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CITY OF KIDSMatteo Vergani, 2007.

One of the most common western cliché on South America, is that it is similar to

what an European country could look like 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. On the

contrary Rio de Janeiro seems to forebode a worrying global destiny common to all

overcrowded megalopolis on earth, where after centuries of migration more than half

of the world population moved. They are humongous cities where large (physical and

imaginary) areas are completely out of control, and where conflicts that will change

the very features of the whole planet are developing.

In Brazil distance between the rich and the poor is abysmal. In overcrowded cities

where everybody lives in close proximity, differences are sharper and cause a

contrast, that irradiates through the media, through images of violence and

ostentation. Our research means to investigate this conflict, paying special attention

to one of the most emarginated social groups: kids in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

Are we sure that violence and ostentation are exclusive attributes of the marginality

and of the upper class? How do the outcasts interpret media narration weaved by

other social groups on the outcasts image? How is their story told? How do they use

media imaginary, to perceive life out of the favela? This article presents a desk

analysis of the Brazilian media (outlining the social-cultural contest, and following a

intra textual and inter textual analysis of press, literature, cinema, TV and new

media) and a field research in two favelas of Rio, experimenting with different

methods that use images as a tool for social research.

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Showing off I crash youOn the signs of conflict. An hyper-textual journey through the Brazilian media.

It is by night that Rio de Janeiro reveals its true face: a worrying and powerful

energy crosses it, lightning its most extreme contradictions, the very contradictions

that make it one of the most interesting cities in the world. Neck-lined dresses, high

heels and coarse laughter. A barefoot child is crossing the street picking up empty

beer cans in a black bag. The yellow cabs crowd messily at traffic-lights, under the

skyscrapers, right by the beach. The imposing building of the Sheraton Hotel

dominates the bay, while a constellation of slums sits as the back of the morro 1.

Jungle and skyscrapers, lagoon and asfalto. Richness, pomp, ostentation. Poverty,

fear and violence. The contradictions of Rio are even the more evident, because,

owing to its morphological conformation favelas are not relegated in the suburbs, but

cross the entire length of the city. The inhabitants do morro and the ones do asfalto 2

live side by side and they bump into each other every day on the streets of Rio, from

the ritziest neighbourhoods of Zona Sul (such as Leblon and Ipanema) to downtown

(heart of all municipal offices) to the unlimited suburbs.

Despite the weight of the enormous social differences, despite the gap between the

rich and the poor is wider and wider (and despite prejudices and barriers that

inevitably exist between different social groups) it often happens in Rio de Janeiro

that people mingle not only on the streets (where no relationship but eye contact is

required) but they enter in contact, they mix, they interact in various places, venues

and events. I refer for example to baile funk, illegal rave parties where funk music is

played: here over the past ten years sons of the carioca middle and high class have

been spending an evening of transgression in the favela, side by side with armed drug

dealers and meninos de rua. We can also consider the Carnival of Rio: the whole city

1 Morros are pointy hills, surrounded by the jungle, that are scattered throughout the whole city. On themorros where according to the urban regulatory plan it is not allowed to built up, the abusive shacks rise thatform the favelas.2 That means those who live in the morros (and therefore in the favelas) and those who live in the cities(made of asphalt).



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attend: certain social groups do have specific preferences of places and events, but

even so, the rich and the poor mix, so do the drug dealers and the bourgeoisies, the

homeless and the tycoons: everybody goes down in the blocos de rua 3 and in the

desfile of the Sambodromo. For this reason carnival is defined as the quietest time of

the year: in fact dealers and criminals (that mostly come from the favelas) are busy

parading for samba schools 4 side by side with the carioca nobility, the latter showing

off to the entire world its magnificent cars, its exaggerated costumes, its almost naked

dancers. (For the majority these last ones are scions of the nobility, regulars of the

very expensive and widespread centres for plastic surgeries: who generously pay the

parade organizers to be able to take part in the parade and therefore appear on the

media all over the world). Finally, let’s consider the hyper world and Orkut: a

Google feature that allows to present oneself (with pictures and a personal profile

including demographic data, religion, interests,…), to chat with other people (always

in the “public” setting of one own personal page, that is accessible by all users), and

most importantly to reach and peep at the personal pages of everybody else. Orkut is

used in an absolutely transversal way by all Brazilian social groups, from the richest

to the poorest groups, from housewives to jailed criminals (O Globo, 11/04/07,

Ruben Berta e Vera Araùjo). This system, born to be used all over the world (using

English as a common language), was soon to be “monopolized” by the Brazilian

people, that massively invaded it using Portuguese and discouraging anybody that

didn’t speak it from entering it. Today the majority of Brazilians (especially under 30

years old ), have their own Orkut page and spend hours a day on it.

The places, settings and happenings, where the official and institutional Brazil, the

mass culture (Morin, 1974) and the suburban cultures touch, collide, melt into

sounds, images and stories, irradiate trough the media. Here we find both the symbols

3 The oceanic parades that cross the city streets during Carnival where people sing songs and marchesassociated with that event.4 High Society personalities: well groomed, rich and smiling they crowd the entire media landscape: fromnews gossip and entertainment shows that report on their lives to soap operas that take inspiration for theircharacters from them. If their galas have a great media appeal, their life style is subjected to strongcriticisms: their good manners in fact often mask fixed social barriers, and power relationship.



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of the high society ( such as their beloved gala 5: full of rich, smiling, well-

mannered, well-dressed people), to the slogans and the jargon of the favela. This

jargon on one sides serves as unifying force amongst the members of the various

tribe on the the morros 6, on the other side resurfaces as a dominant feature of the

imaginary world of the sons of the rich bourgeois.

Crime Superstars.

There is a large amount of media products, that deal with drug-dealers as if they

were superstars, featuring their fun, charismatic and seductive side. This is a huge

part of the public image of these mobsters, who exercise their charm in a transversal

way on very heterogeneous social groups (mainly young people). Traffickers are

idolized by many kids of the favela, who see a career as big time drug dealers as

their only chance to make it, to escape the huge mass of the poor and miserable, to

become desirable by women – females are fascinated by powerful and armed man.

Trafficking is their only chance of being treated with respect and fear by their

community. (As clearly portrayed in the documentary Falcão, meninos do tràfico,

2006). In this regard I think worth remembering an experience I firsthand lived

during a baile funk in the favela Rocinha. Something that happened that night had me

thinking on social status of the traffickers, both in the favela, and in the entire

society.

By night the favela is one of the most lively places in town: it is full of bars, people

talking and drinking in the streets and there are some of the most popular clubs in

town that young people both do morro and do asfalto fill up in the early morning.

The nights I partied there I noticed several groups of armed bandits. Some of them

were hooded and wore thick golden jewels around their necks and arms, including

5 High Society personalities: well groomed, rich and smiling they crowd the entire media landscape: fromnews gossip and entertainment shows that report on their lives to soap operas that take inspiration for theircharacters from them. If their galas have a great media appeal, their life style is subjected to strongcriticisms: their good manners in fact often mask fixed social barriers, and power relationship.6 We can’t forget that in the shacks of the favelas (similarly to all miserable suburbs of the world) theremight not be running water, or a bathroom, but there always is a television with, a perfectly functioning ifillegally connected, cable.



