A weekend of mob robberies on Rio’s beaches saw some Zona Sul residents attempt to take the law into their own hands. But the “crime mobs”, the vigilantes, and the social divisions that underpin them are nothing new, as James Young explains. 

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

Despite the start of the summer season and the giant Rock in Rio music festival drawing flocks of foreign and domestic tourists to Rio de Janeiro, the beaches of the Cidade Maravilhosa were reportedly quieter than usual this weekend.

Perhaps it was because of the overcast weather. More likely and more troublingly, however, it was due to the events of the weekend before. Then, images of gangs of shirtless young men, swarming across the sands of Ipanema, Arpoador and Copacabana, stealing cell phones, cameras, jewellery and wallets, were beamed across the country. In total 61 people, many of whom were minors, were apprehended.

Following the chaos, the police brought forward the start of its Operação Verão (“Operation Summer”) stop and search operation for buses coming in from the periferia (Rio’s distant, working class suburbs) with over a thousand police officers and social workers manning 17 check points on the main access routes to the beach neighbourhoods this weekend.

With many of those involved in the robberies below the age of legal responsibility, the authorities are keen to stress the social care aspect of their operation. “What the police were trying to do was related to the vulnerability of the individuals. If a minor leaves home, 30 or 40 km from the beach, dressed in just his bathing suit, with no bus fare or money for food or drink, then this person, in my humble opinion, is in a situation of risk,” Rio de Janeiro Security Secretary José Mariano Beltrame told Brazilian TV.

Nonetheless, the idea of stopping and searching thousands of largely poor, generally dark-skinned Cariocas from the Zona Norte suburbs as they attempted to access the more affluent tourist areas of Zona Sul was a troubling reminder of the financial and social abyss that separates Brazil’s haves and have nots.

Some, including Eufrasia Souza, Coordinator for the Defence of the Rights of Children and Adolescents of Rio’s Public Defender Service, have criticised the idea of detaining people who have committed no apparent crime, and talked of a “social apartheid“.

While an expanded welfare system, economic and social development and an increased minimum wage mean much progress has been made towards greater equality in Brazil in recent years, Rio’s beach wars seemed like an echo of the problems and prejudices of the past.

Os Pobres Vão Á Praia (“The Poor Go to the Beach”), a documentary broadcast on the TV Manchete (“Headline TV”) channel in the 1990s, showed the unvarnished reality of what it was like to make the long journey from Rio’s poor outer suburbs to the beaches of Zona Sul – complete with often rowdy passengers surfing on top, or climbing in through the windows, of heaving buses.

More compelling viewing than the discomfort of the journey (accompanied by the song Nós Vamos Invadir Sua Praia (“We’re Going to Invade Your Beach”) by the band Ultraje a Rigor), however, is the reaction of the better-heeled Brazilians in the documentary.

“They’re uneducated, you can’t take people out of…the swamp and take them to Copacabana. I can’t be around people who have no education…You have to charge entry…you can’t put someone well-dressed from Ipanema, someone educated…and put them in the middle of people who aren’t educated, who are rude, who are going to eat farofa and chicken…you’d die of disgust, it’s horrible,” says one appalled young woman. “It’s horrific that they’re from my country…they’re not Brazilians, they’re a sub-race,” she continues, as the words scenes of explicit prejudice flash on the screen.

The Poor Go to the Beach was reposted on YouTube on 27^th September, a few days after the beaches of Rio had been invaded once again, albeit at times in a more criminal, violent fashion. “You can see that nothing has changed in Rio. We made programmes about arrastões (“crime mobs”), the war between the classes, all these phenomena, the battle against the drugs trade, police corruption. Some people think that all this started today, but it’s been like this for dozens of years and the documentary shows that,” said Nelson Hoineff, the director of the Documento Especial series, of which the programme was part.

But the arrastões were perhaps not even the most troubling story of Rio’s violent weekend. That came later in the afternoon, when reports emerged of groups of men, mainly from Zona Sul gyms and combat/martial arts clubs, forming vigilante gangs and going off in search of the enemy – namely young men or boys from the poorer suburbs.

“We’re looking for kids in cheap flip-flops, who look like they haven’t got R$1 in their pockets,” said one of the vigilantes. “It’s obvious that they’re here to steal,” said another, Antônio, a shop worker from Copacabana. “If they want terror, we’ll give them terror. It’s self-defence.” On at least one bus, passengers were forced to smash a window to escape the justiceiros (“vigilantes” in English – interestingly, the word vigilante in Portuguese usually means security guard).

Such vigilante action has becoming alarmingly common in Brazil in recent years – or else it has always been there, but has simply become more visible in the smartphone and internet era. In February last year a 15-year-old boy was beaten, stripped naked and chained to a post in the Flamengo neighbourhood of Rio, while 29-year-old Cledenilson Pereira da Silva, suspected of robbing a local bar, was also stripped naked and tied to a lamppost before being beaten to death in São Luis in the northern state of Maranhão in July this year. Similar incidents have been registered in other parts of the country, from the state of Espirito Santo, adjacent to Rio de Janeiro, to Piauí in the north-east.

Such actions reflect many of the issues that trouble Brazilian society – the fear that one may become a victim of crime, in a country where there are over 50,000 murders a year; the loathing of criminals and, by association, the social groups from which it is assumed they come; and the sense of both impotence and rage that stems from the inability of the police or government to do anything about the problem.

The culture of justiceiros has sparked much debate. “It’s shocking to see a scene as deplorable as this in 2014. It’s barbaric. If he’s a criminal, arrest him,” said Rio resident Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, who found the boy chained to the lamppost in Flamengo last year.

Many have taken a different stance, however, including Rachel Sheherazade, the anchor of the “SBT Brasil” news programme on one of Brazil’s biggest TV networks. “This counter-attack is what I call the collective self-defence of a society without a government, against a state of violence without limit. And for the human rights defenders who took pity on the little thief chained to the post, I launch a campaign: do yourself and Brazil a favour – adopt a criminal.” The comments sections of articles about such cases, meanwhile, are inevitably filled with Bandido bom é bandido morto style messages – “the only good bandit is a dead bandit”.

Rio’s beach justiceiros, meanwhile, are nothing new. “S”, a 45-year-old Copacabana resident and former Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, described the situation in the 1990s to Vice Brazil. “If there was an arrastão, we’d retaliate, and obviously we’d kick their asses, because the kids from the periferia couldn’t handle a team of 20 or 30 trained fighters. But we weren’t vigilantes. It was self-defence.” The name for such fighters at the time, according to Vice, was “pit-boy”.

The economic divisions, fear and loathing of social classes other than one’s own, “crime mobs” and vigilantes that underpin and surround Rio’s beach violence, then, are nothing new. While Brazil has made some progress towards a more equal society in recent years, it seems there is still a long way to go.

Directors of the beautiful Casa Daros art space stunned Rio when they announced it would shut its doors just two years after opening. Does this forebode a dark period for cultural projects as the city is pounded by recession and scandal?

By Nathan Walters
Rio de Janeiro

A tragedy has struck Rio de Janeiro, and unfortunately, it seems to be part of a larger pattern. Botafogo’s exquisite Casa Daros art space will close this December after only two years of exhibitions, despite the fact that tens of millions were spent refurbishing the neoclassical mansion. The directors blame high maintenance costs and say the decision is irrevocable, but some are still hoping for a change of heart or for some deep-pocketed investors to step up.

More than a few observers are questioning the Zurich-based Daros Collection’s real motives for closing. Some are whispering about real estate speculation, without proof for their suspicions. A few have used the closure as a starting point to discuss high labor costs, but this can’t be fully explanatory. These are a headache for any business owner in Brazil.

Across the board, low turnout, high costs, and a local economy hit especially hard by the Petrobras scandal paint a grim picture for the future of private art institutions in Rio.

The city has witnessed an encouraging expansion of cultural spaces in recent years, and Casa Daros was one of the best. A beautifully refurbished 19th-century structure, a former Catholic school for orphaned girls, would house large-scale contemporary works from Brazilian heavyweights like Vik Muniz, Ernesto Neto, and Luiz Zerbini.

Daros has one of the most impressive collections of Latin American artists, and exhibitions were as fun as they were thought-provoking. The museum seemed to always be comfortably uncrowded, but it was also common to see Botafogo’s hipsters scoping a Cildo Meireles installation alongside school kids.

As with the some of the other museums that have opened recently, such as Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Casa Daros had a strong educational agenda and sought to enhance access to contemporary art. The loss of high-quality cultural programs could compound problems that the loss of oil revenues – Rio’s main industry is petroleum, whose company Petrobras is mired in a multi-billion dollar scandal – poses for education funding in Brazil, and Rio in particular.

The project got off to a rocky start and refurbishing work proved to be more challenging than initially planned. The Daros institute sought to refurbish the space to its original splendor, and went through a painstaking process, sourcing original materials and plans. The result was magnificent.

Problems with construction work didn’t seem to deter Daros, and in a lemonade-from-lemons-gesture Muniz created the Nossa Senhora das Graças photo(pictured above), based on the seal that adorns Casa Daros’ façade, from the trash leftover from renovation.

But much here is troubling. How is it possible that a presumably highly organized group like the Daros Collection planned so poorly? Or did something else happen behind the scenes? Have costs jumped so much higher than forecasted?

The wave that Brazil had been riding for ten years has come to an end, yes, but is it really this bad? Or was the grim reality of the country’s current state not considered when the company was shelling out millions to refurbish the 12,000 square meter space?

“Times are tough now, but we Brazilians, who have seen worse times, look for creative ways to respond to the changes,” says Rio-based curator Bat Zavareze. “I don’t understand the response from Casa Daros. It’s not the apocalypse. But is a real pity because it’s a very important cultural and education space.”

The curator for the avant-garde Multiplicidade music festival, Zavareze says he is working in a much different climate than a few years ago but still finds a way to make it work. Other emerging Rio-based artists say they have seen a slowdown in the frequency of government-sponsored events, but continue to work more or less as they have in the past.

The hysteria surrounding Brazil a few years ago has been replaced by the re-emergence of old problems. Staggering corruption, violence, and economic problems have re-appeared, and that is making more than a few foreign individuals and companies nervous.

The idea that the Olympics would be followed by a great exodus of foreigners always seemed more of a joke than a reality, but a completely different outlook on Brazil’s future is prompting some to consider a real exit.

Sunday was full of surprises, and most of them dispiriting for the groups that thought they’d made gains during last year’s protests. Here’s the five biggest.

By Mauricio Savarese

1 – Marina Silva out of the run-off

From presidential front-runner to the falling star of Brazil’s politics. The former environment minister was a bad player from the start of her campaign. Not all of her demise is her fault, of course. As usually happens with third way candidates, she preached new politics and became an easy target for the left and right. But her defeat doesn’t have to do only with her rivals: she flip-flopped on gay rights, lost many of the staff that were working with her deceased former running mate Eduardo Campos, avoided openly supporting of conservative politicians, played victim too soon, failed in answering criticisms from Dilma Rousseff and Aécio Neves (who are now heading to the run-off), and failed to make Brazilians more confident about what kind of president she would become. In the end, anti-government voters left her when it became clear Aécio Neves might have a better chance of actually taking down Rousseff.

