{"id":33520,"date":"2016-10-15T06:52:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-15T09:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=33520"},"modified":"2023-08-23T12:20:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T15:20:49","slug":"residents-of-the-tijuca-forest-national-park-left-without-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=33520","title":{"rendered":"Residents of the Tijuca Forest National Park Left without Electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

When Eunice do Nascimento Rosa, 56, came home from work some weeks ago at night, she almost stepped on a snake\u00a0lying on the floor of her home. She only managed to see the snake because the lights of her cars were still on. Otherwise, when the sun goes down, Eunice lives in the dark. For well over a year, Eunice and ten other families in the H\u00edpica<\/a> community in the Tijuca Forest National Park<\/a>\u00a0having been living without electricity.<\/p>\n

No buses come here, the phone reception is weak and it’s an hour hike through the forest to get to the nearest supermarket. But none of that really matters to the families living here\u2013it is the electricity they care about. In the past they had an electricity supply;\u00a0Luci Rosa de Alcomtona, 59, has a huge envelope where she keeps all the old bills in orderly manner along with other official correspondence.<\/p>\n

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

Her father gave her the documents, saying:\u00a0\u201c<\/em>Here are the weapons, now you’ve got to fight.\u201d<\/em> He passed away three years ago. Luci believes\u00a0it was not the cancer that finally killed him. \u201c<\/em>It was the lack of electricity,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0she says. He went to the park administration three times to dispute the situation, but they would not see\u00a0him. At night, he could not sleep. Luci pulls out a medical report of her resistance envelope. \u201cHe should not be put in stressful situations and he needs a refrigerator at home for his medicine. If there is none, there is an increased risk of death,\u201d\u00a0she reads out.<\/p>\n

Luci is not the only park inhabitant who blames the park administration for the poor health condition of a close relative. Maria Hayd\u00e9e Alves da Silva Teruz, 58, lives together with her mother, five nieces, her nephew, his wife and their children in a dilapidated 19th century building which\u00a0once belonged to the Viscount of Bom Retiro.<\/p>\n

The wooden ceiling beams bend; there is a big\u00a0stone fireplace, broken antique tiles and a rug that seems to have lost its color along the centuries. In a small dark chamber, wrapped in a thick cloth, lies Hayd\u00e9e’s mother. Three years ago, she fell on the floor in the dark and now she cannot move anymore.<\/p>\n

\"Hayd\u00e9e's<\/a><\/p>\n

She suffers from Alzheimers and depression, due to the lack of light, her daughter says. Hayd\u00e9e is the only person\u00a0in her community that has a generator, although she cannot really afford the gasoline. \u201cI need warm water to bath my mother and light at night to change her diapers. How do you do that in the dark?\u201d\u00a0she\u00a0asks.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0the electricity supply they long for is there. Three brand new power distributors are within sight in front of the house, around\u00a020 meters away.<\/p>\n

\"img_5016\"
\nBut they are not connected to the houses. This is not a coincidence or sloppiness. The Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation<\/a>, responsible for the protection of the park, wants Hayd\u00e9e and her neighbors to leave. According to national law, living within a nature conservation area is prohibited. But when\u00a0the Tijuca Forest National Park was officially created in 1961, Hayd\u00e9e, Eunice and Luci already lived there.\u00a0Their families originally came to live in the park because the public authorities asked them to: their parents worked in the park to take care of it. They helped build the roads and paths, planted trees, and\u00a0helped visitors.<\/p>\n

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

Now, residents have\u00a0already received various written requests to leave the park, but without any offer of alternative housing or compensation. They would consider leaving, but don’t want to be forced to go\u00a0far away in the periphery, as happened with\u00a0one of their former neighbors who now lives in a favela in Jacarepagu\u00e1. The remaining families are not even allowed to fix up their\u00a0houses. Slowly, they are turning into ruins in the middle of the jungle.<\/p>\n

Residents view the cutting off of the energy supply as a tactic to pressure them to leave.\u00a0\u201cIt is social segregation,\u201d says\u00a0Ot\u00e1vio Barros,\u00a0president of the nearby Vale Encantado Cooperative<\/a> and supporter of the families in their struggle. \u201cIn the 21st century having electricity is a human right<\/a>. It is about dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

For decades, residents\u00a0paid their monthly bills in the bank. But one day, the bank refused to take the money. Then the cables were\u00a0disconnected from the community. Hayd\u00e9e and her neighbors took legal action, but they haven’t heard anything from the courts\u00a0for six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like a plaything. No one takes responsibility and no one offers any solution. What shall we do?\u201d\u00a0asks Luci. They fear their case will be ignored\u00a0and nothing will ever happen. In the Tijuca Forest, home to the world famous Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer statue, residents are left in the dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas When Eunice do Nascimento Rosa, 56, came home from work some weeks ago at night, she almost stepped on a snake\u00a0lying on the floor of her home. She only managed to […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":33524,"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":[1293,1854,1288,336,1329],"tags":[490,226,1495,506,11,107,282,26,25,485,270,489,904,514,2383],"writer":[2204],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-evictionswatch","8":"category-housingwatch","9":"category-highlight","10":"category-violations","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-alto-da-boa-vista","13":"tag-consequences-of-eviction-health","14":"tag-eviction-tactics-canceled-services","15":"tag-exclusion","16":"tag-forced-evictions","17":"tag-health","18":"tag-housing","19":"tag-housing-rights","20":"tag-human-rights","21":"tag-light-electricity","22":"tag-resistance","23":"tag-tijuca-forest","24":"tag-utilities","25":"tag-vale-encantado","26":"tag-hipica","27":"writer-lisa-hollenbach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33520","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\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33520"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=33520"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=33520"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=33520"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=33520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}