{"id":25558,"date":"2015-12-03T10:04:43","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T13:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=25558"},"modified":"2015-12-15T10:00:36","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:00:36","slug":"dona-mariza-left-homeless-after-lightning-eviction-in-vila-autodromo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=25558","title":{"rendered":"Dona Mariza Left Homeless After Eviction in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo Next Door to #Rio2016 Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On October 23 agents from the city government carried out the unannounced demolition<\/a> of five homes in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>, next door to the 2016 Olympic Park. 60 year-old Dona Mariza do Amor Divino lived in one of those houses and has been left homeless. It is the second eviction she has suffered as a resident in\u00a0the community she’s called home for almost 40 years.<\/h4>\n

The first eviction<\/h3>\n

Mariza do Amor Divino was cleaning fish to take to market one morning when some\u00a0men showed up at her cabin. A few hundred yards away construction workers were building a wall around the nearly-completed Formula One racetrack, the Aut\u00f3dromo de Jacarepagu\u00e1. It was 1976, and the men whom Mariza had never seen before told her that she was on their land.<\/p>\n

“They kicked me, took the [fishing] knife out of my hand, and destroyed my cabin,<\/span>” Mariza recalls. “They even took my fishing net.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mariza, who was born by the Jacarepagu\u00e1 Lagoon, had just moved to the small fishing community later named Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> after the racetrack next door. Back then, Barra da Tijuca<\/a> was an undeveloped swampland in Rio’s West Zone<\/a>. The\u00a0wave of real estate<\/a> development\u00a0that began in the 1980s would transform the area into the sprawling suburb\u00a0of wide avenues, shopping malls\u00a0and gated condominiums<\/a> it is today.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

“Outsiders started to arrive and the fishermen started to worry about evictions<\/a>. People\u00a0started to settle on\u00a0the land to build houses.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The land on which Dona Mariza had built her cabin<\/span>\u00a0exchanged hands between different owners\u00a0until a man named Carlos purchased the lot in the early 1980s. Carlos built a house and invited Mariza\u00a0to be caretaker of the property for a small salary. She\u00a0accepted, staying there for five years until she moved to\u00a0another house in the community.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Since 1976, I have never left Vila Aut\u00f3dromo,” she said.<\/p>\n

A promise from the Mayor<\/h3>\n

With the development of Barra da Tijuca as a wealthy, aspirational suburb,\u00a0the\u00a02007 Pan-American Games<\/a>\u00a0and the announcement of the 2016 Rio Olympics in 2009, Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents have long faced eviction threats. Since 2009\u00a0these have intensified and in response the\u00a0community has also intensified its resistance efforts, organizing\u00a0and mounting\u00a0a sustained and exemplary resistance campaign which has included international media reports<\/a>, protests<\/a>, community events<\/a> and an award-winning people’s plan<\/a> to upgrade the community and ensure their permanence.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2013, Mayor Eduardo Paes<\/a> assured\u00a0residents who wanted to stay in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo that they would not be evicted<\/a>. However weeks later plans were revealed to remove much of the community. Residents\u00a0protested outside City Hall<\/a> and Mariza was one of those\u00a0invited to speak\u00a0with the mayor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“There were six people allowed to enter his office and I was one of them,” Mariza recalls. “When he ended the talks and everybody had gotten up, I was the last to leave. I complimented him and I told him: ‘I need your help. I have lived in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo for 37 years, but I don’t have a title and I don\u2019t know what’s going to happen to me.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You aren\u2019t going to end up in the street. You will have your own house.'”<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Power cut<\/h3>\n

In early 2015, Mariza moved within the community,\u00a0into a\u00a0house Carlos had built. By\u00a0then Vila Aut\u00f3dromo was a shell of what it used to be<\/a>. Rows of houses were now piles of rubble, and dust from ongoing construction in the Olympic Park loomed over the community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One day, in September of this year, Mariza recalls the power went out. It was strange, she thought, that the two other houses on her block still had their lights on. She was recovering from a recent operation so asked Carlos, her landlord and employer, to call Rio’s electric utility, Light<\/a>, but she didn\u2019t hear back. One night she heard a knock at the door.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I saw it was 3am on the dot and I thought, ‘what could this possibly be?'”<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside was a man who claimed he was with Light. He asked if he could come inside to talk with Mariza, but according to Mariza the power outage stemmed from a damaged cable on the street, not from inside the house, so she politely refused. The man’s response was stark:\u00a0<\/span>“[He said], ‘If you don’t\u00a0come down then you won’t get your power\u00a0back.'”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mariza doubted the stranger was with Light and suspected he had come to scope out the house for demolition. One month later her suspicion was confirmed.<\/p>\n