After getting roughly same vote she did in 2010, it’s hard to see her as a presidential contender again. For now, supporting Neves in the run-off is all that is left for her – and if he loses that will show her political leverage is even smaller than many expected.

2 – Increase in abstention after street protests

Street protests last year suggested new political forces would appear. That was not the case, at least at the ballot box. What was more noticeable was a rejection of candidates in general. The number of Brazilians who chose not to show up (voting here is mandatory), or cast votes for no one reached 29% this year, the highest level since 1998. This is only a small uptick, but it would be impossible to say that street protests re-energized the country politically, at least in the electoral sense.

It is hard to see Dilma Rousseff and Aécio Neves as so exciting to all the voters that went to the streets last year. And those voters are not putting forward any policies that could be embraced by the candidates. If you look at the first round results, June 2013 looks like too much ado for nothing, at least in terms of the ballot box.

As one left-leaning friend in São Paulo put it on Facebook:

“What happens in June
Stays in June.”

Or, here’s some alternate theories from Rio Gringa.

3 – Brazil’s conservative Congress

Preachers, the military, policemen…Brazil’s new Congress is has become more conservative. Almost 40% of the Congressmen are rookies, which makes for the biggest shakeup since 1998. The Worker’s Party suffered a major defeat: they lost 18 seats and will have 70 in 2015. PMDB comes right next, with 66 seats — they had 71. The most voted-for candidates in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are extremely conservative politicians Celso Russomano,  Jair Bolsonaro, and Marco Feliciano.  If Dilma Rousseff is elected, that means her reform agenda will be even more difficult to carry out. If Aécio Neves wins, there may be more reforms, but some of them could be very controversial: allowing minors to be tried as adults is one example.

Bolsonaro, above, says that the government supports gay pride marches so that it can tear apart ‘the fabric of society’ and make it easier to control the population. In other charming moments, he has praised Brazil’s military dictatorship.

4 – São Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin wins easily

There is a water crisis in Brazil’s wealthiest state. There are various corruption allegations about a cartel that operated for years in subway here. São Paulo’s military police provided, with their brutality, the spark to set off the biggest street demonstrations that the country has ever seen. Yet governor Geraldo Alckmin, who could be held accountable for all those events, breezed to re-election. He won in all cities of the state but one.

Depoliticized voters, plus a lack of enthusiasm for a Paulista third way, represented by businessman Paulo Skaf, gave the 2018 presidential hopeful a shockingly easy ride. Some analysts expected him to win – his power in the Paulista countryside is unmatched. But so easily? That was shocking.

5 – PT wins in Minas and Bahia

This was a major blow to Aécio Neves in his home state and a surprising victory in the battleground state of Bahia. The best news for Dilma Rousseff was that the gubernatorial races there ended in the first round. Taking Minas Gerais from Neves’ allies means governing Brazil’s second most important state with a close friend of hers, Fernando Pimentel. Rui Costa’s victory in Bahia keeps in PT hands a state that was on the verge of going to the opposition. None of those two results were expected a few months ago. In Costa’s case, it wasn’t expected a few days ago.

Follow Mauricio Savarese on Twitter

Drug crime has returned to some of the favelas taken over by Rio’s police in recent years, putting the ‘pacification’ program under further scrutiny. Escalating violence and accusations of human rights abuses indicate police forces may be losing control. One resident group questions the wisdom of trying to resolve the problem with more military force.

By Anna Jean Kaiser

Complexo do Alemão and Complexo da Penha, favelas in northern Rio, have recently seen a wave of shootings, four police fatalities in 30 days, and accusations of human rights abuses commited by police. Rocinha and Manguinhos, two other favelas supposedly conquered and ‘pacified’ by Rio security forces since the push started in 2009, have seen armed attacks on police stations.

In the wake of what seems to be a loss of control, Rio Governor Sergio Cabral has called upon the federal armed forces to intervene and act alongside UPP and state military police.

For five years now, foreign and domestic observers have largely praised the pacification program. But recently, it’s become clear how difficult the long-term situation will be.

The state and the residents seem to agree: combating crime in the community is arduous and the current solution is not working. But the state’s solution, that of sending in more armed forces, seems problematic for some residents, who are asking for dialogue, more participation in society, and above all, positive steps toward social justice.

In light of the escalating conflicts in Complexo do Alemão, an activist group known as “Ocupa Alemão” (Occupy Alemão) released a manifesto. Its opening line reads:

“For decades the State has not recognized the favela as an integral part of the city, denying favela residents their basic rights. Today, after three years of public security occupation in Complexo do Alemão, we see that the path to the guarantee of our civil rights is still long, as the branch of the state that most enters the favela is the armed branch.”

As the Manifesto made its way around the social networks, the state sent in the Battalion of Special Operations (BOPE) and then announced the anticipated arrival of the military.

“The current strategy of the government is centered around military force being the solution for the favela,” Thainã de Medeiros from the Ocupa Alemão movement told ‘From Brazil,’ “We do not believe that this is a good solution for either side, neither for the residents nor for the military forces… The current strategy costs lives on all sides.”

Alemão residents are caught in the middle. The very large majority of residents are working class families with no links to crime, and the effects of human rights abuses and high levels of violence are traumatizing.

After UPP officer Rodrigo de Souza Paes Leme was fatally shot in Alemão, police arrested two minors, Kleyton da Rocha Afonso and Hallam Marcilio Gonçalves, for their alleged involvement with drug trafficking and the officer’s death. Family and friends of the teenagers claimed the allegations were unjust – they had no criminal records and no proven links to drug trafficking. A peaceful protest against their incarceration turned violent, police throwing tear gas and shooting.

Some favela residents go so far as to say that life has deteriorated.

“The residents are living worse than they were before,” said Roberto Borges, the president of the Alemão Resident’s Association to Agência Brasil, “The UPP alone will not solve a public problem that has existed for decades.”

But the state continues to turn to more troops and Secretary Beltrame insists that the program is not at risk, though he does admit that there are serious problems in both Alemão and Rocinha  – noting that the situation is “very far from ideal.”

“Rio de Janeiro lived with this for 30 years and never did anything. There is no guarantee to remove all weapons from everywhere, because for 30 years the state has not done its job and society tolerated it,” he said in defense of the program.

Anna Jean Kaiser is editorial assistant in Brazil for The Guardian and freelance correspondent for outlets such as USA Today.

By Nathan Walters

On a purely aesthetic level, pixação—the spiky black glyphs that pop up at dangerously high spots on buildings and spread like a virus on any exposed stone (pixadores surface of choice)—doesn’t offer much to most viewers.

The graffiti style, which is most dominant in São Paulo, can be academically explained in a few different ways: runic inspirations, pulled from old heavy metal album covers, or unbridled Dadaist impulses. But for most people, this doesn’t make it any more palatable, which is the point. It’s the “Kilroy was here” and “f*** the police” tags reduced to an illegible signature that empowers its author because it flies in the face of society’s tastes. It’s no wonder the government and property owners despise it.

To curb the spread of pixação in Rio, the government and property owners have long been more lax in enforcing vandalism laws against graffiti artists painting colorful, generally aesthetically pleasing works that both brighten up blighted areas and serve as a buffer against pixação.

For more than two decades, this gentleman’s agreement has led to a booming graffiti scene in Rio, thrusting artists’ works onto gallery walls, garnering the admiration of foreign artists and public art enthusiasts. It also managed to block some pixadores.

With a recent decree signed by Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, the understanding between artists and the government was laid out in black and white. The new decree goes even further than a 2009 law permitting graffiti works on private property with owner’s consent; it fully legalizes urban art works on designated city property.

The new law establishes a framework wherein graffiti works will be legal on some public spaces—columns, gray walls, walls without doors or windows, skate parks and construction siding works—so long as the sites are not historically protected. Viaducts and other public facades where anti-graffiti paint have been applied will remain off limits, “because of the high cost of implementation and the need for maintenance cleaning,” according to the decree.

Eixo Rio, a quasi-governmental entity that works as a bridge between Rio’s urban youth community and city hall, will administer the law, and will be responsible for creating an 11-member CariocaGraffiti Council. The group will meet bi-monthly to discuss projects and plans to implement “Cells of Revitalization” for potential tourist attractions.

But what should have been a moment of triumph for the city’s urban artists, official recognition of years of hard work, was greeted by disdain by a large group of graffiteiros, who are worried that the government’s involvement will have a stifling effect. Over the past few weeks, tempers have flared and artists in Rio’s friendly, largely unified scene took to each other’s virtual walls to launch polemics against the decree.

“The thing is, graffiti is a ‘free form’ of art, it normally doesn’t ask for permission. So how are you going to put rules on it?” questions Lelo, a Rio-raised, São Paulo-based muralist.

One of the primary concerns with the new law is that with new, legally designated areas, enforcement will be tightened on popular, non-designated areas.

Many artists feel the new rules are about moving graffiti out of Rio’s more touristy South Zone, a move aimed to appease the hordes of tourist that will descend on the city in the coming months. Criticism of this perceived “tourist-over-locals” agenda is often lobbed at Paes, and is one of the major issues those in the graffiti community have with the new law. But it is not the the only one.

“Usually in Rio, when a law seems to be progressive or vanguardist it’s because it’s hiding real fascist intentions,” says Gustavo Coelho, a Rio-based filmmaker who directed a documentary on pixação.

Just a few days ago, workers wielding paint rollers were starting to whitewash the walls of Rio’s jockey club, the city’s answer to New York’s 5 Pointz and long-known as Rio’s best open-air graffiti gallery. Years of cultural history lost, almost.

Last year, city hall, through Eixo Rio, established an organization, #StreetArtRio, to digitally catalogue the city’s urban art treasures. The imitative is aimed, among other things, at preserving the Rio’s urban works through a massive online photo catalog. The murals that have graced the privately owned Jockey Club wall can still be seen on the site, saving viewers some sunscreen but perhaps diminishing the viewing experience.

For others, the decree, which most say was sprung on them without time for discussion, is a publicity-friendly diversion from other more serious issues confronting the prefeitura and Rio’s disgruntled youth.

“It was a great distraction maneuver by the mayor to create completely irrelevant news that occupied a large space in the media that could have been used for a much more useful discussion about the problems facing the city, like removals of entire communities, the transport mafia, education, and corrupt and unprepared police,” says Rio artist Villas, known for his colorful wooden “love birds” affixed in locations throughout Rio and beyond.

While some artists are left just with questions as to the motives and what the decree will actually achieve in practice, others are happy and willing to explore the new level of cooperation between artists and city hall.

Airá Ocrespo, a veteran of Rio’s urban arts scene, is unfazed by the criticisms, choosing instead to move forward and test the boundaries of the decree.

“This decree positively impacts society because it acknowledges that graffiti is part of the urban landscape and is a reality in the city. This is a big paradigm shift,” says Ocrespo. “Enough talking, let’s do something.”

Ocrespo’s feelings are shared by a large group of artists, predominantly from Rio’s Zona Norte and Zona Oeste, who are welcoming of the changes. For them, changing and experimenting with new arrangements is better than nothing. Whether Paes’ new decree manages to fundamentally change how graffiti is done in Rio will only be seen in the months to come. The walls will speak for themselves.

Photos by Nathan Walters

A brush with what appeared to be a shark and a large-scale beach robbery leads Dom Phillips to reflect on Rio de Janeiro, a city that despite talk of pacification, often reminds residents of a wildness lurking beneath the surface. Above, cops being ineffective in Ipanema.

By Dom Phillips

It may not have been a shark. It may have been a rêmora, the life guard said, a scavenger silver fish about a metre long that hangs around sharks.

It lurked under the fibreglass stand-up paddle board I was on for 20 minutes or so, a few hundred metres out to sea from Ipanema Beach, just by Rio de Janeiro’s famous Arpoador rocks, two Sundays ago. Long enough for the Jaws theme to start playing in my head.

On land, as at sea, there is a wildness about this city it is wise to remember. Rio de Janeiro is, quite literally, a jungle: there are snakes and monkeys in its forested hills, and tiny sagui monkeys that sprint along telegraph cables, or get fried if they misjudge it and land on electricity wires instead.

It is also a deeply violent city and for all the talk about pacification and armed police bases in the favelas, that violence is not going away. On purely anecdotal evidence, having abated in recent years, it now seems to be getting worse again.

As we sat nervously on our paddle boards a few hundred yards out to sea, on the sand a gang of small boys were beginning to opportunistically rob things here and there. Fears grew of a arrastão – literally, a dragnet, or trawler; in this context, a mass robbery that used to be common on Rio beaches, until pacification came along.

In the arrastão, a gang of thieves sweep down the beach seizing bags and wallets. As bathers flee in panic, the kids sweep up whatever they have left behind. Hence the name.

Out at sea, we debated what kind of aquatic creature was casting a cloud over a mildly adventurous Sunday afternoon paddle. I thought the fish looked like it could be a mini-shark – but I wasn’t sure. My friend Luciana Whitaker who was on the paddle board next to me got the longest look at it. She is sure it was a small shark. “When I saw the tail, I didn’t have any doubts,” she said. She also found this story – in which local media said a surfer may have been attacked by a baby shark in April in nearby Copacabana.

Whitaker is not a woman easily phased – she is a photographer who lived for ten years in Alaska, where she once faced down a polar bear, and where she returns every year to photograph the whale hunt. She has covered Rio favelas and protests extensively – as her site here shows.

In attempt to lose the fish, we hitched a lift on a nearby speedboat with the boards, hoping that if we could sail a few hundred meters we could leave it behind. The guy on the boat looked and said it was a cação – a Brazilian word for a small shark. Was it dangerous? He shrugged. We motored a few hundred metres down the beach. But back in the water, the cação was back under my board.

Meanwhile, on the beach, my girlfriend Alessandra was nervously watching the ripples of panic that spread every time the gang of boys approached somebody. Cariocas – Rio natives – like her have finely tuned survival instincts. They have grown up in a city where violent crime is a staple of life, and are constantly attuned to their surroundings.

Cariocas don’t see the same city we foreigners do. They see a map of risk. They have learnt which street not to go down, which corner to avoid at night, which passer by, or motorbike, is a little too close. All over the beach, cariocas like Alessandra were watching the boys looking for easy prey, and quietly putting their beach stuff into their bags, ready for flight if necessary, ready to stay if the danger abated.

The boys found their prey, right in front of us. A woman standing in her bikini by the water’s edge. The boy was about ten, in blue shorts. He reached up, ripped off her necklace, and sprinted off down the beach. The woman shrugged. This is Rio. What can you do?

The boys started the arrastão. The ripple of fear became a wave. This time, everybody ran. In minutes, a whole stretch of beach was empty. Police stood around clumsily, a show of force as ineffective as it was too late. Beach stalls owners stalked around with staves of wood or umbrella poles, furious at two good hours of lucrative Sunday afternoon business that had just run away. The boys had melted away.

Many cariocas argue that the favela pacification programme credited with reducing Rio’s crime rates has failed to offer employment alternatives to those young men who lost their income when the armed police presence forced the drug trade either underground, or somewhere else.

One is a friend called Claudia, born and bred in a Rio suburb. She works for an NGO that offers artistic training to teenagers and young adults from favelas. I have changed her name at her request. Claudia believes street robberies are increasing. She has suffered two violent assaults in recent months.

The first time was at a station where you can rent bicycles via Itaú Bank at a minimal price. Claudia was there with a friend and was on a brand new bicycle she had just bought. She spotted the three youths approaching and felt a twinge of instinctive carioca fear. She told herself she was being paranoid. It was early evening, not even dark.

The boys produced a knife and stole her bike. Shaken, she flagged down a passing police car. The cops shrugged. This is Rio. What can you do?

I’ve heard a half dozen stories like this, and worse, over the last year. There have been a couple of similar assaults by small boys on the beach recently. Claudia’s second robbery was three Sundays ago. She was getting out of a friend’s car in front of her building in Flamengo, about 8pm at night, when a youth approached with a gun. He told them to get out of the car. As the driver clicked off the central locking, the thief tensed in fear and cocked his trigger. They got out, trembling. He took the car and sped off.

This time the police were at the crime scene in five minutes. They gave chase. Shots were exchanged – one went through the windscreen of a police car, missing an officer’s head by centimetres. The thief abandoned the car and ran into the nearby Aterro do Flamengo park.

I was flying through the Aterro do Flamengo on an Itaú bike at the same moment – flying because after dark a different kind of wildlife gathers in the trees: men, presumably looking for anonymous gay sex. I saw the policeman with his gun in his hand, the police car with the light flashing, the crowd of morbid onlookers following, and decided to get out of there.

This time, they caught the thief. Cornered, on Flamengo beach, he waded into the sea hoping to swim to safety, but ran out of breath, according to this news story on the robbery.

Given what might be out to sea, that might not have been his smartest move. But this is Rio. What can you do?

Dom Phillips reports from inside Brazil’s most recent protests in Rio and talks to a ‘Black Bloc’ style protester, whose clashes with police have increasingly dominated coverage of the demonstrations and may even be scaring other protesters away. All photos Dom Phillips

By Dom Phillips

There were seven protests planned in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday – Brazilian Independence Day, which had been billed nationwide as a day of mass protest. Not one pulled more than, at most, a couple of thousand people. Sociologists and academics have been saying this week that the violence has scared off the big crowds seen in June, and that protest groups have splintered. What happened in Rio, especially given the heavy police repression that followed a huge demonstration June 20 here, would seem to bear that out.

I wasn’t on Presidente Vargas Avenue in the morning when a small group invaded the Independence Day military parade and police set of tear gas. TV Globo replayed scenes of the invasion repeatedly, along with images of people they described as ‘anarchists’ burning Brazilian and American flags at the Zumbi Monument in Central Rio.

On Saturday afternoon I was in Cinelândia, central Rio, where the steps of the city council chamber have become an impromptu protest camp over the last weeks, and passing office workers step gingerly around protestors’ tents.

A few hundred protestors were milling around, but the only sign of the demonstration due to begin at 2pm was a handful of animal rights activists, one of whom was dressed as a pink rabbit. The next big event was 5pm near Guanabara Palace, seat of state governor Sérgio Cabral’s palace.

I reached the demonstration where a couple of thousand people were gathered at the exact moment the police started firing tear gas and stun grenades. There was a panic as hundreds of people started running back down the Rua das Laranjeiras towards the Lago do Machado square.

The air was thick with gas. I’ve been tear gassed by Rio police half a dozen times at demonstrations in public places, and this was the strongest I have felt it. People reacted as they usually do: they get angry, they cry (that’s why it’s called tear gas, it stings and makes the eyes water), they scream that the police are cowards.

And some of them, usually young men, usually wearing masks, start breaking things. This time it was the glass window of a bank foyer, where the cash machines are, a bus stop, a street light. As the crowds reached Lago do Machado, some of the masked young men began mingling with the traffic, stopping cars, lighting a fire in the street.

A crowd of onlookers stood on the steps of a nearby church – some hurried off nervously, others filmed on their cell-phones. Some of the protesters began trashing the glass frames on a bus shelter that cover up advertising billboards. For ten minutes or so, as the police made their way down, there was a little pocket of anarchy on that street corner.

It did not last. Rarely do protesters actually engage in combat with police – instead they throw stones from a distance, and light fires from rubbish. The police concentrate on shows of strength – in this case, a squad of them drove around on motorbikes, others rode black police jeeps, wearing their Robocop riot gear: helmets, shields, protective rubber pads and breastplates.

The ‘anarchists’ have their uniform too: masks, black T-shirts wrapped over their heads, hooded tops, black jeans, heavy metal and punk T-shirts. Everybody calls them Black Bloc and say they are inspired by the international protest tactics of the same name.

One black-clad youth holding a crash helmet asked me if I thought trashing banks and bus-stops was valid. “It is not vandalism,” he told me. He did not want to give his name. I got out my tape recorder.

“The financial institutions abuse the rights they have to charge us. The biggest enemy of Brazilians is the banks,” he said. “Every decision the government takes is looking at banks’ profits.” Then he ducked off as riot police in helmets began firing more tear gas in our direction.

Later in Cinelândia, surrounded by cameras, another group of ‘anarchist’ youth dressed in black shouted amongst themselves as they tried to decide what to do. A hundred or so headed off towards Lapa – a popular nightlife area, stopping by a skip to pick up staves of wood as they went, which they waved triumphantly in the air while chanting. A squad of riot police hurried after them.

The scene became increasingly surreal when a woman waving a flag took it on herself to lead the riot police procession, as if it was a carnival parade, while shouting, apropos of nothing: “Save Pope Francis!” Everybody did their best to ignore her: she did not fit into the script that both sides were acting out, in a protest novela that seems to have lost the plot.

Have increasing levels of violence put Brazilians off protests? This is the question being asked this week in the Brazilian media, in posts like this from UOL, in which Michel Zaidan Filho, sociologist and professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco, said: “Now there has been a radicalization, and many people did not go because of the criminality of the protests. The majority don’t want to face police, bombs.”

Paraty, the colonial coast town near Rio, is becoming known for its festivals which are attracting more and more culturally curious Brazilians. Dom Phillips reports from MIMO, featuring the complex music appreciated here.  Above: the Rum Group with Tareq Al Nasser, from Jordan. Photos Gustavo Otero

Dom Phillips

As the 20 or so white-clad musicians in the Jordanian orchestra on stage, called the Rum Group and presided over by Tareq Al Nasser, romped through what sounded like the soundtrack to a film you couldn’t see, shadows of hula hoop dancers flickered on the white walls of the beautiful old church beside the stage.

