{"id":2492,"date":"2011-11-12T20:18:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-12T23:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=2492"},"modified":"2014-06-21T13:32:18","modified_gmt":"2014-06-21T16:32:18","slug":"hurricane-bope-to-make-landfill-in-rocinha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=2492","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane BOPE to Make Landfall in Rocinha"},"content":{"rendered":"

With less than 24 hours before the announced invasion and occupation of Rocinha by a combination of police and military forces, I made the mototaxi ride up the hill to visit the family of Seu Jos\u00e9, whose house I stayed at various times in 2007, 2008, and 2009.\u00a0 A cloud settled in over the course of the afternoon, a kind of pathetic fallacy for the tempest brewing in the machinations of the political-military complex, to a backdrop of real estate values and international media attention.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The family had just returned from making a supply run<\/a>, just like preparations for a hurricane or blizzard in North America \u2013 the essentials to ride out the storm, with the anticipation of spending up to three days without leaving the house.\u00a0 Gatonet<\/em> (pirated cable and Internet) has already been cut, so while the rest of Brazil will watch breathless coverage on TV Globo starting live at 5am, residents of Rocinha will only have the sounds of helicopters, tanks, armored trucks, and maybe a radio broadcast, along with furtive peeks out the window.<\/p>\n

Seu Jos\u00e9 and his daughter Walda were pensive and keenly reflective about the tumultuous events of the last week, which began on Sunday<\/a> night with local boss Nem checking into Rocinha\u2019s 24-hour clinic for reasons still undetermined \u2013 Walda counteracted the press reports of a drug overdose and said the gossip around the neighborhood is that it was pure stress.\u00a0 She was heading to work at 6:30am on Monday morning and nearly broke down in tears to see so many armed traffickers guarding the prominently placed clinic.\u00a0 Since that morning, she hasn\u2019t seen a single armed trafficker.\u00a0 Even still, when the news broke on Thursday morning that he had been arrested, she couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n

The family lived through the killing of former chief Bem-te-vi in 2004 and they expect an easier go of it this time, hopefully no shots fired.\u00a0 But they reserve plenty of suspicion for the police \u2013 a known quantity \u2013 and the military \u2013 an unknown one \u2013 that will very soon make their presence felt.\u00a0 Seu Jos\u00e9\u2019s house has played host to foreign volunteers in Rocinha for social work or research for many years, and on several occasions (including one that I lived through in 2007), police incursions have resulted in confusion and a house-to-house search when a group of gringos who don\u2019t speak Portuguese well are faced with an armed cop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The family is still unconvinced that the police\/military will stay<\/em> after a couple days \u2013 an unprecedented occurrence since drug traffickers assumed control of Rocinha in the 1980s \u2013 and there is plenty of concern about what\u2019s next in the event of a power vacuum.\u00a0 If they do stay, then the specter of what happened in the Complexo do Alem\u00e3o \u2013 theft and harassment by state forces \u2013 is also unnerving.\u00a0 A few days ago, Walda wrote on her Facebook wall: \u201cMais na boa acho que a UPP n\u00e3o vai adiantar de nada, pq os maiores traficantes ainda est\u00e3o por ai soltos, roubando de terno e gravata!!!” (On the balance the UPP isn\u2019t going to change anything, because most of the criminals are free anyway, stealing in a suit and tie!!!)\u201d<\/p>\n

Seu Jos\u00e9, meanwhile, reflected on his 41 years in Rocinha, having arrived in 1970 from the northeastern state of Cear\u00e1.\u00a0 He remembered when there was only one bar in the whole community \u2013 which now has a commercial presence larger than many small cities \u2013 and he walked around with the receipt from his bus ticket in his pocket.\u00a0 The police would stop young men to check if they had a work card, and if not throw them in jail.\u00a0 He kept his bus ticket as proof of where he came from in case he was deported back to the northeast.<\/p>\n

He recounted bloody tales of police attacks on drug traffickers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and when he feels Rocinha is on the cusp of a real change, that means something.\u00a0 For good or for ill remains the question.\u00a0 As he puts it, \u201cEverything irregular is going to stop.\u201d\u00a0 That means that his pirated TV\/Internet is gone, and I was asked for advice on which Internet provider to use.\u00a0 While the family claims they were satisfied with their pirated service, they are prepared to pay a little more and have a formal contract.\u00a0 Sky TV has been blitzing the streets of Rocinha to sign up residents now that their cable connections have been cut \u2013 it\u2019s a sad commentary on Brazilian society that getting TV back is the biggest priority, but now a typical routine in newly-occupied favelas.<\/p>\n

A silver lining for Seu Jos\u00e9\u2019s family has been the relative quiet since last weekend.\u00a0 The 24-hour cacophony in Rocinha has slowed to a murmur \u2013 don\u2019t expect to hear a baile funk tonight on Rua 2, or tomorrow night in Clube de Emo\u00e7\u00f5es, or the pagode party where Nem gave his tearful farewell last Sunday.\u00a0 The bar on the corner that has been doing live forr\u00f3 every weekend at earsplitting volumes has also stopped.\u00a0\u00a0 Pacification has sonic implications alongside the socio-political ones, undoubtedly.\u00a0 For this evangelical family, of course, they are just as happy to see the baile funk shut down, and wish it had come sooner so they could have gotten a better night\u2019s sleep before the national college entrance exam a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I bade them farewell and headed back down to the bottom of the hill, passing a usual Saturday afternoon\u2019s business \u2013 bars doing a brisk trade in beers and billiards, stores selling clothes, crowds coming in from the beach, a stray barbershop or beauty salon \u2013 with one exception.\u00a0 Pirate CD and DVD sellers were fireselling their wares, laying out trash bags on the sidewalk that eager patrons were scouring for good titles.\u00a0 Everything must go for 1 real a piece as Hollywood movies, sertanejo albums, hardcore porn, and live funk shows are likely to be swept up in the same dragnet that is looking for guns, drugs, and cash.\u00a0 Piracy funds terrorism indeed.<\/p>\n

The entrances to Rocinha were choked with journalists, TV cameras, military police, and more Sky TV reps (the only, I might add, to actually walk into Rocinha rather than mill about at the bottom). \u00a0The media spectacle of the war next door \u2013 Rocinha lying in the midst of one of Brazil\u2019s highest concentrations of wealth and power \u2013 will surely keep eyes glued to the tube all day long from the safe confines of gated condos or summer houses.\u00a0 For the unlikely 150,000+ who are about to endure the next several days of armed military occupation, they\u2019ll have to be content with whatever movies they scooped up from the camel\u00f4s<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With less than 24 hours before the announced invasion and occupation of Rocinha by a combination of police and military forces, I made the mototaxi ride up the hill to visit the family of Seu […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2505,"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":[1736,335,336,1329],"tags":[356,109,125,15,17,12,156],"writer":[355],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-1736","8":"category-policies","9":"category-violations","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-bope","12":"tag-community-business","13":"tag-drug-traffic","14":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","15":"tag-police-brutality","16":"tag-rocinha","17":"tag-south-zone","18":"writer-greg-scruggs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","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=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}