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charms shaped as the dollar symbol. They checked out the situation standing

somewhere elevated near the entrance of the party, looking at the movements of the

customers. After several hours, at the apex of the party, while hundreds of people

piled up to dance at the rhythm of the original funk music of the favelas, about

twenty traffickers armed to the teeth walked in, one after the other, pointing their gun

or machine gun towards the ceiling, so that everybody could single them out in the

crowd. The mobsters paraded trough the dance floor, then mingled with the rest of us,

drinking and dancing while still brandishing their weapons. It was a real parade,

made so those people that detain power in the favela could show it to the crowd as to

stress their upper position. Talking with a friend of the favela, I find out that

criminals often “sponsor” baile funk, paying for cocktails and beers and thus

conquering the support of the young people, to which they showed off walking by

and brandishing their firearms. Let’s not forget that in the baile funk there are not

only the meninos de rua and the kids from the favela, but there are also many kids do

asfalto, looking for an evening of transgression. So it is not surprising when tabloids

report on middle class kids choosing criminality or on daughters of rich managers do

asfalto dating traffickers do morro, fascinated by their power and their fame.

Press gossip on their privacy, fiction books celebrate them7, and successful TV

shows feature main characters inspired by them 8. These bandits are treated almost as

pop-stars by the Brazilian media: they are VIP, who have reached the status of

celebrity thanks to their criminality and violence. We can certainly find roots of this

tendency in many world media - let’s just think about the huge success of Hollywood

blockbusters as The Godfather or Scarface - However, we can not help noticing how

this attitude is a real Brazilian trademark, and stands out as a main ingredient of the

local media diet.

7 As the book Abusado - O Dono do Morro Dona Marta (Barcelos, 2003), that celebrates life in the morro,and narrates the stories of the bandit Marcinho VP, infamous trafficker in Rio de Janeiro, very famous inBrazil for a much reported episode: in 1996 he allowed Michael Jackson to shoot the music video for Theydon´t care about us, in the morro Dona Marta, his personal turf.8 Such as the popular soap Senhora do destino, broadcasted by Globo, where the most loved character is acriminal; or the soap Vidas Opostas, that talks about drug dealing, life in the morros, criminality, and therelationship between a woman from the favela and a rich man do asfalto.



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Kings of fear.

When looking at this phenomenon from a different point of view we realize that

the main characters of the outcast universe are not only featured in stories that

describe them as “positive” or at least desirable heroes. The flip of the coin is a wide

repertoire of stories and images that portray the criminals as kings of fear: fear of

their criminal violence. As a matter of fact violence in this country is a main media

attraction: from TV shows (both news and entertainment) to the press, from Internet

to feature films. Let’s think of TV shows as Cidade Alerta, Brasil Urgente, Linha

Direta or Programa do Ratinho that by means of different and effective production

techniques (such as a specific sound-track or very fast paced editing) create

increasing tension and anxiety in the viewer. Let’s consider the newspapers,

especially the national one O Globo, the most sold in Brazil. Here the outcasts have

been described for a century with a series of negative attributes. The urban favela is

described as nest of contagious disease, home of ignorance (especially political

ignorance), and of criminals (these data come from a study of Duarte, 2003). The

poor and unemployed are described not only as criminals, but are also considered

guilty of slowing down with their way of life and their culture, the development of

the country.

Between violence and ostentation.

Rio de Janeiro is a huge parade. Different subjects chose different catwalks to

show off, according to their social status, their possibilities and the circumstances.

We have previously talked about the parades of the traffickers in the baile funk, the

Orkut mania and the carnival of Rio (where Brazilian people not only mingle, but

also show off, setting up a system of relationship close to voyeurism). We can also

take into consideration the huge Brazilian passion for the Big Brother Brazil, where

low income Brazilians can reach success and social prestige unveiling their privacy

on the public stage of television. Or still, it would be enough to walk around the

Zona Sul of Rio (in the Leblon and Ipanema quarters) to realize that people, mostly



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well off, parade on the streets, as if they were on set, posing as if they expected to be

photographed or filmed. But Brazilian élites are not content with showing themselves

on the shopping streets of the most chic areas: they compete on the media, by

showing off their richness under the attention of a mass that lives at a stratospheric

distance from their social condition.. A very big distance, that reminds us of the

structure of the archaic societies, where social mobility did not exist, and belonging

to the aristocracy was linked to inscrutable qualities, as the idea that they were blue

blooded.

The rhetoric that imbues media narration (a rhetoric that is typical of rich western

countries, and exalt the values of “democracy”, “liberty” and “equal opportunities”)

collides and clashes hardly with what is the fate of the most emarginated social

groups. Rather than looking like the free and democratic people that are described in

the talks of the politicians, a conspicuous part of the population looks more like some

of the social groups of certain archaic societies, such as the untouchables in India.

Let’s think for example about the meninos de rua (who by the way, are mostly

blacks, while members of the high society, politicians and “socialites” are almost all

white), or about the throngs of the poverty-stricken that live in the streets of the

Brazilian megalopolis, spending their (short) life between hardship and violence,

being not only emarginated but also - and often badly - prosecuted. It is worth

remembering the documented phenomenon of the death squads, policemen,

servicemen and security guards, who in the 80s and 90s killed the meninos de rua,

that they considered a threat to society (Guaspari Sudbrack, 2004).

In this context violence is not only the result of a conflict, but it is the very

language talked by different social groups to communicate, confront each other and

fight. It is also diffused and expressed through media narration. A clear example of

this paradoxical situation is the birthday party that Vera Lodola (a famous

entrepreneur and regular of the VIP carioca parties, a so-called socialite) threw for

her pet dog. She invited many distinguished guests, wrote press releases and

presented her guests with fabulous homages (O Globo, 20/10/1999, César Tartaglia).



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As Contardo Calligaris wrote on the Folha de Sao Paulo describing this event: «The

ostentation was not to cause envy nor to shock her neighbours in the social pyramid.

The message was addressed to the people. The aim could only be the dismay». (Folha

de São Paulo, 12/12/1999, Contardo Calligaris).

The ostentation of Vera Loyola’s party has something to do with power, authority

and violence: it conceals her, more or less elegant, will to impose herself thus

damaging the Other. In Brazil the rule :«ostentando, te esmago» (translated “Showing

off, I crash you”) holds true (Folha de São Paulo, 12/12/1999, Contardo Calligaris).

The more the subjects succeed in obtaining visibility (through a desperate

competition), the more they live the illusion of reaching social prestige, of taking part

to the shared imaginary of excellence, of being recognized thanks to their own fame.

People that so parade, show attributes of different kind: from beauty to social status

(be it high or be it low), from savoir faire to know how that are specific and related to

their audience. Those who take part to this play, will enter in the supposed kingdom

of inclusion, of social prestige and of power (as a typical Brazilian expression says

everybody want to «se dar ben» 9) by means of the fame and the visibility that these

stages offer. An example of this attitude is the famous footballer Romario, regular on

the gossip sections of tabloids, known by everybody in Rio not so much for his

spectacular goals, as for the reports on his crazy nights, that fill up local press.

