Rio

The Rio de Janeiro is chaotic. The second largest city in Brazil and one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world is trully, overly chaotic. And, of course, no one wants to show that in the travel ads photos. In this urban chaos, one type of community stands out: the favela, poor urban clusters occupying hills and peripheries where the presence of the State with the basic and essential services is practically nil. At the same time as it is a scene of conflicts between drug dealers and police, the favelas also have thousands and thousands of citizens who found there your livings, given the great deficit of housing policy in the country. Statistics show that there are more than 700 favelas in Rio, housing about 23% of the population. The serious social problems that affect Rio de Janeiro are catalyzed in these poor communities, making up a public scenario that is very difficult to solve. As many favelas coexist side by side with rich and famous neighborhoods like Copacabana, it is impossible not to realize the enormous disparity between classes. This frequently generates racial and social frictions. The access to the interior of these communities is not easy or safe for an outsider. The so-called "owners of the hill", drug dealers who control each favela as a fief, maintains a heavy control over their areas. The disputes for domination between “owners” of different favelas are constant. Young people and children are encouraged to engage in trafficking, which compromises the development and future of entire families. Police raids always occur with intense shooting. By that, many residents, police officers and drug dealers die at regular basis. Social actions exist in an incipient way, and pacification attempts have been made continuously, without success. Nothing is easy there. In spite of all this, the local population is strong and tries to survive, working and studying in the city (or “asphalt”, in the community jargon) and returning to home at the end of the day in a hard and brave journey for a better future, all by themselves. And the next day everything repeats in a cycle that, like the favela itself, never seems to end.