posted
Hello, people. While surfing the net I found a french website where there are many photo's of the "Arará", one of the favelas where I teach here in Rio de Janeiro. The text is also preety good. Unfortunatelly, it is in french.
I've been thinking about taking some pictures myself, but I have mixed feelings about this, since I teach at night, and people over there tend not to like bright flashes at night (A girl once told me the drug dealers do not like people taking pictures at night, I really don't know why).
posted
When I was a missionary in Parana, we visited a lot of people in favelas. They looked pretty different from the pictures on your link, though. The favelas I visited were pretty much squatter towns where people would invade some land where nothing was built. Every building was a small shack build by the occupants. These pictures look like that area of town was first build up for buisnesses and apartments, and then "abandoned" to become a favela. Is this how the Rio favelas are?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I agree with Mr porteiro dude. Those are pretty nice looking favelas- they appear to be almost exclusively made of brick and they have bars on the windows and the whole nine yards. While there are plenty of places in Sao Paulo that look like that too, there are also a whole lot of houses made of scrap wood and baling wire or even cardboard.
At any rate it is a sad thing that such a rich country should have so many people who live in such poverty. I think that in the future Brazil will finally find its economic legs and hopefully things like favelas will become a thing of the past.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Not exactly. I don't know if it is widely known, but Rio de Janeiro is a city with many hills (we call them "morros"). Fifty or sixty years ago they were the least desirable areas to live, over here (it rains a lot in Rio. Living over the hill means your house may tumble down any rainy summer). So, people started to build houses (some of them, little wooden huts) over the hills. That's how the favelas came to be. Since there's not much space (it's a hill, after all) where houses can be built, they tend to be built one on top of the other, like you can see in the pictures.
Arará is not one of the worst favelas we have here. It is an old community, and most houses are made of brick. Drug dealers carrying guns are the main problem, of course. See the C.V. painted in a wall in the first or second picture? It's "Comando Vermelho" (Red Command), the largest drug cartel we have in Brazil. They literally own the place. Heck! I have to identify myself (show my I.D. card) whey I go there to teach, sometimes!
posted
So now even the drug cartels are becoming bureaucracies? The paper-pushers really do rule the world!
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Very clear photographs. 
