A quick video of street celebrations in Rio during Brazil’s victory over Colombia in the quarterfinals.
Category Archives: Rio de Janeiro
Climbing Dois Irmãos (Video)
A short video of our journey up one of Rio’s most dramatic peaks.
Music:
Sonida del Sol ft. Ryan Herr & Saqi by The Polish Ambassador.
Strange Days in the River of January
We have been away for two weeks now, and I am beginning to get comfortable with feeling like an alien on Earth. Things are very different here. Red lights don’t mean stop, they mean stop if you want, otherwise dodge the pedestrian. I have not worn a jacket since I left California. Nothing is in English, I can’t even understand how to use a washing machine because it’s in Portuguese. The Subway is not a subway, it’s a tiny box that hundreds of people squeeze into and pray for a safe journey as they shoot through the cavernous tunnels below Rio. There are so many people here, it’s bewildering. Gunshots, fireworks and the cheering from fanatic fans all combine to infect you with enough energy to want to roam around favelas, dodging potholes and gaping at gutted brick buildings. Before I go to sleep, I look out the window and wonder if I am still on the same planet.
Today I woke up to a foreign land that I believed was only a dream. I stood in absolute silence, staring at a landscape that was exotic and strange as far as the eye could see. Palm trees, Banana plants, Mango trees; trees that are every shade of green, except for my comfortable Pine or Eucalyptus grow wherever they can thrive, which seems to be everywhere. Buildings composed of brick and sheet metal huddle to support each other through the thick humidity and relentless heat. The air smells of dirt, gasoline and sweat. The streets are arteries congested with trash and gravel, always packed with cars and trucks, groaning like lumbering giants struggling to bear their loads of sugarcane, gasoline, water, cement, people and whatever else workers manage to strap down, by whatever means necessary. Motorcycles zip between trucks and buses, buzzing by mere inches, never flinching, always looking for the next gap to slip into. No helmets; flip flops and t-shirts are all you need if you’re a local. The bus drivers are the most insane people I have ever seen entrusted with a public service occupation. These men and women can make a manual transmission sing like a baritone with Leukemia. I’ve never been a religious person but after my first time on a bus in Brazil, I had found my faith; not in a God, but in the hands of every bus driver who navigates through the chaos, and still manages to have a conversation with some passengers about whether or not Brazil will win the World Cup.
The World Cup has been underway for a week now, and we have watched most of the games from Copacabana. We’ve seen the Brazilians dance all night when they won their opening game against Croatia, witnessed Chileans losing their minds when they beat Australia, saw the Argentinians light flares when they barely stole a win from Bosnia, gasped at the Spanish losing to Holland, and stood in fear as Germany delivered a crushing blow to Portugal, goal after goal. When the USA played Ghana, the rest of the world doubted our men on the pitch. A Ghana fan approached Nick and I and asked, “Do you really think you can win?” 30 seconds into that game, he was asking himself the same question.
That night, the chanting in the streets of Rio had changed, it was our night, and every American was singing the same anthem,
“I believe that we just won”
Brazil is Not Copacabana
Patrick joined us in the living room as we kicked back and watched the end of the friendly between Fluminsense and Italy. As we cracked open a couple nearly frozen Antarctica beers, he explained that he usually doesn’t drink beer, however he was growing anxious about upcoming protests and World Cup. On Tuesday a group of Indios are planning to retake Aldeia Maracanã, a castle like building adjacent to Maracanã Stadium. They were forcibly removed in 2013 and relocated in preparation for the World Cup. The government intended to build a shopping center on the site, but they have been lagging so far behind in construction that the building is still standing.
As Patrick rolled another long joint to calm his nerves, he mentioned that the Indians were not the only people forcibly removed from the area around Maracanã in preparation for the World Cup. In fact, over 1000 families had been kicked out of the Favela do Metrô, the neighborhood located below where we are staying and the stadium. The government wanted to kick more people out to build a giant parking lot, but some community members fought back and won the right to remain in their homes. The government sidestepped the issue by building a unnecessarily gigantic metro stop and a overpass, accepting that if they can’t demolish the whole neighborhood they can at least block tourist from seeing it.