Lightning\u00a0eviction<\/h3>\n

At 4:40am on October 23 this year, Mariza left her house for a doctor’s appointment and, like in 1976, she saw men in street clothes standing around her house. “I wanted to go back,” she said, “but I thought, as a woman, to go back alone\u2026 they could have attacked me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

When Mariza returned from the doctor, a bulldozer had razed the house to the ground. Her clothes, her furniture, even the money she had saved and placed under her bed, had all disappeared. Mariza’s blood sugar was high, but like the rest of her belongings her medication was nowhere to be found.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

“Nobody warned me,” Mariza explained. “Everything I had in there I had earned through sacrifice.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Vila Aut\u00f3dromo’s Facebook page documented<\/a> the lightning evictions that day<\/a>.\u00a0The Municipal Guard had\u00a0arrived<\/a>\u00a0around\u00a05am and later more government agents appeared. Five houses were demolished that day. The other four houses, Mariza explained, were owned by people like Carlos who owned\u00a0property in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo but lived outside the community.<\/span><\/p>\n

“They had property here but they didn\u2019t live here. I was the only one who ended up on the street\u2026 they have their lives outside [of the community]. My life is right here.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mariza was told that her\u00a0belongings\u00a0were in storage at sub-mayor Alex Costa<\/a>‘s\u00a0office in Barra da Tijuca. She arrived to find everything in disarray. Many of her belongings, including the money she had saved, had disappeared.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mariza“Nothing was the same. Everything was mixed up\u2026 I didn’t see my clothing, my television was face down and mixed with other people’s belongings,” Mariza recalls.\u00a0<\/span>“Then they said, ‘We need to use this space so you’re going to have to take everything.’ I asked them: ‘How will I carry it all? On my head? I don\u2019t have a house. I\u2019m on the street!'”\u00a0<\/span>All that Mariza was able to recover\u00a0after the demolition was her diabetes medication.<\/span><\/p>\n

“How am I going to start my life over without a place to live?” she asked, her arms waving in exasperation. “I don’t have a stove, I don’t have anything. I have four pieces of clothing that were donated to me\u2026 This is my life: a sixty-year-old woman on the street.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Uncertainty in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/h3>\n

The remaining 40-50 families\u00a0in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo are keen to hold on to what’s left of their community. After Mariza was left homeless, a post<\/a> with her picture appeared on the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo Facebook page asking for someone to offer a place to stay. Maria da Penha, another Aut\u00f3dromo resident fighting eviction<\/a>, took Mariza into her home.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Maria da Penha felt bad for me,” Mariza said. “She brought me here to her house\u2026 if she hadn’t I would be on the street.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Uncertainty overshadows the community now more than ever. When asked where she would go if Maria da Penha were forced to leave, Mariza didn’t have any doubt: “I’ll live on the street,” she replied.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her belongings along with most of her neighbors are gone, but Mariza refuses to leave the place she has called home for nearly 40 years. She says she is registered to receive housing through\u00a0the government housing program\u00a0Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a>\u00a0but she has yet to receive any word from the city. She hasn\u2019t forgotten Mayor Paes’ promise.<\/span><\/p>\n

“If he would put me under a roof, give me a stove to cook with, and a mattress to put on the ground, that would be good enough for me to start my life a<\/span>gain. That’s\u00a0all I want.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On October 23 agents from the city government carried out the unannounced demolition of five homes in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, next door to the 2016 Olympic Park. 60 year-old Dona Mariza do […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":25560,"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":[1293,1854,1736,1288,1284,336,1329],"tags":[9,225,226,272,179,1495,991,1497,11,26,25,485,1656,1259,157,5,10,1892,1890,4,21],"writer":[1863],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-25558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-housingwatch","9":"category-1736","10":"category-highlight","11":"category-interviews-profiles","12":"category-violations","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-9","15":"tag-barra-da-tijuca","16":"tag-consequences-of-eviction-health","17":"tag-mayor-eduardo-paes","18":"tag-evictee-profile","19":"tag-eviction-tactics-canceled-services","20":"tag-eviction-tactics-lost-belongings","21":"tag-eviction-tactics-misinformation","22":"tag-forced-evictions","23":"tag-housing-rights","24":"tag-human-rights","25":"tag-light-electricity","26":"tag-lightning-eviction","27":"tag-mega-events","28":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","29":"tag-olympics","30":"tag-real-estate-speculation","31":"tag-sub-mayor","32":"tag-alex-costa","33":"tag-vila-autodromo","34":"tag-west-zone","35":"writer-sam-salvesen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25558","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\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25558"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=25558"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=25558"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=25558"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=25558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}