The Associated Press reports, accurately, I have to presume, on a flare up between two rival favelas that played out on Rio's famous Ipanema Beach.
Quite quaint for Rio, actually: two groups smacking each other with beach chairs for 15 minutes or so. This in a city where rival gangs normally blast away at each other with assault rifles.
Still, to link this small brawl with the "arrastoes," or mass robberies, that have occurred occasionally in the past on the beaches is quite misleading. Also, to cite the "everyday violence of the slums" without noting that most of the homicides in the favelas are due to police shootings is downright irresponsible.
The drug gangs are terrible, but the police are worse.
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8 comments:
Robert good point you making about police being the more troubles for us.
jj
rocinhajj@yahoo.com.br
this blog is juts fantastic grassroots truth-telling
massive respect!
Obrigado.
Robert,
First of all, I would like to mention I am enjoying your Shadow Cities book.
However, as an eyewitness to the event, last Saturdays brawl in Ipanema beach, was indeed some sort of arrastão. Although it may not have started that way, there were enough young people taking advantage of the situation in order to loot beachgoers while the authorities were distracted by the fight.
Robert I only write message with my email.
I hear about the gangs on the beach but was not there.
I Dj a party on the 21st in Rocinha and too much work to know of this.
Alex
rocinhajj@yahoo.com.br
I'll stand corrected by someone who was there.
The continued conflict between drug gangs is an awful reality of the favelas, and when it spills over onto Ipanema beach, that's horrible, too. There's no excuse for arrastoes, for committing acts of violence against innocents.
Still, as rapper MV Bill pointed out in the interview with the Guardian that I blogged about a while back, the dominant image on the favelas from films and in the newspapers makes them places of crime, drugs, and violence. That fundamentally misrepresents the reality and skews people's perceptions.
Why everything of said about favelas is bad? We are good people who working hard for our lives.
Everytime I leave Rocinha, the police gives me many questions to ask. How can we change this?
Alex
rocinhajj@yahoo.com.br
The arrastoes are done not by Funkeiros!
I am a funkeiro and I never do things like this.
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