Besides his luxury cars and beautiful women (in this case treated as true luxury

objects) the footballer is known for events that moulded his image on a collective

level: eating out and “forgetting” to pay the bill, making economic speculations

exploiting the celebrity of his own name (O Globo, 22/05/2002, Elio Gaspari).

Enjoying advantages and especial privileges due to one’s social position and personal

prestige is a typical trait of Brazilian society, that appears not only on academic texts

or on the pages of newspapers, but also lives in the conversation of “ordinary”

people, that on one hand criticize this situation but on the other admire those who can

afford the privileges, that are denied to them (Durand, 2007).

9 It’s a typical Brazilian expression: «se dar ben» it means to take advantage of the privilegesdescending from one’s own social condition, and to enjoy the benefits thank of one’s own prestige.



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Not only ostentation is a kind of violence, but violence itself is a way of showing

off power. As Romario obtains a kind of authority thanks to the admiration for his

footballer qualities and to his celebrity status, so do criminals who fill up media

stories and reach authority not only thanks to people’s admiration, but also thanks

to people’s fear (Durand, 2007). A week after Vera Loyola showed on the media

parade her opulent party for her pet, Paulo César dos Santos robbed a bank,

kidnapped some hostages and in the middle of the negotiation explained the reason of

his act: it was unbearable that someone could throw a birthday party with such gifts

for a dog while he had no money to feed his son (O Globo, 28/10/1999, Solange

Duarte). This robber did not limit himself to stealing the money that he needed to

support his family, but kidnapped some hostages, playing with their life: an excess of

violence, typical of this country, unnecessary to the theft he wanted to commit.

Brazilian criminals show off their violence: they do not limit themselves to an

anonymous theft, but prefer to wrestle, to frighten the public thus marking their own

superiority, their own power. If Vera Loyola is not ashamed of showing off, it is

because she delights in astonishing. If a theft is more violent than it is necessary, it is

because it is pleasant to profane the body of the victims (Folha de São Paulo,

12/12/1999, Contardo Calligaris).

The favela.

Rocinha at sunset, or by night, passing by bus along the big main street towards

Barra of Tijuca, is a terrifying view. Terrifying and terrific at the same time. Rocinha,

the widest favela in Rio de Janeiro 10, is an endless expanse of asymmetric and

shabby shacks, that cover a whole mountain: the forest surrounds it on the edges;

before its entrance there are huge buildings inhabited by the middle class, while at a

little distance it is possible to see a golf club, pastime of the carioca nobility. Entering

the favela, the hot weather is stifling, and walking through its narrow and stinking

10 The favela is constantly expanding, due to migratory waves from rural areas in The North East of thecountry. Rocinha is a community where the immigrants mostly come from Cearà (very poor Brazilian state,its capital is Fortaleza).



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alleys, it is impossible not to see a gun, a revolver or a boy snoring a line of cocaine

on a cd-case careless of passer-bys. Trash pile along the streets, and rudimental

sewers (when existent) run by the sides of the walk-ways. The alleys have names as

«roupa suja» (dirty dresses), and the few elderly people of the community sit on the

sidewalks together with stray dogs, looking at some plucked groups of chicken

pecking in the trash, and smiling at barefoot children, that run up and down the steep

slopes of the morro.

Contrarily to what one might think, the favela is also a place of many differences.

Not everybody is a criminal or drug dealer: most people earn their living honestly,

working humble and often underpaid jobs, to support their family. Most importantly

not everybody in the favela is so poor. There are people with enough money to be

able to move no asfalto, but they remain no morro to follow their business or owing

to the convenience to live in a central part of town. In a favela I knew children cared

by their family, who went to school, studied and are educated; but I also knew

children that were growing up in trashy alleys, their school the blade of a knife and

the barrel of a revolver. These kids will soon have more money than the others, and

they will be envied, respected and feared teenagers, but they will rarely hit thirty

years old: they will die young and their body will fall into the drainage canals of the

favela, killed in the drug-dealing wars or by a police bullet. Rio is a city where the

number of homicides (mostly among minors) competes with that of war zones.

«From 2002 to 2006, 729 minors (Israelis and Palestinians) died as

a result of violence in Israel and in the Occupied Territories […] in the

same period of time, 1857 minors were killed in Rio de Janeiro,

according to the data of the Public Security Institut» (O Globo,

17/04/2007, José Meirelles Passos).

The situation in Rio is serious: the city is besieged by the criminal violence, cause

of an awful number of deaths, amongst them of many innocents. The case of those

who are shot by stray bullets constitutes the best example, the perfect metaphor for



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the innocent victim of violence: it is a meaningless death, the very incarnation of the

powerlessness of the authorities. And this is the very reason why this kind of death is

the most terrifying: because there is no way for people to escape it, unless deserting

the streets and living locked in at home.

«During the past year alone 186 carioca were hit by stray bullets –

the equivalent of a full Boeing 737-900 […] If we consider the

population of Rio, a little over 6 million people, one over 33000

carioca was hit by a stray bullet last year. According to the

mathematician Oswald de Souza, it is twice as probable to be shot by

a stray bullet in Rio than to win the Federal Lottery» (Veja Rio,

18/04/07, Fabio Brisolla and Fàtima Sà).

The war exists and causes many victims, most of them are inhabitants of the

favelas (they are often victims of stray bullets because of the frequent shootings

amongst the shacks of the morro). Nevertheless those who more suffer - at an

imaginary level - the fear of this conflict, are exactly those people that are less

touched by it: the middle class that live imprisoned by their own fear. The buildings

of the South Zone, that are watched day and night by doormen and security guards,

look more and more like luxury jails, with swimming pools, tennis courts and all that

is necessary to not go out. People do asfalto live as besieged by monsters, by demons

that nest in the ravines of the city and are ready to hit at any moment following an

absolutely unpredictable logic. This is a frustrated, segregated, frightened middle

class, nourished by media narrations, that on one hand celebrate criminals and on the

other hand describe them as freaks. This last contradiction is what lowers the group

self esteem.



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From favela to fairy tale.On the traces of conflict. A short extract of the visions of children in the

favelas in Rio.

In Rio and above all in the favelas there are very many children. Children in the

favelas frighten, because they steal, rob, take drugs, kill. Children are afraid, because

they constantly live in fear of being abandoned or of a sudden shooting, that will

leave them orphans or will take away their siblings. To these children - of the favela

Rocinha - I asked to show me their vision of the world, in order to find out how the

city conflict shaped up in their imaginary.

In the following pages I will present some short extracts of the material I collected

and revised during the three months of research in the favelas Rocinha and Parque da

Cidade.There I taught photography within a voluntary project organised by the

Association Unicom of the PUC University in Rio de Janeiro. It is a small part of the

work that was developed there, yet is meaningful: for the methodologies that I used

and the issues that were touched

Interview with photo-stimulus. The case of the Big Brother Brazil

The first work deals with the case of the Big Brother Brazil. I spent some time on

this case because its characteristics make it exemplar for investigating the

representation of conflict on Brazilian media.

