{"id":27604,"date":"2016-03-19T08:29:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T11:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=27604"},"modified":"2016-03-19T09:15:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T12:15:13","slug":"the-view-from-the-favelas-on-recent-protests-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=27604","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Favelas on Recent Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article by Renata Malkes and Fernando Caulyt\u00a0in Portuguese published in DW Brasil\u00a0<\/em>click<\/em> here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Residents of a favela in Copacabana<\/a> in Rio\u2019s South Zone<\/a> don’t hide the extent of their disappointment with the government and fears surrounding the current crisis<\/a>. But there are still very few of them who see a reason to come down from the hilltop and join the protests against President Dilma Rousseff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saint Roman Street, the main point of entry into the Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho<\/a> favela, is only 500 meters away from Copacabana beach. But even though they are facing an uncertain future, it was from the top of the favela with the best view of the sea, rather than the beachfront, that the majority of residents followed the protest calling for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on Sunday 13 March<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The current political crisis has divided residents of this South Zone favela, home to approximately\u00a020,000 people. In the bars, people make a point of watching the latest news from the protests on TV. And even though the subject of the protests features heavily in conversations in the stairways and narrow streets of the favela, few residents saw any reason to go down and join the protestors. One of the reasons given: the belief that corruption (one of the main motivations for the protest) goes beyond the ruling Workers\u2019 Party (PT) and the governments of Dilma and her predecessor<\/a>, Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva.<\/p>\n

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

Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho received a Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a>\u00a0in 2009<\/a>, but still suffers with the\u00a0incomplete public works promised by the government’s\u00a0Growth Acceleration Program (PAC)<\/a> in 2008. Residents don’t know what happened to the R$43 million set aside for public works in their community. The area still lacks investment to improve mobility and basic services such as sanitation<\/a> and\u00a0electricity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But despite the extent of resentment felt towards the federal government, people like supermarket worker Maria de Lurdes Silva, 44, believe that problems affecting Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and Brazil as a whole are the result of corruption that has ravaged the country since well before the PT came to power in 2002. She preferred to stay at home during the protests and confirms that the majority of her neighbors did the same. For her, the protests are \u201cthe height of stupidity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to remove Dilma but who will they put in her place? She\u2019s being used as a scapegoat. Everyone steals in Brazil, and I even believe that Lula has stolen too. Who hasn\u2019t? But Lula\u2019s government improved the lives of the poor. When Fernando Henrique Cardoso<\/a> was president [1995-2003] he stole too. The problem started because Lula didn\u2019t manage to put the brakes on all the stealing,\u201d Maria de Lurdes says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all have their hands dirty.\u201d<\/h3>\n

The links between Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and politics are longstanding ones. In the 1960s, when removals were taking place<\/a> in other favelas in the South Zone ordered by then-governor Carlos Lacerda, the community received its first upgrading<\/a> works with improvements made to stairways and water<\/a> supplies. In 1984, during\u00a0Leonel Brizola<\/a>‘s first term\u00a0as Rio state governor, further upgrading\u00a0works<\/a> took place in Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho, such as the installation of a funicular tram in the favela.<\/p>\n

Residents such as Carlos Alberto da Silva, a 52 year-old driver, remember this well. He is unemployed and survives by making a bit of money selling flip-flops and says he is unhappy with corruption but believes that overthrowing the president is not the solution to the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose to go to church on Sunday [instead of the protests]. Here everyone voted for Brizola, he used to come and spend the day here, sit down, chat with everyone in the bar. Later\u00a0we voted for the Workers\u2019 Party. I voted for Dilma and I am very disappointed in her, but she was elected and she has to finish the job. Life has got better in recent years, even though I have been unemployed for the last six months. If Dilma and Lula stole money, they will have to pay for their mistakes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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

In 2012, a socioeconomic study of 16 pacified favelas<\/a> in Rio carried out by the organization Firjan showed that Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho had the largest per capita income (R$755) and the second lowest unemployment rate (5%). But despite having four schools and a kindergarten, the favela was recorded as having the third worst average education<\/a> level\u00a0for people aged\u00a025 or over. The average education for this age group was just 5.9 years of schooling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you talk about the so-called white elite taking to the streets<\/a>, you allow the government to sustain the narrative that the protestors are a bunch of sore losers. This narrative is becoming increasingly unsustainable. We can see, including among classes with lower levels of wealth and education, a certain level of consensus that the President and her party are responsible for the crisis,\u201d says political scientist Rodrigo Prando from Mackenzie University.<\/p>\n