When a families home is destroyed, the government relocates them to outskirts of Rio, areas “dominated by paramilitary groups. made up of crazed firefighters and police officers. It’s like a concentration camp, no schools, no nothing, just forrest all around.”
This is not an isolated incident, all across Rio the government is demolishing neighborhoods,constructing unnecessary highways and noise barriers to create the illusion that Rio is just Copacabana in preparation for the World Cup and Olympics. They are spending billions of dollars to fuck over the poor in Rio instead of using the money to improve social services in underserved communities. Pacification Police (UPP) have invaded the favelas closest to tourist areas. Although the came to bring peace, all they brought was violence and life under a military occupation.
In 2007 there were 20,000 police in Rio, now there are 100,000. Police are stationed on every corner, but it is as dangerous as it has ever been. The UPP routinely get high on cocaine at night and shoot people with cellphones believing that they are armed.
Brazil did not have a culture of protest, however Rio’s residents are quickly realizing that increased enforcement is not the way to go and the resentment and protests are growing rapidly. During the Confederations Cup last year, a preparatory tournament for the World Cup, what started out as a 200 person protest over increased bus fares grew into movement of 1 million strong in just 20 days. It opened many people’s eyes to the injustices of the government and the protest movement has been amplifying ever since.
Hours and joints kept passing by as we watched Patricks crazy videos of the protests in Rio. Eventually we ran out of beer and decided to hit up the pizzeria on the corner. As we stepped out of the house, the cop who lives next door gave Patrick a dirty look. Patrick had decided to rock a shirt with the World Cup logo, but instead of a ball, the football player is kicking a bomb. Underneath it says ‘fuck the World Cup’. The lady working at the pizza place told Patrick come by during the World Cup, because they’ll have specials and open up earlier than usual. “I’ll be filming the protests,” Patrick responded, “you should have a special that when you buy a pizza you enter to win a gas mask.”
Patrick has been filming with black bloc protesters for the last seven years. His production company is the biggest one of its kind in Brazil showing the struggle from the people’s perspective. He is always at the protest’s front lines, getting the most insane footage and producing journalistic videos, posting them online the same day, and selling the footage to new agencies around the world. If you are looking for protest footage or connections in Rio, he’s the only guy to talk to. He has is no competition. Now he pays four people to film here in Rio and two in Sao Paulo.
There is an unbelievable amount of pressure on the Brazil team to win the World Cup. If they are kicked out early Rio will explode in anger. The government must be praying frantically for a win so that all the destruction and pain caused by the World Cup can somehow be justified and the country doesn’t plummet into chaos.
Rio’s Police Have the Good Shit
We made it! Safe, exhausted and excited, we are no longer floating thousands of miles in the sky, waiting for the captain to land. We are now living within the creature they call, the Cidade Maravilhosa (Marvelous city). It’s hard to say what makes the city so marvelous. It is an incredible combination of the people, the geography, the climate, the architecture, the festivals, the list can go on forever. At the top of this list would be something I will never forget; the first impression that our host, Patrick Granja, made upon us when we first arrived on his doorstep. Patrick is a remarkable person who’s deeply involved with fighting corruption and documenting the brutal tactics that the police force have been using on the poorest people here in Rio. His passion, it would seem is to give a voice to those who are beaten down into silence, to put a name with the unidentified bodies that are left in the streets after police “pacify” a favela. He found the time in his busy schedule to give us a ride to Copacabana, and I am so glad he did. It turned to be a ride I will always remember.
