{"id":33349,"date":"2016-10-05T06:59:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T09:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=33349"},"modified":"2025-09-13T14:08:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T17:08:54","slug":"providencia-over-119-years-of-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=33349","title":{"rendered":"Provid\u00eancia: Over 119 Years of Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Provid\u00eancia, originally called Favela Hill, is officially Rio’s oldest favela. It will turn 120 next year and residents are working to maintain the community’s memories and history alive.<\/em><\/h3>\n

There are many ways to tell a story and there are many stories to tell. Cosme Felippsen, 27, uses the official and unofficial history of the city, gives performances and recites his poetry while he guides visitors through the Provid\u00eancia<\/a> favela. His tour\u00a0includes\u00a0the paths created by Rio\u2019s City government\u00a0in 2005 for the so-called Museu \u00e0 Ceu Aberto da Provid\u00eancia<\/a> (Open Air\u00a0Museum of Provid\u00eancia), as well as the paths chosen by him personally.<\/p>\n

Cintia Sant\u2019Anna, a 30-year-old actress, decided to tell stories of the favela through theater<\/a>. After months of interviewing residents, she and other actors invited by the Bando Teatro Favela<\/a> created and portrayed the oral histories in a play called Entre Becos e Vielas<\/a><\/em> (Between Alleys and Alleyways).<\/p>\n

Alexandre Louren\u00e7o, a 37-year-old resident of Cidade Nova<\/a>, uses video\u00a0as a tool to produce new narratives about the favela and the Port Region<\/a>\u00a0with the initiative Cine Provid\u00eancia.<\/p>\n

Eron Cesar dos Santos, a 49-year-old biology graduate\u00a0born and raised in Provid\u00eancia, is a self-taught historian and creator of the Provid\u00eancia Community Museum blog<\/a> where, together with resident Roberto Marinho<\/a>, he is spreading the community\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

In this way, each one of them creates and recreates their own reservoir of memories about Brazil’s\u00a0first favela: Morro da Provid\u00eancia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Cosme<\/a><\/h3>\n

Stories of yesterday and today on Cosme\u2019s tour<\/h3>\n

\u201cBefore being called Morro da Provid\u00eancia, it was called Morro da Favela (Favela Hill). Before Morro da Favela, it was called Morro do Livramento (Rescue Hill). Before Morro do Livramento they were the lands of Senator Bento Barroso, which is why we have the Ladeira do Barroso (Barroso Slope),\u201d says\u00a0Cosme Felippsen<\/a>, a resident and tour guide in Provid\u00eancia.<\/p>\n

Cosme says that he was eight years old when he gave his first tour of the favela. It was in 1997 when they were celebrating the\u00a0centenary of Brazil’s\u00a0first favela<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0the original occupation of the hillside by ex-soldiers<\/a> and camp followers from the Canudos War. A foreign couple asked Cosme to show them the alleyways in the favela. As payment, he was given a popsicle and at home his mother almost spanked him for having wandered off with strangers. In 2015, Cosme became a certified tour guide and he maintains the\u00a0Provid\u00eancia Turismo<\/a> Facebook page to schedule visits.<\/p>\n

Among his materials for work, Cosme always carries the book SMH 2016: Removals in Olympic Rio de Janeiro<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a0which\u00a0he appears on pages 96 and 97, another of the artist Vhils<\/a> who sculpted the faces of residents in the walls of their houses as an act against evictions<\/a>, a handout about Evictions and Literature from a workshop that happened at the Evictions Museum in\u00a0Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> and a book by French photographer JR with various images of Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, whose work initiated the NGO Casa Amarela<\/a>. When there aren\u2019t visits scheduled, Cosme sells pies\u00a0and sweets at the Central do Brasil station and surrounding area nearby. He has two children and lives in an occupation on Ladeira do Faria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City removed 50 families, but one family resisted and that resulted in other families<\/a> going to re-occupy the empty space. The majority are people from Cear\u00e1 who work at Central do Brasil. The rubble from the City\u2019s evictions is still there today, and the residents themselves are removing it little by little,\u201d says Cosme. \u201cThe Housing Secretariat\u00a0should have changed its name to the Evictions Secretariat. They evicted more<\/a> people than they housed. They wanted to remove 832 families. And how many houses did they build here? 34. Don\u2019t you think they should have changed the name?\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Dramatizing memory and facing\u00a0the everyday<\/h3>\n

