Babilonia within Babylon - the contrasts of Rio

Rio De Janeiro is a city of high places and low, in geography as well as other less tangible things. San Francisco seems as flat as a pancake in comparison, Rome an undulating plain.  

The truly sublime and enchanting vista of Rio de Janeiro at sunset.







View of Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf mountain)
from the summit of Corcovado.

The main tourist activities principally involve conquering the hair raising peaks of the city - but not by sweat and grit. Instead you are conveyed by concierge bus (Corcovado - Christ the Redeemer) or executive cable car (Pão de Açúcar - Sugarloaf). From these vantages you can look down upon the glistening city of golden beaches populated by tanned athletes, the choked highways, the airports and the jokey club, the Art Deco edifice of the Copacabana hotel, and the favelas that snake up the sides of dozens of gorgeous dramatic mountains.





The luxurious Copacabana Palace Hotel

It is easy to see what Dean Martin and Bridgette Bardot saw in this place jetting back and forth in the fifties. This home of glamour, unparalleled vista and samba, where the music and culture of the favela has been sanitised repackaged and monitised to tourists and the wealthy. Yet at the same time the people who invented the what makes Brazil so different are disowned and hiddenaway by the nation. We are beginning to realise Brazil has a difficult relationship between a genuine desire for community, celebration and love struggling against a historical context of entrenched interests, exploitation and a fair share of fear.

  

We moved around to try and get a flavour for the different sides of this fabulous pulsating city. First we stayed in the Babilonia favela above Leme beach. Such is the way of Rio, luxury apartments and gated underground garages in Leme proper gave way to a single opening into Babilonia three blocks back from the beach. This junction is reasonably intimidating when you turn up at the middle of the night to see police officers with fully automatic machine guns hanging around the entrance into a steep incline to a warren of roads, the red strobe of the police lights shining off the buildings. Babilonia had been "pacified" in 2009 - one of the first in a programme that has to date been invoked in near 200 favelas. The process involved the aggressive clearing of gangs and guns by a three step strategy.

The Pacifying Police Unit (UPP) located at the
top of the Santa Marta favela

1) Penetration of the favela by the BOPE - a

heavily armed counter organised crime and terrorist unit. They give gangs inside the favela several days notice to move out. Then they go in and move from house to house searching for guns. Drugs are seen as less of an issue. In the early days of pacification this was met with some resistance, and some gun fighting.

2) Once the favela has been cleared and declared safe a permanent police post is established, usually at the entrance and at the highest point of the favela. "Normal" police are stationed - normal in the Rio sense being heavily armed and ubiquitous.

3) The police establish links with the community and offer services and outreach programmes with the residents to build trust and a sense of security.

Allied to this a police academy was setup to encourage large numbers of new recruits to counter the deep rooted and on-going corruption in the police service.

With Danubia, at the entrance to the
Santa Marta favela.

It's, at least to a traveller who knows so little about the actual mechanics of such things, to have been reasonably effective in the neighbourhoods we visited. In the morning Babilonia revealed itself as a fantastic warm community with its fair share of wonderful restaurants and bars. Danubia, a community volunteer who guided us around another favela Santa Marta, said - although there was significant residual distrust of the police - that the residents greatly appreciated rule of law being re-introduced to the favela,and the improved business opportunities it brought. Many of the former gang members she knew now had legal jobs. Quality of living had generally increased.

The colourful Santa Marta favela near Botafogo, Rio de Janiero

Ian, in amongst the twisted pathways and
wonderful street art of the Santa Marta favela

One particular effective policy was to emphasise women police officers - around 70% has been achieved in Santa Marta. Studies had shown women were more likely to be trusted by residents and therefore purposefully recruited. Also services like a day care centre have been offered with mixed success, but certainly it was an improvement on the years before 2009, where police would only enter favelas heavily armed, to raid and repress and depart, often resulting in lethal gun battles with the gangs inside who ran them as their own fiefdoms. It was also heartening to hear Danubia say that she felt police corruption had greatly decreased also.

The rider to all of this positivity is the favelas we visited were all in the tourist heartland and therefore so accessible to the prying eyes of international news cameras in the run up and wake of the world cup in 2014 and 2016 Olympic games, begging for a scandal, begging for a sensation. In the Zona Nord, the seemingly endless urban conglobation beyond the Maracana where the majority of the Rio population rests, has a much lesser extent of pacification and welfare services. What we experienced in Babilonia and Santa Marta is far more likely the exception rather than the rule to date, sadly.

Ready for kick off at the Maracana stadium

We took in a game at the Maracana - a worthy citadel to football, huge yet intimate at the same time. Flamengo - the most popular team in Rio versus Internacional from Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil. The stadium was only a third full - Brazil, despite being the world's most famous and successful footballing nation is really struggling to build up attendance for domestic games. The richer fans worry about violence and thefts, while the poorer cannot afford the tickets. Plus wall to wall tv coverage of all games gives people the option of staying at home or going to the local bar to watch. That said things are improving - the World Cup stadia are tremendous and modern, well staffed with guides and welcomers to make you feel at home. We saw plenty of families and women supporters alongside the bare chested young men screaming for their team.

