DREW VO: I’m Drew Scanlon.
I’m exploring the world through the lens of games, and I’m doing it with the support
of people like you on Patreon.
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When I think of Brazil, I can’t help picturing the favelas, those ubiquitous, multicolored
shanty towns I’ve virtually walked through and blown up in games like Max Payne 3 and
Modern Warfare 2.
“Favela” is the word Brazilians use for “slum,” and in Rio de Janeiro especially,
they’ve gained a reputation as hotbeds for drugs and violence.
But is that the reality?
To find out, we hired a guide to take us to the largest favela in Brazil, Rocinha, in
the hills surrounding Rio.
As our driver Claudio wound his way up the hill, our guide Marina filled us in on the
current situation.
MARINA: There are favelas everywhere in Brazil.
Usually in big cities.
In fact, this is how they started.
With the industrial boom, they needed cheap labor, so they hired people coming from the
countryside and poor areas and they had no place to live.
They started to build their houses in the favelas.
Rio has nearly 1000 favelas.
Twenty percent of the population here lives in favelas, which is about one and a half
million people.
Waiters, room keepers, they work in the kitchens at the restaurants around, maids,
drivers, and so on.
It’s normal to have the rich and the poor living close together, next door.
Two worlds, facing each other.
Favelas are places forgotten by the government and by the society as well.
So people from the drug traffic found in those places the best areas to have their business.
And what's happening in Rocinha at the moment is, there was a drug lord in charge of the
entire favela, and he was caught, and he's in a prison of maximum security in the north
of the country.
Because of corruption, even from there he still controls the favela.
Even from a prison of maximum security.
Well, after he's in prison, there's another one took his place.
For nearly a month now, shootings and things.
Many people are being killed.
We have to be a little bit alert what's going on around.
DREW VO: I’ll admit I was nervous, but something Marina said made me feel a little better.
MARINA: The word is, "don't mess around your own neighborhood."
So they live in the favela and go rob us in town.
I usually tell people that you're much safer carrying your belongings in the favela other
than on the streets in Copacabana.
You can be robbed very easily in Copacabana.
And then as we turn left, welcome to the favela, right here
And this place, for over 80,000 people, they have only this road here, four more streets.
That's it.
The rest are alleys with stairs.
DREW VO: For the time being we stuck to the
main thoroughfares, which allowed Marina to give us an overview of favela life.
MARINA: You can see that the place is quite clean.
They have special areas for garbage containers and city government provides the cleaning
twice a day.
They have electricity, they have water, they have sewer.
Did you notice the wires around?
Electricity, cable TV, telephone, Internet, and whichever could fit there.
It's a legal and very well organized chaos.
Rocinha has over 6,000 little entrepreneurs.
So many stores you see here in the favelas are owned by these people.
Three big banks in this favela.
If people didn't have money, banks wouldn't be here.
A nice dental clinic here.
These doctors, they live in town, but they work in the favela.
There's a lot of competition in town.
Here they practice cheaper prices and dozens of clients.
Men love to have birds here.
DREW: Really? Why is that?
MARINA: I don't know, but men like to have birds.
They go, have a beer, they take their birds along.
They chat, the birds sing, they have competitions and things.
This is a repair garage.
He fixes cars if you get into an accident.
If you want to work as a taxi driver, cars don't come in yellow, so they change it into yellow.
DREW VO: Behind the garage was one of the best views I have ever seen.
MARINA: How many stories is it safe to keep building on top of each other?
We don't know.
Nothing happened so far.
You cannot come and build on top of anybody.
You build your house, you are the owner.
Even if you don't have the property title, you're still the owner.
You can build on top, or you can sell the top to another person and that person builds
on top.
It can be endless.
The blue containers are for water.
Many satellite dishes.
In Brazil you can buy things and pay in many installments.
So people can afford buying whatever they want.
But if they don't pay their debts on time, their names go to a black list.
They have huge LCD televisions, they have appliances, everything in their homes.
