Rio Happenings

Obama's recent visit provided some entertainment. The president visited Brazil as part of his Latin American "tour" (tour in inverted commas as the only other countries he visited were Chile and El Salvador), starting in the capital, Brasilia, before spending sunday 21st March in Rio, staying only five or so blocks from where I live. After the scenes a few days previously in the centre of the city, where large anti-US protests took place and the odd molotov cocktail thrown, I was keen to see what the reception would be like as Obama left his Copacabana hotel at 2:30pm to deliver a speech at a theatre in the centre of the city. The police presence was predictably huge, riot police, federal police, choque police (arguably the meanest police around) , the army, it was quite a sight. After much standing around in anticipation I finally got a glimpse of the man before he entered his bullet and missile proof vehicle. He was then escorted along the beachfront to the sounds of hundreds of people cheering. A note of the subsequent speech he made - the only negative reaction was from Obama joking about a Brazilian football match from the previous day, whilst the rest of his words about democracy and all that was lapped up by the 400 people given access to the theatre.

The rest of my time has been filled struggling with my dissertation and attending four hours of class a week. Given the amount of free time I have, I've been able to check out more of this vast city. Rio's favelas (slums) are a misinterpreted part of Rio, and Brazil in general. Most middle class Brazilians gaze up in revulsion at these hillside settlements, regarding them as a tropical version of Sodom, filled with gun-toting drug dealers and general Grand Theft Auto-esque activities, yet the same people base their judgements on the conservative, crime obsessed media rather than actual experience. Most people who abhorr these settlements that I've spoken to haven't actually visited one. This coupled with the fact that the most successful well-know Brazilian films of recent times have all been about favela-related violence (Tropa de Elite, Cidade de Deus, Onibus 174). It appears, somewhat bizarrely, that the paranoia of the middle and upper class here is equal to that of people back home. Vidigal, where my friend is living, is a large favela located near the rich suburb of Leblon, and based on my experience is as safe as anywhere else in Rio. There's far more of a community feel to in than a lot of the rich areas of Rio - places such as Copacabana have a noticiable, but not particularly damaging divide between the wealthy tourists/residents and the people who work in the cafés, bars and restaurants, all of whom invariably live in favelas.

I recently visited Barra da Tijuca, where I attended an Iron Maiden concert : see here for details:
http://manehead.blogspot.com/2011/03/iron-maiden-live-at-hsbc-arena-rio-de.html
Barra is one of the newest parts of the city (most of it's development has happened in the last 60 years), and one of my least favourites. I thought many parts of Zona Sul in Rio, such as Copacabana where I live, were the product of stunted tacky development, but Barra takes the mick. The place stinks of awful U.S. rip offs - gigantic shopping malls with ostentatious designs (such as Rio's very own Statue of Liberty), dire tower blocks and nothing pleasent or idiosyncratic. On a positive note, it has the highest quality of life in Rio, and is one of the safest places, but I'd rather live in Copacabana than sterile Barra.

The weather is still as intense as ever, and almost constantly sweating is grating on me a little. Any extreme of weather is the same - we all love to sledge and have snowball fights but road closures and delayed flights are a pain. Similarly here, the hot weather is great if you want to chill at the beach but if you want to get along with your daily life it is a bit of an inconvenience. The lack of seasons here isn't too healthy. In the U.K, the seasons give the year more definition - we suffer through bleak winter nights to (occasionally) be rewarded with glorious summer days. In Rio there is no suffering, no sense of being rewarded for punishingly bad weather - you can have a cloudless blazing hot day any day of the year (although less frequent in June-July).


Jack