Ole, Ole Ole Ole.... Flamengo FC supporters

We stayed in the Flamengo end, and even if the stadium was mostly empty our stand was full to bursting. The singing, drumming and flags gave a terrific atmosphere. Flamengo won 2-0 but the quality of the football was perhaps not so good (not surprising when any half decent Brazilian player is hoisted off to Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, Italy, Japan, Russia, even Malta to play for a fortune. It is hard to find a league in the developed world without Brazilians in it. Literally thousands must play abroad), but enjoyable enough. For skill and jaw dropping dexterity we saw more compelling feats on Ipanema beach, including extraordinary futevolei (foot volleyball). Bicycle kicks, chest flicks, any kind of pirouette you can imagine. The players of that game are gods.

Alongside football Samba in the other great cultural focal point. The Rio Scenarium - an opulent 19th century concert house - is one of the great palaces to it. We saw a glammed up older lady belting out tunes there accompanied by an eight piece band replete with flute. Great for a dance, even if I am struggling to follow the furious steps (Sal is pretty good at them, I am not). The crowd are even more engaging than the music - the median age was much more like forty than twenty, alongside a few ladies and gents in their fifties and sixties - all keeping up with the ferocious pace and maintaining snake like hips. You are really struck by how much socialising and dancing are an intergenerational thing, quite unlike how it is stratified in the UK and age groups rarely mix on a night out.

The famous Lapa aquaduct which becomes the
setting for a street party come 11pm on a Friday night

After the Scenarium we ended up in nearby Lapa - the great swarming heartland of a drunken Rio Friday night. Unlike the Scenarium which was pretty expensive to get into and therefore all tourists and upper classes, Lapa is a street party where everyone mills around in great flocking groups. Bands play all sorts of music on corners (we saw a samba punk band with shaved heads, saxophones and distorted guitars), and there are little stalls where you can buy a Caprinha for 5 reals (about a pound). These are really good but don't plan anything the day after....



A slightly more sophisticated version of the Lapa caipirinha!

How to make a Lapa Caipirinha (serve two):-

1) Slice and crush eight whole limes

2) Add six heaped table spoons of sugar. This is really a disturbing amount of sugar.

3) Fill a cocktail shaker to the top with Cachaca (spirit made from pure sugar cane).

4) Add nothing else. No soda, no juice. Shake with ice and serve.

Ilha Grande

When you get the boat across the water from Concepção de Jacarei to Ilha Grande it is like you are experiencing the idealised paradise of a Hollywood script. The prow of the speedboat chopping through turquoise surf, an iridescent sky, the joking Portuguese chatter of the boat's pilot and mate, the lush semi tropical island growing closer to reveal a detail of brightly painted shop fronts and cafes set above golden sands. Apologies if this rather exuberant intro sounds smug. I am only trying to tell it how it is.

 

View of the main port, Abraao

 



The jetty at Praia de Palmas, Ilha Grande

Pousada Aratinga where we stayed is a quiet oasis out the back of the main port Abraao. It is run by Rennie, a charming Australian expat with a fantastic eye for decor and gardening, and who has a particularly English passion for afternoon tea served at 4pm each day. Mountains of cake - Brazilians are obsessed with it - are also served at breakfast (Sal's love for Brazil unveils itself...) alongside tasty scrambled eggs, fruit salads and yoghurt. It really was a magnificent place to stay, and if you ever go to Ilha Grande (which you must) I would heartily recommend dropping your backpack there and enjoying some modest luxury. Rennie bought the place and is now a Brazilian resident, and her business - like the island - is booming. Apparently, if you fancy, you can buy a place for US$50,000 and become a resident of a Brazilian paradise too, providing you employ local folk and contribute to the economy. While we chatted about that it did sound very tempting, even with a few bureaucratic hurdles (once buying Aratinga, Rennie had to move back to Australia and wait for her residency for two years before returning to kick off the business on Ilha Grande).



Stunning Praia de Lopes Mendes, Ilha Grande

This week was intended, more than anything, to be a time to relax. And Ilha Grande delivered on that. I won't bore you with too much of the detail as I am sure you have all been on a beach holiday or two. The days were divided into lounging on the islands many beaches (stunning), hiking through the Jurassic Park like jungle (gorgeous, sweaty, steep), eating (grilled succulent fish) and drinking (sweet and salty Caprinhas, large beers in coolers served with tiny little glasses to drink it from*). You couldn't beat it for a start.

 

 

 

NOTE - As this is my first post I feel obliged to say that the way I approach these blogs means that I only really write a little about what we did up at the start. I just can't do the blow by blow breakdown of each days activities. I bore myself, let alone you. So instead - you lucky readers - I try to do a little bit of hackneyed journalism on the place we visit, which may or may not intersect exactly with what we have done, but will be related to it at least by geography. Got it? Okay. Please do not feel bad if you stop reading now as you have a visceral hatred for abuses against the fine art of reporting, or do not care for self important analysis - the bit above has all the key information that you need about what the place is like to visit, and that we are alive, unraveged by disease or criminality, and generally having a lovely time.

