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.