Rio Gringa

Juliana Barbassa's "Dancing with the Devil in the City of God"

Juliana Barbassa is a person I've known through the grapevine for years since she arrived in Rio as the Associated Press correspondent. I didn't meet her in person until two years ago, when I was in Rio at the tail end of the massive street protests. I was fascinated by her trajectory and her unique eye for reporting in Brazil.

Barbassa was born in Brazil, but grew up all over the world because of her dad's oil company job, living not only in Rio but also in Iraq, Malta, Libya, Spain, France, and the United States. She went to UT Austin for undergrad and to UC Berkeley for graduate school. She joined the AP in 2003, and became the AP Rio correspondent in 2010.

Back in 2013, Barbassa was kind enough to invite me over to her beautiful home in Flamengo, where I also met her dad and now-husband Christopher Gaffney, every Rio journalist's favorite curmudgeon and one of the top experts on global mega-events. We talked about the protests and the World Cup and Barbassa's career and what it was like to go from writing for a wire service to writing her first book. We also talked about her experience going to grad school for journalism, which in retrospect I credit her for inspiring me to do.

That meeting confirmed what I suspected: that Barbassa is someone special when it comes to understanding Brazil and being able to translate its cultural idiosyncrasies. She's able to capture the nuances of a native while also providing the perspective of an outsider.

And now, finally, you can see the result of Barbassa's hard work with her new book, coming out July 28. (Pre-order your copy of the book here.) Below, see my impressions of the book, my Q&A with the author, and when you can meet Barbassa during her book tour.

My Thoughts on the Book

Called Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink, the book explores what's been happening in Rio over the last few years in a way that I really think has never been captured as well as she does. The reporting is incredibly deep and thorough, from poring through documents to an exhausting number of hours spent in the field.

Overall, the book is exquisitely written, a blend of a memoir and some of the best reporting you will find on Rio de Janeiro. Some parts are heart-wrenching (see the chapter on the mudslides), and some parts are laugh-out-loud funny (don't miss the anecdote about the Mexican entrepreneur and how he got his Brazilian visa.)

Not only does she get into the nitty gritty of security, gentrification, evictions, environmental degradation, and mega-event preparation, but she digs deep into the history of Rio's ongoing conflict. She revealed things that were new even to me, including a Rio policy that helped drive killings by police.This book should be required reading for any journalist who plans on covering the 2016 Olympics.

And instead of devoting a whole chapter to 500 years of Brazilian history, as is common in English-language non-fiction books about Brazil, she elegantly weaves historical facts into the narrative about what's happening now. And when she explores historical sites few people even know about it, you feel like you're there with her.

Barbassa combines the reporting with her own story of living in Brazil and around the world, making it an even more intriguing read. (Warning: if you have ever lived in Brazil, her chapter on trying to find an apartment may give you PTSD flashbacks.)

And even though during her time in Rio she went from being single to getting married, her relationship isn't part of the book. For this I really admire her, since this is usually a big part of female-written memoir-style books. It's clear that her time in Rio was a personal journey about coming to terms with her birthplace.

In other words, read this book ASAP.

Meet Juliana

Barbassa and Gaffney are now living in Switzerland, but Barbassa is heading to  the U.S. for a book tour this month. Meet Barbassa and get a signed copy of the book on the following dates:

• JULY 29: Porter Square Bookstore, Cambridge, MA
• AUGUST 4: The BookMark Shoppe, Brooklyn, NY
• AUGUST 5: Americas Society, New York, NY
• AUGUST 7: Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL

 Q&A with Juliana Barbassa

What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching the book?

I was taken back by the early history of the Comando Vermelho. When I first became aware of the gang in the late 1980s, they were already a powerful, violent entity making headlines with boastful interviews, a cinematic prison escape, or bloody confrontations with police. But they had that motto, Peace, Justice and Liberty. It seemed incongruent.

Reading about the gang’s early days in the Ilha Grande prison from books like “Quatrocentos Contra Um” or Carlos Amorim’s “Comando Vermelho” made me curious about the environment that shaped these men and their aspirations. I sought out those who were there or remember that time, like the Professor, dug for old news clippings, and finally, searched what’s left of the uncategorized prison archives, trying to understand who they were, how they lived, what influenced their thinking.

 

In particular, I spent hours going through daily prison logs, fascinated by the the minutia of everyday life in this terrible place - who fought with whom, which prisoners were punished for smoking marijuana, gambling, fighting, what there was to eat, what each man brought with him when he came in, who got visits. Much of it was mundane and unvarying, but the accumulation of details made them, their needs, their cells more real.

