The situation here is getting much worse as the Pan American games approach. Police are beginning to occupy favelas near venues for the games and near major high ways. One day last week, the police killed at least 13 people in the community of Alemão. The occupation of these communities is supposed to go into full force on July 10th. It will be bloody. I don’t understand the reasoning for addressing the security around the Pan Am games in this military style. When we visited Ciudade de Deus, to see the project run by CUFA, one of the Brazilian students quickly befriended the parking attendant, a boy of maybe 12 whose mother had died, and brought him along to get registered at CUFA’s cultural and educational center. Later, she said that he was talking about how the police had treated the community. They recently shut down the community’s parties as part of the control measures for the games, so the boy was saying the drug traffickers were going to kidnap tourist to shut down the city’s party. The horrifying thing is that all these events of occupation, mass arrest, school closings, and killings, are front page news. All the papers are reporting it front and center, often without questioning the killings. This adds to the already tense air palatable in the city.
Police in Ciudade de Deus
Here are some highlights from the class in the past weeks:
More pictures from TV Roc, the television station in Rocinha
I was thinking of hanging out with them more, but recent newspaper articles say that the police have already set up camp outside the community, preparing to occupy it. It might not be a good place for me to spend my last few weeks given that.
This group is run by a French photographer who focuses on quality of work and investing his energy into a few young people from favela communities. He teaches them photography, and they learn to articulate projects and execute them. They have exhibited internationally. The work is very strong and compelling. It certainly blows the Parsons photography students out of the water.
CDI is an amazing NGO that has created computer labs and pedagogy around teaching computer skills that encourages critical consciousness. They started just 12 years and are now in something like 10 countries.
I don’t actually have any pictures of the computer lab because who needs more pictures of kids on computers in bad lighting. This is Joal, who fixes up the computer donations.
We had a conversation with Ronaldo Coutinho, the brilliant documentary film maker. Maybe I’ll post my notes on this later… for now, just the portraits. He chain smoked the whole time.
