Culture is Our Weapon: AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio (Latin America Bureau Short Books) - Softcover

Neate, Patrick; Platt, Damien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1899365699 ISBN 13: 9781899365692

Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Brazil is a conundrum; even as its culture enjoys an ever higher profile in the West, an undeclared, vicious and often ignored drug war is being fought on the streets of its cities' favelas (shanty towns). Culture is Our Weapon: AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio is a unique and remarkable book. It tells the story of this war through the eyes of both the protagonists and those it affects, revealing terrifying complexities of life on the frontline of one of the most damaging civil conflicts in Latin America. At centre stage of this ground breaking book is the extraordinary work of Grupo Cultural AfroReggae, a Rio-based NGO which seeks to divert favela residents from the path of poverty and violence, through music and an appreciation of black culture. AfroReggae are a force for real social change; they are also a model for what is possible when an oppressed community decides to resist the twin onslaugh of violence and poverty. This book is co-authored by a prize-winning fiction and non-fiction writer.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Patrick Neate is the author of four novels. His book Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism in the US in 2005.

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Culture is Our Weapon

AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio

By Patrick Neate, Damian Platt, Sue Branford, Ralph Smith, Jean McNeil

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2006 Patrick Neate and Damian Platt
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-899365-69-2

Contents

Authors' note, vi, 
Preface, ix, 
1 Living in a War Zone, 1, 
2 The Cradle of Crime, 9, 
3 First Moves, 16, 
4 Rival Factions, 24, 
5 JB Tells his Story, 29, 
6 The Political Moment, 40, 
7 Funk, 48, 
8 Back in Alemão, 56, 
9 People and Perceptions, 64, 
10 The Factions, 73, 
11 Guerra, 82, 
12 How it Works, 93, 
13 The Police, 103, 
14 Three Survivors' Stories, 113, 
15 Trabalhadores or Traficantes, 126, 
16 Junior, 135, 
17 A Different Way, 143, 
18 The End of the Beginning, 154, 
Postscripts, 158, 
People and Places, 159, 
Further Information, 161, 

CHAPTER 1

Living in a War Zone

Leida

'Even New Year's Eve isn't safe. There are fireworks but there are lots of tiros too. My husband and 1 like to go up on the roof to see the view over São Conrado, but before midnight we go down to my mother-in-law's because we know there'll be shooting. So we begin our celebration on top and then, at five to twelve, we come down and wait – because there are moradores who've been hit by stray bullets at midnight.

'From inside the house you can't really watch anything at all. If you climb on a bathroom chair and peer out, you can just about see something. But even so, it's only taking a peek. You see some of the fireworks and they're pretty. But at the same time you see the tracer bullets flying to and fro and, in the end, you give up and try to get some sleep.'

Leida is intelligent and unassuming, her manner exhibiting that quiet patience and dignity that so often seem to accompany a tough life. Six years ago, she left her family in the northeastern state of Maranhao to migrate south in the hope of finding a well-paid job. To an extent her wishes have been fulfilled. She works as a domestic help for two households in the asfalto and earns a salary that, though a pittance by most standards, is more than reasonable compared with those of the north-east.

She has married a Carioca from Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro's largest and most famous favelas. They live on the first floor of her mother-in-law's house and, at weekends, her husband toils on the lajé building a second storey. This upward expansion is the most common manifestation of social mobility in Brazilian favelas. If you can't, or don't want to, leave the community, you construct more space for yourself and your extended family by going up. Consequently, many of Rio's favelas are dotted with houses three, four or even five storeys high. These are typically solid, colourfully painted buildings that boast tiled verandas offering shade and a view. The common perception of favelas as crudely-built shanty towns is often mistaken.

If Leida has ambitions for her home, she has ambitions for herself too. She doesn't want to spend her whole life getting up at the crack of dawn to earn a tiny wage cleaning up after the wealthy, and she's already spent a year and a half training as a surgical assistant.

Her only access to such an opportunity was to pay for a course herself; a course that takes 600 hours to complete. Unfortunately, only those hours spent in the operating theatre count towards the qualification, and Leida had to pay 50 Reais to the hospital each month for the privilege of her training. She worked at night, slept between operations, and returned to her housekeeping jobs during the day. It was an impossible schedule and, in the end, she was forced to quit, but she still hopes to complete the remaining 500 hours of her training one day.

The cobertura

It's a Saturday morning and we're sitting on the roof terrace of an apartment block in an affluent part of Rio, the hillside overlooking the world-famous Copacabana beach district, 15 minutes walk from Avenida Atlántica. This is where we're staying.

After several days rushing around with an estate agent to be shown nothing but claustrophobic bachelor pads – all tacky décor and far too many mirrors – we finally got lucky. Aurélio, another north-easterner now living in Rocinha, led us to a bright, airy and frankly enormous two-terraced penthouse that he looks after for its owner, a French theatre director. It happened to be available, and at a bargain price too. The only condition was that Leida would come in every day to water the plants and make breakfast. No problem.

The flat is a cobertura – the chic, upper middle-class equivalent of the lajé – high on the eleventh floor. Paradoxically, however, the height of the penthouse setting actually sets us cheek by jowl with the neighboring favela and all its noise and activity. This is a typical Rio irony.

This favela, Ladeira dos Tabajaras, clusters around the road which winds its way up the hillside behind the building. Every morning is greeted by a chorus of barking dogs and crowing cockerels. But that's just the beginning of the daily racket. Saturdays, for example, are dedicated to blasting forró and funk, while Sunday nights are taken over by the thundering drums of the samba school: its weekly practice sessions are becoming ever more enthusiastic in the months leading up to Carnival. Despite the refined surroundings of the cobertura, our ears belong to the favela.

One day at dawn, the dogs and cocks are drowned out by the sound of a helicopter that spends hours hovering over Tabajaras. It's a civil police machine overseeing some sort of operation on the ground. This is one of many such operations being carried out in the city in early November that are most likely related to the police killing of Bem-Te-Vi, the boss of drug trafficking in Rocinha. He was one of Rio's most wanted men.

Since Bem-Te-Vi's death, the police have undertaken a number of incursions into favelas dominated by drug factions that rival Amigos dos Amigos (ADA – Friends of Friends), the gang to which Bem-Te-Vi and, consequently, Rocinha belong. The purpose of these raids? To squash any plans by ADA's rivals to invade and take Rocinha and wrest control of its lucrative drug trade.

Over breakfast we read the news. Bem-Te-Vi's immediate successor, named in the newspapers as 'Soul', has been killed by fellow members of ADA, the victim of an internal dispute – some 'friends'. Rio's papers follow each step in the unravelling drama as if it were a soap opera, and the sub-plots come thick and fast. Now, Bem-Te-Vi's patricinha girlfriend is arrested and photographed for the front pages. Now, Rio's Public Security Secretary poses ghoulishly for the cameras brandishing the dead drug lord's gold-plated Uzi. Now, and most bizarrely, a group of men gathering jaca fruit cause panic in a road tunnel near Rocinha when motorists assume they are a gang of armed traficantes. Dozens of cars are abandoned mid-tunnel and the men are seized by the cops along with the sacks and knives they were using to cut jaca.

The terrified atmosphere – all rumour and counter-rumour – owes much to concern that the death of Bem-Te-Vi will reignite last year's turf war between Rocinha and the neighbouring favela of Vidigal. In April 2004, Dudu, head of trafficking in Vidigal, led some 70 men in an attempt to take over...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Practical Action Publishing - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1899365699
• ISBN 13: 9781899365692
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 174
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland