Olá,
I wrote a blog post and then I deleted all of it because I
realized it sucked. So here’s my second attempt. I’m keeping the blurbs short.
Been here about 2 weeks. Getting really used to it, and
liking São Paulo a lot so far. Had an acai bowl, caiperinhas, faejoada, passion
fruit, pao de quejo, brigadero…
haven’t had Brazilian coffee yet, but I will. I’m pretty sure I ate some
chicken hearts, but I’m honestly not sure…
The buses here are all stick-shift. Hold on tight!
Not being able to speak Portuguese is very confining and
isolating.
Been hittin’ up the clubs, they’re pretty fun! But also
makes me tired the next day.
So the other day we went on a site visit to what we were
told would be a “squatter settlement” but after going there, I’m not sure I
would describe it that way. In Brazil, people usually don’t like to renovate
buildings – they prefer to just build a new one somewhere else. So there are
many vacant buildings around São Paulo – over 1,000, in fact. And in many
cases, it’s illegal to knock down a building in order to preserve its
historical significance. Well, people who don’t have anywhere to live just move
into these buildings and create their homes there. This makes the owners of
these buildings pretty mad, but even if they bring a case to court, it’s hard
for them to kick the people out. In 1988, a new Brazilian constitution was
written, and it said that every building had to serve a social function. While
there seems to be no punishment for leaving buildings vacant, the squatters are
giving a social function to the building. Plus, if the government kicked them
out, they would have to provide them with some other form of housing. Both
these factors together make it likely that the squatters can stay.
But this place was truly amazing – so well organized, and
everyone had to help out to maintain the building itself and to do chores like
cook and clean. There was a daycare center for the residents and a doorman to
make sure no criminals got in. A mailman even dropped off letters to the
building, like any other house or apartment. There was an organization that was
in charge of 6 buildings in the area that all housed people with nowhere else
to go, and they really had their act together for something that would seem to
be so informal.
On another site visit, we got a tour from one of the most
famous pixadores in Brazil. A pixadore is basically a “tagger”, someone who
writes on buildings with spray paint. It’s different from graffiti, because
graffiti is considered to be beautiful and people will pay graffiti artists, where
as tagging is viewed as ugly and vandalism. The man we went with is the most
avid advocator of tagging and has been on news channels like CNN and in
newspapers. He even holds Brazil’s record for highest building climbed and
tagged – 30 stories high! We’ve learned a lot about it, but in summary, tagging
is a way for those who feel excluded from society to ‘make their mark’ on
buildings all over the city, giving some unity what would otherwise be a very
physically separated society (for instance, tagging a wall that is meant to
keep criminals out). The greater the risk a person takes to tag a place, the higher the respect he receives from other taggers. It's like a competition between groups.
Also, there have been a lot of protests lately about the
public transportation system. Not too long ago, a man named Lula was the
president, and he decided that his people needed to be able to get around. He
gave everyone who couldn’t afford a car money to buy one. Since then, the
traffic in São Paulo has been horrendous. It can take you 1 hour to drive 2
miles. So people started using subways and buses more often, but the problem
still existed, and the public transit systems are completely congested, too… I
had to wait in line for 10 minutes just to enter
the subway station once. So anyway, recently the government wanted to hike the
price up another R$0.20 … and that was so not cool with anyone. There was a
series of 7 protests and I’m pretty sure some smaller ones along the way. Some
people say there is a real problem and others say that young people are just
trying to exercise their right to protest. Still others say that there have
been too many problems for too long a time, and the people are just now letting
out their pent up anger. Well, whatever it is, I know that I haven’t been
charged the extra R$0.20 yet.
Oh, and I forgot to mention… happy birthday to me! 21 years
old hollaaa!! My host sisters bought me some really cute Havainna slip on
shoes. So nice of them :)
Alright, picture time:
This picture was taken from a
new apartment/shopping mall complex. It’s soooo fancy in there, and expensive
too. Like, Chanel, Louis Vitton status. And the apartments are huge. But the
view shows you that slums rest right up against high rise business buildings,
so the inequality is distinct and very visible in the city.
Surprisingly I haven’t taken
any pictures of tagging, but here’s a good example I got off of http://www.ekosystem.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2380
Okay, I think that’s all for now and I really don’t feel
like proofreading this, so sorry if there are typos, Dad.
Bye bye for now…
Emily
Can’t deal with taglines right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment