{"id":4665,"date":"2012-08-22T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=4665"},"modified":"2016-02-11T10:41:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T13:41:42","slug":"curicica-part-1-occupying-mobilizing-building-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=4665","title":{"rendered":"Curicica (Part 1): Occupying, Mobilizing, Building Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This is the first of four articles<\/a> about the cluster of favelas in Curicica<\/a>, Jacarepagu\u00e1, that are awaiting urban integration projects through the Morar Carioca<\/a>\u00a0upgrading program.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“There’s never been violence here.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never even thought of the word before they started using it to describe me,\u201d said Regina S\u00f4nia Gomes Baptista, known by S\u00f4nia, ex-president of Vila Uni\u00e3o da Curicica, unfolding a newspaper as she stepped out to rejoin us in her sunlit front porch.\u00a0There, on brown-tinted paper that had been nibbled at the corners by age, stood a younger S\u00f4nia in front a younger Vila Uni\u00e3o, her son quasi-naked in her arms. And that word, in bold letters below: \u201cleader.\u201d<\/p>\n

The surrounding text detailed the emergence of favela communities in Jacarepagu\u00e1 beginning in 1982. The headline: \u201cCanal separates who pays and who doesn’t pay taxes in Curicica.” \u00a0But such simplification overlooks the spectrum of motivations and the scarcity of alternatives that gave birth to communities like Vila Uni\u00e3o.<\/p>\n

Over coffee and biscuits, she told stories of life before the occupation, of too much money sacrificed for the most basic necessities, and of violent episodes that surged from the dearth of opportunities in the region. \u201cNow there’s none of that,\u201d she said. \u201cThere’s never been violence here. It’s a peaceful community we live in.\u201d Vila Uni\u00e3o and its neighbors are among a minority of favelas in Rio that are run neither by vigilante militias or drug traffickers. They are community-managed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet’s get to work, friend.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"There was nothing here at the beginning, S\u00f4nia explained to me \u2013 just empty space and municipal plans to build an additional hospital on a fraction of the land. But the demand for housing during the era was overwhelming. Edson ‘Pitimbu’ Ribeiro, president of the Resident’s Association of Vila Pitimbu, spoke of the disconnect between people’s priorities and the plans of City Hall: \u201cThere was a space here (where Vila Pitimbu is today) that was set to become a plaza or a school, but there were already various schools and plazas in the area. The necessity of living<\/em> was our first priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City said we couldn’t build anything here, but one day, I came by and people were dividing the land between themselves and starting to build,\u201d said S\u00f4nia. Renildo, president of the nearby community of Abadiana, recalled the spirit of collective action that marked that era: \u201cLet’s trade materials and get to work, alright, friend?\u201d<\/p>\n

The movement spread and gained momentum in little time. According to the article S\u00f4nia showed us, 20 such occupations occurred in the neighborhood of Jacarepagu\u00e1 between 1982 and 1986. But none of it came easily; building a community from the ground up came with obstacles that many weren’t ready to tackle. \u201cWhen I came here,\u201d said Ribeiro, \u201ceverything was already occupied. But someone gave up and passed his land on to me, and from there I started to build a wooden shack of my own. Everyone started with a wooden shack then, naked and uncemented.\u201d Everything started then, from the simplest materials, from wooden shelters and the beginnings of a brick foundation that residents had started to lay around them.<\/p>\n