An initiative of Cintia Sant\u2019Anna, 30, the play\u00a0Entre Becos e Vielas<\/em> by the Bando Teatro Favela<\/a> was staged following\u00a0interviews with residents from Provid\u00eancia and was performed throughout the month of July in the Largo da Igreja square.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very honest script. The three stories talk about the importance of honesty, of the solidarity<\/a> that people have with\u00a0each other and that we only experience within\u00a0the community,\u201d says Cintia.<\/p>\n

M\u00f4nica Saturnino, 41, says they spent two months recording the audio with residents, over eight hours of recordings. \u201cIt\u2019s a famous and\u00a0historic hill<\/a>, but we wanted to tell peoples\u2019 stories. It\u2019s not a historical account, it\u2019s an emotional account. That’s what we call it,\u201d M\u00f4nica affirms. \u201cWe used those stories as the basis for the show. We made fiction of the story. The people who were interviewed attended, felt moved, and liked it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturnino and Sant’Anna invited other actors from outside the favela to participate in the research and\u00a0show. Thiago Viana, 28, resident of Morro da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o<\/a> was one of them and he says\u00a0it was delightful to hear the residents\u2019 stories. \u201cI very much like studies of historical content. This project gave me another line of action that had been little explored. The people always take the more well-known stories from Morro da Provid\u00eancia, or the most media friendly, and this project was the opposite of that. It was to find anonymous residents who weren\u2019t in the same circles that everyone knows, and use those stories to create a drama<\/a>. Sometimes people want to stage pieces by Machado de Assis, but the project wasn\u2019t that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most well-known stories remind us that Provid\u00eancia was the first favela in Brazil, famous for the childhood of writer Machado de Assis<\/a> on the hill, samba people, Dona Dod\u00f4<\/a> (flag-holder for the Portela samba school), the Carnival street parties, the removals, the construction of the cable car<\/a>, the figure of the docker, the army\u00a0and police actions<\/a> on the hill\u2013an emblematic example being the deaths of the youths who were arrested and sent to a rival gang faction in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Pacifying Police Unit (UPP)<\/a> was installed in Provid\u00eancia in 2010<\/a>, but the army occupied the favela in 2006 after some military weapons were stolen. At that time, 11 favelas in Rio were occupied, including Provid\u00eancia, but the weapons were found in Rocinha.<\/p>\n

Cintia recalls that although she has been doing theater<\/a> for six years, it is the first time that the hill has had a theater group. Other initiatives didn\u2019t last long and she recalls the difficulties encountered in creating the show: \u201cSeveral times there were shootouts during rehearsals. Twice we didn\u2019t perform the show because there was a police operation on the hill or because someone died. All of that messes with the day-to-day and we live in that day-to-day. It\u2019s not like a standard theater run,\u201d Cintia says. \u201cMaintaining a group is very difficult and the territory is very unique for all the reasons people know about. Now everyone wants to live in a favela, it\u2019s in style. But the guy doesn\u2019t actually live in the favela and doesn\u2019t know what it really is, sometimes, to not be able to go home because of a shootout, taking it hard from the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The story on the big screen: cinema on the hill<\/h3>\n

It was through a course in culture that Alexandre Louren\u00e7o, 37, approached the hill and created Cine Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, a project championed by the Rio Municipal Culture Secretariat.<\/p>\n

Recently, he produced the short film Olhares da Provid\u00eancia<\/em><\/a> for the 72h Festival. During the last presentation of Cine Provid\u00eancia in July<\/a>, residents were excited to recognize neighbors and places on the big\u00a0screen. According to Alexandre, the film club archive\u00a0has close to 120 short films produced in the Port Region\u00a0and he is finalizing a feature\u00a0film about the Vizinha Faladeira<\/a> samba school.<\/p>\n

Alexandre affirms that he has also been working with memory\u00a0by conducting research about the samba school at the National Library and the National Archive, as well as\u00a0interviewing ex-participants of the school: \u201cYou have to dig around\u00a0a lot to find the roots of the school, since it spent 50 years without activity. You have to find residents who don\u2019t live here anymore. I found relatives of the school’s founders, for example, in Campo Grande. It\u2019s a lot of work, but it\u2019s gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documentary filmmaker affirms that Vizinha Faladeira is one of the oldest samba schools in Brazil and brought a series of innovations\u00a0utilized in the schools like the children\u2019s wing and the front commission, for example. The school was in\u00a0Group C of this year\u2019s Carnival parades. Vizinha Faladeira was created by rogues from Santo Cristo in homage to neighbors who observed all their lives: \u201cThere were two neighbors from the alleyway, on Rua da Am\u00e9rica, who always gossiped. Going back, the school\u2019s symbol was an old lady with a huge tongue. Now it\u2019s a mermaid,\u201d states Alexandre.<\/p>\n

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

Legends and stories from Provid\u00eancia<\/h3>\n

Eron Cesar dos Santos, 49, is the\u00a0janitor\u00a0at the Nossa Senhora da Penha church. His parents took\u00a0care of the space since 1973 and he has taken care of it since they passed away. He is a master in the Grupo Ventre Livre<\/a> capoeira group which he’s been part of for over 20 years. Beyond receiving and guiding visitors<\/a> around the hill, Eron collects ghost\u00a0stories of the favela.<\/p>\n

According to stories passed down from generation to generation<\/a> of residents, there is Iron Foot, a former slave who roams the hillside in the early hours\u00a0dragging chains and there is also a bundle of clothes that rolls out of the chapel, where many washers worked, and wraps around the first resident in its path, stealing the resident\u2019s soul. The Nossa Senhora da Penha church is also full of those kinds of stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the old days, the church didn\u2019t have electricity. Then, one resident turned and said \u2018Whoa, the Cruzeiro church is illuminated, it\u2019s beautiful.\u2019 Then the other resident noted: \u2018Wait, but there\u2019s no electricity there.\u2019\u201d Eron laughs as he tells the story. \u201cAt Nossa Senhora da Penha, people also saw a wedding party\u00a0leave around midnight\u2026 Suddenly, all the lights went out and the party was over.\u201d<\/p>\n

The janitor\u00a0tells the scary stories with a smile and recalls that he himself also experienced an event. When he tutored kids\u00a0after school, he and a student heard someone walking up the steps of the church, from the first step to the last: \u201cI thought I was going crazy, and we both heard it,\u201d Eron assures.<\/p>\n

The Church survives on donations, but support for maintenance has been minimal and Eron doesn\u2019t receive payment to look after the place. In addition to being the janitor, a capoeira teacher and a\u00a0tutor, Eron is a historian of the hillside and around two years ago created a virtual community museum: Morro da Provid\u00eancia Community Museum<\/a>. This effort to preserve local memory is still in its initial stages but it also counts\u00a0on the participation of another resident, Roberto Marinho<\/a>,\u00a0whose family has lived there for generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cProvid\u00eancia for me means life. It is my history, my space. It is where I was born and the place where I grew up. It is where my son was born. I want to leave a legacy for him and I hope that one day he leaves it for his children too,\u201d concludes Eron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Provid\u00eancia, originally called Favela Hill, is officially Rio’s oldest favela. It will turn 120 next year and residents are working to maintain the community’s memories and history alive. There are many […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":33351,"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":[1294,1288,1328,1268,1271,1670,329],"tags":[1261,2109,258,504,221,674,1560,602,188,485,716,962,148,144,1403,319,194],"writer":[1532],"translator":[2145],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-by-community-contributors","10":"category-favelaculture","11":"category-favelaqualities","12":"category-favela-tourism","13":"category-solutions","14":"tag-central-rio","15":"tag-community-museum","16":"tag-community-solution","17":"tag-culture","18":"tag-favela-culture","19":"tag-memory","20":"tag-favela-tour-operator","21":"tag-film","22":"tag-history","23":"tag-light-electricity","24":"tag-museum","25":"tag-oral-history","26":"tag-port-region","27":"tag-morro-da-providencia","28":"tag-solution","29":"tag-theatre","30":"tag-tourism","31":"writer-miriane-peregrino","32":"translator-anne-marie-moran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33349","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=33349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81689,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33349\/revisions\/81689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33349"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=33349"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=33349"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=33349"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=33349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}