{"id":34983,"date":"2017-02-20T11:14:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=34983"},"modified":"2018-05-08T09:56:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T12:56:01","slug":"role-dos-favelados-tour-highlights-favela-culture-and-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=34983","title":{"rendered":"Favela Activists Launch Series of Unique Favela Tours for Cariocas and Visitors Alike"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The second installment of Rol\u00e9 dos Favelados (Stroll of the Favelados) kicked off this Saturday, February 18 in the downtown<\/a>\u00a0favela of Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, which will celebrate its\u00a0120th anniversary this year. Amid a backdrop of party goers and street vendors<\/a> from across\u00a0Greater Rio<\/a> disembarking at the Central Station and heading toward pre-carnival events taking place throughout the city, a group of eleven visitors–Rio natives and international residents of the city–met guide Cosme \u201cO Favelado\u201d Felippsen<\/a> and\u00a0community journalist Gizele Martins<\/a> for a tour of Provid\u00eancia, Rio\u2019s first favela<\/a>.
\n<\/a>
\nThe tour emerged from both Felippsen and Martins\u2019 work as community activists dedicated to combating the stigmatization<\/a> of Rio\u2019s favelas. Felippsen, who has a degree in tourism, recognized\u00a0the need to change the negative perceptions that non-residents have of favelas when\u00a0he began his career as a tour guide at the young age of eight, when Provid\u00eancia celebrated its 100th anniversary and visitors\u00a0with the Methodist Church in the nearby Sa\u00fade neighborhood would pay him with popsicles for tours around the hillside favela.<\/p>\n

Martins, a community journalist from the\u00a0North Zone<\/a> favela complex of\u00a0Mar\u00e9<\/a> who has studied oral history and is currently working on a Masters in Urban Peripheries at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Department of Education of the Baixada Fluminese<\/a> in Duque de Caxias<\/a>, sees the tour as an opportunity for favela residents to disprove the negative stereotypes that dominate media and policymakers\u2019 narratives about favelas and their often poor, black residents. \u201cWe want to tell our story ourselves, we want to use our own references, our own language<\/a>, so visitors get a sense of what we go through and suffer,\u201d she stated early on in the tour.<\/p>\n

The idea of the Rol\u00e9 dos Favelados<\/a> is for the two to lead tours in a number of\u00a0favelas with local guides and activists. They plan to host two tours in March in Santa Marta<\/a> and Mar\u00e9 in order to show both local and foreign visitors alike that while Rio\u2019s 1000 favelas share characteristics, they exhibit a rich socio-historical and cultural variety and currently face different forms of state and market-driven oppression, such as forced\u00a0eviction<\/a>, police occupation and brutality<\/a>, and gentrification<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

The tour is intentionally participatory and didactic. In Provid\u00eancia, the tour began on Ladeira do Barroso, an uphill road lined with colonial Portuguese architecture known for being the childhood birthplace and home of famed Brazilian author Machado de Assis<\/a>. Felippsen started the tour by asking everyone in the group whether that specific place was a favela. Answers varied since the site lacked the self-constructed homes, businesses, and roads associated with most favelas, but Felippsen used the opportunity to underscore the social dynamics that exist within favelas: \u201cResidents here won\u2019t say this is a favela, but traffickers pass by here, and residents higher up say\u00a0it is part of the same hill. Many people here used to live higher up because the dream is to go down the hill.\u201d Access to basic necessities, such as sewage and paved roads, not only mark the boundaries between the morro e aslfato<\/em> (the ‘hill’ and the ‘asphalt,’ or the favela and the serviced\u00a0city) but also the boundaries between those who have managed to move up the social ladder by moving down the physical hill.<\/p>\n

Felippsen then asked the group what is a favela<\/a>, to which Martins\u00a0gave a historically, politically, and personally informed answer: \u201cThe favela is the act of building<\/em>. It\u2019s not just the fact that we build\u00a0our own homes. We are the bus drivers, the waiters, the nannies, the people who work without documentation so that the city as a whole can function. We built\u00a0everything. Nothing here was given [to us]. The black population\u00a0never received\u00a0reparations. So they went to the quilombo<\/a>, and the favela is the urban quilombo.\u201d She went on to express her frustration at the state\u2019s one-sided public \u201cinsecurity<\/a>\u201d approach to favelas, which she experienced first-hand during the military occupation of Mar\u00e9 ahead of the 2014 World Cup<\/a>: \u201cThe state enters to kill people. They do this to control [marginalized] people. Society calls us minorities. The LGBT<\/a> minority, the Black minority, the indigenous minority, because if we knew that we are the majority this system would break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Felippsen admitted to asking the question because he himself had not yet reached a definitive conclusion, his answer was equally poignant: \u201cFavelas are the solution<\/a>. Here the favela was the housing that was promised to the soldiers returning after the Canudos War but which they never received [and so occupied the hill]… It\u2019s the government that says they are the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Though like any traditional tour Felippsen highlighted important sites throughout the favela, the tour centered around the issues that both guides had faced as residents. Felippsen focused on the evictions\u00a0that took place in Provid\u00eancia due to the construction of the currently non-operational cable car<\/a> that was built in 2013 to connect the hill to the Central Station. Largely driven by real estate speculation due to the city\u2019s Marvelous Port program\u00a0to revitalize the Port Zone<\/a>, an important site of Afro-Brazilian history and culture<\/a>, the construction of the cable car removed 200 houses. Prior to the evictions<\/a>, city official marked those slated for destruction with the infamous letters SMH and a number. Though SMH stands for Secretaria Municipal de Habita\u00e7\u00e3o <\/em>(Municipal Housing Secretariat), residents angrily joked that letters meant sai na mesma hora <\/em>(leave right now) and sai do morro hoje <\/em>(leave the hill today).<\/p>\n