I enjoyed most the occasional finds that came from from the hands of the prisoners themselves -- a crude playing card made from the page of an encyclopedia, part of a seized deck, that was stuck inside one of the thick log books; the letters from inmates to those on the outside. The best examples of those were in the little museum that now exists on the site of the demolished prison: they have missives written by gang members on the inside asking their ‘brothers’ for some help with the prisoners’ Christmas celebration. These things were reminders of a time when the Comando Vermelho was an entirely different creature.

Was there a part that got cut that you especially liked?

Of course! There were long sections cut out to streamline the story. Within them were characters who deserved whole chapters to themselves -- in another book. One of my favorites was the section about Flávia Froes, an attorney whose list of clients reads like a who’s-who of Rio’s drug traffic dating back to the 1990s. She dredges up references to class warfare to frame the conflict between the state and gang members convicted in horrific murders.

But she’s not a lefty, bleeding heart sort; she’s tough, and she plays her over-the-top Carioca sexy to the hilt. The first time we met she was picking her way around crack users in trash-strewn alleys wearing six-inch stiletto heels, rhinestone studded jeans and a corset, her long blond hair swaying down to the middle of her back. But when we made our way to the heavily-armed dealers standing guard over tables stacked with baggies of crack, they respected her: it was all, “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am.” What makes her interesting as a person, and as a character, is that you’re left wondering how far she would be willing to go -- how far she has gone -- for her clients.

During the days of chaos that preceded the take-over of the Complexo do Alemão, when someone was carrying orders from imprisoned gang leaders to their soldiers on the outside, a judge ordered her arrest. Forty officers and a helicopter were sent out, but she got wind of it and went on the lam without a computer or a cell phone, untraceable. Later the charges were dropped for lack of proof, and Flavia was back, jaunty as ever, but there are many who never got over their doubts.

How did the book-writing experience compare to your work with the AP?

Daily news has specific requirements -- you work under deadline, keep your articles short and to the point. That’s the nature of news. It often meant having to do grab-and-run interviews, leaving before the conversation got really interesting; other times it simply meant leaving much of the nuance out of the final article.

My motivations for writing this book were many, but at the core was a desire for more time to report and more space to write. This came, in part, from my relationship to Rio. I wanted to bring the city to readers, but I also wanted to get into it myself, really get into it. Covering the city as a correspondent gave me breadth of experiences; reporting the book allowed me to return to the same person or place and see various layers. It gave me depth.

What do you miss most about living in Rio?

Living with my windows wide open all the time, except when it stormed. But then I miss the spectacle of those extravagant summer downpours. Friends and family, of course, particularly my nieces and nephews. The açaí from Tacacá do Norte in Flamengo. All the fruit. And the fresh fruit juice. The sweet man with the white handlebar mustache who sold vegetables at the farmers’ market in front of my building, and greeted me with a hug and a kiss every week. Running on the sand. The weather. I even miss the heat!

If you could write another book, what would it be?

I have some ideas. We’ll see!

Images courtesy of Juliana Barbassa.

Rio's Olympics Legacy: What Can't Be Fixed Overnight

Ever since I started writing about Rio de Janeiro, this is one of the most common questions I'd get from prospective visitors and expats: "Is Rio a war zone?"

My immediate answer is no, but the real answer is more complicated.

Rio is not a war zone in the sense of Syria or Yemen. And like other major cities in the Americas, much of the violent crime affects the poorest residents. Tourists aren't going to see tanks rolling down the street in Ipanema, and the typical foreign visitor is unlikely to see an exchange of gunfire.

But it's undeniable that armed conflicts in the city's favelas and suburbs between police, drug traffickers, and militias that developed over decades aren't going away.

April protest in Complexo do Alemão. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

 

Stray Bullets and Police Killings

That's become clear in the last few weeks, as five people were killed in 24 hours in one of the city's largest favelas, Complexo do Alemão. The community had suffered through three months straight of shoot-outs every day.

One of the victims was a mother shot by a stray bullet in her own home; her teenage daughter was also injured. Another case was that of a 10-year-old boy shot in the head by a policeman. His parents, who say police also threatened them, packed up and left Rio, returning to their home state of Piauí.

In Brazil, police kill an average of 6 people a day.

Plus, stray bullet injuries and killings, once a scourge during the 1990s, are ticking up again this year. It's literally a laundry list.

Last week, a 16-year-old girl biking in the West Zone neighborhood of Jacarépagua was killed by a stray bullet, caught in the crossfire between rival drug gangs.

In March, a 63-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet in Del Castilho, and a 10-year-old flying a kite in the North Zone neighborhood of Engenho da Rainha was seriously injured by a stray bullet.

