{"id":5487,"date":"2012-10-10T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=5487"},"modified":"2016-02-18T10:06:34","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T13:06:34","slug":"curicica-weighs-in-on-morar-carioca-roles-and-obligations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=5487","title":{"rendered":"Curicica Weighs in on Morar Carioca Roles and Obligations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>
The Quadra de Samba was occupied by a Globo film crew for the night, so Curicica-area residents and Morar Carioca staffers gathered outside a local restaurant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last Monday night in Curicica<\/a>, Jacarepagu\u00e1, in Rio’s West Zone, Carlos Brand\u00e3o held up three blue circles cut from construction paper. \u201cCity government,\u201d he announced to the thirty people seated encircling him on a restaurant patio.<\/p>\n

One woman said tentatively, \u201cMedium?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, big, big!\u201d chimed in several others.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s talk about it,\u201d said Brand\u00e3o. \u201cYou all indeed pay part of the budget for the city government.\u201d Although they did not discuss the specifics, Curicica favela residents pay various combinations of income and property tax \u2013\u00a0so they agreed with Brand\u00e3o and moved to the topic of how beholden the city government was to providing improvements to the community. Eventually they decided the city had a large obligation, and so Brand\u00e3o wrote \u201cPrefeitura\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(City Hall) on a large blue circle in permanent marker and pasted it onto a paper chart he was creating on the wall.<\/p>\n

Brand\u00e3o works for ISER<\/a>, a non-governmental human rights organization, but he was brought in to lead the meeting by the city\u2019s Morar Carioca<\/a> infrastructure upgrading program. Since its launch in 2010, Morar Carioca has pledged to introduce\u00a0a more participatory element to construction projects that have been arriving in Rio\u2019s favelas for the past sixty years<\/a>. It\u2019s still the beginning of the process here in Curicica. Construction is not scheduled to start for a few months; this is the third public meeting thus far.<\/p>\n

This meeting did not delve into the specific. Residents who came wondering if their particular street would get lighting installed left without an answer. Instead, the group engaged in a more theoretical discussion about their roles in the upcoming process. Their roles would be important, Brand\u00e3o emphasized. He began the evening having everyone go around in a circle, saying their name, their community, how many years they had lived there, and their occupation. People had come from Asa Branca, Vila Calmete, Abandiana, and Village Campos de Paz (known to the government as Vila Uni\u00e3o). They were bakers, truck drivers, business administrators, and one president and one vice-president of community Residents\u2019 Associations. The longest period of residency in the area was 33 years; the shortest, eleven.<\/p>\n

Brand\u00e3o asked about the original founding of the communities, and residents described the establishment of the first favela in Curicica in the early 1980s by workers on construction sites in the early days of Barra da Tijuca. The process of real estate development still heavily characterizes the area, where dusty new roads separate swamps from condominiums and the occasional monumental sporting arena.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Carlos Brand\u00e3o, facilitator for the evening, works in an ISER program called Justi\u00e7a Com\u00fanitaria.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2009, Asa Branca Resident Association President Carlos Alberto \u201cBezerra\u201d Costa\u00a0wrote a letter<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Prefeitura<\/em>\u00a0requesting public works in Curicica. Three years later we sat in open discussion about the influence of the upcoming World Cup and Olympics on the upgrades\u2014it would not be happening, everyone agreed, were the communities not very near the site of the future Olympic Village. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean we should reject the construction,\u201d said one resident. Far from it, the group considered the approach of the construction a starting point for the evening of suggestions.<\/p>\n

After the introductions, Brand\u00e3o passed out green slips of paper and pens to everyone present. \u201cThink of your ideal community, as you would imagine it in your dreams,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is one word that describes it?\u201d Everyone wrote silently and then handed the slips of paper to a uniformed Morar Carioca attendant. Brand\u00e3o had taped a large sheet of paper to the restaurant exterior that made a wall behind him. He pasted people\u2019s adjectives in columns on the left, reading them aloud: \u201cLeisure\u2026Comfort\u2026Clean\u2026.Regularization\u2026Education\u2026.Culture.\u201d The group agreed that one of the best things about Curicica’s communities was their\u00a0strong sense of community<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next, Brand\u00e3o repeated the exercise having people write down a few challenges the communities faced and circling the one they deemed most important. He pasted them up on the right. More than half listed better sanitation as the most important thing to be addressed; others listed security and accessibility. Then, in the middle, Brand\u00e3o had participants choose the size of blue circle that corresponded to the degree of responsibility various groups\u2014such as the national, state, and local governments, the Residents\u2019 Associations, and the residents themselves\u2014had for addressing these issues.<\/p>\n

The discussion this prompted was a long one. When comments died down, Brand\u00e3o suggested the group consider the role of a few actors they didn\u2019t think of immediately. One was the justice system\u2014Brand\u00e3o encouraged residents to know their rights throughout this process, and Bezerra followed up telling residents to personally track projects near their homes. Another was fee-for-service utility companies such as Light for electricity and CEDAE for water and sewerage. Occasionally the thoughtful tone gave way to jokes, with the Asa Branca section of the circle being told to calm down more than once, and later on, a few people speculating about what they were missing on that night\u2019s episode of Avenida Brasil. <\/em>Talk became most serious when several residents said their greatest fear was that people would face removal as was happening in nearby Vila Aut\u00f3dromo<\/a>. Indeed, a portion of the Bus Rapid Transit line TransOl\u00edmpica is currently set to run<\/a>\u00a0through Vila Uni\u00e3o, a Curicica favela.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Another sponsor of the event was Ibase, a nongovernmental organization that promotes active citizenship.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Brand\u00e3o did not know whether such removals would occur, but encouraged residents that their opinions would be heard if they kept participating in the planning process. Morar Carioca staffers assured the group they would inform community leaders of the next forum. The staffers did not collect any formal recommendations based on the evening\u2019s discussion\u2014diagnostic drawings for the project were already announced by the architecture firm in a previous, private meeting<\/a>\u2014but their message was one of general availability to residents. Brand\u00e3o reminded the group that it was important both to continue debating these issues and to remain pragmatic. \u201cYou have to work with the relationships and the resources that you have. You can\u2019t put makeup on them,” he said.<\/p>\n

Facilitation meetings like this, of course, are easy to carry out when topics remain abstract. This is the first early-stage participatory meeting Brand\u00e3o has directed; he said the others in Caj\u00fa and S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o went smoothly. He foresees a bumpier ride in communities where he will arrive at a later phase in the upgrading process\u2014he will be doing dispute resolution, for example, in Provid\u00eancia<\/a>, where there has been robust community protest of government actions.<\/p>\n

In Curicica, Monday night\u2019s meeting ended with the choice of a large blue circle to represent every actor in the upgrading process. The Prefeitura<\/em>, the state, the Residents\u2019 Association\u2014meeting attendees thought they all have significant responsibility for how things will proceed. So too, they agreed, with Morar Carioca staffers nodding along, did the residents themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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