{"id":30043,"date":"2016-07-13T12:29:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T15:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=30043"},"modified":"2016-07-20T16:49:41","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T19:49:41","slug":"favela-stories-personal-stories-from-residents-of-complexo-da-mare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=30043","title":{"rendered":"Favela Stories: Personal Stories from Residents of Complexo da Mar\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The following excerpts come from Favela Stories, a blog<\/a> and Facebook page<\/a>\u00a0by Sascha Bercovitch* that\u00a0tells the stories of residents in Complexo da Mar\u00e9<\/a>, one of Rio\u2019s largest\u00a0favela complexes, located in the North Zone<\/a> of the city.<\/em><\/p>\n

For all the talk of violence<\/a> and poverty<\/a> within favelas, the reality of life is a lot more complex: lavish birthday parties, beauty salons (for humans and dogs), small businesses, churches, frequent construction, and, more generally, people who are resilient, resourceful and happy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Through telling their stories in their own words (the interviews are recorded in Portuguese and translated to English), the blog has two main goals: to challenge the pathological views of favelas represented in the media<\/a>, and to show the eloquence and wisdom of people too often stigmatized<\/a> and portrayed as \u201csimple\u201d or \u201cuneducated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaquelline<\/h3>\n

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

“I came to Rio by bus. My mom put me on a bus and told me, ‘one of my sisters lives there and you\u2019re going to go live with her.’ I had never met my aunt, but when I arrived in Rio I recognized her face, because she has the same face as my mom. When I got to Mar\u00e9 \u2013 imagine! That girl from the countryside, that country bumpkin [laughs], not knowing anything. For me everything was new, but I adapted in a year. I didn\u2019t end up living with my aunt very long. When I was 17 she expelled me from her house. That was when I discovered how to be independent, and it was during that time that\u00a0I abandoned my studies.<\/p>\n

“In order to survive I worked at various places, first at a restaurant, then at a snack shop in Copacabana. At one point, when all doors closed for me, I lived for a period on the street and to survive I entered the world of prostitution. After that I went to work in the home of a family. Since I was little I always did nails for fun, and along the way an interest awakened in that being my work. When I opened this salon here in my home I already had some clients, though not too many. I gained clients mainly through word of mouth, and something else that helped me and that still helps me is Facebook, social media. I have a little over a year working here, and I\u2019m grateful to God because in little time I already have a good clientele. It\u2019s enough for me to support myself well.”<\/p>\n

Read Jaquelline\u2019s full story here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rodrigo<\/h3>\n

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

“Every day I play music here, and as with everything in the favela, it becomes interpersonal\u2013you make a sound, you start playing a drum inside and people will appear at your window. I\u2019ll open my door and the kids will come in and we\u2019ll have a class: I\u2019ll talk a bit about music, we\u2019ll make some noise. It\u2019s important to bring that perspective so they see that here it\u2019s not just guns, it\u2019s not just drugs, it\u2019s not just the police. There are also artists, there are also people who work, people who struggle daily, the truth is that they\u2019re the majority of the people here. The media don\u2019t want to say that the majority of people here are the workers who move this city forward, because that doesn\u2019t sell newspapers. The more blood, the more deaths, the more newspapers they\u2019re going to sell. That\u2019s why I like to open my door for kids to enter, to produce music and sound, to speak to them about what\u2019s behind it all and what\u2019s possible here: that even with you being poor, even with you living in a favela, you can still be an artist, you can still consume art. It\u2019s not just the privilege of the middle class and the bourgeoisie, it\u2019s the right of every citizen.”<\/p>\n

Read Rodrigo\u2019s full story here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Atan\u00e1sio<\/h3>\n