\"VilaLooking at the area where Abadiana, Vila Uni\u00e3o, and Vila Pitimbu are located now, it’s difficult to imagine its bare beginnings just a few decades back. The houses are solid and cemented, with colorful fa\u00e7ades that greet visitors into the warmly lit, vividly tiled spaces within. The buzz of construction, though less prominent now that many living necessities are in order, continues. Residents seek constant improvement. \u201cThis is about two years old,\u201d said Renildo of the building to the right of where I entered Abadiana. \u201cAnd this project of laying concrete on our main road started just under four years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this,\u201d he said, \u201cis the work of the people who live here. And everything was organized by the Resident’s Association.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed to organize.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cAt the time,\u201d said Edson Ribeiro, \u201cwhen all those occupations were happening in Jacarepagu\u00e1, the Prefeitura (city government) would come and remove people from their houses. So what we had to do was get together in the same way that we occupied this land. We needed to organize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ribeiro is a powerful personality from the first glance. Our introduction was quickly followed by a blaring musical promotion announcing his candidacy for City Council, and our interview was marked with frank and frequent questions on his part about the intentions of my work. It’s fitting, then, that he would lead this process of mobilization in his own community of Vila Pitimbu. With the help of the Federation of Associations of Favelas in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAFERJ), a board of directors was formed, a constitution was drafted, and efforts began in order to acquire legal ownership of the land the community had occupied.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis area was set to be a school and a plaza, and so the land had to be cleared out,\u201d he said. \u201cWe needed to separate ourselves from the area of the municipality.\u201d For 10 years, Ribeiro spearheaded this work, contacting the city government and communicating the population’s desires for legal ownership and land title. Eventually, in 1996, the process was finished: the city government called the residents of Vila Pitimbu to sign their documents. \u201cThey said we could keep our houses,\u201d said Ribeiro. \u201cWe had to pay the government for the land for 8 years, but it was cheap then: just 18 or 20 reais a month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VillageThe story is similar in Village Campo da Paz, a community that started when an old factory went bankrupt and was abandoned and afterwards occupied. \u201cThe municipality tried to take us out, to dispossess us,\u201d said Resident’s Association president Lindinalva da Silva. \u201cBut eventually we were able to keep our land. Everyone who wanted to stay had to pay the Prefeitura.\u201d From those beginnings, the Association has grown to implement sanitation, water, telephone lines, and electricity throughout the community. \u201cWe grow more and more everyday,\u201d she said. \u201cBut all of it is done by the Association and the community members.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vila Uni\u00e3o hasn’t had the same luck in terms of land title. Though the City has, until recently, allowed the community to stay where they’ve settled, S\u00f4nia said: \u201cWe want to legalize our land rights, but so far, we haven’t been able to. The land still legally belongs to city government. They can let us stay, or they can take it away.\u201d Faced with an uncooperative governing body, the Resident’s Association of Vila Uni\u00e3o has focused on providing the necessities they’re able to provide.<\/p>\n

S\u00f4nia spoke of the struggles that accompanied a growing community in the absence of public services: \u201cWe arranged a mutir\u00e3o<\/em><\/a> (collective community action) to pull water from the city’s system. Before that, people had to carry water in from outside. But as we grew, the water wasn’t enough, and so we asked the Prefeitura to legalize the water so everyone could have access to it.\u201d The requests, however, went ignored. More mutir\u00f5es were thus arranged to serve the growing population. “Now we have water coming in from here, from there, from everywhere!\u201d she said, giggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not a question of asking because we’ve already asked,\u201d said S\u00f4nia. \u201cIt’s a question of survival. Imagine a community without water. Everything would stop.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat comes with the most sacrifice.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cI had no ambitions of leadership at the start,\u201d S\u00f4nia said with a smile. \u201cI just liked to talk to people, to communicate, to help get things going by connecting people’s efforts to each other. And that ended up being crucial.\u201d You can always hear that smile in the cadence of her speech, which is pointed but gentle: a perfect symbol of the strength, optimism, and stubborn faith that continue to power the trajectories of Vila Uni\u00e3o and the communities that surround it.<\/p>\n

It’s necessity that created these communities, and it’s due to the weight of inequality and negligence that difficult measures had to be taken to ensure the well-being of those inhabiting them. The life that the era offered for those excluded from a small circle of privilege was one of much uncertainty and scarce opportunity. They decided, then, to build their own opportunities. Their own neighborhoods, their own houses, their own lives.<\/p>\n

And none of it came easy \u2013 but in the end, said S\u00f4nia, \u201cwhat comes with the most sacrifice is also the most valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the first of 4 articles about the cluster of favelas in Curicica, Jacarepagu\u00e1, Rio de Janeiro prior to upgrading through the City’s Morar Carioca program. The next article will examine the threat of removal that some of these communities are facing with the construction of the TransOl\u00edmpica Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line.<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to see more photos of the communities featured in this series, or watch the slideshow below:<\/em>
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Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas This is the first of four articles about the cluster of favelas in Curicica, Jacarepagu\u00e1, that are awaiting urban integration projects through the Morar Carioca\u00a0upgrading program. “There’s never been violence here.” […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4689,"comment_status":"open","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":[1284,329,328],"tags":[584,219,258,581,188,569,129,147,218,1292,103,583,592,585,21],"writer":[524],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-interviews-profiles","8":"category-solutions","9":"category-understanding-rio","10":"tag-abadiana","11":"tag-collective-action","12":"tag-community-solution","13":"tag-curicica","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-jacarepagua","16":"tag-leadership","17":"tag-morar-carioca","18":"tag-mutirao","19":"tag-organizing","20":"tag-profile","21":"tag-vila-pitimbu","22":"tag-vila-uniao-de-curicica","23":"tag-village-campo-da-paz","24":"tag-west-zone","25":"writer-rexy-dorado"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}