Paraty is celebrated for its colonial architecture – and this first edition in the city of the MIMO Festival wisely made good use of it. But it is increasingly becoming known for its cultural events, each of which attracts its own distinct audience. Good news for the tourism industry on which the city depends.

Paraty’s Jazz Festival, for instance, appeals to an older demographic, like jazz festivals all over the world. The creatively-inclined flock to photography weekend Paraty em Foco (Paraty in Focus). Panama hats and pearls are big at the FLIP literary festival. A younger crowd concentrates on getting drunk at the cachaça festival. New Year’s Eve packs out the Pontal beach with axé pop for families and young couples.

MIMO slotted neatly into the “mid-30s, disposable income, culturally curious, and, in the case of the men, bearded” bracket. The festival started out as a caravan of local musicians in 2004 in Olinda, near Recife, as the Mostra Internacional de Música em Olinda. Like Paraty, it is a colonial town big on history and culture. Today MIMO is also staged in Ouro Preto, another historic city in Minas Gerais state, but this was the first time it had ventured this far south.

It was a well-organised event with proper sounds and lights and corporate sponsors that were easy enough to ignore – bar the heavily-branded shed that a cellphone operator inexplicably constructed in front of a screen – and all shows are free, though some of the events held in indoor venues like churches require you to get a free ticket beforehand. And MIMO had the advantage that Brazilian audiences are very open to music that might be seen as too difficult for other countries. Perhaps this is cultural – both samba and bossa nova are considerably more complicated both musically and rhythmically than rock and roll.

There was much interest at MIMO in headliner Herbie Hancock, a jazz funk legend who filled the same main square with an instrumental show in which he performed with a percussionist, a bass player and a drummer, leaving him in charge of every other melody in the show, much of which he played on a keyboard he could carry around like an electric guitar. Thus demonstrating a musical ego as impressive as his repertoire.

If the crowd did chatter in Hancock’s quieter moments, they hooked back in for his career bookending hits ‘Cantaloupe Island’, a jazzy piano bar standard, and pioneering electro classic ‘Rockit’. And the same audience stayed on to see Brazilian rapper BNegão and his group Seletores de Frequência combine lazy funk grooves and an evocative jazz trumpet with live hip hop into the early hours.

Despite its sleepy appearance, Paraty is not scared of the odd late night out, as its carnival shows – the best bloco (mobile samba street party) in town, Paraty do Amanhã (Paraty of Tomorrow), heads out of the main square at 1am. And most of the audience even stood through BNegão’s ‘hardcore experiment’ with thrash metal, even though by now it was gone 3am.

MIMO also had early evening attractions, like the premiere of the film Olho Nu (Naked Eye) about the colourful Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso, at which the artist himself appeared, and German multi-instrumentalist Stephan Micus both performing in a church and then hosting a Saturday morning workshop to explain his work.

All of which could make MIMO sound like hard work, when in fact it was just the right mix of culture, music and fun. Provided, that is, that Jordanian orchestras, hand-held keyboards, and hoola-hoop shadow dancing are your idea of a good time.

By Dom Phillips

Rio de Janeiro is a city with a strong libertarian and radical political tradition, that goes back to the dictatorship era. And though the numbers turning out to protests in recent weeks have come down drastically down, they continued before and during the Papal visit, as I covered in these two stories for the Guardian.

The ‘SlutWalk’ joined other marches on Monday July 22 and headed towards Guanabara Palace where Pope Francis, who had just arrived, was meeting President Dilma Rousseff. Violence later broke out – as I reported here – and controversy still surrounds the cause of that violence. This New York Times blog has the latest–

Last Saturday afternoon, July 27, with millions of ‘pilgrims’ (as World Youth Day called them) crowding Copacabana Beach, around 2-3,000 joined another Slut March – or Marcha das Vadias, as it is called in Portuguese. Above, her sign reads ‘“Take your machismo out of the way because I want to pass without shame.”

[Below is a photo gallery from the Saturday protest.]

This was all potentially confrontational. The concept of the Slut March, in which women demonstrate for freedom, control over their bodies, and proclaim their right to sexual freedom, while dressed either provocatively or half-naked, is controversial enough. Even more so in a country as religious as Brazil and especially during World Youth Day.

One of the march’s main demands was safe, legal abortion – which is illegal in Brazil. This can appear to be a country at ease with its sexuality, but it is also a deeply religious, macho and conservative society with high levels of violence against women. An estimated one million illegal abortions are carried out each year and are the fifth highest cause of death for women, representing some 400,000 deaths a year, according to this Associated Press story.

Thaísa Violante, one of the marchers, said she objected to the money spent on the pope’s visit and that she objected to Catholic church doctrine which does not give women responsibility over their own bodies.

“It is against machismo. It is  in favour of abortion. It is against the pope’s visit,” she said.  “Today a bishop put out his hand and pushed me. This youth of the pope should learn something before they come to another country. They are making a big mess. The organisation is very bad, even though it is not their fault.”

There was no violence. This could in part be because Rio police finally seem to be learning some ‘intelligent policing’ tactics to avoid violence – as was seen the previous night when a smaller demonstration of some 4-500 caused fear, confusion and chaos amongst pilgrims when it entered into the vast crowd in an attempt to reach the pope’s stage on Copacabana Beach.

I was at Friday’s demonstration too and noticed the very visible presence of a police officer in the middle of all the confusion who seemed to be doing his best to accommodate what demonstrators wanted while maintaining some police control and stopping hotter heads on either side coming to blows.

Anonymous Rio later shared this article about the police chief concerned on their Facebook page – the page is a widely-read source of information on Rio protests.

The Slut March was certainly the most celebratory of any march I have seen so far in Rio, with samba drums and instruments giving it a carnival street party atmosphere.

Later, after I had left, some of the demonstrators apparently conducted some gratuitously sexual acts using religious icons that have caused an unpleasant fall out. Not just amongst Catholics, but also amongst some who were on the march.

All photos Dom Phillips July 27 (text continues after photos)

Later, The SlutWalk seemed to have finished, but a smaller contingent later regrouped and headed onto the beach to try and reach the pope’s stage, only to be stopped by this line of National Force – a branch of the police.

Here, two worlds collided, on the sand: the slut march, and hordes of pilgrims, many of whom were planning to sleep the night on the beach. [The photo at the top is from after this ocurred.]

As some marchers exposed their breasts and others shouted at police who would not let them past, pilgrims on the other side of the police line either prayed, looked nervous or picked up their bags and moved on.

“They are criticising our religion. It is a lack of respect,” said Harla Rachel, who had travelled from Pará state in the Amazon to see the pope. “You can understand their cause but it has no focus.”

Foreign pilgrims were simply confused. Sara Zuni was with a group of Catholics from Isleta, in New Mexico, USA, and had no idea what the protest was about. “This is the first I’ve seen of it,” she said. She did not know that abortion is illegal in Brazil. “I know it’s controversial, but I would say I’m pro-life,” she said. “It’s a woman’s right to choose, but I’m pro-life.”

In 2013, this is what it looks like when the Pope is about to pass by in front of crowds. Smartphones and cameras everywhere.

It’s Popeweek here in Rio de Janeiro, and that has absolutely dominated news coverage. Since my main employer, the LA Times, is a newspaper in a Catholic-heavy city in a very religious country, we’ve done a lot. Brazil watchers should also check out Folha’s excellent English-language coverage,  but what follows below is a summary of what’s happened so far as I report for LAT.

Brazil is “the world’s largest Catholic country,” but it is less Catholic than ever, and it’s worth asking how Catholic people here really are compared to the rest of Latin America, and how often self-professed believers agree with the Church on moral doctrine.

In Brazil, it’s the Evangelicals that have strong opinions on religion, and whom the secular-liberal protesters view as a threat. Just as often as not, being “Catholic” here is a default option for anyone who hasn’t thought much about religion. Only 16% of Brazilians report going to Catholic Mass once a week – and the word “report” in there implies it could very well be less.

The faithful are hopeful Francis will inspire the flock to come back to the Roman Church. He is certainly popular, largely because of a perception he goes out of his way to live simply and get closer to ‘the people.’

He was received like a pop star on Monday, with crowds laughing, and cheering, and singing, and snapping, and snapping, and snapping (see photo above). I have never seen so many photos taken at the same time in my life. One amazing scene unfolded as a group of nuns mobbed his moving car with open windows…to take pictures of him on their camera phones. But I didn’t see anyone crying or praying.

Tomorrow, he heads into a favela which was pacified last year. That will be symbolic for both the Church and for protest-ridden Brazil.

OK, I think I got all the links in there. For the full list so far, go here. And for those that really care, you can follow me on twitter.

The situation in Brazil has changed radically since I wrote this a week ago. Most obviously, the protests are much bigger, perhaps around 200 times bigger. Importantly, many of the 5,000 people I was on the street with last Thursday no longer have much do with what we’re seeing on the streets, and the original Movimento Passe Livre will not organize any more protests in the near future, saying they were alarmed by the direction some of the demonstrators have taken recently (See Claire Rigby’s piece, below). And two people are dead.

I believe it’s easier than before to explain where the protests came from, and more difficult to predict what they will mean. I want to shoot off some scattered thoughts, but they may presuppose a tiny bit of knowledge. So first, some background for those that need it.

Here are the five stories I’ve done for the LA Times in the last week. The most important is the first one, the big feature I did yesterday attempting to explain what is behind all of this.

Brazil protests tap into frustration of have-nots (June 20)
Protests continue as thousands rally in São Paulo (June 18)
Authorities in Brazil reduce bus fares in response to protests (June 18)
Tens of thousands protest conditions in Brazil (June 17)
Protests against São Paulo fare hike turn violent (June 13)

After these were written, over a million people took to the streets last night across the country. Though in many cases these were supposed to be victory celebrations after fares were reduced in São Paulo and Rio, clashes ensued, one protester was killed by a car, and on the other side of Brazil a middle-aged street cleaner died after she inhaled tear gas.

The cause –

Last week I said that this explosion was more the consequence of economic growth in the last decade than of a recent slide in growth or even inflation. Yes, 40 million people rose out of poverty into a new middle class, and people feel empowered now to make the demands for what they were implicitly promised, an advanced middle-class society with services to match. And yes, they justifiably have a lot to complain about, especially when it comes to the things the protests originally centered on. Public transportation is abhorrent and overpriced, public schools and hospitals are tragic, and the police often treat Brazilians like dangerous criminals rather than citizens. This reality contrasts all too clearly with the image the shiny World Cup stadiums want to sell the world.

But I think this week gave us another, complementary, way to interpret what has unfolded. The obviously brutal police reaction on June 13, combined with the spotlight the Confederations Cup and massive media support provided, gave a generation, for the first time, a stage on which they could voice their complaints. And not only could they voice their grievances with the state, they could do it in an atmosphere of (justified, probably) self-righteousness, euphoria, and historical importance. The obviously unjustified police crackdown last Thursday (and then at soccer games Saturday and Sunday) gave the sheen of legitimacy to every issue Brazilians had to bring to to the table, since they were also asserting the right to protest itself.