Felippsen even sang his own version of samba composer Ze Keti\u2019s \u201cOpini\u00e3o,\u201d<\/a> modifying the famous lyrics, \u201cdaqui do morro eu n\u00e3o saio n\u00e3o\u201d (from this hill, I\u2019m not leaving) with the names of favelas that have recently experienced state violence: \u201cDa Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> eu n\u00e3o saio n\u00e3o, da Mar\u00e9 eu n\u00e3o saio n\u00e3o, do Alem\u00e3o<\/a> eu n\u00e3o saio n\u00e3o, da Provid\u00eancia eu n\u00e3o saio n\u00e3o.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martins drove home for the visitors\u00a0the extent of the structural and physical violence that the Pacifying Police Units<\/a>\u00a0have wrought on favela residents: \u201cWe ask for water, electricity, education, rights. We don\u2019t ask for police; we ask for security, which are two different things.\u201d She spoke frankly about how both the police and the military harass, harm, rape, and kill favela residents with impunity<\/a>. Felippsen believes that the 2010 installation of the UPP\u00a0in Provid\u00eancia<\/a> was part of a strategic plan of the city to control and terrify residents: \u201cThey placed 200 police officers here. What if that had been doctors and teachers?\u201d<\/p>\n

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

A\u00a0unique goal of this tour is to reach cariocas<\/em> (Rio natives)–not just international\u00a0tourists–who might never have set foot in a favela in their own city. Carolina, a public policy researcher at Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Get\u00falio Vargas (Get\u00falio Vargas Foundation-FGV) and resident of Botafogo<\/a>, said she and her boyfriend Daniel had already been to Santa Marta due to its proximity to her home, but that this was their first favela tour. \u201c[Tours] are a delicate issue,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want it to be like you\u2019re going to a zoo to observe poverty. But because the mentality has always been to hide the favela, [the tour] shows that the favela is part of the city. It proves that it is an important, relevant, interesting part of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately the tour serves as yet another example of resistance. Lamenting that the UPPs have prohibited many cultural expressions in favelas<\/a>, from forr\u00f3 to baile funks, Martins stressed that the favela is not something to be neglected and then consumed for the benefit of non-residents: \u201cPolice enter and prohibit the things that we produce and that now others consume. We [in the favela] breathe resistance in education, in culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

To follow Cosme Felippsen’s community tourism work and learn about the next Rol\u00e9 dos Favelados,\u00a0like their Facebook page<\/a>. Or simply join in on the Santa Marta Rol\u00e9<\/a>, to take place on March 18, 2017.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas The second installment of Rol\u00e9 dos Favelados (Stroll of the Favelados) kicked off this Saturday, February 18 in the downtown\u00a0favela of Provid\u00eancia, which will celebrate its\u00a0120th anniversary this year. Amid a […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":34984,"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":[1288,1333,1670,1503,329,328,1329],"tags":[1361,1261,168,280,221,1561,1560,2616,11,37,15,148,144,270,2722,66,453,949],"writer":[1716],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-34983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-event-reports","9":"category-favela-tourism","10":"category-opportunities-to-support-favelas","11":"category-solutions","12":"category-understanding-rio","13":"category-by-international-observers","14":"tag-endfavelastigma","15":"tag-central-rio","16":"tag-centro","17":"tag-complexo-da-mare","18":"tag-favela-culture","19":"tag-favela-tour","20":"tag-favela-tour-operator","21":"tag-favela-vs-asphalt","22":"tag-forced-evictions","23":"tag-north-zone","24":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","25":"tag-port-region","26":"tag-morro-da-providencia","27":"tag-resistance","28":"tag-role-dos-favelados","29":"tag-santa-marta","30":"tag-stigma","31":"tag-tour-guides","32":"writer-stephanie-reist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34983","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\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34983"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=34983"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=34983"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=34983"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=34983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}