Daiene Mendes
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| Shops in the Alemão favela complex, whose residents face new challenges including the closure of a health clinic and cable car service, as well as routine gunfights between drug gangs and police. Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters |
In her latest diary entry on life in Alemão after the Games in Rio, Daiene Mendes says residents are the real champions for carrying on with their lives
The Olympics are over, as is the expectation of building a real legacy for the people from the favelas. From what I can see around here, the Olympics didn’t positively impact on the reality of life for Alemão residents. On the contrary – we lost more than we gained.
A big sports centre that once catered to the whole community is now closed because the government did not make the necessary arrangements for its maintenance. The sports activities in the Grota favela have been halted, without any news of when they might restart. The building has no electricity and the phone lines have been cut. The pool, once used by hundreds of people, is filled with filthy green water and mosquitoes. This what I call the legacy of abandonment.
With the announcement of the end of the Olympics, we also received news of the end of the cable car service, the teleférico, in Alemão. It was inaugurated in 2011, and at one point registered 9,000 daily users. The handicrafts fair at the last stop, Palmeiras station, an important part of the economy there, will also close. This is the legacy of indifference.
Less than a month ago, community journalists were attacked and arrested while covering a police operation. The objective of the operation was to remove dozens of families who had reoccupied the place where they used to live – they had been evicted earlier and their houses destroyed. At the time, the government offered to pay a monthly fee towards rent, called “social rent”, to guarantee they had a place to live until new houses were built for them. This was almost three years ago. No houses were built, the land where their houses stood is unused, and the government, blaming the financial crisis, suspended the rent payments.
The young journalists and Alemão residents who were arrested were kept in jail for several hours while the police threatened and filmed those who had accompanied them. This is the legacy of repression, of censorship, of the restriction of the freedom of the press and the abuse of police authority.
Built in 2010, the Library Park operated inside one of the stations of the teleférico. It was one of the main cultural points in Alemão, where music get-togethers, poetry evenings and literature competitions were held. Immediately after the Olympics, with increased violence in the area (which is right next to a pacification police unit) and funding cuts by the state government, the library closed its doors and the whole teleférico station was abandoned. It is now occupied only by the police.
Most of our cultural activities here in the Complexo do Alemão have been lost, cancelled by the state. This is the legacy of corruption, greed and power.
A family health clinic was operating in the Complexo do Alemão, facilitating access to healthcare for the elderly. Recently, the government announced the closure of the clinic for security reasons, as there are almost daily clashes between the police and drug traffickers. This is the legacy of neglect.
On 5 December at around 9am, a troop of armed policemen entered the Grota, one of the main entrances of Alemão. They had orders to remove dozens of food stalls and other shops that have been functioning for more than a decade along the Joaquim de Queiroz road.
On the other side of the favela, at almost the same time, there was a gunfight in the Mineiros area. Nilza de Paula, 51, was shot in the head inside her house. She was helped by neighbours but died soon after at a nearby hospital. According to the journalist Betinho Casas Novas, her death marks the 20th registered in Alemão in 2016. Forty-two people have been wounded by gunfire. This is the legacy of death, and in this area the state gets a gold medal.
But still, we are champions. We continue waking up at 6am, with or without firefights, making our way to board crowded buses and get to work – and be reminded that we need to arrive on time and produce more than necessary. We are winners because we leave work or university and face hours in traffic jams, and fight to concentrate to get through the next semester, the next year, the next day.
We continue to win because we believe a new model of a city is possible, one that thinks about the poorest residents and respects diversity, even though everything we are seeing shows us just the opposite. We continue to win because we innovate and because we are smiling despite the fear of the next wayward bullet finding its way to us, from a war justified by drugs.
If anyone deserves the “merit of victory”, it is the people of the favelas. We win every day. And we will win in the end.
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