The main issues from the start were ones that, in my opinion, deserved the near-unanimous support of the Brazilian people – better transportation, education, healthcare, and police. But the direction things have taken recently has shown that this special kind of protest moment throws up lots of contradictions as well. If everyone is together demanding everything, including things that may contradict the other things, that’s not exactly politics. Last night’s clashes hinted at why things may fall apart, or at least take separate paths.

It was incredibly bizarre to see the mostly new protesters shouting down many of the people who had spearheaded the movement just last week, because they were representing the same groups they always had. It was almost as if, after 20 years without a mass-based protest movement, no one realized that if they didn’t like a march organized around one specific issue (transportation fees, in this case) they were free to organize their own around another issue at another time and another place. They didn’t need to invade someone else’s protest and try to change it.

That was the situation in São Paulo, at least. Keeping track of the rest of the cities across Brazil has been so difficult that it’s impossible to summarize here.

I don’t think the vandalism or violence really need explaining. If you have over a million people on the streets because they are angry about something, it only takes a tiny, tiny, minority for something to get out of hand. All reports still indicate the overwhelming majority of protesters are peaceful. Where I come from, all it takes is a basketball victory to start a riot.

Next step

So what’s the next issue for those that want to stay on the street? Some coming together on Saturday think it’s opposition to PEC 37, a very complicated constitutional amendment which puts criminal investigations in the hands of the police, while the power to accuse remains with the Public Ministry, which will not investigate directly but oversee investigations. Without boring you, I can say that after a fair amount of research I still don’t know if I support it or not, but I certainly can’t understand why it would be the next flag under which to unite the ‘people’ rather than something so obvious as healthcare, education, or the police. No one holding a ‘PEC 37’ sign in São Paulo last night could explain why to my satisfaction, either.

Then there is this quite shockingly juvenile video being passed around (the music!), which comes with the added bonus that I may now be hacked because I said so. The other of the video’s ‘five causes,’ which were all well-represented on the street last night, make sense to some extent, I guess, and focus largely on corruption prosecution, but it seems bizarre to me that a movement would have its goals defined by a masked man on a Youtube channel.

In São Paulo, people have been protesting Marco Feliciano for a while now. That may get a boost. Then there are the movements that have already been around forever, protesting the World Cup preparations and pushing for more concrete goals like better social investments.

It seems we have a generation that has re-discovered its right to complain to a government which should represent them, a dormant energy and a desire to make a difference. Yes, some of these kids look new to the politics game, and the learning curve may be steep.

But as to what will happen in the short and mid-term, I haven’t the slightest clue. Hopefully the energy can be sustained but poured into more focused, and perhaps segregated, causes in the case of inevitable disagreements. But we’re already seeing in-fighting and defections in the movement as it stands. And now we have a body count.

Politics

This is the billion-dollar question this afternoon. If you are Dilma, what do you do? Do you assume these movements may lose legitimacy and fracture, and hold back from giving into a group that doesn’t have specific demands anyways?

Or, perhaps the tougher question: If Dilma wanted to give the protesters exactly what they want, what would that even mean? What could she give? What could she do right now? After all of this, if it really is supported by the population, the country is likely to demand something to show for it. We’ll see when she speaks tonight at 9pm.

Note 1 – The media

The left, the Movimento Passe Livre, and even this MTV star, are saying that after initially calling for a police crackdown, the conservative media in Brazil (that’s basically all of it) are now trying to turn the protests into an empty anti-politics movement, which to them makes it anti-PT, useless, or worse. Though it sounds radical, I wouldn’t entirely discount this hypothesis.

Note 2 – Me

I may keep updating this as the situation unfolds. I may also change my mind on every single thing I’ve written here.

Follow @Vinncent

Claire Rigby takes us behind the televised spectacle and into the free and fluid world of the street party – Rio’s true Carnaval. Above: The outskirts of a bloco in Leblon, on Tuesday morning.

By Claire Rigby

From the world-class razzle-dazzle of the sambadrome to the endless, hedonistic celebration that takes place in its streets, Brazil is more compelling than ever during Carnival. I spent it in Rio de Janeiro, where the sambadrome reigns supreme – if you’re looking from outside Brazil, that is, where images of the floodlit parade ground, the Marquês de Sapucaí, have become synonymous not only with Carnival, but sometimes with Brazil itself.

But there’s way more to Carnival, and Brazil, than that.

Growing in popularity over the past ten years or so, the street carnival has seen a huge resurgence in Rio, where millions this year took to what seemed like a never-ending festival over four full days. ‘Blocos de rua‘ (street Carnival groups) are the heart and soul of Carnival in places like Olinda, in North-East Brazil, but have become a much-loved fixture in Rio too – and in São Paulo, where they go hand-in-hand with a wave of new, politicized interest in street life and street culture.

In Rio this year, hundreds of blocos comprised an endless, rolling, moving party, from young pretenders like Toca Rauuul and Boa Noite Cinderella, and favourites like Sargento Pimenta and Santa Teresa’s Céu na Terra, to the gigantic Monobloco, and 95-year-old Bola Preta – the latter took place in Rio’s Centro on Saturday morning and is said to have pulled a crowd of more than a million.

What goes on in a bloco? Music, dancing, drinking and general carousing in the style that Brazilians were apparently born to do best. (For a glimpse of one particularly musical bloco in action, see video: A street bloco during Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, 2013, on Vimeo.) Dressing up is de rigueur, and some go all out with their costumes, often in teams of uber-coordinated friends. One of the best this year in Olinda, in North-East Brazil, was a group dressed as a rollercoaster, rolling down the street in a long train, two by two, each dressed as one of the cabs. A favourite of mine from Olinda another year was a platoon of fruity soldiers with hollowed-out half watermelons for helmets. But not everyone goes full melon jacket: as Rio resident Dom Phillips noted in his expert Pre-Carnaval post before the event – just a sequinned tie, a sparkly eye mask or a sprouting of feathers are enough to mark you out as one of the gang –

— or one of the gangs, plural, since there are blocos kicking off throughout the day, with some of the best starting out as early as 6am. People carouse from bloco to bloco as the day wears on, stopping off for a dip in the sea, a break on the beach or a mid-afternoon disco nap before heading out again. And despite complaints from local residents about blocked roads and litter, drunkenness and noise, there’s very little of the bad behaviour you’d associate with no-holds-barred drinking and frolicking elsewhere. Naming no names but staring guiltily at Northern Europe. 

Roaming the streets and the beaches since the early morning, we encountered the true spirit of Carnival on Saturday night, under a small clutch of trees just up from Copacabana beach. A motley crew of musicians, refugees from some bloco or other, were playing a ramshackle set of sambas under the trees on drums alone, while an equally ramshackle, eclectic set of people, drawn like moths to the samba as they passed along the road, swayed and sang or simply gathered round.

It’s a long way from the excess, the precision, the sheer spectacle of the sambadrome – and at the opposite end of the commercial spectrum. Street Carnival is by its nature free – open to all and free to join, whereas the institutionalised form of Carnival – the sambódromo – is a hyper-commercialised sugar rush of grandiose, magnificently gaudy floats, casts of thousands singing their hearts out, and goddess-like, gold-dusted Carnival queens.

The sambadrome has to be seen to be believed; but for good old-fashioned fun it’s hard to beat the big-hearted bagunça (mess) of Brazil’s street blocos, with their fancy-dress gangs of teddy bears, tipsy girls in day-glo wigs in the early morning light, the just-met couples up to who knows what on the beach in the darkness, and the thousands upon thousands of men dressed as women. Carnivalesque.

All images (c) Claire Rigby.

Dom Phillips walks us through the joyful insanity of Rio Carnaval costume etiquette, and the pre-celebration celebrations that are often better than the real thing.

By Dom Phillips

Ambling through the blazing heat and Saturday afternoon crowds on Rio de Janeiro’s SAARA street market, I was getting nowhere in my search for a crucial purchase: my carnival fancy dress costume. Nothing seemed quite right. I hovered, briefly, before a Super Mario outfit in cheap fabric, lingered beneath an all-in-one Spiderman cat-suit, and even stopped in front of some sort of caveman combo that came with a cheap plastic club.

But I couldn’t see myself in any of them. Practical considerations dominated: how much would one sweat in all that man-made fibre, in a crowd, in the Rio heat? But time was marching on. The market was closing. The prospect of a late afternoon beach visit receding. And then I passed the uniform shop for the second time, and this time, turned and went in. Problem solved, or so it seemed.

With less than a week to go, you might think Rio de Janeiro is heating up for its carnival. Instead, it’s already begun: this year, more than ever, cariocas (Rio residents) seem to have decided to just get on with it, and cram in their carnival fun before the tourists swamp the place. Everyone says it’s much better like this. Pre-Carnival beats actual Carnival, hands down.

Consequently, over the last few weekends, the mobile, free street parties called blocos that have multiplied in recent years have been ramming city streets, increasing exponentially as the Carnival gets closer. Last weekend alone, there were hordes of them – a sound truck, a samba drum corps, and a crowd following in fancy dress.

Thousands packed into a square in Rio’s centre Sunday for an enormous party that celebrated the cheesy old pop songs, referred to as brega. In Ipanema, a bloco called Simpatia é Quase Amor (niceness is almost love) was rammed Saturday. Blocos are big on ironic names: one is called Me Beija que Eu Sou Cineasta (Kiss Me I’m a Film-maker). On Sunday, one of the best blocos I’ve come across, a brass and samba drums ensemble called Orquestra Voadora (Flying Circus) paraded through the rain at the Aterro do Flamengo. This was the third Sunday in a row I’ve seen them. And the bloco has just got bigger, and better, each time.

Led by giant tubas that tower above the musicians playing them, they specialise in brass-band arrangements of popular songs, with a heavy, syncopated samba beat. It works much better than that might sound.

Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, Brazilian classics, movie themes, even the 1970s funk classic ‘Low Rider’ by War – with the lower-note brass instruments doing a sterling job on that funky bassline – were all greeted with loud, happy cheers. Even in a torrential downpour, with some of the band walking and playing under a gazebo, which helpers were obligingly carrying over them. Most of the crowd were already in costume. The carnival, for them, was already in full swing.

But I still hadn’t braved the fancy dress. I’m a Brit, and consequently somewhat reserved, and I’ve got through my whole life – and three Rio carnivals – without ever putting on a fancy dress costume. The closest I’ve come to it was going to a theatre do in London dressed, rather optimistically, as a ‘gangster’, in a dark suit and sunglasses. My partner was dressed as a flapper.

But the whole night, people kept asking me then where my costume was. The same thing happened at Orquestra Voadora on Sunday. It seems my fancy dress-free days are numbered. It’s time to bite the bullet and fall on my sword, to mix a few carnival-costume related metaphors (plastic swords and guns both being popular accessories).

So I explained the outfits I’d bought at the uniforms shop to the people I was with. One is an all-purpose cleaner’s outfit, with shirt, slacks and baseball cap in matching navy blue. I was planning to carry a brush, and had even begun mentally rehearsing a spiel about how the financial crisis in Europe had motivated a move to Rio in search of gainful employment.

