{"id":46284,"date":"2018-08-14T14:11:11","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T17:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=46284"},"modified":"2018-09-10T14:01:40","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T17:01:40","slug":"not-everyone-has-a-price-part-3-vila-autodromos-rise-as-a-symbol-of-olympic-resistance-video-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=46284","title":{"rendered":"Not Everyone Has a Price, Part 3: Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s Rise as a Symbol of Olympic Resistance [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This is the third article in a\u00a0six-part series<\/a>\u00a0that comprises the book chapter entitled \u201cNot Everyone Has a Price: How the Small Favela of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s Fight Opened a Path to Olympic Resistance\u201d recounting the story of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s struggle. Written by Theresa Williamson, executive director of\u00a0Catalytic Communities<\/a>,* the chapter is part of the book \u2018Rio 2016: Olympic Myths, Hard Realities<\/a>\u2018 edited by economist\u00a0Andrew Zimbalist<\/a>. To read our review of \u2018Rio 2016,\u2019 click\u00a0here<\/a>. RioOnWatch would like to thank Brookings Press for providing the permission to republish the chapter here in its entirety.<\/em><\/p>\n

I first visited Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a> two weeks later (see Part 2<\/a>). Catalytic Communities<\/a>\u2014the NGO I founded in 2000 that supports favela organizing and development of homegrown solutions as well as advocating for favela-led urban planning policies\u2014was partly inspired by the community of Asa Branca<\/a>, the closest favela to Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, which I first visited in 2000, due to their extensive community planning programs<\/a>. When I read about Vila Aut\u00f3dromo being slated for eviction in the newspaper, I reached out to the president of the Asa Branca Residents Association, and he introduced me to Guimar\u00e3es. <\/span><\/p>\n

On my first visit to Vila Aut\u00f3dromo in early November 2010, Guimar\u00e3es provided a rundown of the community\u2019s history, his own incredible personal struggle with eviction\u2014Guimar\u00e3es had been removed by the government from his homes<\/a> in two other favelas\u2014and walked me around the calm and livable, family-centered community. Guimar\u00e3es explained how he\u2019d chosen Vila Aut\u00f3dromo due in part to its peace and quiet when he was evicted from City of God<\/a> in the 1990s. <\/span><\/p>\n

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As we walked, Guimar\u00e3es pointed out that the residents\u2019 association headquarters had a stack of recently purchased, long, thin steel reinforcement beams carefully piled up. He explained that these were acquired thanks to weekly fundraisers the community had been holding, and they would allow the association to cover the soccer pitch on its property, guaranteeing an enclosed space for community events. Their other dream for the plot of land, he told me, was a neighborhood day care center. Eventually, he said, the plot would host the association, an enclosed soccer pitch and event hall, and a day care center. <\/span><\/p>\n

This dream was completely shoved aside in the months and years that followed, and those reinforcement beams eventually grew rusty, as the residents\u2019 association and a wide gamut of community members stopped living their everyday lives, instead dedicating themselves exclusively to resisting the City of Rio\u2019s campaign to evict them. Hearing of their ensuing fate through media channels\u2014rather than from the mouths of municipal officials\u2014residents were confused. Planning maps submitted by the city government to the IOC in the bidding process and later\u2014those approved by the architecture firm AECOM for the final works\u2014maintained Vila Aut\u00f3dromo in place<\/a>. After all, the favela was not located on the land assigned for the Rio 2016 Games\u2014that land was where the Nelson Piquet Racetrack was\u2014but simply adjacent to it. Yet Rio\u2019s main media channel, O Globo<\/em>, reported occasionally about the community\u2019s pending removal \u201cfor the Games,\u201d and, as they began to visit the community and increasingly did so, municipal workers claimed the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without a moment to waste, Vila Aut\u00f3dromo residents began organizing. In early 2010, association members met weekly with lawyers representing the community from Rio state\u2019s public defenders<\/a>\u2019 Land and Housing Nucleus<\/a> (N\u00facleo de Terras e Habita\u00e7\u00e3o or NUTH). The NUTH was on firm ground in claiming the community\u2019s rights, given Vila Aut\u00f3dromo was one of few favelas where residents held written documentation conceding the right to use the land. In 2005 Vila Aut\u00f3dromo had also been declared an Area of Special Social Interest<\/a> (\u00c1rea de Especial Interesse Social or AEIS) via Municipal Law 74, thus recognizing the community\u2019s role<\/a> as a site of affordable housing, protecting the community from speculative development, and declaring it a priority area for investment in infrastructure and public services. With these legal supports in hand, the community\u2019s case was as solid as is possible for any favela in Rio de Janeiro.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to opening a case against the City of Rio, the NUTH prepared an eighty-page memorandum to the IOC, describing the human rights and broader legal violations being witnessed in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. The letter attempted to bring to the IOC immediate, direct knowledge of the nature of the unsettling behavior being exhibited by Mayor Paes<\/a>\u2019s administration toward Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, its legal ramifications, and context about what was at stake. The history and nature of the community was at risk. At the end of 2010, the IOC responded with a direct inquiry to Rio de Janeiro State Governor S\u00e9rgio Cabral<\/a>, who proceeded to \u201cresolve\u201d the problem by disbanding the NUTH, reassigning all the public defenders<\/a> from the office elsewhere in the state, and temporarily closing the office<\/a>.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of 2011, municipal workers increasingly visited the community and attempted to knock on residents\u2019 doors individually, but they were barred entry by organized residents who insisted that any negotiations had to be done collectively. The city\u2019s \u201cdivide and conquer<\/a>\u201d eviction tactic had by this point been well documented<\/a> in communities that experienced sudden evictions in 2010 and were caught unprepared to react, such as Recreio II<\/a> and Favela do Metr\u00f4<\/a>. Municipal workers were therefore ineffective in reaching individual households during this period.<\/span><\/p>\n