And those who\u00a0fear the crisis getting even worse, such as C\u00e1tia Maria Marcelino, 33, thought it best to stay away from the protests. Marcelino, who owns a clothing and accessories shop in the favela, says she’s worried about a fall in business and fears an even larger economic downturn. In her opinion, removing the president without concrete alternatives is \u201cabsurd and dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that all the parties have their hands dirty. They need to continue investigating and punish the politicians that steal. If they remove Dilma from office, she\u2019ll only be replaced by her vice president, who\u2019s corrupt. If it\u2019s not the vice president who replaces her, there\u2019s Brazil’s congressional president Eduardo Cunha, who is corrupt too. Who is left after that? The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), which are also full of politicians suspected of corruption? Those two parties only think about helping the rich. I feel like we\u2019re moving backwards,\u201d bemoans C\u00e1tia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the rich went to the protests\u201d<\/h3>\n

Manoel, 40, who works as a doorman, has a similar opinion. He lives at the top of Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and works in a building on the seafront. He was working on Sunday but guarantees that even if he’d been free, he wouldn’t have taken to the streets because \u201cthere were only rich people at the protests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw it all from the building where I work. All the rich people went. Rich people don\u2019t like the Workers\u2019 Party or the poor. The rich only like the poor as a source of labor. We cannot trust people who defend the rich. I voted for Lula and then for Dilma and if Lula runs for president in 2018 I\u2019ll vote for him again. At least they think about us. Dilma was elected and has to stay. I just don\u2019t know if she\u2019ll have the strength to do so, because all this is very embarrassing,” says Manoel, who did not want his surname to be revealed.<\/p>\n

According to political scientist Valeriano Costa, a researcher at Unicamp, there is a reason why people from lower social classes did not go to the protests. Beyond the fact that they don’t have much trust in what the protests were arguing for, the discourse of the protests’ organizers isn’t directed at the interests and concerns of this part of the population.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirstly, because they are people who face basic issues affecting their survival, they have a very large fear of losing what they have earned. Those who went to the protests on Sunday are not talking about issues to do with social and public policies; they are concerned with an issue that directly affects a middle class that, in reality, sees itself as the big victim of the State due to high income taxes and high levels of state intervention in terms of social policy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

For Jacinto Pedro da Costa, 42, there\u2019s no point in protesting. He voted for the Workers\u2019 Party in the last elections and now, disappointed, says he doesn’t intend to vote for them again. He was born and raised in Pav\u00e3o-Pav\u00e3ozinho and declares himself to be a political independent, promising to do a lot of research before deciding who to vote for in the future. But he thinks it is unfair to attribute the problems facing the country to the Workers\u2019 Party alone. He ventures\u00a0that if the other parties were better, perhaps they would work together for political reform.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are lots of rich businessmen who don\u2019t just want to remove Dilma but get rid of the Workers\u2019 Party altogether. This is unfair, even if mistakes have been made. It was thanks to the Workers\u2019 Party that I managed to open my first bank account, got credit to buy things and put more food on the kitchen table. Corruption mixed together all the powerful politicians from all the parties,” complains Costa, who works as a doorman in a neighboring building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article by Renata Malkes and Fernando Caulyt\u00a0in Portuguese published in DW Brasil\u00a0click here. Residents of a favela in Copacabana in Rio\u2019s South Zone don’t hide the extent of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27582,"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":[1668,1290,1330,328],"tags":[136,942,205,188,1475,15,155,374,671,18,156,206],"writer":[1979,1978],"translator":[1401],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-participationwatch","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-translation","10":"category-understanding-rio","11":"tag-copacabana","12":"tag-funicular-tram","13":"tag-growth-acceleration-program-pac","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-leonel-brizola","16":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","17":"tag-pavao-pavaozinho","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-president-dilma-rousseff","20":"tag-protest","21":"tag-south-zone","22":"tag-upgrading","23":"writer-fernando-caulyt","24":"writer-renata-malkes","25":"translator-sarah-jacobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27604","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=27604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27604"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=27604"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=27604"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=27604"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=27604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}