A girl dressed as a bride and holding a flower frowned. “That’s no good,” she said. Her friends – Snow White and a girl in a leopard-skin print one-piece gym outfit – nodded in agreement. “Your costume needs to be interactive. It needs to invite some sort of exchange.”

I wondered what sort of interactive signals her bride outfit was sending out. But then she interrupted my thoughts with the killer line: “And I don’t think many women are going to be interested in a guy dressed as a cleaner.”

Damn. Once again, a clumsy attempt at self-depreciating English humour, this time in the shape of a carnival costume, had floundered on the rocks. I told the bride my back-up outfit was that of a chef. She brightened. “That’s good. A guy who can cook…” Her friend in the gym outfit interrupted. “It’s carnival. You have to be in costume. You have to go all in.”

This was more than evident the previous Friday night, at a carnival baile (party) at the Monte Líbano club in Rio, where many of the organizers of Rio’s main blocos were enjoying themselves dancing and singing along to a band on stage. This was the old guard, these were people who take carnival and its associated culture of creativity, celebration, and escaping from a year of drudgery in a three-day costume fantasy, more seriously than anyone else. Their costumes brought this home.

One guy was dressed as a Petrobras worker, in overalls. A girl had come in yellow, with a TAXI sign attached to her head. There were Bo Beep and Princesses, professional footballers, a guy dressed as Nina from the soap opera Avenida Brasil, Roman goddesses – and a guy who told me that when he is not serving on the management committee of the Escravos da Mauá (the Slaves of Mauá, one of central Rio’s most traditional blocos), he is an astrophysicist.

Then a Star Wars storm-trooper in full space-man uniform, holding a ray gun, walked in and stole the show. Photographers surrounded him. So did women. Never mind that he – or she – couldn’t even be seen behind the helmet. It’s carnival. And if you’re not in costume, you’ll stand out like a Star Wars storm-trooper at a wedding. With competition like this, I’m not sure how a simple British chef can even begin to compete…

Fireworks blast over closely packed crowds on Copacabana Beach on New Year’s Eve, and this year, things turned out much like most mega-events in Rio.

By Dom Phillips

New Year’s Eve in Rio: it has a certain ring to it. This is the city that specialises in giant set-piece events that draw enormous crowds – be that Carnival, the Rock In Rio music festival, or looking forward, 2014’s World Cup Final and the 2016 Olympic Games.

For Réveillon, as the turning of the year is known in Brazil, more than two million people dress in white, carry flowers, and swarm onto the beaches of Copacabana to watch an elaborate firework display that takes place over the sea. It gets so crowded that for weeks beforehand cariocas – Rio residents – were planning their party manoeuvres with military efficiency.

This would be my first New Year’s Eve-proper in Rio, and I approached it with a certain amount of trepidation, having been through both the best and the worst of carnival and its uncontrollable crowds.

There was, legend had it, no way out of the melee once you were in, so the only reliable plan was to head to the after-parties on the beach near the rocky outcrop of Arpoador and hang out until morning. It would be chaos. It would be an unbearable crush of humanity. It would be deeply moving as the multitude ooh-ed and aah-ed at the fireworks. It would be neither of these scenarios. It would be both. And what if it rained?

Rio had arranged a dress rehearsal on Christmas Day evening: a free concert on Copacabana Beach with Gilberto Gil and Stevie Wonder. As it happened, the crowd, while some 500,000 strong, was manageable, the night was warm and dry, and everything was set for one of America’s greatest soul artists to seal the night with a magical performance, much as he had done months earlier at Rock In Rio. Instead, he fluffed it by making a basic error.

Just like American rapper Missy Elliott had done at the Back 2 Black festival in Rio in November, Stevie Wonder began his show by trying to get the audience to take part in a mass singalong. This is something that deeply irritates me at the best of times. I don’t want to hear the crowd singing and clapping out of tune and out of time. I want to hear the artist. It’s even worse when it’s the very first thing that happens.

Nor had anybody in Stevie’s team bothered to explain to him that in Brazil, people speak Brazilianish and not English. It didn’t matter how much oomph he put into his exhortations that “all the fellas go ‘uh-huh’” and “all the ladies go, ‘eeh-ah,’”. Because the vast majority of this crowd couldn’t understand what he was saying and nobody bothered to translate. Much of his show was met with incomprehension, rather than enthusiasm. People simply talked through the bits they didn’t get.

When Wonder played his classics – ‘Hotter Than July’; ‘Superstition’ – he was fantastic. When he laboured on with his audience participation, having failed to grasp that actually, nobody was singing along, or warbled through an interminable ballad, he was tedious. When he tried to hush the crowd – a brave move when you’re in front of half a million garrulous Brazilians – it simply ignored him and carried on chatting.

But New Year’s Eve was a much simpler proposition – better suited to such a vast crowd. Find a spot on the beach, survive the crowds, and watch the fireworks. No language barriers involved.

The gang of friends I was with gathered at an apartment in Catete to warm up, rode a subway train to Copacabana (we even got seats), then ambled up to the beach at Leme, where the crowds were less jammed-together and there was room to spread out sarongs on the sand. Someone had even brought a polystyrene cool box to keep the fizz on ice.

The fireworks were fantastic – brash explosions of every colour in the rainbow, supernovas of light over the ocean that had the white-clad crowd wowing in wonder. The walk to Arpoador afterwards took an hour and a half, but despite the crowds on the streets, it was noticeable how calm, peaceful and happy people seemed.

The scenes on the beach at Arpoador, where traditionally DJs entertain what had been described as a “more alternative” audience, encapsulated Rio at its best and worst. A huge crowd milled around a tiny tent on the beach, in which a DJ sweated over a sound system that nobody could hear. The beer was warm – and then it ran out. Overloaded cell-phone networks simply stopped working. Nobody could find anybody else. It felt like a mass gathering that had only come about because nobody could get a taxi home.

But as the night became dawn, the crowd thinned a little, and somebody – as ever in Rio – delivered more cold beer, Arpoador’s chaotic gathering seemed to form itself into a relatively coherent party. And the best of Rio, the city that needs little more than a warm evening, some music, and a few drinks to have a party, showed itself.

Somebody set up a barbeque stall in the middle and began to give away free meat. Revellers jumped in the sea – men in their underpants, girls in their white party dresses. Everybody took photos and wowed at the view. People turned chaos and disorganization into fun and celebration, focusing on the fact that they were on a beautiful beach at dawn with their friends, rather than complaining about the tiny sound system.

Perhaps it is this positive, can-do attitude that makes Rio such a good place for giant, set-piece events. Where all that is required is enthusiasm and a smile, rather than complicated audience participation routines delivered in another language. Stevie Wonder should have hung around, he might have learnt something about non-verbal communication.

By Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

2,000 heavily armed police and marines, with 13 armoured cars and helicopters, set off at dawn Sunday October 14 to occupy one more of Rio’s notorious favelas. For years Manguinhos and the surrounding slums in North Rio had been run by the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, drug trafficking gang.

It made for a dramatic scene, in the dark before dawn, as a mob of press in flak jackets and helmets buzzed around a row of urban tanks and a battalion of police and marines.

Armed cars began to roll at 4.45am and crushed concrete barriers gangs had placed at the entrance of the Manguinhos slum. Across the street in Jacarezinho, piles of rubbish had been set on fire.

But the bandits had long since fled – earlier, one had even suggested he offer himself for amnesty in an interview with this blog’s editor Vincent Bevins for the LA Times, like members of Colombia’s FARC can.

Nevertheless, it was still tense as the press pack followed police sharpshooters as they inched down alleyways with rifles at the ready in the nearby Jacarezinho favela, home to one of Rio’s biggest concentrations of crack users, with photographers careful not to get any other snappers in the shot.

Because it is a general rule of the media that no matter on how big a scale an event is being ccovered, reporters must always pretend that they are the only ones there. Even if just beside the shot of the correspondent doing that dramatic live report are another 20, doing exactly the same thing, just in different languages.

But much as in the invasion of Rocinha in Rio’s more upscale South Zone a year ago, this occupation passed off without a shot being fired. It took just 20 minutes to occupy Manguinhos and neighbouring favelas.

The operation was hailed as a success for the city’s policy of pacifying slums dominated by armed drug gangs. “What we achieved today was to improve the life of these people,” said Rio security secretary José Beltrame, in a press conference the same day.

“This is a Sunday stroll with the family,” said Officer Pittigliani, cradling a sub-machine gun, as he drove past in a black police pick-up.

36,000 people live in the area. Two armed police base, called UPPs, will be installed in incoming months – there are 28 such bases in Rio. “If the state decides to take control of a piece of land,” said Officer Geraldo Arranha, “there is nothing the gangs can do.”

It was all very different two years ago when police and soldiers fought pitched battles with drug gangs in Rio’s Complexo do Alemão favela during an invasion. Now security forces advertise invasions in advance. They also begin operations days earlier. Five suspected bandidos were killed on the previous Friday night in the Juramento favela, also in North Rio, where members of the Red Command gang were believed to have fled.

In the run-up and aftermath of the operation, cocaine, crack, marijuana and weapons were seized. Gang leaders were arrested. But what did the population think? Those I talked to were cautiously optimistic.

At the Our Lady Helper catholic church in Jacarezinho, Father Dario da Silva, 60, led his congregation in a Sunday morning prayer for peace as police patrolled the streets. “We hope this will bring change,” he said afterwards. “The community is very poor and needy.”

The last gunfight took place a week earlier, Father da Silva said. Killings were frequent. But he argued that the Red Command gang fulfilled a sort of social role in the area that the state, up until now, had not. The gang bought medicine and gas for poor families, and even held a children’s party on Brazil’s Day of the Child. “If the state does not meet its obligations, they will want them back,” he said.

In Manguinhos, in front of a wide, dirt avenue strewn with rubbish, Luciana Regina, 32, was hanging out washing in her tiny concrete-walled front yard. “There are always gunfights here. A lot of people come to buy drugs. It is frightening. Now it is going to stop,” she said.

On the street in front of her, an enormous pig grubbed in a pile of rubbish, surrounded by vultures. “It has to get better. That’s what they say. Let’s see what happens,” Regina said.

“It’s great,” said Antonio Bispo, 54, from behind the counter of his bar in Jacarezinho. “Those of us who are workers are going to have more freedom. We have been imprisoned, silent.”

Critics say the favela pacification policy is just forcing gangs further out to the Rio suburbs. That it only affects those situated near tourist areas, World Cup and Olympic sites, or pieces of land slotted for gentrification.

This has largely been the case, but is certainly not true when it comes to Manguinhos, which is in a part of Rio tourists never venture out to. It is not on a hill, does not have sea views, and is not picturesque. It’s dirty and poor. Media reports after the invasion suggested that this outpost of Comando Vermelho had been had been singled out because police suspect leaders of the gangs here of pulling off a jailbreak this July, in which one of their fellow traffickers was freed.