The Big Brother presents a sugar coated version of violence, where the phases of

elimination of the Other wraps up with extreme elegance. A kind of primordial fight

is played out during the show, where the declared target is the other’s elimination by

a reckless competition. Competition is the real protagonist of the show, its propellant

is lust for fame and to be included in the imaginary of the best ones.. A lot of people

describe the Big Brother Brazil as a model for social cohabitation, where the Other

one, while necessary to one’s survival, is also a threat, imposing his needs and

limiting one’s freedom. The purpose of the show is to cause, by confining different



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people together, comparison (and most of all contrast) amongst personalities. It

shows on a “micro” level the social conflicts that cross the entire society. Watching

the seventh edition of the Big Brother Brazil I realized how the inhabitants of the

house do not respect at all the social composition of Brazil -poorness, evidently very

little photogenic but affecting a very large part of the population is not at all

represented - nor the ethnic composition of the country: at the beginning of the show,

only one guy out of 6 was black, with 6 blond competitors (1 man and 5 women). To

put it a as joke, with the volume down, the Big Brother Brazil looked just like the Big

Brother Germany. What motivated the production to chose so? Are blacks so little

photogenic? Or are blacks associated with violence and poorness, characteristics

that are not appropriate for a light entertainment program as the Big Brother? Does

the Other frighten so much ?

I showed the children of the favela about ten images from the BBB (gathered on

the research engine Google Images) and I recorded their reactions. Here are the

reactions of some girls in Rocinha, aged 9 to 12, to the picture of the only black of

the show (Ayrton).

«He is bad, ugly» the interviewed girls said «He belonged to the group of the bad

ones, he was allied, with Roberto, to kick the trio out of the show». At my request for

explanations, the girls referred specific anecdotes, situations happened during the

show, where (according to their point of view) it was evident that two groups were

siding. One group represented the Good: their leader was the winner (the blond



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Alemão), the other group represented the evil with Ayrton - the black guy of the

picture - as their leader. This Manichaean vision of the characters and of the relations

developing during the show is probably a result of the will of the authors and/or of

preferential reading of the audiovisual text, and it is also generated by cultural

interpretation, where it is normal that the black is bad, while the white and blond is

good. In the multiethnic Brazilian society (surely one of the most “coloured” of the

world), the divisions in ethnic groups and races, coming from a social system based

on slavery until not too long ago, still reflect on social stratification. The most

emarginated social groups (as the meninos de rua, the prostitutes, the beggars, and the

poorest families in the favelas) are characterised by the colour of their skin. As a

probable consequence in media narration, the criminal, the robber, the “bad” is

always black, as the case of Big Brother Brazil confirms.

Subjective images production: the drawings.

In this second work I asked the children to create images of different kinds:

drawings, photos, and hybrid products, as electronic business cards with drawings

and photos. The contract agreed upon by me and the children was to play: to

introduce themselves to an other person by means of images.

The picture above to the left is clearly the snout of a teddy bear: a typical symbol

of childhood: its reference could be a stuffed animal particularly loved by the child

author, or kids TV shows (as Teletubbies), or her love for animals, particularly for

her cat (as it emerged in her photo production). In any case it is a typical feminine



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children’s symbol, linked to a domestic context of love and care. The purple mask

below has on the contrary some more worrying tones, owing to its colour and to its

squared and hard shapes that remind us of the famous mask of Agamemnon, and

therefore perhaps of the stern and powerful paternal figure. (This comes as no

surprise in the Brazilian domestic patriarchal structure - and more generally in the

Latin American social structure). However (although the dark, worrying touch to the

whole image) it is to underline that the girl did not drew free-hand, but used the Paint

tools “rule” and “compasses”. This way she drew a more squared figure with the

above mentioned results, perhaps to make her mask different from the rounded Teddy

bear. To a closer attention, the used colours (that together with the forms of the mask

cause a worrying effect) are recurring in the decorations (little circles, ellipses and a

little flower) dotting the image.

The colour chosen for the background and for the writing with its cheerful and

fancy font concur to confirm an overall serene image. Two are the images chosen to

complete this pastiche. The first image features three girls of the Big Brother Braszl:

the little girl proved to be an expert fan of the show and revealed family regulated

and therefore “protected” fruition. The size of the image and its position under her

name, that crowns and titles the picture, reveal how the BBB girls are the projection

of how she would like to be, how she would like to see herself in the mirror. The

three media figures symbolize success, realisation and beauty; they are symbols of

life outside the favela, that very life that breaks into the day life of the little girl

through the media. Media are the window through which she looks at the world do

asfalto and she dreams about it. The second image is a peace dove, a recurring theme

of all the works of the children in the favelas, as we will see later on . Placement and

size of the dove with its olive twig (peace symbol all over the world and particularly

in the very catholic Brazil) underline the importance the little girl gives to this

concept. We find this symbol centred above her name: it is an abstraction, an allegory

of a noble ideal, that is very much felt by the children in the favela, who are the ones



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suffering the most and risking the most the effects of violence, a real war besieging

their homes.

The two images above come from the photos that the children of the favela

“Parque da Cidade” (aged between 12 and 14, thus slightly older than the children of

“Rocinha”) have taken of each other, with my Reflex digital camera. Looking at the

proxemic (physiognomy, aspect, feature, character) of the subjects, one can draw a

lot of conclusions on the imaginary of these children, surfacing from the way they

choose to be represented. Their poses in front of the camera express the way they

want (at a more or less conscious level) to be “frozen”, “fixed”, “remembered” or

“imagined”. It is a very interesting indicator, that lets the imaginary of the excellence

emerge in an evident way: the children show us how they would like to be seen, and

probably also how they would like to become. For sure they put under our eyes a

“model” they think desirable. The first, spontaneous, analogy that came to my mind

looking at these pictures, is the one with the rapper world of US cultural industry,

that has been spreading all over the world for years. This parallelism emerges when

one looks at the children plastic poses, their hand signs and their facial expressions.

By putting this consideration into the Brazilian context, the parallelism can be drawn

with the drug dealers of the favelas. They borrowed many characteristics of the media

aesthetic of the American rappers, to re contextualize them in baile funk circle, born

in the Brazilian favelas. The kids, assuming exaggerated poses, no doubt produce a

comic effect. However it is impressive to notice in their photos someone miming a

revolver with his hands. In Rio de Janeiro having a weapon at the age of 13 is not a



17

dream of transgression, but a daily and widespread reality in the favelas. What we

just discussed is even more impressive if we compare it to the drawings realized by

the same kids of the Parque da Cidade. In these drawings, that I will analyze in the

following pages, they express just the opposite: they stigmatize violence and declare

peace as their main ideal. The poses of the kids in the “Parque da Cidade” in front of

the camera represent the aesthetic of the outsiders. This aesthetic while coming from

the media and stereotyped representations of rappers of the United States

metropolitan ghetto, is also very much typically associated in that context to local

criminality.

