{"id":28973,"date":"2016-05-25T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=28973"},"modified":"2016-07-10T12:50:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T15:50:06","slug":"history-culture-and-organizing-in-julio-otoni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=28973","title":{"rendered":"History, Culture and Organizing in Julio Otoni"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Julio Otoni<\/a>\u00a0favela in Santa Teresa<\/a> sits\u00a0on one of Rio de Janeiro’s many hills, looking out towards\u00a0the Guanabara Bay. From the top of the favela you can see both Sugarloaf Mountain\u00a0and Christ the Redeemer, two of Rio\u2019s most famous tourist attractions in one amazing panorama. The community is home to 400 families, more than 2,000 people in total.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first families settled in what was to become Julio Otoni in the 1940s. Community leader Sizenaldo Marinho<\/a>‘s\u00a0parents arrived\u00a0in the 1950s from theNortheast of Brazil in search of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am 47 years old, I was born here in the community. My parents have lived here for more than 50 years. When they arrived it was an extremely small community.\u00a0There were only 16 families, but over\u00a0the years the population grew. Some families extended their homes and rented rooms for people to live. Usually the people who\u00a0came here to live in rented rooms ended up staying and building their own houses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\u201cMy first memories here from when I was a child are that there was\u00a0lots of fruit, lots of trees. When I was young I lived inside the forest, picking fruit. Guava, mango, banana, avocado… Not far away there was an orchard, it was huge, so we played there and went there to get fruit. I almost never ate at home, I ate in the street, or with the families of my friends. The families were more united back then…<\/p>\n

\u201cThe memories I have of back then are of a lot of space. We played games that nowadays kids don\u2019t play as much, like rope, spinning tops, football, and kites. At night we would get wood and make a fire and the adults would tell us stories… I had a lot of freedom, I stayed out until late barefoot with my friends. Back then people got together more often, they hugged more. That\u2019s the memory I have of being a child here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Sizenaldo\u2019s mother, Maria de Lourdes has a different memory of how the community was when she first arrived. Born in Recife in the state of Pernambuco, she moved to Julio Otoni 52\u00a0years ago. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have running water, we didn\u2019t have electricity. The forest was very thick back then, no one could cut it because there were forest wardens who took care of the trees. My house was the last one in the community, next to the forest.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryday at 5pm I would go down and wait for my husband to come home from work because I was scared there was someone hiding in the forest. From then on I started to raise a lot of dogs, we had seven dogs to guard the house. I was often home alone and my son was still very young.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Much has changed since then. Sizenaldo\u2019s mother\u2019s house is no longer the last in the community, and the forest is cut back further. Houses were\u00a0built higher up the hill as the community expanded. <\/span><\/p>\n

The community experienced the most growth during the 1990s. During this period Julio Otoni was occupied by drug traffickers<\/a>, who encouraged the influx of people. \u201cThe bigger the favela was, the better for the traffickers because that way they had more escape routes, they had more clients, they had more places where they could hide… For them it was good that the favela was getting bigger,\u201d says Sizenaldo. Since 2013<\/a>, Julio Otoni has been covered by the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a>\u00a0program\u00a0jointly with the nearby Cerro-Cor\u00e1<\/a> favela, but although there is a police presence, other government services such as sanitation<\/a>, education<\/a> and health<\/a>\u00a0have not improved.<\/p>\n

The community has strong cultural traditions, for example holding an annual celebration for Brazil’s Black Awareness Day<\/a> on November 20. \u201cIt\u2019s the day of Zumbi dos Palmares<\/a>, one of our first black heroes. We organize an event in the community. It always turns out great, the other residents of my street help me. We always do a big event to remember Zumbi, it\u2019s very important,\u201d Sizenaldo says. <\/span><\/p>\n

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

Sizenaldo also tells of the demand for adult education in the community and his initiative to meet these needs. He opened a community center in September 2004 and started an adult literacy program for members of the community. He says: \u201cSomeone came up to me and said, \u2018Do you know that there are many people here who don\u2019t know how to read?\u2019 I was shocked. At the time they had to go down the hill to learn to read, and not many people did because they came home from work tired having worked all day… Having a class here in the community was much easier. So it was the first thing I did in the community center, an adult literacy class.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had 26 adults, and we joined up with another course of 18 adults who didn\u2019t know how to read or write… I spoke to my friends and told them what I wanted to do. I went down to the Candido Mendes University\u00a0and managed to get chairs, tables, book donations to make a library, teaching materials, all for free for the adult students. And it was amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the class was over I cried. I cried and cried because we interviewed them and asked why they wanted to learn to read. They said \u2018When I go to the supermarket I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m buying. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a good product, what variety it is, and I want to know.\u2019 and \u2018My children go to school and sometimes they ask me something and I don\u2019t know how to answer my son,\u2019 and \u2018I drive, but I don\u2019t know the names of the street!\u2019 It\u2019s very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sizenaldo affirms there are still many demands to be met by the government in the community:\u00a0\u201cNowadays there is speculation<\/a> and gentrification<\/a> in some favelas. But that is very far away [for Julio Otoni]. The reality here is very different. The issue here is that the government never looks to the favela. Never. Just during election time, to win votes. Sometimes I like to say that in Rio de Janeiro in one street, one corner, one block, there can be two totally different realities. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas The Julio Otoni\u00a0favela in Santa Teresa sits\u00a0on one of Rio de Janeiro’s many hills, looking out towards\u00a0the Guanabara Bay. From the top of the favela you can see both Sugarloaf Mountain\u00a0and […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":28974,"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":[1284,1329],"tags":[1098,779,756,504,125,397,221,188,1722,129,15,172,156],"writer":[1964],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interviews-profiles","8":"category-by-international-observers","9":"tag-cerro-cora","10":"tag-community-leaders","11":"tag-community-organizing","12":"tag-culture","13":"tag-drug-traffic","14":"tag-education","15":"tag-favela-culture","16":"tag-history","17":"tag-julio-otoni","18":"tag-leadership","19":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","20":"tag-santa-teresa","21":"tag-south-zone","22":"writer-rhona-mackay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28973","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\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28973"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=28973"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=28973"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=28973"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=28973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}