Rio de Janeiro | The Race to the Start

As it gears up to host two mega sporting events, Rio runs the risk of leaving its poor behind

01 November 2012
Taina Pereira’s cousin Cristiano holds up a photograph of her brother Thales, who was 15 when he was shot and killed by a special forces unit of the police in June this year.
JIMMY CHALK FOR THE CARAVAN
Taina Pereira’s cousin Cristiano holds up a photograph of her brother Thales, who was 15 when he was shot and killed by a special forces unit of the police in June this year.
JIMMY CHALK FOR THE CARAVAN

THE BLEACHED WHITE WALLS inside the one-room chapel glow with fluorescent lights. Perched on the highest street of an exasperatingly steep slope, only the sturdiest cars and most intrepid motorcycles even attempt to climb up here. This mountainside in Rio de Janeiro is covered with favelas, or shanty towns, which greet and swallow up downtown day workers in their cars as they zoom into the tunnel below towards the posh neighbourhoods on the other side.

The church is so high that residents here in the favela Fogueteiro can nearly look eye to eye with the city’s famous Christ statue—which sits atop Corcovado, a central peak that towers over the city—and, when the statue is lit at night, make out the features carved into his stone face.

Even in a city ripe with postcard views, the one from Fogueteiro is among Rio’s most mesmerising. But the favela is a place where a climate of dissent and mistrust is driving a thorn deep into Rio de Janeiro’s plan, in the words of the mayor Eduardo Paes, “to transform” itself before it hosts the 2016 Olympics. The community is supposed to be “pacified”—the verb Rio now uses to describe the occupation of favelas by thousands of new police personnel given special training in human rights and conflict mediation.

Taylor Barnes is a freelance journalist based in Rio de Janeiro, who focuses on issues of human rights and public security. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and GlobalPost.

Keywords: poverty Latin America Rio de Janeiro Olympics
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