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While some residents held watch, barring entry by municipal agents, others took extroverted organizing roles. Early on Nascimento<\/a>, Guimar\u00e3es, and Inalva Mendes Brito<\/a> were a sort of all-star team of organizers, each entirely dedicated to the community\u2019s permanence yet characterized by a unique skill set and audience. Nascimento, a soft-spoken militant and mother of two teenage girls, was exceptional at building emotional bonds and often left the com<\/span>munity for meetings with human rights and church groups and broader networks of communities suffering eviction. Guimar\u00e3es held his ground in the residents\u2019 association, generally always there when not at his construction job, often flanked by his young daughter Naomy<\/a>, welcoming visitors and sharing his story of repeated eviction and thus his absolute determination to not allow the same to happen in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. Brito, a school teacher who had been able to build her home up over decades, into one of the community\u2019s largest with an organic tropical fruit garden near the lagoon, was a popular speaker on university and school campuses as well as academic conferences. All worked together to host community-wide meetings, engage with NUTH attorneys, and generally make strategic decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

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During 2011 the government\u2019s determination to remove Vila Aut\u00f3dromo became explicit. Not only in the governor\u2019s dismantling of NUTH but in the constant reinterpreting of the \u201cneed\u201d to remove<\/a> Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. Justifications for eviction vacillated<\/a> constantly and continued to do so over the subsequent years. Initially, in 2009 it was said the community actually occupied the future media center needed for the Games. When the future media center\u2019s location was moved, the new justification became a \u201csecurity perimeter\u201d around the Olympic\u00a0<\/span>park. The community, via legal counsel, quickly defended against this justification, citing the towering condominiums being built across the street from the future park as a much greater risk. And indeed, statistically they were right: not only were the hundreds of new high-rise con<\/span>dos on that land more difficult to police, offering high platforms from which to execute threats, but Vila Aut\u00f3dromo, in its nearly five decades, had coexisted next to Formula One races and massive events like Rock in Rio (on the neighboring plot) without a criminal incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this same time, left in the lurch while awaiting the reestablishment and preparation of a new group of lawyers at NUTH, leaders of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s resistance began working with urban planning partners at Rio\u2019s two top universities, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro<\/a> (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro or UFRJ) and Fluminense Federal University<\/a> (Universidade Federal Fluminense or UFF). They summoned their help to respond to a 2010 comment by Mayor Paes in which he challenged the community to \u201ccome up with an alternate plan (to removal).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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In what constituted the city\u2019s next chess play, however, Rio de Janeiro\u2019s housing secretary, Jorge Bittar, called a meeting<\/a> in Vila Aut\u00f3dromo for Sunday, October 16, 2011, not to negotiate, but to make an announcement<\/a>. No high-ranking city official had yet set foot in the community since declaring its removal two years earlier. And neither did Bittar, as his staff set up the \u201ccircus\u201d (the meeting literally took place in a circus tent) just outside the community\u2019s entrance that morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Citing simply a vague \u201cwe need this area for the Olympics<\/a>,\u201d Bittar shared a thorough PowerPoint presentation with a packed audience of well over one hundred residents and an equal number of supporters and journalists, displaying flashy sketches and blueprints of the Parque Carioca<\/a> housing development that would be built especially to house the residents of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo. A bright blue swimming pool with a toboggan waterslide was promised and afforded much attention on the shiny brochures. A map showed the housing project would be just one kilometer away on the well-transited Estrada dos Bandeirantes. Apartment sketches included state-of-the-art appliances<\/a>, including an espresso machine. The presentation was clearly intended to seduce while also sending the message that this was a done deal. He then opened the floor to questions and reactions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Residents got up, one after the other, posing a number of questions. Some simply wanted more information about the diagrams and maps. Others gave deep testimonials about why they would not consider the city\u2019s proposal and would resist to the end, citing the community\u2019s legal defenses. Still, a few got up and angrily fired back at their resisting neighbors, saying they were eager to learn more and would accept the city\u2019s plans. I recognized these residents\u2014they tended to live in the newer, more precarious area of the community near the lagoon and canal\u2019s intersection. These residents, at their peak equaling some 10 percent of the community, indeed had reason to consider the city\u2019s proposal better than their current conditions, and they felt unrepresented by their resident association.<\/span><\/p>\n