 

 

 

 A typical Brazilian bikini the 'Fio Dental'
(Portuguese for 'dental floss')

The weekend fell on a Brazilian holiday, which meant the visit of a huge amount of the wealthy middle class from Rio De Janeiro and the surrounds. The posh ones arrive on fancy cruiser boats with pumping stereos, and are endowed with an impressive degree of corpulence, flaunted through minimal swimware coverage for women and men alike. These growing bellies are a sign of Brazil as one of the emerging economies of the world, alongside the Rolexes, a sushi restaurant, and the upscale pousadas on the island - though there are also plenty of more modest folks who come over on the slow boat from the mainland to stay on campsites and ramshackle concrete guesthouses.

Music abounds, soulful guitar players weaving samba and rhumba tunes in the courtyards and beach front. Everyone is smiling, everyone is drinking, everyone is eating, everyone is shuttling off in taxi boats to the half dozen beaches you can reach from Abraao in 30 minutes. It inspires an enchanting hopeful, successful and inclusive image to Brazil's present and future. The people really are lovely, welcoming and infectious.

Yet this joviality is a recent phenomenon - at least as far as Ilha Grande is concerned. The island was off limits to tourists right up to 1994. Prior to this the island was home to an Alcatraz style maximum security prison for murderers and, sadly, the persecution and torture of political prisoners during the dictatorship of the 70s and 80s. In the new burgeoning economy, and in the idealised post dictator democracy, it was decided that the island would be better served as a tourist mecca than a criminal colony.

 



Remains of the Cândido Mendes high-security prison,
Dios Rios, Ilha Grande

However the simple demolition of the prison in '94 did not resolve the underlying incarceration problems in Rio state or the country as a whole. Brazil has a severe and growing issue with prisons, with or without democracy. Today half a million souls inhabit them across the country. There are, astonishingly, only 239 prison doctors between all inmates. Over half of all prisoners languish in jail pre-trial yet to be convicted of any crime, and can wait years for a court date which could mean their release and confirmation of their innocence. Each year the rate at which people are imprisoned increases. And like the United States, the UK and France non white prisoners are vastly over represented compared to their proportion of the population.

 

'God is Faithful' inscribed above the ruins of the
 prison cells

Heaped upon this over 70% cannot afford legal council, and the state cannot provide them with aid or a public defender. It is an epidemic which undermines the aspirations of Brazil to become a first world state, and makes the poor who are overwhelmingly impacted by the system cynical of the federal and state governments, justice system and police forces. Jose Eduardo Cardozo, the justice minister, has said that he would rather die than go to one of his own prisons, a staggering indictment. Dilma, the Brazilian president, once imprisoned and tortured herself in the dark days of authoritarianism, has done little to address the issues to date despite electoral promises two years ago.

The sad state of affairs came to a brutal display of violence at the end of August. Two prisoners were beheaded and two more were thrown to their deaths from the roof inside Cascaval City correctional facility in Parana state. The ordeal was filmed and broadcasted on television to a shocked nation which had preferred, on the whole, to ignore a crisis hidden behind concrete walls, iron bars, and the invisibility of those without privilege. The riots that culminated in these events were the product of poor conditions and lack of adequate guards on duty.

 

Track from Abraoo to Dios Rios, Ilha Grande

Yesterday we hiked across to Dios Rios which houses the ruins of the demolished prison - four hours there and back on a near abandoned dirt road (no cars are allowed on the island due to some impressively progressive environmental legislation) - and were met by a still inhabited yet spookily dilapidated town. It would make a fabulous setting for the next Resident Evil instalment - rusted lamps, broken roads and an overgrown park square were set out before the intact frontage of the whitewashed penitentiary. Within the prison the cell blocks and workhouses had been imploded and sat in heaps, but there was a museum on the site to gave a little detail on the history of the inmates and penitentiary life. It was one of hunger, disease and violence.

Top: Cândido Mendes high-security prison in
Dios Rios was imploded in 1994.
Bottom: The beach at Dios Ros

These issues then and now are a symptom of under funding for the vital institutions in developing economies. Hugely expanding populations demand ever greater resources from a government which struggles, despite rapidly expanding GDP, to collect and distribute adequate taxation from wealthy elites who can offshore the money or circumnavigate the tax inspectors through the best lawyers and accountants or securing of political favours. The inequality drives up crime rates, which in turn increases corruption and these factors conspire to boost the prison population. Against this tide prisons have to compete for scant incremental government investment against stretched hospitals and schools which are understandably attract greater public (and therefore electoral) sentiment. It is a cycle that existed in Brazil and much of the developing world in 1994, and one that continues to exist today.

A grim counterpoint to a glorious experience on Ilha Grande. I am inclined to agree with the justice minister. We certainly will be doing all we can to avoid prison while we are here...

 

 

*Dad - I recommend you adopt this policy. Get a tiny glass - nothing more than a teacup in capacity - and always pour your drink into that you drink. The first beer may now last you more than 3 minutes!