Slum or Community - São Paulo

From Folha de São Paulo, Friday 24 January 2014 Section C8

So, once upon a time, I was going to do some volunteer work teaching English in a place called Jardim São Remo. São Remo is one of the oldest poor communities that developed around a richer area, in this case the richer area was University of São Paulo in Butantã.  There is a tangled love/hate story between the two--Jardim São Remo was first created by the construction company which built it for the workers that were constructing the university campus in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Once the campus was finished, the workers stayed on. Many of the current residents still work as gardeners or janitors or whatever on campus, which is why there are two gates open between the community and the campus.

Orange bit is Jardim São Remo. The entire area to its right is USP São Paulo

Today I noted that the Folha de São Paulo had classified São Remo as a "favela"or slum, rather than a  "comunidade" or community. I personally would not have closen "favela" since that brings to mind haphazard cardboard and metal roofed temporary places. And I can't think of a place that supplies a lot of good to the university, and the pejorative-laced "favela."

My experience there was that it very much was a community--the woman in charge of the NGO (Alavanca) took me around the streets. The homes were piled on top of each other, pieced together from brick and concrete block. Small rooms were filled with multiple families, the roads terrible, filled with trash, with electric wires and with people. Yet every person said hello to me. I was introduced to the woman at the gate of the community that leads to University of São Paulo. She told me about how she was starting a bookmobile for the community.  I felt secure. About two months later, I met a distance runner from São Remo and took him home from one of the races, taking him as far as that gate that walled the poor from the rich campus that is USP.  I could hardly drive in there with my imported Japanese car. It just wouldn't look good.

Today São Remo is again a favela, according at least to Folha. USP seems to be under attack from a gang there. $20,000 reais bicycles are being stolen at gunpoint as their owners rid around the campus early in the morning. The bicycles are disappearing into São Remo. This latest story claims that a negotiation took place between an executive and the "leaders of the favela" to get back his R$20,000 bicycle. Some say he paid R$2,000 to get it back. 

In the end, most favelas probably are communities in the sense that the live together, succeed together and suffer together. Meaning, I am guessing that police presence will shortly be heightened there. There's a lot of good in that bad, so I just hope they stop to figure out which one is which.

Sprawling waters - São Paulo

This is the view from my car of the work in progress on the monorail that will run from the Congonhas Airport (the national airport) to connect with business areas and other metro lines in São Paulo. It is one of the areas that most surprises me when I venture there every six months or so.

When I first lived here in 1998, this avenue was called Aguas Espraiadas (sprawling waters) and was largely a road to nowhere. I should say nowhere good. Next to the avenue, near the marginal Pinheiros, was one of the largest and worst favelas (shanty towns) in São Paulo. It was a place where you had to be on your guard against hold ups, and the horror stories were exactly that. 

In 1998, they were starting to raze the cardboard houses, but there was a significant percentage left to go. Where did the people go, I would ask? Well, they were given about US$1000 and sent off to live in other "communities" in the north and east of the city. About 40 residents who were in actual city housing received significantly more when they were at last told to leave in about 2003.

The old favela. Now squished.

The avenue is now named Roberto Marinho, though you can tell people's political beliefs or longevity in the city by what they call it. Those around longest call it still Aguas Espraiadas. Those newer or more precise will call it Roberto Marinho or the pretty postcard road (our former mayor Marta Suplicy called the suspension bridge built at its start "São Paulo's postcard"). And those who were opposed to the re-naming of the avenue (which was apparently an illegal change because of a municipal law governing name changes) referred to it as Avenue Vladimir Herzog.

São Paulo's postcard Ponte Estaiada. Cabled Bridge in English.

The long and short of it is this. Roberto Marinho founded Globo, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. At the time of his death, in 2003, his net worth was around US$6 billion. But he was not well-loved by all, not only because he was a carioca (from Rio), but because he supported the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964-1985. To say it lightly, those were not Brazil's finest hours (and yes, I do know that the US hands are dirty too. Very dirty.) Vladimir Herzog was a journalist tortured and killed during the dictatorship; he died at the age of 38. Roberto Marinho lived well until the age of 98. During the building of the avenue, there were a number of protests that changed signs to Herzog's name rather than Marinho's.

One only has to scratch a tiny bit at the story behind daily photos to turn up an emotionally scarred past. The history of the military dictatorship is burbling underneath it all. Poverty too. Corruption too...at the time, the building of the avenue was the most expensive road project in the world. Yet much of it allegedly went into the pocket of then-mayor Maluf.

The monorail is slated to open in 2014.