The first people

Brazil planned to share its passion, history, and identity with the world during the two weeks of the Olympics. The opening ceremonies began with a dialog that predates the first games in ancient Greece. It begins with a garden, and walks through the creation of the world. “A storm announces the forces of nature and the beginning of life on Earth” ⁽⁸⁾. We see an ocean and forest consume the stadium through a series of projections that progress to show the history of Brazil. Seventy-two native dancers from the Amazon emerge each dancing with an immense elastic band they weave together into indigenous braids. Today there are about 800,000 Indigenous people dispersed across 305 tribes in Brazil, the majority of which live in the Amazon ⁽¹²⁾. It is estimated that around eleven million native people and 2,000 tribes existed on the land when the Portuguese arrived 500 years ago. Tragically, within the first century of Portuguese contact with Brazil, 90% of tribes were wiped out, mainly through diseases imported by the colonists, such as flu, measles and smallpox. In the following centuries, thousands more died, enslaved in the rubber and sugar cane plantations ⁽¹²⁾. Announcers continue the story, “the Portuguese found ‘the land where everything grows’, the paradise to be conquered. From there, they extracted many riches. The first one was a tree, the ‘pau brasil’, that gave its name to the country” ⁽⁸⁾. Arriving in the early 1500s, Portuguese used Brazil as a type of prison. An article by Timothy Coates on the history of colonization explains that the most frequent sentence in Portugal was banishment ⁽¹³⁾.

During the Atlantic slave trade era, beginning only 30 years after the arrive of the Portuguese ⁽⁸⁾, Brazil received more African slaves than any other country. An estimated 4.9 million slaves from Portuguese colonies in west Africa, specifically Angola and Mozambique, were brought to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866 ⁽⁵⁵⁾. This is ten times as many than were trafficked to North America. According to some estimates, between 38% and 43% ⁽¹⁴⁾of all Africans forced to leave their continent were taken to Brazil. Slave labor was the driving force behind the sugar economy, Brazil’s primary export from 1600 to 1650. When gold, silver, and diamond deposits were discovered in 1690, an increase in the importation of African slaves began to fuel mining efforts as well ⁽¹³⁾.  In an article for the BBC historian Schwarcz writes, “Slave ships brought the religions, rituals, rhythms, visual cultures, languages and symbols of the people they transported. This process led to Brazil’s Africanisation, as it became populated by various groups of people who made deep marks on social and cultural identity.” The result was a mixed society with great economic inequality ⁽¹⁴⁾.

The transatlantic slave trade had such a deep foothold in Brazil that the nation was largely unsuccessful in creating an effective anti-slavery movement, even while many other nations around the world were making revolutionary reforms ⁽⁵⁶⁾. The slave trade was finally abolished in Brazil on May 13, 1888, making it the last country in the world to do so ⁽⁶¹⁾. Yet even after slavery became illegal, years of exploitation still have extreme effects on Brazilian society. This takes many forms including profound social divides and pervasive prostitution. Prostitution and exploitation took root early in the country as many natives were bought and sold for sexual services by the Portuguese. When slavery was officially abolished, many women turned to prostitution for survival. Today the sale of sex is still legal in the country, and age requirements are rarely enforced. Such long-standing slavery in Brazil created a vast lower class and extreme social exclusion. Children and teens often have no other choice but to find work wherever they can, as an estimated 38.3 percent of the population of Rio de Janeiro was once comprised of slaves ⁽⁵⁵⁾. As published in an article by the outreach NGO Exodus Cry, “There is an urgent need for resurging abolition efforts to combat a battle that has moved from the brutality of plantation life to brutality in the streets: sex trafficking ⁽⁶²⁾.”

Brazil’s long struggle against human trafficking is of particular note when we talk about the Olympics. Immense numbers of women and children are smuggled into countries (not limited to Brazil) alongside sporting events (including the super bowl, world cup, and other events where huge numbers of tourists, power, and wealth create an opportunity to promote the sex trade). Some of these slaves were brought from abroad and others are locally recruited. Brazil has the highest number of trafficked individuals in the world, and this is a reality that existed before the games making their population extremely vulnerable to forced prostitution in order to meet rising demands.