Rio governor Sérgio Cabral said that 9,000 new homes would be built and that the Brazilian development bank BNDES would lend R$100 million ($49.3 million). The Rio government also moved to seize an oil refinery situated nearby as a place to build new homes.

Will the government deliver on its promises for Manguinhos? Will it just open up room for property speculators to move in? Residents and critics will be watching keenly. If experience in other pacified favelas is any guide, property values, prices, and profits will likely rise here.

By late Sunday morning, life in Manguinhos was returning to normal. As a soldier watched from the turret of an armed car, a man laid second hand shoes out on a blanket to sell and a fruit and vegetable stall opened. People bustled in the streets as if nothing had happened. Perhaps what was most important about Sunday’s occupation was that nothing actually happened. A sign that favela pacification is now part of the norm.

[Photo Dom Phillips]

In the interview, he asked me to announce that he and many others want to give themselves in and turn over their weapons and territory in return for amnesty. This was going to be part of a larger story coming out later. But when I found out the police plan to invade the favela he runs this Sunday, we decided to publish that part of the interview at the LA Times.

He said that “he and many other drug traffickers would be eager to take advantage of a voluntary demobilization program similar to that available to leftist guerrillas in Colombia.
 
“I’d do whatever it takes to get some kind of amnesty,” the heavily armed leader said in an interview on his home turf recently. “Any way I can pay my debt to society.”

The rest of the story will come out soon enough, but those are the bits we thought we should get out now.

He is currently wanted and the photo above is up on the Rio police Wanted site. I don’t know where he is.

Click here to continue reading “As police move in on Rio’s favelas, a drug lord seeks amnesty”

Sunday is the first round of voting. In cases where there is no majority, the top two candidates go to a second round of voting a month later.

São Paulo – the rise of Evangelical Christian politics

The mayorship of South America’s largest city is extremely important, likened credibly to running a mid-sized country. And as anyone who has visited SP knows, this place is in dire need of good leadership.

We’ve had a big surprise here. The country’s two major parties, the PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Worker’s Party, of Dilma and Lula fame), and the PSDB (the center-right party of the also much-revered Fernando Henrique Cardoso), have been shocked to find themselves trailing far behind Celso Russomano, the TV personality and candidate from the relatively new PRD, a party backed the Brazil’s increasingly powerful evangelical Christian churches.

This has terrified the traditional power structures and you have seen everyone coming together (other than the actual supporters of the man) to try to stop him. This includes the right-wing media, left-wing unions and parties as well as bien pensant middle-class liberal urban types. Most of Russomano’s supporters are the conservative poor, and some call his campaign a genuinely populist movement representing those who have long been neglected, and others call it the dangerous mixing of religion and politics.

But he is almost certainly going to the second round, so the question now is who is going with him. On the right we have José Serra, who was already mayor of São Paulo, but quit to run for president, against Dilma, and lose badly. That has not helped his image with the common man, and pollsters routinely find a large number of voters reject him.

Nevertheless, he’s ahead of Fernando Haddad, a relative newcomer for the PT, who has been pulling out all the stops (these stops are named Lula and Dilma) to get into the second round and give the city a left-of-center option. It could be close.

Here’s the most recent poll

Rio – Riding a wave of success vs. the gadfly critic

Incumbent Eduardo Paes (from catch-all centrist party PMDB) is overseeing a city which is booming, regaining much of its importance for the country, and which will host the Olympics in 2016. He should win easily and probably will. But the one person who may stop him from getting 50% of the vote Suday is Marcelo Freixo, the human rights advocate who famously inspired a character in blockbuster movie Tropa de Elite 2 (If you haven’t seen these two movies, but you are somehow reading this blog, you must).

Freixo is an extremely exciting figure for Rio’s middle-class lefties as well as many people in the favelas. This is an impressive spread, to say the least, and he’s a powerful critic of the way Rio is developing. Here is an interesting piece on him, if you’re interested.

Latest Datafolha poll on Rio

Check back here next week or follow me on twitter to see how this turns out, as well as more info on Brazil’s other major cities.

Follow @Vinncent

[Photo above – Haddad, Russomano, and Serra, plastered on a wall. Felipe Morozini]

South America’s largest country is finally, hopefully, on its way to patching up its woefully lacking infrastructure. But fixing one problem sometimes means dealing with others.

By Dom Phillips

Living in Rio can at times feel like living on a construction site. Construction is all around: a new metro line, new highways, the whole decayed central port area being redeveloped, Olympic facilities, the Maracanã stadium. Not to mention all those people doing up their houses.

It’s not just Rio. Brazil is in a frenzy of construction. And much of it is around infrastructure.

Because infrastructure is something that Brazil sorely lacks. Trains, for instance. There is no train between the country’s two biggest cities: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Just planes and buses. There is no train between any of the four airports in these cities and their centres. Just buses and taxis.

Or cars, which seems to have been the only default transport option successive governments thought of in Brazil. And now much of the population has a car, and the roads in big cities are jammed.

Too many cars, not enough roads, not enough railways to carry cargo so it goes on trucks which fills up the roads further. So the government’s announcement recently of a public-private partnership to build 7,500 kilometres (4,660 miles) of roads and 10,000 kilometres of railways, involving R$133 billion ($66 billion) over 30 years was broadly welcomed.

Even the government admitted it was long overdue. “The first structural initiative to endow the country with an adequate transport system, after two decades of low investment,” the government declared in its announcement document. Given that the ruling party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT, or Workers’ Party, has been in power for one of those decades, one can’t help wondering why they hadn’t thought of it before?

A taxi driver bemoaned the lack of transport options to me the other day, as we trundled through the endless Thursday night traffic on the way into town from the Riocentro centre, out past the Rio suburb of Barra de Tijuca. A carioca (Rio native) said the same thing, as he explained the traffic problems in the suburb of Jacarépagua: all this stuff grew up without any expectation that anything more than a car or a bus would ever be needed to get there.

Riocentro is where the Rio+20 United Nations sustainable development conference was held. This week it hosted the enormous Rio Oil & Gas conference. 50,000-odd turned up to both. Both times there were shuttle buses to central points. But obviously, no train. “Back when they built Riocentro, this was all outback,” said the taxi driver. “But today everybody has a car.”

The Olympic Park is going to be situated nearby. So the government are extending a metro line which will go some of the way then meet a highway that will have a bus rapid transit link (BRT). BRT sounds flash. But it’s still a bus.

Then there are bigger state-sponsored projects, such as potentially vast sub-salt oil reserves, thousands of metres below the sea bed, hundreds of kilometres off the Rio and Espirito Santo coasts, that government-controlled oil giant Petrobras is going to extract.

Petrobras is getting as many of the rigs and production platforms constructed in Brazil as it can to meet government rules on ‘local content’: essentially, requirements to build a large amount of this stuff in Brazil because we want to grow our domestic industries.

Brazil used to have a decent shipbuilding industry, but it fell into disuse and disrepair. Now the government is hoping the sub-salt boom will help to revive it.

Politically, this makes sense – more jobs, more votes. For Petrobras shareholders, it means a slower journey towards increasing production of oil and gas, because some of the shipyards where their rigs are going to be built are themselves still under construction.

In the North of Brazil minerals giant Vale is duplicating the one-track railway line it has that runs from its iron ore mine in Carajás, in the Amazon, to São Luís. It’s there that development hits rural reality. Not only does the track run through land where around 100 members of an uncontacted tribe, the Awá live, it also passes near quilombos, which are agricultural settlements of the descendents of slaves.

In July a judge in São Luís suspended work on the railway because of its environmental impacts. The ban has now been lifted. But there are still legal problems looming for the railway project. But there’s also a gigantic quantity of iron ore to be moved from the mine, which the company is expanding – as it is, in 2011, Vale exported 109.8 million metric tonnes in 2011. The view from São Luís is of a constant line of giant cargo ships, steaming out of Vale’s port near the city. That number is going to increase to 150 million metric tonnes by 2014.

But Brazil needs the income those iron ore exports bring in, much of it from China. Just as it wants the income from all that oil it’s going to produce – 4.2 million barrels of it a day in Brazil by 2020. Just as it needs the electricity that will be produced by Belo Monte, the controversial hydro-electric project in the Amazon, whose construction involves flooding hundreds of kilometres of rain forest, threatening the livelihood of tribes who live there.

This is the problem with development – once you start, there’s no stopping it. You can’t grow the income and industry of a country this big without making a mess. You can’t do this without dramatically impacting on the lives of the populations that live in isolated places like this. On one hand, the economic benefits works like this could bring to these isolated rural populations, on the other, the environmental impact inevitably involved cutting down trees and dramatically affecting the life of those same populations.

“Brazil without misery. Rich country without poverty,” is the government’s slogan. But at what cost? Never mind the economic benefits, is all of this just going to expand the country’s army of consumers? Will they be happier? Will the Amazon just be decimated into a series of theme parks criss-crossed by highways and dotted by mines and dams, with islands of biodiversity, like in the film Jurassic Park?

Business daily Valor ran a story on what 12 indian tribes affected by the Belo Monte dam wanted as compensation. 40 four-wheel drive pickups with air conditioning were included, along with 303 houses with indoor bathrooms were included on the list. And 1,300 heads of cattle, 500 of them from the Nelore breed. Not to mention 12 cellphone towers with wireless internet capacity.

The Indian tribes didn’t think of asking for a railway line development. Pity. Vale – which bought a 9% in the Belo Monte project in 2011 worth $1.5 billion – is apparently pretty good at them.

Know who this is and what she stands for? The soap opera is a devastatingly important part of Brazilian culture. And life here imitates art just as often as these shows depict an exaggerated version of reality.

By Dom Phillips

IF you want to try and understand a country or a culture, you could do worse than start with its soap operas.  In no country is this more true than Brazil.

English-language soap operas run for decades. In Brazil, novelas, as they’re called, change all the time. This is a country that loves television, and whose television is dominated by the Globo network. And the novela as 9, as the peak-time, 9pm soap is called, is the one half the nation seems to settle down in front of.

The current hit is called Avenida Brasil, and is set, like most of them, in Rio de Janeiro. Much has been said about how this is very much a novela for ‘Classe C’, the famous Brazilian middle class that now constitutes more than 50% of the population.

Actually, Classe C is not a middle class as an American or a European would understand it – although they now own cars, cellphones, computers and the rest of it, it’s all on a much smaller scale than in more developed countries. Classe C actually represents a demographic that in the last few years is slowly beginning to reach a standard of living long enjoyed by, say, the British working class.

But that’s by the by. Avenida Brasil has all the themes that Brazilians love in their soap operas: romance and passion, treachery and revenge, ambition and comeuppance. One of its favourite characters is Suelen, played by actress Isis Valverde, who has helped popularize the current slang word piriguete. Here she is.

What this word actually means depends on who you’re talking to, but basically it’s a party girl whose wardrobe is both revealing and colourful, and designed to attract the attention of men. Both Suelen, the idea of a piriguete, and her wardrobe have struck a nerve in Brazil. There are even songs on youtube about her and the whole piriguete theme, like this one.

