AQ_Winter 2016-Rio's Big Moment

Inside the city’s favelas
during an Olympic year —
and a recession
DISPATCHES
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio’sBig
Moment
Denis Torres,
40, wears a cap
that reads: “I am
part of the favela.”
Photographs by Carlos Coutinho
With reporting by Thainã Medeiros
and Stephen Kurczy
56 AMERICAS quarterly issue 1, 2016
AQ0116F_RIO_LAY12.indd 56 1/7/16 6:40 PM

DISPATCHES
THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE the year of Rio de Janeiro.
The 2016 Olympics were meant to showcase a safer,
modernizing city that could not only provide for its more
than 6 million citizens but also play host to a marvelous
global party. Unfortunately, it hasn’t turned out that
way — Rio has been badly hit by Brazil’s worst recession
in 80 years, and violence is once again on the rise.
As a result, residents of Complexo do Alemão — one
of Rio’s largest and poorest collections of favelas, or
shantytowns — face even greater challenges than usual.
Unemployment is rising, people are spending less on
even the most basic needs, and Brazil’s boom years of
the late 2000s are becoming a distant memory. Police are
trying to wrest control of the area from drug gangs, and
shootings are rife. But the Complexo is also a hotbed of
the entrepreneurial energy that Brazil needs to get back
on the right path, as the following photo essay by local
journalists shows. This is a portrait of a community under
pressure from all sides.
ComplexodoAlemão
Carlos Coutinho Born and raised in
Complexo do Alemão, Coutinho is a
photographic reporter with the media
group Coletivo Papo Reto. His work has
appeared in The New York Times, Sydney
Morning Herald and Fusion.
Stephen Kurczy Based in Rio de
Janeiro, Kurczy has been a Brazil
correspondent since 2013 and is a special
correspondent for Americas Quarterly.
Thainã Medeiros A reporter for
Coletivo Papo Reto, Medeiros also lives
in Complexo do Alemão. His work has
appeared in The New York Times, BBC,
and VICE.

issue 1, 2016 AMERICAS quarterly 59

DISPATCHES
“I’m happy that [the Olympics]
But the Olympics don’t happen
Souza, 30, stands in the narrow
kitchen alley of her one-bedroom
home. For the mother of six, life
is looking up with her new job
as a cleaner in Rio’s ritzy south-
ern neighborhood of Barra
da Tijuca, which has seen a
blitz in housing development
to handle the inﬂux of tour-
ists for the mid-2016 Olympics.
Souza earns 1,100 reais ($293)
a month, but she said she
still depends on aid from the
government’s Bolsa Família
welfare program—which some
in Congress have threatened
to cut amid the recession.

gave me work.
here. So many things in Rio are more important.”
Catarina Souza

DISPATCHES
“The word
‘favela’
now is not
a slur—it’s
a symbol
of pride.”
Denis Torres
Torres, 40, remembers the
boom years in Complexo
do Alemão, when strong
economic growth from 2003
to 2013 lifted more than
26 million Brazilians out of
poverty. Riding that wave, in
2010 he started Brazil’s ﬁrst
favela-themed clothing line
and quickly licensed seven
franchises around Rio. But
whereas he once counted
daily sales of around $750 at
his ﬂagship Complexidade
Urbana shop, sales have
now plummeted to around
$15 a day, forcing him to lay
off six of his 10 workers. Four
of his stores have closed.

“Now I just buy the basics.”
Anita Maria da Silva
DISPATCHES
The empty shelves of Silva’s refrigerator reﬂect
her pinched pocketbook. The 34-year-old
was forced to shutter her food stall business
(pictured right) in early 2015 amid the wors-
ening recession and rising violence, and now
her family relies on a Catholic charity for gifts
of rice, beans, coffee and pasta. Their trou-
bles have been compounded by a mudslide
that destroyed their home in 2012—a rela-
tively common occurrence in Rio’s hilly
favelas. Once Silva’s husband ﬁnishes build-
ing their new one-bedroom brick dwelling,
they plan to sell the property and return to her
hometown in the northeast state of Paraíba.
“Everyone living here knows someone who
has died,” she said. “I fear for my kids.”

AQ0116F_RIO_LAY12b.indd 66 1/13/16 6:26 PM

Barbershop owner Renato
Aguiar, wearing the
white sports jersey, said
he raised the price of a
haircut by 50 percent to 15
reais ($4). That’s because
of Brazil’s double-digit
inﬂation, which has
hiked his costs for basic
items such as electric-
ity and hair gels. More
pain is expected, with
the economy forecast
to contract another 2
percent in 2016, after
an estimated 3 percent
recession in 2015, spell-
ing the longest recession
since the 1930s. Complexo
residents are cutting
back on non-essen-
tial purchases—and
waiting longer between
trims, said Aguiar.
AQ0116F_RIO_LAY12b.indd 67 1/13/16 6:26 PM

-Mariluce
Mariá needs
to have an
accent on the
last A in her
“When there was only drug violence, the
media said nothing. But when the violence
was between the police and gangs the media
got interested. Now there’s fewer tourists.”
Mariluce Mariá
Mariá, 34, capitalized on the tourism that
came with the opening of a cable car (tele-
férico) through Complexo do Alemão in
mid-2011 by creating a line of teleférico-
themed ﬂip-ﬂops and paintings. But with
the rise in gang-police shootings in 2015,
the iconic cable car became associated
with violence in the favela and visitors
dropped off. “Every time the media has a
report about a shooting here they show the
teleférico, so people think it’s happening
by the teleférico,” said Mariá, whose sales
have dropped to less than 100 reais ($26) a
weekend from a high of 1,200 reais ($310).

For the past 16 years, ﬁsh-
monger Gil Pontes has
driven the hilly streets of
Complexo do Alemão selling
fresh-caught sardines,
shrimp, tilapia and corvina
out of his Volkswagen van.

“[The increase in
sales] has been
good for me.”
Gil Pontes
DISPATCHES
Pontes, 31, proudly said he’s selling more
ﬁsh than when he started in 1999. He now
earns about 1,000 reais ($270) a day—a
good living here, and a credit to the growing
population and general rise in incomes
in Complexo do Alemão. But he said the
recent ﬂare-up in police-gang violence now
prevents him from entering certain areas.

“Everything is
more expensive
in the market.”
Josinete Hermínio
Hermínio, 52, rides the cable car
during her daily commute to work
as a maid in Rio de Janeiro’s afﬂu-
ent Zona Sul (south zone), which
includes the beachside neighbor-
hoods of Copacabana and Ipanema.
She said she earns about 800 reais
a month ($213) but added that
wage increases haven’t kept pace
with rising costs of basic items like
chicken, which has doubled in price
to 8 reais per kilogram over the past
year—highlighting how the poor are
especially vulnerable to price shocks.

“In the media, this place is the
terror of Rio de Janeiro. Before,
we had drug dealers in the
streets, but this wasn’t a problem.
Now, we have police and drug
dealers shooting all the time.”
Genilson dos Santos
Gil Pontes
Like the dragon-slaying saint on his T-shirt, favela resident Santos is
in the middle of a battle. “We’re not selling anything,” said the long-
time owner of Amigos Bar. He said he lost many customers when
he was forced to relocate during the building of a nearby cable
car station. Another sap on demand has been the police ban on
raucous funk music parties. Other former customers have simply
disappeared altogether, he added, squeezed out by the combina-
tion of recession and heightened violence in Complexo do Alemão.

AQ_Winter 2016-Rio's Big Moment

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