On the south of the city of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, we can find Rocinha, the country’s largest favela and the tenth largest in the world.
This slum, according to official sources, has about 70,000 inhabitants and has only been considered one of the city’s neighbourhoods since 1993. Rocinha is located between the districts of Gávea, São Conrado (two very wealthy districts with the highest land value tax in the city) and Vidigal (another important favela in the city). This situation increases the urban contrast in the region’s landscape even more, illustrating the image of social inequality that afflicts Brazil.
The story of the Rochinha slum
The favela Rocinha arose in 1930 around a settlement of Italian immigrants and Northeast Brazilians. In the beginning, the shacks, made of wood and other salvaged materials, were to be an area to supply vegetables and fruit for the Praça Santos Dumont fair in Gávea, as Rocinha stood on land where there was an old coffee farm. The favela’s name has a very peculiar origin: when asked about the origin of the products they bought at the fair, the farmers replied that they came from the “rock” (rocinha in Portuguese) above Gávea.
In the 1940s the first asphalt road was built, connecting Rocinha with the Gávea neighbourhood. This connection led many people to move to these territories as they were not occupied by anyone. This was one of the causes of the first mass migration to the area during the 1950s. As time went by, the first brick structures were built with attached (usually illegal) connections to water and electricity. This growth gave rise to the first commercial establishments. The first street lighting, however, was not electric, but there was a person in charge of lighting the torches in the streets and smaller houses.
From 1960 the expansion of the district began due to the opening of two tunnels, which increased employment in the region. However, this expansion, which was not followed by the government, became uncontrollable: they built one house on top of another, made water connections by makeshift means and left the green areas to decay. As a result, there were several protests by the inhabitants that did not have the desired results. In fact, all these conditions led to the creation of an outbreak of tuberculosis, which is still present today.
Gang wars in Brazil’s largest slum
As often happens in slums such as these, war between gangs is the order of the day, and Rocinha is held in check by the continuous diatribe for control of two very influential groups in the sphere of drug trafficking and illicit affairs: Amigos dos Amigos and Comando Vermelho.
Comando Vermelho is a criminal organisation founded in 1969 in the Cândido Mendes prison in Rio de Janeiro by a group of prisoners who had fought against the military dictatorship. Until the 1990s, they were the most influential criminal organisation in the Carioca city, but to date they have lost much of their power due to the death or arrest of some of their main exponents. Their descent has thus led to the birth of new criminal groups, among which Amigos dos Amigos, born from the conflict between Comando Vermelho and Terceiro Comando (another group born from the split of the Comando Vermelho).
Since 2005, incidents of violence have increased dramatically, due to the death of Bem-Te-Vi (in Portuguese I saw you well), Erismar Rodrigues Moreira, leader of the group Amigos dos Amigos. Although they had lost their leader, the criminal organisation continued to control Rocinha undisturbed until 2011, when Erismar’s second, Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, known as Nem, was imprisoned. The arrest was made on 13 November as part of the police operation to remove Amigos dos Amigos from Rocinha due to the approach of two very important sporting events: the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. To avoid shootings the police had announced the raid days before, in fact Nem was intercepted inside the boot of his car while trying to escape.
From 2011 to 2017 it was Comando Vermelho that was in control of Rocinha with Rogério Avelino da Silva aka Rogério 157 at the head. The new “mayor” of Rocinha did nothing but increase the cost of products and charge even more taxes to local traders, going so far as to expel Nem’s wife from Rocinha in 2017. Upon hearing the news, Nem sent three people to search for Rogério 157, but they were found dead by the police. Hence began a brutal turf war, characterised by shootings throughout the neighbourhood.
In fact, on 17 September 2017, Nem sent another 60 people with the intention of ousting Rogério 157 and taking back the neighbourhood’s drug dealing and consequently power. In an attempt to break up this urban guerrilla warfare, the police intervened on 22 September with 950 men from the Army, Navy and Air Force, with another 3,000 officers ready to intervene if the need arose. During the police raid, as usual, the losers were the ordinary inhabitants of the favela, who found themselves without drinking water and electricity for several days.
The health problem in Rochinha
As we have already mentioned, one of the main problems in Rocinha is the sanitary situation. Uncontrolled squatting has created the ideal habitat for the spread of diseases including tuberculosis. In fact, the very narrow streets, the lack of light in the streets and the discharge of waste water in the open air has created the right conditions for the spread of tuberculosis, but also cholera and meningitis.
Tuberculosis is a major problem because the lack of medicines to cure the virus and the high number of people also infected with HIV continue to claim victims to this day. The situation had become even more untenable in May 2014, when the lack of medicines was such that they were available for two days of treatment every 15 days.
Life expectancy is 20 years lower than in the neighbouring district of Gávea. In fact, in the favela of Rocinha, although there is a very high birth rate, the population over 65 years old represents only 5% of the inhabitants, compared to an average of 21-22% in the rest of the country.
Another problem is that the entire sewerage system is built almost entirely of asbestos, which exposes the population to the risk of asbestos. In addition, the population of Rocinha is also continuously discriminated against by the health system, often depriving them of basic health care. This situation was repeated during this period, as the spread of the Coronavirus was greatly facilitated by the lack of hygiene and the impossibility of maintaining social distancing.
Slums and urban regeneration
It was not until the mid-1970s that the first services were provided in the neighbourhood, with the construction of kindergartens, schools, a local newspaper, a pedestrian walkway and drainage ditches. However, the construction of the first health facility had to wait until 1982, only thanks to the support of a local priest who built it as a Christmas present for the population.
To try to breathe new life into the favela, architect Oscar Niemeyer built a pedestrian bridge in 2010 to try to connect Rocinha to the sports centre located just off the Lagoa-Barra highway. The bridge, inaugurated on 27 June 2010, was built thanks to the Growth Acceleration Programme, which aimed to stimulate economic growth in Brazil. The footbridge is about 60 metres long, has three access ramps (one on the favela side and two on the sports centre side) and is built entirely of concrete. Although the structure is all concrete it has very sinuous shapes and the arches of the bridge are M-shaped, this is to remind us of the shapes of a beautiful and curvy Carioca woman.
After the shootings in September 2017, Mayor Marcelo Crivella announced a series of works to return the neighbourhood to normal. With an investment of 15 million Real a series of interventions were made including: the replacement of the extinguished lamps of the streetlights, the repair of the walls of the houses riddled with gunshots, the reopening of the Parque Library, the Rocinha Music School and the Lúdica Centre, and finally, but very importantly, the construction of the Nave do Conhecimento, i.e. a centre that allows access to the digital universe and therefore offers courses and workshops on the digital world.
One of the most interesting projects in the favela is the tour of the streets of Rocinha: the aim of this tour is to show the neighbourhood as a place of culture and art and not as a place of crime, drugs and disease. On this tour, it is possible to see the various works of street artists, who have left their mark, and to come into contact with the various educational projects.
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