa Marta Through the Eyes of Activist Guide Vitor Lira"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On Monday June 1, police, municipal guards and city officials crowded into the Santa Marta<\/a> favela\u00a0to destroy a number of homes<\/a>, leaving residents confused, panicked, and without shelter due to the delay in promised public housing construction. Last month,\u00a0RioOnWatch took a tour of\u00a0\u00a0Santa Marta\u00a0led by<\/em>\u00a0Vitor Lira, a 5th generation resident of the community. In addition to\u00a0leading tours to show the\u00a0reality of life in the neighborhood, Vitor plays a<\/em>\u00a0vocal role in community activism and offered insight into the ongoing transformations and pressures of eviction.<\/em>
\n<\/a>
\nVitor stands leaning over the railing of the tram platform and casts his hardened gaze further up the seemingly vertical mountain slope. His backdrop is quite miraculous\u2014a patchwork of unique and colorful homes hugs the forested hillside, and Rio\u2019s famous Christ the Redeemer statue stands directly above with arms outstretched. The rest of the tour group joins on the platform, winded from choosing hundreds of steps rather than waiting for the next tram.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy house is right up there,\u201d Vitor says to the group and points to where the brick homes of Santa Marta, the steepest of Rio\u2019s thousand favelas, meet the sheer rock face of the hillside. Birds fly at eye-level leading one\u2019s gaze down winding narrow paths and stacked homes, over the tops of tall apartment buildings and Rio\u2019s lagoon, and out to the Atlantic. This view is more than just home to Vitor, whose family was some of the first to settle into the favela in the 1930s. This view represents\u00a0over five generations of family and friends who have together built a vibrant community, witnessed the rapid expansion of the city below and, more recently, faced the government\u2019s threats<\/a> to take it all away.<\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a><\/p>\n

Vitor\u2019s tour began at the base of the favela, where a line of chatting elderly residents, mothers, and school children was forming to take the tram up the hillside. Two teenage boys carried heavy bags of red corrugated bricks and leaned them against the \u201cservice\u201d side of the tram. Built in May 2008, the tram is a critical part of Santa Marta<\/a> and according to Vitor, \u201cthe only successful form of assistance the government has provided for the community.\u201d He is quick to point out that for as often as the tram runs, it just as frequently breaks down, leaving community members to walk up and down the steep steps with construction supplies, groceries, schoolbooks, and garbage. The first round of evictions in Santa Marta were\u00a0due to the construction of this tram; the following round came after the installation\u00a0of the\u00a0Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a>.
\n<\/a>
\nIn December 2008, Santa Marta became Rio\u2019s pilot favela for the highly publicized UPP program and is often used as a shining example of success for the pacification policy. Since then, Santa Marta has become a \u2018chic\u2019 tourist attraction<\/a> and the subject of a TED Talk featuring brightly painted fa\u00e7ades of a beautification initiative<\/a> led by Dutch artists. For residents like Vitor however, \u201cthe UPP has done everything to allow tourists to come into the community, but it has done nothing for me.\u201d Like many entrepreneurial thinkers in the community, Vitor seized upon this opportunity to show outsiders a \u201ctruer\u201d side of Santa Marta.<\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a>
\nAs a tour guide, Vitor reveals every intense passion and the emotional struggle he endures to sustain his life in Santa Marta. He wants visitors to see through the eyes of residents<\/a>, for whom a colorful coat of paint exemplifies a gilded reality of evictions, threats, and lack of investment<\/a>. For years, Vitor and his fellow community members have fought against the government’s unfounded demands of eviction, especially at\u00a0the highest levels of the favela<\/a>. Deemed too \u201crisky\u201d for habitation<\/a>, the City ordered residents at the peak\u00a0of Santa Marta to leave behind over 80 years of history and relocate to a public housing unit. Residents formed an activist group and were able to successfully hold on to their land rights by bringing in the expert testimony of a local geology professor<\/a>. He proved that their homes are not the \u201cdangerous dwellings\u201d the government claims them to be, but are in fact safer than the proposed setting of relocation.<\/p>\n

Vitor also led a vocal demonstration of around 300 residents in July 2013<\/a>, protesting evictions and the City\u2019s inadequate attempts to provide basic sanitation and infrastructure. \u201cBecause Santa Marta was the first favela to be pacified, the city needs to protect the image of \u2018success,\u2019 but\u00a0fails to meet our needs every single day.\u201d Vitor argues\u00a0that the UPP\u2019s apt location at the top of the community has not brought the promised safety or security, but instead creates fear and provides a ubiquitous eye for the government to impose its order.<\/p>\n

\"Vitor<\/a>
\nVitor’s story of government pressure and distrust in police is unfortunately not unique, but is becoming more and more common, and increasingly intense, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro as the city prepares for the Olympic Games<\/a>. Just last week, on May 28, Santa Marta\u2019s image\u00a0of security was challenged when UPP officers exchanged gunfire<\/a> with suspected drug traffickers.<\/p>\n

Vitor ends his tour at another iconic\u2014and appropriate–lookout: the setting of Michael Jackson\u2019s music video, \u201cThey Don\u2019t Care About Us<\/a>.\u201d Michael\u2019s face looks out from a vibrant mosaic on the wall, and his cast-iron statue stands with arms outstretched in pride. \u201cJust look at this view up here,\u201d Vitor admires. \u201cIt\u2019s no coincidence that those with the best views in Rio have to fight the hardest against evictions.\u201d This point highlights the unusual socio-geographic features of Rio, as one of the only places in the world where the poorest hold the most coveted and scenic views. It also brings to light a larger issue of land security and the need for a regulated market as the city experiences a resurgence of economic activity and lure of mega-events.<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a><\/p>\n

Vitor knows the fight for his land rights will continue, that he may have to resume his role of activism just to remain in the home he has known his whole life. \u201cTo work in human rights in Brazil is to put your life at risk,\u201d he states. And yet he demonstrates with dignity and confidence that defending his livelihood and generations of memories is a risk he is willing to take, for a community worth fighting for.<\/p>\n

To schedule a tour with Vitor, contact him on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On Monday June 1, police, municipal guards and city officials crowded into the Santa Marta favela\u00a0to destroy a number of homes, leaving residents confused, panicked, and without shelter due to the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":22352,"comment_status":"closed","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":[1293,1277,1670,1284,1329],"tags":[1027,1102,1561,1560,11,942,15,270,66,156,194],"writer":[1664],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-uppwatch","9":"category-favela-tourism","10":"category-interviews-profiles","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-area-of-risk-designation","13":"tag-community-leader-profile","14":"tag-favela-tour","15":"tag-favela-tour-operator","16":"tag-forced-evictions","17":"tag-funicular-tram","18":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","19":"tag-resistance","20":"tag-santa-marta","21":"tag-south-zone","22":"tag-tourism","23":"writer-julia-jones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273","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\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=22273"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=22273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}