In  February, a girl was shot in the leg on a main street in Copacabana, and three days later, a three-year-old was shot in the spine by a stray bullet in the North Zone.

The Complexo do Alemão killing of the 10-year-old boy, Eduardo Ferreira, shook the city. A military policeman admitted he likely fired the fatal shots, and had a nervous breakdown. Rio's governor later confirmed this "mistake" the police made.

It's another sign that the state's pacification strategy remains to make long-term gains. The governor confessed that he doesn't expect peace in Alemão for at least 10 to 15 years, and that pacification is a "permanent process."

Deaths of children at the hands of police is nothing new in Rio. Between 2003 and 2012, 60 percent of Brazilian police murders of children took place in Rio state. Prior to 2011, forensics weren't even required in cases of killings by police, until the Juan case happened.

Never-ending Turf Battles

In 1999, the documentary Noticías de uma guerra particular, which is sometimes translated as News from a Private War or News from a Personal War, was released. It's an essential watch to understand the dynamics and history of Rio's armed conflict. This is a deeply entrenched conflict, and a government security presence is not enough to resolve it.

 

Over a decade later, the pacification strategy has yet to find a way to permanently rid the city of organized crime groups, including drug traffickers and militias. Some just get displaced to other areas, or new players pop up.

This is not a band-aid fix that can happen in a year, even if violence is temporarily on hold during the Olympics.

The Good News

Community media, including Voz da Comunidade, Coletivo Papo Reto, Fala Roça, and others are making it impossible to ignore what's happening in the city's favelas. Through live coverage on social media, eyewitness videos and photos, and daily reports from the ground, the government can't hide abuses and is under greater pressure to address community struggles with violence.

Protests following Eduardo's death were covered around the world, and put pressure on the government to sit down with Alemão residents.

Alemão protest this month. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

Rio's "Olympic legacy" is unlikely to include a permanent security fix. And if you attend the games, you're not likely to have to face this kind of violence. But those who call Rio home will.

Stopgap Trash Clean-up Stalls in Rio's Guanabara Bay

One of the big concerns ahead of Rio's 2016 Olympics is whether the city's waterways will be cleaned up enough to safely hold water sports events, such as sailing, rowing and swimming. The truth is that the Olympics were an opportunity to address a decades-old problem and to find sustainable solutions so that Cariocas themselves can enjoy their cities beaches, bay and lagoons without fearing skin diseases, gastrointestinal problems, or crashing into rusting refrigerators.

That prospect is looking even more unlikely.

Last month, Rio Governor Luiz Fernando Pezão insisted the city is on target to reach its Olympic clean-up goal, after another official said it wouldn't be possible. Pezão says 80 percent of the city's sewage will be treated by mid-2016, and claims Rio is already treating nearly 50 percent.

These comments came shortly before the state environmental agency launched an investigation into a massive fish die-off in the bay, with thousands of twaite shad floating in the water. (A similar die-off occurred in November 2014, which some specialists attributed to the region's drought.)

Treating sewage is one of the major goals of the clean-up, but so is preventing 80 to 100 tons of garbage from entering the bay every single day. Two stopgap measures to address this as part of the Olympics clean-up effort include eco-boats, tasked with trawling and removing trash from waterways, and eco-barriers, lines of floating plastic in the city's rivers to stop the flow of trash into the ocean and lagoons.

But even those efforts are faltering, according to a report in yesterday's O Globo.

According to the newspaper, the state government stopped paying the eco-boat operators, and they have ceased working altogether. The 10 eco-boats are able to remove around 45 tons of trash per month. The government is about four months behind in payments, and owes around half a million reais. The eco-boat's contract with the government is estimated at R$1.8 million for 2015.

Plus, the city's supermarket association was sponsoring the eco-barrier efforts, but it pulled the funding. As a result, of the 14 eco-barrier structures operating in 2012, there are only 7 left. In 2012, the barriers were capturing up to 900 tons of trash a month; now, it's only 150 tons per month.

Image: An eco-boat in Rio. Rio government/public domain from the Programa de Saneamento dos Municípios do Entorno da Baía de Guanabara.

The Olympics Aren't Enough for Rio's Guanabara Bay

One of the main selling points of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics was the so-called legacy of the games. The events meant the government would have to move forward with investments made in transportation, roads, airports, and other infrastructure, benefitting host cities.

In the case of the Olympics, one of the big legacy elements was the clean-up of the Guanabara Bay. Projects and promises to clean the long-suffering waterway have fallen through for decades. The Olympics was the chance for Rio to finally get definitive action on the bay.