The two drawings above are by Guilherme and Matheus, two kids in the Parque

da Cidade (the same little boys of the previous photos). For this exercise I asked the

kids to draw what they do like and what they do not like. The two works are very

similar and both represent the same subject: on one side (probably the side of what

they “do not like ”) we can find “violence”, on the other side “peace”. Guilherme

represents peace (“paz”) with a subject taking a picture of another crowned subject

(probably a “miss Brazil”, rather than a monarch); while violence (“violência”)

assumes the features of a male tall figure, certainly a drug dealer At the same way

Matheus represented in the left part of the sheet two people holding hands (we can

deduct a man and a woman judging by their hair), they symbolize “peace”. In the

right part of the sheet there is a typical scene of a robbery: a figure pointing a

revolver against a subject with his hands up (“violence”, evidently). Similarly to the



18

business cards I analyzed in the previous pages, “peace” is one of the core values for

these kids. It is surely true that they are very much suffering from violence, that

narrows their freedom and threatens their existence. But let’s mix this aspect with the

fascination the kids feel for the dealer’s world (emerging for example in Matheus e

Guilherme photographic self representation), with their wish to gratify me (besides

the camera of the first drawing I refer to the fact that Matheus signed his name as

“Matteo”, thus using the Italian translation of his name that happens to me my name

also), the suspicion now arises that their stressing the concept of “peace” is partly an

induced response: they probably unconsciously try to meet the expectations of a

“gringo” like me. The kids know very well - they just need to turn on the television

to realize it - that the only subject of the favela that is talked about in the “outside

world ” (in the rest of the city as well as all over the world) is its violence. They are

surely psychologically “bombarded” by the imperative of refusing violence, of

choosing peace. This brainwashing started from early childhood, in all the institutions

they came in contact with: from school, to sport teams, to television and so on.. The

concept of peace is soon transformed into empty rhetoric, that springs off

automatically from beneath the consciousness threshold, in order to satisfy the

expectations of the interlocutor, without ever questioning real life models, as the “

drug dealers”. These are certainly determined by the “objective” conditions of the

kids life, that is the absence of attracting or viable perspectives to gain an

economically better life, and a socially desirable one - at least amongst their peers -

without entering into drug dealings.

Subjective production of photos

These are only few of the numerous photos shot by the kids of the favela Rocinha,

on the basis of a storyboard I supplied. The authors revealed some of the crucial

events of their life - relatively to the objectives of this research - and made clear their

interpretation of images in an interview with photo-stimulus, thus revealing further

details and backgrounds that were crucial to understand the favela world .



19

The first picture shows the small square where the photography school was, in the

middle of the favela Rocinha. «This is the valão (name of that area of the favela):

you can see the bar, the houses, the dump… there is a lot of confusion in this square,

noise of people shouting, loud music… there are drug dealers. Because there is a

boca right there», said the girl author «in this square we already had two shootings

amongst rival dealers and stray bullets». In fact right under the school window there

was a so-called boca de fumo, that is one of the dealing centre for maconha

(marijuana) and pò (cocaine) of the favela. Every day, all day, this little square was

garrisoned by dozens of men with machine guns and big guns: a typical enough view

in the alleys of the favelas. However this place evoked a particular fear in the kids,

associated perhaps to the last shootings where the biggest danger for the inhabitants

are the balas perdidas, the stray bullets as the girl author said. In the favela the kids

breathe a constant tension, a burden and an inhibitory restraint to their freedom that

heavily condition their daily life.

«This is my father» the girl author of the second image commented on «he is at

home… the house is all dirty, the walls need to be repainted. I took this picture one

evening, when he came home from work… here in this picture he has a wound on his

forehead… one evening he came home, and he had it, he said he had a row with

somebody, I did not understand why». This image and the words of the little girl

reveal a difficult domestic situation: the decay of the physical conditions of the house



20

is added to a violent father figure. The family condition of this little girl is very

common in the social context of the favela, where economic difficulties and socio-

cultural deficiencies add up to a machista domestic ideology - frequent in the whole

Latin America, not only in Brazil - according to which women are completely

subjected to men. To better understand the turbulent father figure and the conditions

of family violence this little girl is coming from, I would report her reaction to a

picture I showed in the classroom .

«It is a fight» the girl said looking at the image «this is a man who oppresses and

hits his wife, who is pregnant: my father does this to my mother». This drawing is

part of a set of images I used to develop some works with the kids, among them the

“business cards” game, I described before. This hard to hear statement completes the

reconstruction of her father figure that was the subject of the previous photo.

«She is my teacher and here we are in the classroom» the author explained looking

at the first picture «I like her, I get along with her. The walls of the classroom need to

be repainted, it is in very bad condition […]one time, the Guardia Municipal came



21

to school , to arrest a 18 year old guy, that had hit the teacher, so the head master had

called the police. It happened not so long ago… There was a lot of confusion that day

at school». In the image and in the words of this kid we can clearly read the decay of

public schools in the Brazilian megalopolis and mostly in the school for the kids of

the poorest areas. The conditions of social degradation and violence these kids live in

do not exist only in the unsafe streets of the favelas, but involve all aspects of their

public life: only in their private domestic sphere some luckier kids can find some

peace and serenity. For other kids even there it is impossible, as we just saw.

«I took this picture in front of my home» the girl author of the second image

declared «Some criminals live nearby. They often give money to us kids so we can

buy whatever we need. They are criminals but they are good, they have been living

there for a long time. […]We can hear a lot of noise outside my house, at night too,

but it is not the criminals to be noisy. We are bothered especially by some people

that believe in a religion called creite, who always shout and sing a lot especially

when praying». There are many themes emerging from this image and from the

words of its girl author. First of all the picture (even though not so clear on a

compositing level) shows us how the houses in the favela are all piled up on top of

each other. There are not “decompressing” spaces such as front yards, entrance-halls

or lobbies of any kind: opening the front door one walk right on the crowded streets

or on the thresholds of someone else’s house. Public and private are thus constantly

overlapping. Second: the hint to the creite religion. According to what I understood

from the words of the kids, this is one of the numerous sects, where beliefs and rites

of African origin are mixed with characters of Catholicism. This hint opens a

window on the cultural richness in which these kids are living, getting accustomed to

living in close proximity to the Other, the different one. Finally in the little girl’s

comment we can read a clear ambivalence in the vision of the figure and the role of

the dealers. On one hand the subjects and the families who are not involved in drug

dealing - that is the greatest majority of the favelas - live the presence of narco-

traffic power as a problem, as a limitation of their freedom of speech, thought and



22

movements. The risk to be involved in a shooting amongst rival criminal bands, or

between criminals and police is great. So is the risk to make a “faux pas” with

dangerous criminals, such as to be over heard talking badly or suspiciously about

them. These are always pending and oppressive threats. But on the other hand the

words of the girl author underline another typical dynamic of the favela: facing total

abandonment by the State, the inhabitants of the favela help each other in a support

system of reciprocal aid, but are also helped by the dealers. The little girl has

provided us with an example of the dealers giving money to the kids to buy candies,

to play at video arcades, or even to pay for exceptional expenses that their family

could not afford such as taking part to school trips or buying material for specific

workshops. But I would also like to report in a conversation I had with the mother of

another student of mine in the favela Rocinha (who unfortunately did not take part to

any of the here mentioned works). This mother told me of a situation that she recently

had to face: at the death of the youngest of her children, caused by a heart condition.

She had been left by her husband, and she had raised alone her four children: with no

money for the funeral, she turned to her neighbours and asked them, a group of drug

dealers to help her. They paid for the ceremony and the graveyard without asking for

anything in return At a social level the presence of the dealers in the favela is lived in

a contradictory way, between fear and admiration, between condemnation and

respect, between love and hate.