We started out in his hatchback from Maracana Stadium and drove through the district of Lapa. Outside of Maracana Stadium, Patrick told us of his memories going to the old stadium, before it was remodeled for the World Cup. How the seats were packed with the local people, and the tickets were affordable enough, even for the poorest of families. Where they sat didn’t matter, it was the love of the game that brought everyone together. I found it strange then, that most of the graffiti in Rio didn’t depict a love of the upcoming World Cup, rather, they expressed a clear discontent about the event. When I brought it up to Patrick, he wasn’t surprised, instead he was in agreement. The resentment to the World Cup had nothing to do with soccer, or any lack of love for the sport. This is a country that worships its players, they put people like Pele next to god in their hearts.
It was the elite police forces that had been assembled from all over Brazil, and were going around Rio to stomp out criminal activity that was making the locals give up on their love for soccer. In a massive effort to make the city safer for the huge influx of tourists who will be making their to Rio in less than a week, the Government has started to “pacify” the most dangerous parts of the city by sending in their most highly trained squads of riot police to root out the criminals they believe will harm the image of the city. This makes things tough for the people who live in those neighborhoods and aren’t participating in any criminal activity.
The people have started protesting intensely, and the police have responded with brute force, firing live rounds into protests, beating anyone who doesn’t stand down, and violently punishing anyone who publishes material that incriminates them. Patrick and his crew are literally on the front line, laying down their lives to try and get attention to the subject. In spite of the danger he lives in, he still had a sense of humor. There is a joke, according to Patrick, regarding the tools that this new police force uses. Before the riot police began turning protests into warzones, the local police force was using expired tear gas to disperse the crowds. Tear gas becomes very dangerous once it passes it’s expiration date, and the effects of it can cause far worse symptoms than it usually would, in some cases, it can kill. According to Patrick, when the new Federal police force came in with their tear gas, he noticed that they weren’t affected by it. He joked with his friends that only the local police had “the good shit” or the expired and lethal tear gas that they had grown accustomed to. He did say that one perk of the newer gas was that while protesting, he and his friends noticed feeling a little high, a welcome relief in the midst of flash bangs and bullets raining over them. It must have been the effects of the new tear gas that inspired him, but while we were sitting in traffic, surrounded by cars, motorcycles and people all weaving in and around one another,
Patrick decided to share his stock of Paraguayan Ganja. I sat next to him in the passenger seat, a bit nervous about smoking it because of a police car that was right in front of us. This, he told us, was no problem. The police don’t care about marijuana in Rio, because they don’t make any money off it anymore. New legislation requires police who catch you with it to bring you into the station, confiscate your Lambsbread and have you sign a form that states that you will no longer use the substance. Prior to this law, the Police would take your sweet, sweet, cheba, throw it away, then threaten you with jail time, or worse, if you didn’t grease the wheels for them with some cash. Now, they have nothing to blackmail people with, and no means of making money, so why bother with arresting anyone? Corruption in this city sometimes works out in our favor.
Patrick was in the middle of telling us stories of injuries he suffered over years of filming protests when he noticed that the traffic on the way to Copacabana was intensifying, a sign he took to mean that the tunnel that would take us there had been shut down due to a protest put on by the local teachers. He dropped us off nearby and hurried over to film what he could of the protest. Suddenly it was real. We were in the city, surrounded by the sounds of Rio dancing around us, like an orchestra composed of Rio’s urban musicians, from cars honking indiscriminately to, engines struggling to propel their cargo another mile, coughing and hacking their way through winding streets, all with the unique musical sound of Brazilian Portuguese flowing in the background. This is an enchanted land, as old as it is beautiful, as lovely as the people who live and work on it’s wonderful landscape.
We finally sat on the beach of Copacabana, our heads filled with stories of corruption and brutality, our eyes lost on the perfect white sands and warm waters of Rio de Janheiro; a paradise surrounded with colossal mountains that break the clouds. My eyes were transfixed upon Cristo Redentor, as he stands atop the highest peak overlooking the city. The ruler of a utopia, and the witness to a purgatory all at once, his arms outstretched as the winds drive painful memories into the past, and bring with them hope that this land can forever remain what it was meant to be: Paradise.