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Focus on Brazil: new Rocinha’s literary café is waiting for your art books

Rocinha is known as the main favela of Rio de Janeiro, and apparently also the most populated of the entire South America. It is said that between 200.000 and 300.000 people live here, but of course no trustable data is available since during the third decade of the last century workers employed in the making of the Zuzu Angel tunnel – originally named Dois Irmaos after the mountain it crosses – started to build on this hill unauthorized shacks. During the last 100 years, a period during which Brazil has left the status of poor country to become a leading economic power, this spontaneous architectonic organism has been the hideout of the drug dealers supplying the two Rio de Janeiro’s richest neighbourhoods of Gavea and Sao Conrado, between which Rocinha is placed.

 

As Carlo, our young guide, pointed out, before the last election the Brazilian government invested some money in the restoration of one of the two main entrances to the favela. But after the victory of Dilma, Rocinha has been forgotten again. While the so called “favelas pacification program” military forces brought peace to many problematic Rio de Janeiro’s areas, in Rocinha the gangs of drug dealers are still fighting with the police for the control of the territory and the “bocas de fumo” (drug den) – the spots where drug is sold, generally by not liable teenagers – can still be detected here and there in open air.

 

Carlo is 29 years old and is an activist of an Italian NGO called Il Sorriso dei miei bimbi. A friend, working for Axa Art, told us about it and its founder, Barbara Olivi, who left Italy ten years ago and fell in love with this dangerous, dirty, but vibrant and energetic place. According to an official chart, Rocinha’s public school is the worst in town, and most of its citizens still don’t have running water at home. But the Oscar NiemeyWark da Rocinhaer’s iconic “passarela da Rocinha” is there to remind us how good design can be extremely effective where unexpected, and Wark da Rocinha’s angels popping up now and then – and often right by the “bocas de fumo” – have the social awareness of the best public art.

 

Thus, if you don’t know what to do with your art auction catalogues or you have already reached the point of no return in your home bookcase, then it could be a good idea to send these books to the small literary cafe that Barbara and her helpers have recently opened at la Rocinha. It doesn’t matter whether they are written in English: images will certainly do what words could not. Carlo told us that a drug seller recently stepped into the cafe, took an art book from the bookcase, and flicked trough it. Before learning about money laundering he will certainly need to learn how to respect an artist.

June 28, 2015