The movie.

The last work I want to introduce in these pages is the script of a short film, that

was thought to be written and interpreted by the kids of the favela. Unfortunately the

film was never realized due to my health problems that forced me at home during

the time that I had planned for shooting. Nevertheless I decided to insert this

experiment (although unfinished) in this report. I think it supplies interesting data and

fresh inputs that can help us understand the reality under research, coming both from

the script and from other contents such as the cover and the title of the film. In these



23

pages, for sake of brevity, I will not include the entire script but I will limit myself to

present the conclusions that I drew from it. Very important features of the imaginary

of these kids can be derived from the script.

First of all a very interesting situation aroused and was provoked by giving the

roles to the kids: nobody wanted to play the bandit. In this collective dynamic I think

we can notice the same lever we noticed in the business cards game, in the photos and

in the drawings: when one speaks about violence, criminality, “outlaws”, and about

peace, police, “law”, the kids have no doubt about where to side: law men are

“good”, and bandits are “bad”. I am convinced that this mechanism which springs

automatically, has many diversified explanations,. I will try to sum them up in the

conclusions of this research. In this context the prevailing dynamics is definitely the

one of the group, that “moralizes” its members, originating a mechanism according to

which all have to be on the same side, otherwise they are demonized by the other

members.

A second interesting theme is the woman figure that partly seems to contradict

what so far emerged (that is her conforming to prevalently passive woman models

coming from the media). In this work female characters are the real protagonists of

the story: Vanessa (the positive hero, a woman doctor) gets to arrest the murderer

(the assistant of the anti-hero), and to overcome many narrative obstacles during the

development of the story. On the other side we have Roberta, the anti-hero: a

dangerous international bandit with a male assistant (the murderer). The figure of

Vanessa (and her nemesis Roberta) carry on the chromosomes of media woman

characters coming from hard body movies of the ’90 (such as Alien, with its manly

protagonist Sigourney Weaver) to scientific/detective fiction as C.S.I. The choice to

comply with these models on one hand evidences media dependence in these kids,

which already emerged in all the works of this field research, but it also underlines an

urge for woman emancipation and for overcoming the country patriarchal ideology.

Another feature emerging in this work, even if in an apparently less evident way, is

the strength of social relationships among equals as an instrument to overcome



24

difficulties. Chip and Lucas (a private detective and a policeman, both assistants of

the hero) are friends and their friendship will allow them to win the battle against the

villain. On the contrary the anti-hero Roberta is alone, just like the murderer: their

fate is to lose out, simply because they are not bound by friendship. In fact quite the

opposite is true: Roberta will not hesitate to kill the murderer when she will realize he

can threaten her liberty. It does not surprise us that “villains” are always trying to

hide themselves, to vanish, to go unrecognized using masks and denying their own

identity (let us think about Roberta that changes her name three times during the

film). Conversely the status of “good” is based on mutual recognition, on trust and on

credibility, the necessary foundation to establish any type of relationships. .

A last element I would like to underline is the continuous reference to both real life

and media experiences, that are melt into one another to forge the kids imaginaries.

On one side references to the real life in the favela are perfectly represented in scene

number 7: here the murderer is too poor to buy a quicker means of transportation

other than a bicycle, and solves his problem with a violent theft, a robbery ended with

an unjustified beating of the victim. We can also consider scene 9.1, when the

private detective follows the tire marks of the criminal’s bicycle: we must remember

that most of the streets in the favelas are dirt road, not paved, and especially when it

rains, it is in fact possible to detect marks on the ground. On the other hand it is not

difficult to find media imaginaries constellating the setting: we already mentioned

the female figures of the hard body movie, and of TV detective stories like C.S.I. (a

trend underlined for example by the use of the technology in the investigation, like a

computer to find the identity of the criminal). Besides this, in some scenes we can

find the topoi of other TV successful genres: I refer for example to scene 15, that

sounds like the script of a typical joke of a comic TV show: a little girl confirmed in

fact in the native image making, to be a fan of such shows. Photograph as an element

of the story is also featured in many scenes: we remember number 6, where a photo is

one of the means (together with other technologies) that enable them to get to the

desired goal; or also scene 15, where a photograph appears again showing its



25

revealing power, and its authoritative status of object which tells the truth. Surely the

kids added these anecdotes because they attended a course of photography with me,

which they liked, and because they wanted to gratify me at a more or less conscious

level. Going passed this level of reading, we can understand by these anecdotes that

the role of photography (and more generally speaking of media image) has complete

authority on the imaginary of these kids: the media image tells the truth and helps

reach one’s own aims, moreover it is a collection of experiences, of collective

fantasies and more generally of resources.

Finally I am sure that a part of the roots of the title and the cover drawing sink into

functional text such as horror pictures like Dracula, as far as the image and font are

concerned, or the most classic action thriller, as far as the title chosen (“A life or

death case”)

On the other side we can not forget that when these kids talk about death, violence

or murder, they do not only refer to an abstraction, they know exclusively trough

media fiction. When the kids of the favela talk about death or murder, they talk about

a daily reality, they are always facing. A reference to these themes is not only a by

product of media experience (as for most of their western contemporaries), but is an

inseparable hybrid between reality and fiction.



26

ConclusionsOn the signs of conflict. Synthesis of the results.

At the end of this analysis of the Brazilian society and of the conflict arising from

its contradictions it is possible to deduce some intuitions of general character. The

works of the kids of the favela reveal the point of view of a particular social group: a

vantage view point, that of witnesses who live the conflict from the inside, and who

are both protagonists and victims. I suggest a possible synthesis of the results, by

observing the following dimensions of analysis.

Between public and private.

The first tension disruptively emerging from this research is the one between the

public dimension and the private sphere. From one side the houses, private space par

excellence, owing to social and urban conformation in the favela look like public

spaces: small and overcrowded houses are constantly visited by relatives,

neighbours and acquaintances. It is impossible in fact to create a nest, a personal

space and to have some privacy (a fundamental value of middle-class ideology).

Nobody locks their front door: kids can walk into neighbour homes to play and to

party on the panoramic terraces of the larger houses. Moreover boundaries between

houses are faded. As I noticed in the field research, there are no decompression

spaces (as entrance-halls, gardens) between the crowded streets and the houses.

Public spaces and private ones overlap.

Conversely, public spaces (streets, little squares, play courts) shape up as private

places: it is sufficient to remember the armed guards at the entrance of the favela:

dealers controlling access to the favela, where the police (the guardians of “public”

power) can not enter. Upon coming in, one needs to give up written rules (the Law)

and unspoken rules (the Etiquette) that elsewhere organise life in public spaces: one

comes in a space with other laws, other etiquettes, that must be known and observed,

otherwise one will be - perhaps violently - rejected. For example, it is highly advised



27

against (I’d rather say forbidden) to take pictures in the favela, mostly when one is

near to some dealers: a restriction that recalls the rules of a private space. Moreover

and simply because houses are overcrowded and lack room, streets become a valid

setting for elsewhere private activities such as washing and hanging laundry,

preparing and consuming cocaine and marijuana, or listening to music (setting one

own music system outside and sitting on the corner of the street to listen to it, like

many young people do).