[youtube owyrWPnmUtU]

Like all good soap operas, there is a sense that Avenida Brasil is sending itself up. There are laughs among the dramas, and comedy amongst the tears. The acting is exaggerated, the dialogue rapid-fire, and you get the feeling both the actors and screenwriters are at times having fun with this. Much like the long-running UK soap Coronation Street, which can be read as a saga of working class life in a Northern town, or as a pantomime. Or indeed, as both.

In one Avenida Brasil scene, Suelen posed for a sexy photo shoot in a soccer kit with a local photographer, while her young husband griped in the background. Here, the local men were the comic target. A bunch of them actually climbed up to peek in through a window at the photo shoot, like schoolboys peeping at the girls’ changing rooms, so desperate were they to ogle their local beauty in her smalls. The scene made them look ridiculous. Brazil might be in many ways a pretty macho society, but in novelas at least women sometimes get the last laugh.

And as much of the novela audience is female, sympathetic female characters are important. In last year’s Insensato Coração (Foolish Heart), actress Camila Pitanga, in the role of a swish, designer clothed executive called Carol, got caught in a love triangle between cheating rat André (Lázaro Ramos) who’d fathered her child, but who she still loved, and a gentlemanly older beau Raul (veteran Antonio Fagundes) who came along to mend her wounded heart.

Then the cheating rat changed his ways and wanted to come back. And the old beau decided to let her go. And Carol stood in the middle of all of this with tears welling in her eyes. It was a storyline that could have been played out as weepy romance; instead it was played out with delicacy and sensitivity.

Nor is it all love and passion in novela-land. Insensato Coração had as one of its central characters a corrupt, middle-aged banker, Cortez (Herson Capri), whose crimes were unmasked by a dogged blogger. The sort of story that, in real life, regularly makes news in Brazil.

The impact of all this on his family was also cleverly portrayed, while the character of his dumb younger girlfriend, a one-time reality show star called Natalie Lamour played with gleeful abandon by Deborah Secco, was a vicious send-up on Brazil’s vacuous celebrity culture.

But it’s not just art following life in Brazilian novelas – and yes, soap operas are a populist art form, whether we like to admit it or not. Life sometimes follows art. As happened in July when Rosane Collor, big-spending ex-wife of Fernando Collor, the Brazilian former president impeached in 1992 or corruption, appeared on Brazil’s biggest TV show Fantastico to plug a book she was writing.

Her book was going to detail all the dark secrets of the couple’s time in power, such as the black magic ceremonies she alleged her former husband took part in while president, in a murky period of Brazilian history beautifully detailed in Peter Robb’s book ‘A Death In Brazil’. But the audience didn’t care: Rosane’s allegations had all been heard before. They were too busy howling at her insistence that she couldn’t live on the monthly allowance of R$18,000 ($8,877) her ex paid her.

Rio de Janeiro tabloid Extra zoomed in the blonde hairdo and cream suit Rosane was wearing for her Fantastico interview, and how she seemed to have borrowed the whole look from Carminha, the villain played by Adriana Esteves who is another central character in Avenida Brasil. You can make your own comparison.

“The two don’t just resemble each other in their beige look,” Extra said. “Like Carminha, the great villain of the Avenida Brasil soap opera, Rosane Collor insists on denying her past as first lady, dreams of living with a lot of money, evokes her religiosity the whole time and wants to enter political life.”

And one had the distinct feeling that Carminha, the villain that Brazil loves to hate, was so much more popular than Rosane, the former first lady that nobody could even be bothered to dislike.

Brazil’s two biggest cities are very, very, different. This is a an argument which never ends here, and one which I couldn’t help but jump into – Vincent

By Dom Phillips

Clichés abound in Brazil, and it’s not just we foreigners who throw them around. One is that life in Brazil, be that in terms of romance, work or national politics, resembles a soap opera, with all its dramatic twists and turns. It’s a cliché. It’s also sort of true. But it’s also much more dramatic than that.

Another is based in the fierce yet friendly rivalry between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the country’s two biggest cities, and the jibes residents of both fling at each other. Recently I’ve been hearing this from both sides: after four and half years in São Paulo, I moved to Rio earlier this year, and have been finding out which of the clichés don’t stand up.

“Ah, paulistanos, they’re stressed all the time, they don’t know how to relax, they just work. They’re so formal, they don’t know how to enjoy life,” a carioca (Rio native) quickly explained to me on arrival. “Cariocas are more relaxed.” You hear this a lot in Rio.

“The trouble with Rio is that cariocas are lazy. You can’t rely on them. They’re always inviting you to their home, but never give you the address,” a Paulistano gently informed me before moving. “And they have no culture,” another added. “But…” a third whispered conspiratorially, “I would live there too if I could.” You hear all of this in São Paulo.

São Paulo could be Brazil’s New York, a dense, intense and immense urban jungle whose forward–thinking residents play as hard as they work. It is the engine room of the Brazilian economy. This is one popular cliché, and it is true in many ways.

In this version of events, Rio then becomes the country’s Los Angeles**: a lazily chaotic beach city, big on samba and beaches, characterised by sexy, tropical glamour. But which, with the Olympics and World Cup looming and its associated programme of infrastructure works, has suddenly found a dynamism that is putting São Paulo to shame. That’s also mostly true.

But each city, in a sense, is defined by its economics and architecture. And the images each has of the other relate, as if each was a mirror, reflecting different images of the same reality. São Paulo is where the banks and car factories are; where the money is generated and spent. Rio is where TV Globo is based, where it makes – and sets – those famous soap operas, and is home to Brazilian cinema and those famous beaches.

São Paulo is posh restaurants, avant garde galleries, and underground discos in city centre car parks. Rio is beer in plastic cups, rice and beans, flip–flops on the cobblestones, samba and sunsets.

But the trouble with clichés is that the real world, and real people, are much more complicated. Paulistanos will tell you it’s a nightmare to work with lazy, chaotic cariocas. But they themselves are nowhere near as organized and productive as they would like you to believe. And there are plenty of stressed–out, overworked cariocas who would like to spend more time at the beach.

Rio is where the big companies in Brazil’s booming oil industry are based, such as state oil giant Petrobras, along with minerals giant Vale. These are all very serious players. São Paulo has samba, and it’s better than Rio gives it credit for. Rio has its underground discos in city centre car parks, but the DJ will definitely play samba at one point.

Paulistanos invite you to their houses because there is no beach. But they also know how to enjoy themselves. In Rio many people live in tiny apartments, the city has plenty of nature and outdoor space, and plus it’s about three degrees warmer, so cariocas prefer to meet in public.

The implementation of armed police bases, called UPPs, in some of Rio’s dangerous favelas has created a sensation that the city is less dangerous than it was. This is partly true.

But that doesn’t mean the city’s problems have disappeared: in the last fortnight alone I’ve been told about two violent crimes – a house invaded and its residents tied up and robbed by armed masked men; and a guy robbed at gunpoint coming out of a bank. While the drug violence problem just seems to have been partly shifted to the Rio suburbs. But crime too is also on the rise in São Paulo.

In focusing on the clichés, both cities miss out. A lot of cariocas won’t go anywhere near São Paulo because they think the city is ugly and polluted, which is true. But all of them are missing everything that São Paulo has to offer in terms of a vibrant cultural life.

Whereas paulistanos love a weekend in Rio, but tend to stick to the city’s South Zone which, beaches and nature aside**, is actually its least interesting area. They complain about Rio’s clichés then do their best to live them out when they visit the city. Perhaps they’re so desperate to escape their infernal megalopolis they live in that by the time they get to Rio they just collapse in exhaustion on Leblon Beach. Or is that just another cliché?

[Editor’s note:  – Vincent]

What’s more interesting is the similarities, not the differences, between both cities. They’re like two very different children born of the same parents, both competing for attention. Both are as modern and competitive, as hard–working and lazy, as clever and dumb as each other. Actually Rio is much more like the rest of Brazil, especially the North East, only much more beautiful. And São Paulo is a giant megalopolis with everything that entails, a city that is unique not just in Brazil, but in South America.

And both are unmistakably Brazilian cities, two misshaped peas in the same pod, and you will never understand anything about Brazil if you don’t get to know both. And appreciate that the smart, ugly sister and her beautiful lazy sibling is one cliché that doesn’t hold up.

**[[Editor’s note: As an American, and native of Los Angeles, I don’t like this analogy. To me, São Paulo is New York and Los Angeles combined, and Rio is a sort of over-sized Miami, if it were also where the emperor used to live. São Paulo reminds me more of LA than NY, with its chaotic sprawl. And getting to LA’s beaches from downtown doesn’t take much less time than it does to get to São Paulo’s breathtaking jungle retreats from o centro.

And, when I come to Rio, I go straight for the beach. Nature in Rio is breathtaking. Most of the other stuff, though nice, is better in São Paulo. Do cariocas come to São Paulo and try to go swimming in the Marginal Pinheiros? Someday, I’ll have to write my own SP-Rio comparison. — Vincent]]

— Both photos above by Dom Phillips, taken on an iPhone and embarrassingly sent through an Instagram filter —

Ideally, police are the solution to the problem, not the cause. But for the last week, most attention here in Brazil has been focused on police strikes that probably led to a number of deaths and at one point seemed to threaten the country’s extremely important Carnival celebrations.

It now looks like things will more or less return to normal. The strike in Salvador which began at the beginning of the month has now ended, and the small strike in Rio may very well end today. A vote is scheduled for tonight.

But this was an unpleasant wake up call for Brazil, and a difficult reminder of the sometimes tense relationship between the police, the federal government, and civil society.

As professor David Fleischer said, “The strikes were organized to be on the eve of the Carnival to put these cities in a very difficult position.” That comes off sounding like a bit of an understatement. It is hard to overestimate the role Carnival plays in Brazilian culture, and indeed, in Brazilian business. Salvador and Rio host the country’s largest and most profitable celebrations.

So it’s quite important that the police actually be policing during the events, and that they do not let thugs run wild, unleashing a spree of murders and robberies. So it seemed the police had authorities right where they wanted them. But this strategy may have backfired. While the government of Bahia let things get out of hand, Rio made it clear very quickly the strike would not be tolerated, coming down hard on leaders.

As with most strikes, it was about money. Brazilian police are not paid very well, and the country is very expensive. One sympathizes. But the question is whether or not allowing people to die is a legitimate bargaining chip. It seemed quite reasonable when President Dilma Rousseff judged that it was not.

So what does this tell us about Brazil in 2012? It’s hard to say. Should we worry that the country won’t be prepared for host the World Cup in 2014, or the Olympics in 2016. Probably not. When things are that important, Brazil finds a solution. But perhaps more worrying is that in their day-to-day lives many Brazilians view police with suspicion, and that some police consider their situation so difficult that they thought they needed to send this message. Whatever the message is, it’s not a good one.

Links:

Reuters story with the latest news 

My Los Angeles Times article from Saturday

An excellent set of photos on the A Folha de São Paulo site