In previous months, however, with technical support from UFRJ\u2019s Experimental Nucleus of Conflictual Planning<\/a> (NEPLAC by its Portuguese acronym) and Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning<\/a> (IPPUR) and UFF\u2019s Nucleus of Housing and Urban Studies\u00a0<\/a><\/span>and Projects (NEPHU), AMPAVA and these technical experts had been leading a series of broadly attended public meetings in the community, debating, developing, and fine-tuning an alternate plan that would allow for the community\u2019s full upgrading and integration with the Olympics site next door. Named the Vila Aut\u00f3dromo Popular Plan<\/a>, the first thirty-two-page report was completed in December 2011 and launched in mid-2012, demonstrating how, for R$13,526,000 ($6,627,700 at the time), the entire community could be upgraded, including providing affordable housing on site for those in precarious dwellings while making final improvements on established homes and integrating sewerage, lighting, paving, and even the community\u2019s sought-after day care center and enclosed soccer pitch, all outside the boundaries of the Olympic Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bittar\u2019s office, the Municipal Housing Secretariat<\/a> (Secretaria Municipal de Habita\u00e7\u00e3o or SMH)\u2014which became known internationally for marking homes for eviction without warning in a Naziesque fashion, with the famous \u201cSMH\u201d and a number\u2014had uncovered an opportunity through the public display of vulnerability at the October event. Now the SMH argued that the community could not block access from the office visiting individual homes because some residents were clearly interested in the public housing option. So in the weeks and months that followed, while urban planners from the federal universities were holding public meetings debating the Popular Plan, which included community-based affordable housing for those more vulnerable families, SMH workers began going door-to-door, collecting information from residents allegedly interested in the public housing option.<\/span><\/p>\n

The SMH notably sent large, intimidating groups<\/a> of workers door-to-door, in many cases pressuring residents<\/a> into allowing entry by saying if their information was not captured they would have no claim to eventual compensation should relocation take place or claiming they were registering residents for the Bolsa Fam\u00edlia<\/a> federal welfare program or simply asking questions about the home\u2019s size to register<\/a> something on their spreadsheets. This process went on for many months, throughout 2012 and into 2013<\/a>, while a large group of residents increasingly organized their resistance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in 2012 Vila Aut\u00f3dromo began making its way into the global media spotlight. The first major visibility came from the New York Times<\/em> in March under the headline \u201cSlum Dwellers Are Defying Brazil\u2019s Grand Design for the Olympics<\/a>.\u201d Thus, the stage was set for what would grow into one of the key narratives in coverage of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games: how this small peaceful favela resisted the largest of corporate interests, interests represented not only by the IOC but especially by Brazil\u2019s mega\u2013real estate developers who were the ones investing in the Olympic park next door with massive government subsidies and who would thus reap the post-<\/span>Games benefits of inheriting what was once prime public land. After 2016, the Olympic park would be converted to luxury housing and moguls such as Marcelo Odebrecht<\/a> and Carlos Carvalho<\/a> were set to gain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here for Part 4<\/a>.<\/em><\/h3>\n

This is the third article in a six-part series<\/a> that comprises the chapter entitled \u201cNot Everyone Has a Price: How the Small Favela of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s Fight Opened a Path to Olympic Resistance\u201d recounting the story of Vila Aut\u00f3dromo\u2019s struggle. The chapter is part of the book \u2018<\/em>Rio 2016: Olympic Myths, Hard Realities<\/a><\/em>.\u2019\u00a0RioOnWatch would like to thank Brookings Press for providing the permission to republish the chapter here in its entirety.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bibliographic References<\/h3>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Alexandre F. Mendes and Giuseppe Cocco, A Resist\u00eancia \u00e0 Remo\u00e7\u00e3o de Favelas no Rio de Janeiro\u2014Institui\u00e7\u00f5es do comum e resist\u00eancias urbanas: a hist\u00f3ria do N\u00facleo de Terra e Habita\u00e7\u00e3o e a luta contra a remo\u00e7\u00e3o de favelas no Rio de Janeiro (2007\u20132011)\u00a0<\/em>(Editora Revan, 2016).<\/p>\n

Videos Cited Above in Text:
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