Between global and local.

Another tension that is present through this entire research is the one between local

and global. First of all this element is expressed in the media representation of the

outsiders. Outsiders in Brazil on one hand find their roots in a global trend, on the

other hand are an expression of Brazilian history and politics back at the time of the

military dictatorship. They are also an expression of the social structure of the

country in more archaic times, during the Portuguese domination, hen the slavery of

black people was strongly practiced by the white colonizers.

In the favela this double matrix is clearly evident in the works of the kids: we can

think about the influences of the media global stories - such as hard body movie,

detective shows like C.S.I., or TV comic shows - in the script, or about the models of

United States rappers that emerge in the pictures of the kids in the Parque da Cidade.

The effect of these media global stories is in the identity itself of the dealers, who

wear at their neck medallions with the dollar symbol (as the American richest

rappers, the ones that some purists might call “sold” to the very music business their

precursors tried to fight), while drawing inspiration from the aesthetic of the warriors

of the Middle East: wearing the Palestinian kefiah as a hood or a mask (this aspect is

described very well in the already mentioned short Falcão, meninos do trafico, of

2006). These global symbols and models have a very important common matrix: they

are enjoyed through mass communication media. These are media symbols that

mainly belong to the global imaginary of the outsiders, that of conflict, of resistance



28

to an oppressing power, of rebellion against an unfair society. However these

symbols do not shape up as a political protest but remain associated to a sphere of

private violence and small time criminality. These are symbols that are reinterpreted

by the subjects and that assume a new meaning according to the context they sink in:

a different meaning both from the real reference and from the intentions of the

media.

Between exclusion and inclusion.

Brazil is a society where the most contradictory trends can live together with a

disarming simplicity. Rio de Janeiro is one of the most tolerant cities of the world, for

example in regard to homosexuals. In Ipanema, the most chic beach of Rio, there is a

well-known meeting place for this social group, decorated with flags of the

gay/lesbian community: here, especially during Carnival there are the most popular

parties where all the young people of Rio, straight and gay, go. The city is full of gay

clubs, and nobody minds if a gay couple openly displays their affection on the streets:

There is widespread acceptance and an open minded attitude towards them, attitude

comparable to the most liberal European or American countries. On one hand this is

definitely a product of a marketing strategy (gay clubs are among the most expensive

and popular clubs in town), but on the other hand it is a cultural characteristic that we

could rarely find in any other Latin American country, where gays are violently

segregated. The reason lies in the fact that Brazil is a country accustomed to live

with the Other and where contaminations between races (as well as different cultures

and sexualities) began centuries ago, with the arrival of the black slaves from Africa,

and went on with the immigration of Europeans in the XX century and with the more

recent influx of Argentineans and Asians. The incident told by the little girl in the

native image making of her neighbour singing an African religious song is an

example of just this cohabitation, of this melting pot of races, religions and cultures,

that generated the very Brazilian nature. (In fact I would like to point out that



29

Brazilian natives, the so called indios, were wiped out by colonizers and are still now

exiled in more and more confined ghettos… but this is another story).

On the other hand Brazil is a country where racial discrimination, rooted in the

slavery of the blacks, still exists and moulds the Brazilian society, although taking

ever new forms and ways to express itself. The PUC University in Rio, where I

studied during an exchange program, is a clear example of it: a private university,

with amazingly high fees 11, and an almost all white student body. The only blacks in

the institute were the workers : cooks, guards, janitors and so on.. I already said that

the more emarginated social groups (from the poorest families in the favelas, to

meninos de rua), the ones that live in the hardest predicaments are mostly black..

This overlapping between social classes and races is inevitably mirrored by media

narration where the “heroes” are white and the “villains” are black, as the kids of the

favela reminded us talking about the seventh edition of Big Brother Brazil. The

exploiting of the inhabitants in the favela who working no asfalto, that some kids

hinted at during the native image making to, is certainly another form of this

discrimination.

But the relationship between outsiders and the middle-high class does not end here.

In the media, as well as in different places, settings and situations, the symbols do

morro and those do asfalto clash and overlap, hybridizing both the imaginary of the

children of the middle class - who are fascinated by the power of the dealers - and the

imaginary of the children in the favela, as it turns out from their admiration for the

emblems of the society do asfalto - such as real TV personalities or abstract

professional figures as the policeman, the judge, the physician. The collision between

these urges and the traditional culture (the culture that preaches “to each his own”

that means everybody inserted in the role predetermined for him or her by his or her

economic condition and social status), and with the political and ideological needs of

the industry of media products and of the power groups (that aim to control

11 Monthly minimum wage as set by the government is 350 Reais, and the PUC monthly fee (PontifìciaUniversidade Catòlica) is between 800 e i 1.300 Reais, depending on how many classes one decides totake(data from the Manual de Orientação of PUC 1° semester, 2007).



30

consumers through the economic and ideological penetration of their imaginaries),

and with the marketing needs (imposing that anybody producing an income should be

exploited, regardless of their ideologies), and with the personal biographies of the

social actors; the collision between all these different forces give birth to the

Brazilian mediascape. These are texts that take inspiration from and inspire all social

groups in different ways and in somehow contain many (if not all) aspects of the

problem, giving to the readers the possibility to read them and interpret them

autonomously. They contain (in different measure, depending on the results of the

negotiation that I just underlined and in various contexts of production and reception)

both the incentives to accept the other, to emancipate the minorities, and the

incentives to the marginalize him, to discriminate him. This complexity emerged in

different phases of my research above all in the role of women in society: on one

hand the imaginaries of the little girls in the favela are influenced by models of

traditional and conservative womanliness, that reflect the ideology of the patriarchal

family. On the other hand the little girls not only demonstrate that they are living and

reinterpreting the media stories in an active manner, but also that they are inclined

towards more progressive woman models, an active, emancipated woman, owner of

her fate.

Between war and peace.

The tension between war and peace, focus of this research, is an evolving

dimension, that changes according to one’s point of view. We saw that a real war is

ongoing in Rio, and the number of its casualties is impressive. The war fields are the

streets as well as the collective imaginaries. These imaginaries are being assaulted

both by the mainstream flow, and by the products of the alternative network, products

that spread out quickly thanks to new technologies, and that modify the perceptions

of the public. Moreover it emerged that media are a stage where social groups face

each other, clash and send out messages through the language of ostentation and

violence. These languages are not exclusives of the high class and of the outsiders,



31

but are used by everybody to define the forms and the areas of influence of their own

law. Let’s just consider the parade of the criminals during the baile funk or scene 7 of

our script where a criminal is beating a motorcyclist in order to rob him: a fiction

recalling the real violent happenings which fills up the Brazilian mediascape.

On turn media themselves use a violent language to capture the audience and keep

them glued to the screen. Their strategy is based on shocking rather than informing

thus creating a “Manichean” perception of conflicts, where the “good” and the “bad”

are wide apart in the battle field, black and white, with no shade of grey or room for

doubt. This trend lives on in the imaginaries of the kids and emerges for example in

the interpretation of the roles of the Big Brother, and in their comments on Ayrton.