The Fevelas

One of the most controversial projects of the 2016 games was the creation of a special military force called the Pacifying Police Unit (or UPP), formed to pacify and reclaim the favelas, or slums that make up almost 25% of Rio ⁽¹⁵⁾. Unfortunately the UPP often acted violently and did not succeed in bringing positive change to the slums, instead turning them into war zones. These areas which lack water, sanitation, and public safety are deeply embedded in the identity of the nation. Brazilian history cannot be separated from the favelas.

A comprehensive article by Theresa Williamson called Not Everyone Has a Price: How the Small Favela of Vila Autódromo’s Fight Opened a Path to Olympic Resistance”⁽¹⁷⁾, recounts the formation of these famous communities. According to a combination of history and legend, around the year 1900 a group of worn down and penniless soldiers left the city of Bahia after one of Brazil’s bloodiest civil wars, the battle for Canudos. The soldiers were former slaves who had been freed and immediately drafted into the war. They were promised land in Rio de Janeiro, the nations then capitol, for their military service, but upon arriving there was no land set aside. As Williamson explains, “They squatted outside the ministry of war in downtown Rio awaiting what would turn out to be an empty promise. Weeks later, a colonel with some land on a nearby hill in Rio’s downtown port area gave them permission to squat on his hillside. And so they climbed up the hill and settled, naming their settlement Morro da Favela after the flowering bush that had characterized the hills where they had served in battle ⁽¹⁷⁾.” Many evictions of these faveals were attempted throughout history, some successful and others not.  Today favelas are such a central part of the city that in 2012 UN reporters on adequate housing declared Rio’s favelas a part of the city’s world heritage status. However, their growing prevalence did not earn equal rights ⁽¹⁷⁾.

Descendants of slaves who composed the majority of the favela population were not considered full citizens and therefore were not entitled to urban improvements. Even so, favela settlements were encouraged over the years because they offered cheap local labor. The article, Not Everyone has a Price, goes on to explain that, “we can summarize policy toward favelas historically as one of finding ways to maintain the structure of a slaveholding society, even post abolition.” Policies toward the favelas have varied over the years. Unfortunately this has often looked like repressing and criminalizing the cities poor through police force. Today favela residents consistently frown on the occupation of the favelas under the UPP in preparation for the Olympics. A primary argument to this end expresses frustration that they only seem to have access to “security” aspects of the states resources, when what they really desire is a remedy for open sewers, an end to water shortages, and a resolution for electricity outages ⁽¹⁷⁾. One of every five inhabitants of Rio call the favelas home, often trying to avoid crossfire between drug gangs and police ⁽¹⁰⁾.An article from the telegraph reported, “In Nova Holanda, one of the communities (fevelas) that sits alongside the motorway where drug traffickers man a makeshift checkpoint at the entrance, there is no sign of the Olympic spirit…Wedged between two parallel main roads, Nova Holanda – home to around 30,000 people – is visible from the motorway only through the occasional missed panel in the barrier (decorated to hide the slums from tourists)” ⁽⁴²⁾.

Fevelas were especially impacted by Olympic renovations. Thousands were relocated as their homes were demolished to make way for new roadways connecting stadiums, forcing children to change schools and adults to change jobs. Metro expansion evicted many others who were not allowed to use this transportation during the games. To secure Olympic areas, 84 people were killed by police in May 2016 alone. This was a 91% increase from the year earlier. Although Olympic venues were blanketed with security guards, this left the remainder of the city without officers and in a state of increased violence ⁽³⁾. Street muggings went up 43% during the months surrounding the games ⁽⁷⁾.  Local hospitals were shut down, social services reduced, health and education budgets slashed, as their funding was used to build transport systems and “clean up the city” violence ⁽³⁾. Though much of this news was not visible to the outside world, a protest staged by police and firefighters just five weeks before the opening ceremonies at Rio International airport warned visitors of what was truly going on. Their signs read, “welcome to hell.” The officers threatened to go on strike during the games, as they had been unpaid for months, along with other social service providers ⁽⁷⁾.

Read on.