That problem is to deliver them through the alleys, which is quite tough.
DREW: Yeah.
MARINA: But the view’s not bad, huh?
DREW VO: From this vantage point, Rocinha seemed calm and serene.
The same was true for the nearby favela of Vila Canoas, where we got to explore some alleys.
It was immediately clear that people here took pride in their community and their homes,
even if those homes weren’t exactly up to code.
MARINA: If you ever get lost, just look for the light and you’ll find your way out.
Look at that bike.
DREW: Gotta put it somewhere.
MARINA: No space inside, so…
DREW: It’s really peaceful and quiet.
DREW VO: One possible reason for the relative peace in the favelas these days could be the
initiative started in 2008 called Pacification.
MARINA: It's impossible to stop drug traffic totally, but it's possible to decrease drug traffic.
The police go into a specific favela, and they get the control of the territory back.
They remain in the favela, they have an office there, and we say the Favela is “pacified.”
Seems easy, but it's complicated.
Many alleys, few streets, the police didn't know the way around, no maps, and many lives
are involved.
Before the pacification, we would see those guys in the motorbikes carrying guns in the back seat.
Before, you'd say, "I'll go to a favela."
"Are you crazy? You're going to be killed, you're going to be robbed."
Not anymore.
People are saying, "I'll go because there are police there now, they can protect me."
During the World Cup, many people in the favelas rented rooms for tourists and the favelas
were packed with people from other countries.
And I asked one girl, "How did you find out this place?", "Oh, through Airbnb."
DREW: [laughs]
MARIINA: Listen.
They work in town, so they know how to treat us well.
Beautiful views.
Much cheaper, and especially during the World Cup, was totally safe.
Not all of them are pacified.
Some are very dangerous indeed, but in general most people are very nice people.
But they have to obey the rules of the minority, which is the drug traffic.
And unfortunately, many kids get involved with the drug traffic.
Easy money. Easy money.
We have free education, free healthcare in the country, but both are very deficient.
People with more money, they want a better future for their children and so put them
in private schools if they can.
There are several private schools in the Favelas nowadays.
We support two of them.
Eighty-five kids altogether in this school.
Morning and afternoon.
They have two shifts.
The ten commandments.
"Be gentle, be educated, ask please."
It doesn’t look like you are in the favela, does it?
DREW: No.
MARINA: Very cute.
DREW VO: Seeing kids in school who may otherwise have been sucked into the drug trade was incredibly
heartening, but as Marina points out, the situation in the favelas is constantly in
flux, subject to the whims of drug lords and politics.
MARINA: They did some things after the Pacification.
There's a new hospital now here.
They have a sport complex.
This is part of our federal government.
But nowadays, because of the situation, the State of Rio is broken, because of the corruption,
they're not investing anything in the favelas.
This is the option that people from the drug traffic have to get the control of the territory
back, because there's a lack of power, lack of government to protect people here.
It is perfect for the drug traffic nowadays to try to get the control back of the territory.
That is what they're doing.
DREW VO: There are reasons to be afraid of the favelas.
The day before we went to Rocinha, a suspected gang member was killed there in a shootout
with police.
Four days after we went there, a tourist was killed on a tour just like ours when her
van accidentally ran a police barrier.
It’s hard to believe the charming town we spent the day in could erupt at a moment’s
notice into deadly violence.
But can’t both things be true?
That Rocinha can be violent and beautiful, vibrant, and warm?
In a country of contrasts, this is not a stretch.
What is inconceivable to me is to blanket an area and a people with judgement based
on fear.
I’m not saying everything is nice and safe all the time, just that things are rarely
as scary as we think.
And if that’s true, by challenging and diminishing our own fear of the world around us, we can
make it a much better place to live.
This concludes Cloth Map’s Brazil series.
If you’re just joining us, our previous episodes touched on the electronics gray markets
of São Paulo, the fandom for video games across Brazil, and a look at independent game
development from Rio to Brasilia.
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