{"id":32470,"date":"2016-09-02T09:50:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T12:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=32470"},"modified":"2016-09-02T09:51:16","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T12:51:16","slug":"depression-panic-attacks-even-death-the-heavy-psychological-cost-of-olympics-evictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=32470","title":{"rendered":"Depression, Panic Attacks, Even Death: The Heavy Psychological Cost of Olympic\u00a0Evictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article by Luiza Oliveira\u00a0in Portuguese with video published by UOL\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Those meeting\u00a0Cenira dos Santos Pereira for the first time are soon engaged with\u00a0her extrovert character and winning smile. Wearing an off-the-shoulder red top, she walks around the Parque Carioca<\/a> housing complex\u00a0as if she owns the place, since everyone knows her there. But even after only five minutes of conversation there\u2019s a transformation. She suddenly takes on a distant look, one of deep sadness. It doesn\u2019t take long for the tears to start. This is the proof that she\u2019s not fine at all.<\/p>\n

Cenira was one of approximately 800 families*\u00a0who lost their homes in the\u00a0Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>\u00a0favela because of the Olympic Games<\/a> in Rio de Janeiro. Ever since, her life has taken a dramatic turn. The house and guesthouse that she had built with years of sweat and hard work were knocked down. She lost her income and now lives off the few savings she has left. And as if that were not enough, the decision about where to move to ended up causing a family dispute and today she is no longer speaking to several of her relatives.<\/p>\n

It was too much. She entered into a state of deep depression and confesses that she lost the will to live.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have depression now. There are days where I don\u2019t manage to see anyone, I don\u2019t want to talk to anyone, I keep myself locked up indoors. For the first month [after the eviction] I didn\u2019t stop crying. I didn\u2019t leave the house, I didn\u2019t want to see anyone. Some days I didn\u2019t wash. Some days I didn\u2019t eat. There were days where all I did was cry,\u201d she said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sleeping, I lost the will to live, or to do anything. I went to hospital a lot. I was taking heavy medication.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Cenira wasn\u2019t the only one to suffer a heavy psychological blow. This became a very common trend among the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents who were removed<\/a> from their houses. Housewife Gene Lopes da Silva also moved to Parque Carioca and still suffers from severe depression. Even today she is undergoing treatment and talks of regular hospital visits. She spends up to R$600 per month on medication. \u201cI can\u2019t sleep, I\u2019ve been to see the doctor about it, I did medical examinations. I still can\u2019t manage to feel ok,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A process of removal that took years<\/a> to unfold has caused emotional scars. Residents talk of the heavy emotional pressure piled on them by the City government<\/a>, with residents who resisted removal finding themselves threatened<\/a> and even physically attacked<\/a>. The City\u00a0was in a hurry to remove the families from the area near where Olympics construction projects were taking place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we went through was terrible,\u201d says retired Vila Aut\u00f3dromo resident S\u00f4nia Ludovice Nascimento. \u201cWe suffered emotional and physical violence. There were days when they came and announced \u2018We\u2019re going to destroy so-and-so\u2019s house,\u2019 out of the blue. There were residents who left their houses with black eyes, head wounds. We experienced a lot of humiliation. The authorities would come and say \u2018We\u2019re going in, we\u2019re going in.\u2019 Whoever resisted ended up getting hurt. We went through the humiliation of watching a tractor passing by our houses, on its way to destroy our neighbors\u2019 houses. They cut the water and electricity<\/a>, we saw an increase in rats and mosquitos. We were forced to accept the Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a> housing program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"S\u00f4nia<\/a><\/p>\n

Candombl\u00e9 practitioner Heloisa Helena<\/a> knows about the horrors of the removals process. She had a spiritual center in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo and saw the materials she used in rituals end up in the trash. Homeless and shaken, she suffers from depression and panic attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took away my home, which was a spiritual center,\u201d she says. \u201cThey said it was all trash. They knocked it all down without an ounce of respect. I experienced a lot of stress, I had psychiatric and psychological problems\u2013these were presents given to me by the City Government. I’m very traumatized. It\u2019s not easy to spend two years suffering psychological damage<\/a> and death threats<\/a>. Now I take anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication twice a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former\u00a0Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents speak of even more extreme cases of elderly residents who ended up dying from heart problems. They report at least seven people whose deaths are related to the evictions\u00a0process. \u201cFor some people, the shock was so strong that they had heart attacks and died. One resident, Seu Pernambuco, died because he couldn\u2019t bear it,\u201d S\u00f4nia says.<\/p>\n

UOL<\/em>\u00a0approached the Rio de Janeiro mayor\u2019s office but they declined to respond to accusations made against them. They only spoke to highlight that only a part of the removals of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents were to do with the Olympic Park construction and that a large part of the evictions were motivated by the desire to guarantee the protection of land bordering the Jacarepagu\u00e1 lagoon and Pavuninha river, both environmentally protected areas. The City government also said that a large part of removed residents chose to leave the community of their own free will and that those who opted to live in Parque Carioca have seen a raise in living standards.<\/p>\n

*Original article mistakenly said “people” so we have corrected in this translation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas For the original article by Luiza Oliveira\u00a0in Portuguese with video published by UOL\u00a0click here. Those meeting\u00a0Cenira dos Santos Pereira for the first time are soon engaged with\u00a0her extrovert character and winning […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":32476,"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":[1293,1736,1288,1330,336],"tags":[226,1495,1496,11,1862,157,851,423,4,21],"writer":[2189],"translator":[1401],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-1736","9":"category-highlight","10":"category-translation","11":"category-violations","12":"tag-consequences-of-eviction-health","13":"tag-eviction-tactics-canceled-services","14":"tag-eviction-tactics-divide-and-conquer","15":"tag-forced-evictions","16":"tag-mental-health","17":"tag-minha-casa-minha-vida","18":"tag-parque-carioca","19":"tag-psychological-terror","20":"tag-vila-autodromo","21":"tag-west-zone","22":"writer-luiza-oliveira","23":"translator-sarah-jacobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32470","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=32470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=32470"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=32470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}