Tension between war and peace is also one of the most leading trait in all the

children production. The violence of the society where they live emerges in several

parts of this research. The children who are in the middle of this conflict are on one

hand demonized by the media (according to the equation “marginality = violence”; or

the widespread opinion that outsiders are the main cause of the underdevelopment

and of the problems of Brazil) and on the other hand they are obsessively

“bombarded”, by media and institutions of different kind (schools, sports, religions,

and so on), with messages about “peace”, about the necessity of stopping violence,

messages that demonize the dealers and exalt law enforcement figures.

This never ending overlapping of contradictory stimulus gives ground for doubts,

such as the one that I previously expressed: the kids speaking about “peace” as a

core value without really understanding its meaning, but transforming it into a

rhetoric artifice to please the interlocutor, especially when he is an “outsider” of the

favela. Actually, as it is clear in many works of the kids, they are just as much

fascinated by the dealers world, by their style, by their power, by their fame. When

confronted on it, kids hardly admit their fascination. The reason for their reluctance

come from the never ending rhetoric of the media and of the institutes they are

attending, and the dynamics of the group. We can not forget that the kids suffer very

much the violence and the war they live in, that causes constant mourning in the



32

community, limits their liberties and nourishes the discrimination spiral they will be

subjected to for their whole life. If on one hand there are strong reasons that should

push the kids to reject violence, on the other hand there are objective reasons that

make them choose crime, such as the real lack of viable alternatives ( with a

comparable appeal, of course) that could allow them to make a living for themselves

and for their family, to gain power and prestige before the community, to leave the

mass of miserable and anonymous people, to be desirable by girls (even by the ones

do afalto), and so on .

Between past and future.

Coming back to the very introduction of this work, the last dimension of analysis

that I would like to spend time on is the contrast between past and future. One of the

most common western cliché on Latin America is that it looks like what an European

country could look like 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. I think Brazil, and Rio most of

all, look more like what a western country will look like in the future.

It is a country of extreme social contrast, a megalopolis where miserable ghettos

rise amongst rich neighborhoods, middle and high class buildings look like luxury

jails, where everything is organize as to never have to leave the house, never have to

face extreme poverty. This city is crossed by a conflict that talks the language of

violence and ostentation, it is a conflict born out of the clashing of social,

economical and cultural contradictions, that have been clashing and crashing and

melting for hundreds of years. This conflict mirrors into the media, that inspire and

take inspiration from the lives of the citizens, now paranoid with fear of violence, and

of the favelas. Favelas that are intricate spreads of shacks covering up the morros,

(pointy hills lush with tropical vegetation) and that are all over the city: from the

ritziest areas to the huge suburbs. The favelas are the liveliest part of town: a place

with a sense of community, that somehow reminded me of some little towns of rural

Italy. Here nobody locks their door, everybody knows each other and everybody

helps each other, with a mutual support system, that holds on in front of the total



33

abandonment of the favela by regular institutions. This abandonment caused the birth

of a state within a state: that cannot be entered by the police, unless to declare war,

with streets, homes and schools as battle fields. Amongst the shacks of the morro the

sole power of the drug dealers can reign, this on one hand generates a true welfare

system, based on donations to poor families or financing of services needed by the

entire community, on the other hand limits everybody else’s freedom and endangers

their life with constant shootings.

Post-human Favela: «lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate»12.

The following are magical words capable of letting free that paranoia that floats

into the collective imaginary of Brazilian megalopolis. They come from an alleged

interview with the infamous criminal Marcos Camacho, nicknamed Marcola, leader

of PCC 13. Nobody knows if these are Marcola’s words or if they were written by

somebody else, however they hit the right spot, right at the center of an urban

apocalyptic phobia, that has already given its fore warnings. (let’s just think about

San Paolo events in May of 2006, or the violent episodes in Rio in December 2006,

events that shocked the entire world)

«I am a signal of new times, I was poor and invisible and you

haven’t taken me into consideration for decades […] have the

governments ever spent just a word on us? No, they never did […]

we are a late outburst of your social conscience […] but there’s

nothing you can do now, there’s no solution anymore, the idea alone of

a solution is a mistake. Have you seen the size of the 560 favelas di

Rio? Have you ever flown over the suburbs of S. Paolo? What could

this solution ever be? […]

You are the ones that are afraid of death, I am not. In fact, you

can’t walk into my cell and kill me…but I can send out somebody to

kill you […] death for you is a Christian drama in a death bed, a heart

12 «Give up hope, you that enter» (Dante Alighieri, Inferno, III, v.9).13 Brazilian Mob, also known as Partido do Crime, crime party PCC stando for Primeiro Comando daCapital.



34

attack maybe…death for us is a daily event, a body dumped in the

sewage canals […] We are not afraid of death, while you are afraid to

death […] The population of the favelas help us, out of love, or out of

fear. You are despised[…] We will never forget about you, you are our

clients 14. You forget about us, unless when you are afraid of our

violence […]

You turn us into crime superstar: we turn you into clowns […]

You intellectuals, didn’t you talk about class war, and about “being

outcasts being heroes”? And here we are, here we are, it’s us! […]

No more un happy – exploited blue collar workers . There is

something new, growing out there, learning on the blade of a knife,

learning in total illiteracy, graduating in our jails, like an Alien

monster hidden in the city. We are a breed of post-misery, a post-

misery that generates a culture of assassins helped by technology:

satellites, cell phones, internet, modern weapons. It’s shit with chips

and megabytes. My men are mutants, mushroomed out of a big, dirty

mistake.[…]

We are right at the center of the insolvable. There’s no solution, just

shit.

Rather than looking like an idyllic past of the “developed” West, Brazil ( and

especially Rio de Janeiro) makes us face a scenario that we will have to deal with

for the next decades. A likely and not so distant future when megalopolis all over the

world will have to face the same problems: a huge part of the population (and of the

city) that is completely out of control, a series of extremely violent conflicts between

numerous social and ethnic groups, a more and more invasive media system that

causes collective phobia and fear. In short a constant state of war, but a war that is

hidden, underground, that causes thousands of victims every year and is fought not

only on the streets but mainly in people’s heads.

I am portraying a hopeless scenario, that can remind us of many contemporary

work of arts and cultural products, such as Philip Dick short stories, films as Blade

14 He refers to drug trafficking, especially cocaine, handled by the mob and mainly dealt with in the favelas.



35

Runner, Matrix. or Nirvana, or again Ken Shiro’s images, or Akira’s or Ghost in the

Shell. They are all ominous of a global future that is out of control and that has traits

recognizable in many areas of the planet: we can think about the aesthetic similarities

that it carries with Palestinian refugee camps, that just as the favelas are full of rage,

are for outsiders, are out of control. What solution could ever be possible?

These pages are an extreme synthesis (about a third) of the research I developed in

Rio between February and March 2007. This work suffers from the lack of the pages

devoted to the choice of methodology, pages where I analyzed at length limits and

values of the use of images in social research. Moreover I presented just a small

extract of the pictures produced by the kids of the favela, images that definitely

represent the added value of this research.

Contacts: [email protected]

References

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- Barcelos, C. (2003), Abusado - O Dono do Morro Dona Marta, Record, Rio de Janeiro.

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esquecimento, Psicologia em Revista, Belo Horizonte, v. 8, n. 12, p. 24-31, Dec.

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36

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