\"Atan\u00e1sio\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“I came from Maranh\u00e3o, on the coast of Bel\u00e9m, in the steaming heat of November. My brother brought me to live here in Mar\u00e9, in a little shack in Baixa do Sapateiro. He showed me the city, how it was, and then, on Monday, he went to work, and I was there alone. I took a bus downtown, I arrived in the main plaza, and there was an advertisement that someone was needing a tailor. At the time I would eat lunch at a Chinese place, the cheapest restaurant there was, and I didn\u2019t eat dinner; I had a bit of coffee and saved the money. I didn\u2019t have anything and I was thinking of buying a radio. But with the money I had I went out and I bought this sewing machine here. My brother arrived that night:<\/p>\n

‘What?! You bought a sewing machine?!’<\/p>\n

‘I did.’<\/p>\n

‘Didn\u2019t I tell you to buy a radio?’<\/p>\n

‘With this machine here I\u2019m going to buy 10 radios, if we buy a radio we\u2019re just going to lose the money we spent.’<\/p>\n

And thank God that machine was the beginning of my work.”<\/p>\n

Read Atan\u00e1sio\u2019s full story here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maria<\/h3>\n

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

“In the future, 10 years from now, I hope for better things: peace, a better future for our children, a better government. It\u2019ll be difficult. Those who enter politics already encounter rottenness, and they end up worsening everything, putting the money in their own pockets, causing more poverty, more violence. Here if there really were\u00a0a good police force, a good president, I think it would be a really nice country. If there were more people who were honest, the world wouldn\u2019t be the way it is today. That\u2019s why I teach my daughters to not take others’\u00a0things, to not go into my bag to take money, that if they want money they should ask me directly. If I have it I\u2019ll give it to them and if I don\u2019t then I can\u2019t. If you don\u2019t teach them that way then they\u2019re going to become what\u2019s out there on the street, part of the violence, part of the mess. I try to say these things to at least change a little in the world of our youth, to see if it gets a little better. No one understands one another anymore, no one can look one another in the face anymore. What we\u2019re needing now is love. What the people now are needing is love.”<\/p>\n

Read Maria\u2019s full story here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Robson<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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

“God gave me an ability, a perception to know how to sell these things. I have a book with all of my clients\u2013their names, the date they\u2019re going to pay. I give them from the seventh to the tenth day of the month. At times there are people who don\u2019t pay and I end up letting it slide; I leave the clothing as a present for them. Each month I make two minimum wage salaries, and with that money, as my father always said, I go floating my boat. I have my house, my rice and beans, money to leave and return home, to take care of my wife, my daughter, my family, and still some left over to help people when they\u2019re in need. I\u2019ll help someone buy bread; I\u2019ll pay the bus fare for a group of children or adolescents so they can go out and have a good time; I\u2019ll contribute to my church\u2019s raffles with clothes and other things, for families and their children. I get immense pleasure from that, an immense happiness in helping these people.”<\/p>\n

Read Robson\u2019s full story here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*Sascha Bercovitch is the creator of Favela Stories. He studied Latin American history at Harvard University and has lived in Complexo da Mar\u00e9 for the past year on a Trustman Postgraduate Fellowship.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas The following excerpts come from Favela Stories, a blog and Facebook page\u00a0by Sascha Bercovitch* that\u00a0tells the stories of residents in Complexo da Mar\u00e9, one of Rio\u2019s largest\u00a0favela complexes, located in the […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":30053,"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":[1288,1268,1271,1284,1463,1329],"tags":[1361,109,280,427,445,221,1900,1366,865,1370,37,431,453],"writer":[2105],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-favelaculture","9":"category-favelaqualities","10":"category-interviews-profiles","11":"category-perceptions","12":"category-by-international-observers","13":"tag-endfavelastigma","14":"tag-community-business","15":"tag-complexo-da-mare","16":"tag-economy","17":"tag-entrepreneurship","18":"tag-favela-culture","19":"tag-media-narrative","20":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","21":"tag-micro-business","22":"tag-music","23":"tag-north-zone","24":"tag-northeast-of-brazil","25":"tag-stigma","26":"writer-sascha-bercovitch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=30043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}