Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

In April 2014, Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, a dancer, was beaten to death by the police. A resident of his favela later said, “This effort to pacify the favelas is a failure; the police violence is only replacing what the drug gangs carried out before.” In “pacified” Santa Marta, people complained of escalating tension. The Washington Post reported that at least ten gunfights had taken place at police bases in pacified favelas. After the period of relative peace, this mounting animosity between police and gangsters generated an increase in murders, arson, and revenge killings. A Rocinha resident, Cleber Araujo, said succinctly, “It feels like we’re in a war.” A Pew Research Trust study found that in 2014, Brazilians trusted the police less than they had four years earlier. When police battalions arrived to rout out the gangs that controlled the Maré favela, even law-abiding residents found their houses invaded and their possessions destroyed; police helicopters fired indiscriminately. In 2015, Atila Roque, the head of Amnesty International Brazil, said that the whole plan was “backfiring miserably and leaving behind a trail of suffering and devastation.” Many believe that the pacification program will be defunct as soon as the Olympics are over. Asked how long it would take for the gangs to resume their position, one favela resident said, “They will run into each other on the way out.”

I visited Vidigal, recently pacified at the time, with Márcio Januário, a playwright, actor, and dancer. Januário is black, heavily tattooed, openly gay, and widely beloved; to walk through Vidigal with him is to be greeted every ten steps. He works with children and adults in Vidigal to put on plays. When I saw him, he was fresh from a performance of Romeo and Juliet set in the favela and performed in what he calls Favelese—the psychological language of the slums—with his Free Minds theater company. Vidigal, which occupies a hill right above Ipanema beach and next to Barra da Tijuca, has the best views in Rio. Januário complained that the price of everything had skyrocketed with pacification. Many people had already sold the houses where they had lived for generations for what seemed to them a lot of money—but he said they would never find comparable houses because prices continued to escalate as middle-class purchasers bought into the favela adventure. Vidigal now has poor and rich areas, and these populations seldom interact. When I asked Januário whether he would ever consider relocating, he scoffed. “I have to be here,” he said as we sat in his spare, attractive studio apartment. “When it gets too expensive for me, I will leave Rio completely.”

Vidigal has terrible schools and few services. Januário, who volunteers in the schools, said that the kids aren’t interested in education because the teachers aren’t interested in teaching. He works with between thirty and forty students each year, many of whom go on to university. “When I began this project seven years ago, a teacher said to me, ‘You’re crazy! This school is for dummies. Poor black people don’t need theater.’ ” Januário contended that people capable of so much fun were capable of learning. “When they wake up,” he said, “they open their eyes and say, ‘Where are the lions? Let’s fight them.’ You just have to change which lions they are after.” I asked whether people were less afraid within the favelas, and he said, “It’s normal to us to live in fear; it’s not so hard as it would be for you. Violence is a culture, and there are a lot of people who like violence. Don’t assume we all want peaceful lives.” Like many favela residents, he was not only unimpressed by the whole idea of pacification, but also dubious of the problem it was intended to address.

GHANA

In Bed with the President of Ghana?

New York Times, February 9, 2013

My friend Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s wedding brought me to Ghana. The traditional ceremony began when a representative of the groom’s family said to a representative of the bride’s, “We have seen a beautiful flower growing in your garden, and we wish to pluck it.” In keeping with tradition, the two families threw challenges back and forth, which seemed to ritualize the complex ambivalence parents often feel at their children’s marriages. But they also kept breaking into song. It felt as though they were simultaneously battling and celebrating. The presentation of the dowry didn’t feel, as I’d anticipated, like a commodification of the bride. It felt respectful, less as if they’d bought my friend than as if they’d offered a tribute in acknowledgment of her worth.