FIFA World Cup 2014: A visit to Rio’s underbelly

Rio de Janeiro:  Two German tourists ventured into Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, the largest slum in South America, a couple of months ago to be greeted by a hail of bullets.

Both of them managed to survive with serious wounds. Drug lords controlling favelas in Rio don’t take kindly to visits of strangers. Around a thousand slums exist in and around Brazil’s second most populous city. Twenty percent of Rio’s population lives in favelas.

Rocinha, located next to enviable residential areas such as Ipanema and Leblon, is the most crowded with more than 1,50,000 people living in match box houses rising up in a hill. Automobiles are of no use after a certain point as many houses are perched precariously on the hill.

Dark, winding alleys you would have seen in gangster movies take you to the top where the boss of the favela usually lives in a resplendent house.

A favela tour organised by Marcelo Armstrong, one of the credible operators in Rio, revealed the life in the underbelly of a city which is bookmarked by foreigners for its sun-kissed beaches and beautiful women.

Rachael, our guide for the tour, warned us not to be adventurous in Rocinha. “The police patrol the place round the clock but it’s not adequate to ensure our safety. I never come here alone, even though I know the place quite well,” she added.

According to Rachael, the favelas in Rio are controlled by drug lords.

“They set the agenda for people here. Drug kingpins don’t shoot people indiscriminately. Their problem is with rival gangs, informers, the police and strangers. Family members of one gang can’t live in a locality taken over by another group usually after a bloody battle. Some gangs try to preserve the demand for their products by killing rivals selling different drugs,” she added.

Relative calm exists in Rio’s big favelas after the government moved the police and military into the shanty towns six years ago in what was called a pacification programme to crush drug dealers.

Intermittent shooting does take place these days but the situation isn’t as bad as it was before pacification started. Rachael said solving one problem created another as the youth rendered jobless after the crackdown on the illegal drug trade have taken to robbery.

“Under the rule of drug lords, robbery was prohibited. Now there is a spike in robberies as young men not used to going to work are struggling to make ends meet,” she added.

Favela is the name of a hardy plant that grows in the northeast region of Brazil which gets little rain. Most of the people living in favelas here are migrants from Brazil’s northeast. Rachael said it would be wrong to brand every favela dweller a drug peddler. “Stereotyping the poorer section of the society is always easy.

There are also people from Rocinha who do graveyard shifts in hotels and bars to earn money legally. A new generation of favela residents are moving to other parts of Rio after they get respectable jobs,” she added.

According to Rachael, rents are soaring in Rocinha as its residents are inching closer to lower middle class. “Money is not a problem for many even though the living conditions remain terrible. Rocinha has its own radio station and newspaper,” she said.

A golf course on one side and a gleaming mall on the other grab attention on the road just outside Rocinha. Two worlds exist in a matter of a kilometre.