{"id":64477,"date":"2021-03-02T10:01:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T13:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=64477"},"modified":"2021-03-04T09:46:44","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T12:46:44","slug":"every-train-on-the-supervia-is-a-bit-of-a-slave-ship-uprootingracism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=64477","title":{"rendered":"Every Train on the SuperVia is a Bit of a Slave Ship #UprootingRacism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This article is the latest contribution to our year-long reporting project, \u201cRooting Anti-Racism in the Favelas<\/a>: Deconstructing Social Narratives About Racism in Rio de Janeiro.\u201d Follow our\u00a0Rooting Anti-Racism in the Favelas series here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Racism is also impregnated in policies of urban mobility. What impacts does this have on the black, poor, peripheral population of Greater Rio\u2019s Baixada Fluminense?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Racism possesses several variables, it is present in practically all fields of knowledge and areas of society. It is impossible to analyze mobility racism solely under the lens of racism. What we need is to plot a brief history of a public policy that affects the lives of thousands of people every day<\/a>, especially those included in the 13 municipalities<\/a> of Greater Rio de Janeiro’s\u00a0Baixada Fluminense<\/a> region\u2014that has lived decades with a suburban rail system that tries, to no avail, to bring \u201cmodernity\u201d to this group of territories. Mistakes (d)effects, demagogy, and even the violation of rights are everyday routine<\/a> in the lives of over three million people, most of them black, poor, and peripheral. We opted to narrate their misadventures through users of the longest line of Rio’s\u00a0SuperVia<\/a> suburban rail system: the Central do Brasil-Japeri line.
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Speaking about the Baixada Fluminense<\/a> from the point of view of the trains means returning to the infancy of the country\u2019s economic development. During the first half of the 20th century, the emergence of the railway system was the springboard for dozens of stations from which towns, villages, and cities were born. Municipalities such as Nova Igua\u00e7u<\/a>, Duque de Caxias<\/a>, and Itagua\u00ed<\/a>, for instance, would not exist had it not been for the railroad. Starting with the great urban revolution that began around 1950, with the irreversible move from country to city, the growth of towns that were close to large urban centers sped up. This brought the rise of bedroom communities<\/a>\u2014a consequence of the lack of local jobs and a strong dependence on the then nation’s capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, the trains that connected these municipalities started to be called suburban trains and their passengers became the masses of workers that moved back and forth between home and work everyday, on trips that were increasingly longer and farther,\u201d writes Jos\u00e9 C\u00e1ssio Ignarra in his master\u2019s thesis<\/a>\u00a0The Process of Decentralization and Statization of the Metropolitan Train Systems in Brazil and its Impacts on the Instruments of Management and Coordination of Metropolitan Public Policies<\/em>, through the Get\u00falio Vargas Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2018, 42.5% of train-pedestrian fatalities in Brazil happened in the Greater Rio metropolitan area (91 cases). Among these victims, 82.4% were black.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lilian Barbosa was born and raised in Japeri<\/a>. A social worker, researcher, poet, and master\u2019s student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ<\/a>), she is extremely aware of what she suffered to get the undergraduate degree she dreamed of while working and needing SuperVia\u2019s trains to get around. With an estimated population of over 105,000 inhabitants<\/a>, according to data collected by Brazil’s national statistical agency, IBGE<\/a>, in the last census (2010) the municipality of Japeri possesses a single bus line and the train line as the only modes of transport to get to Rio de Janeiro proper. Exactly 61.75 km separate the two cities, covering 17 stations on a trip that takes, on average, over two hours. The inefficiency of the transportation system coming out of Japeri has resulted in many disruptions that had a direct effect on Lilian\u2019s daily life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was held back a semester due to the time I\u2019d arrive at the university because of the train delays at the beginning of the 2000s. I had to deal with a lot of prejudice, including from classmates who kept saying I should get up earlier to get to school. But what those people didn\u2019t know was that, as it was, I took the first train out. Attending university made me a trailblazer in my family. Being a black, poor, peripheral woman, I went against the statistics. Still, traveling to and from the Baixada, considering the enormous territory it covers, its diversity, and the distance between municipalities, makes the trips tiring,\u201d says Lilian.<\/p>\n

Exhaustion is similarly part of Kelly Martins\u2019 vocabulary, an administrative assistant who also lives in Japeri. At 36, she has already spent half her life depending on SuperVia trains. Physical and emotional tiredness, particularly as a result of the distances traveled, are some of the factors that weigh her down. The Covid-19 pandemic brought on the deterioration of her mental health<\/a>. Dealing with people who are constantly negligent with safety protocols<\/a>, such as wearing face masks<\/a> inside train cars, stresses her out. Kelly also identifies the racism of the railroad system.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis is a mode of public transport in which racism is everywhere. From the passengers, to the informal vendors. Almost all are black. You can actually make an analogy with slavery. Some time ago, trains had a device that prevented people from falling down, which were the ‘pacifiers’ (large metal rings on which standing passengers held on and tried to balance themselves during the bumps of the long journeys). That, to me, is the slave quarters themselves. If you consider that you are on a crowded train, unable to move properly, with people bumping into you after a tiring day at work, often dying of heat without the comfort of air conditioning, it\u2019s not much different from a slave ship. I can’t see much of a difference,” says Kelly.<\/p>\n

But is this analogy an exaggeration? Is it possible to make a comparison, even if metaphorical, between Rio de Janeiro’s public transport railway network and one of the most perverse forms of the diaspora (the forced dispersion of a people from their territory of origin) known to mankind? If we were to focus on a more contemporary look at the SuperVia trains, it is possible that one improvement or another could be considered “satisfactory” nowadays. The trains are cleaner, the doors actually close, for example. But let us focus on one of the most obvious indicators of this controversy: overcrowding. It is clear that the extent of all the forms of cruelty imposed on the enslaved populations coming from African countries from the 15th century on is stomach-churning in terms of the proportionality of physical and psychological damages. However, when talking about “space optimization” on slave ships, the similarities are more plausible. If on slave ships, entire families were subjected to degrading environmental aberrations, this was due, among other evils, to the minimal conditions to fit the largest possible number of slaves.<\/p>\n

SuperVia has never chained, tortured, or thrown dying passengers to the rails during its train rides as was the case on those death ships (though they have struck them with whips<\/a>). But it is clear that for decades before privatization in 2007, the scene was dramatically chaotic and dangerous. Look at any archival image from before the new operator ran the railroad to see that, metaphors aside, crowded black bodies heading to work were routine. In 2013, six years after the rail network changed hands and became privately managed, a story in the Extra<\/em> newspaper reported<\/a>, for example, that “a man fell off a SuperVia train this Friday morning, at the Vila Militar station, in Rio’s West Zone. The car was overcrowded. The man\u2014who allegedly boarded in Padre Miguel\u2014was hanging from the door and unable to hold on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Muito cheio \u00f3 trem Japeri olhar isso pic.twitter.com\/oghEl3vN1e<\/a><\/p>\n

— S\u00e9rgio Fernandes (@SrgioFe59592225) July 22, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n