As part of the Olympics budget, the state planned to invest nearly $1 billion (R$2 billion) in clean-up efforts. But last April, the Rio state government slashed the clean-up budget by 95 percent. And the state of the Bay--filled with trash and raw sewage--remains woeful.

So as the Olympics draw closer, what's going on with the bay?

• This week, the Rio state environmental secretary admitted that the goal to cut 80 percent of pollution in the bay by 2016 would not happen. He added that an investment of $3.8 billion is needed for the clean-up. Experts estimate that it will require uninterrupted work over 20 years to fully clean up the bay.
• In December, scientists identified a "superbacteria" in the Carioca River, as well as on Flamengo Beach and Botafogo Beach. The bacteria is associated with hospital waste, can cause a variety of health problems, and cannot be treated with antiobiotics.
• The same month, Swiss sailors training in Rio for the Olympics reported falling ill after having contact with water in the bay, including fever and diarrhea.
• This month, the state environmental secretariat testing found that sand on some of the city's most popular beaches, including parts of Copacabana, Barra, and Arpoador, are not recommended for human contact due to contamination from dog urine and food waste.

So if the Olympics aren't enough to pressure authorities to make the clean-up a priority, what will?

Images: Agencia Brasil Flickr Creative Commons; Gloverbr2008, Flickr.

Human Rights in Brazil: Interview with Mauricio Santoro

Mauricio Santoro is a man of many hats. He's a political scientist by trade, and is working as an advisor at Amnesty International in Rio. He's also a university professor and a columnist, and is active on social media. And in this age of the proliferation of experts, he's someone who really knows what he's talking about, making him a great asset for journalists.

I've known Mauricio for years through social media, and in April I had the chance to finally meet him in person and chat about his work. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Working at Amnesty International

In Brazil, there are several human rights crises a week, says Santoro. "The Amnesty office was created in part to work on Brazilian issues, but also to bring Amnesty's global issues to a Brazilian audience," he explained. "For example, we did a campaign on homophobia in Russia, which went really well because people identified with it. It's the same thing whenever we talk about the United States, because Brazilians love to criticize the U.S.," he laughs. "The Middle East is hard; it's very complicated and tends to divide our base." Santoro focuses on four main areas: foreign policy and human rights, education and human rights, indigenous peoples, and issues related to the dictatorship. But he notes that things can come up unexpectedly with such frequent crises.

What's the Most Important Human Rights Issue in Brazil?

"If I had to choose one, it'd be homicides," says Santoro, "because Brazil is the country that has the largest number of murders in the world."

"Proportionally, it's not the most violent country, though it is in the top 10. It's the most violent in terms of absolute numbers of homicides. Brazil alone has more murders each year than the United States an the European Union combined. More than China, more than India, and these are countries with much bigger populations than Brazil. We're talking about something around 50,000 homicides a year. There are countries at war that don't reach that annual number."

Murder, perhaps, is the most serious violation of human rights, says Santoro, "because there's no turning back." The most you can do is to try to compensate by ensuring justice for the family and to provide support to those close to the victim, he adds. "With 50,000 murders a year, that means around 130 murders a day. It's such a big number that it ends up creating a feeling of insensitivity and apathy."

There are two ways Amnesty is dealing with the issue. "The first is what we call the 'symbolic deaths' in order to mobilize people. Nobody goes out to protest because of a statistic. People protest because they found out about the story of a life. The story of Amarildo last year was the most important case of human rights in Brazil because it was an individual story that illuminated this greater trend of human rights violations, and it brought together the issues of death, disappearance, torture, and the pacification debate."

But there's a challenge to this approach. "The classic homicide victim in Brazil is a young, black man, who lives in a favela or a neighborhood on the city's outskirts. Our director says there's an epidemic of indifference in Brazil with relation to the death of these young people. It's rare to find a case like that of Douglas (a dancer who was killed in Rio in April), that one of these murdered people has a first name, a last name, a face."

The second way is a new study. It aims to compile information about the murders of young black men in Brazil, because "the data on this is still shaky," Santoro explains. "We don't have official documentation about how they died, whether in a shoot-out with organized crime or in a fight with a neighbor, or if they were killed by police. So this research is to fill the gap. We're also going to launch a sensitization campaign to convince people that these young people had a life story, they had dreams."

Santoro gives an example of last year's fire in a club in Santa Maria, in Rio Grande do Sul. "It was very interesting the way that tragedy was covered in the media and played out in public opinion. I remember seeing several newspaper and magazine covers showing the faces of the people who died. And there were several of their stories. 'This girl wanted to be a doctor. This guy was trying to join the Air Force.' It wasn't just a statistic: 200 or so people died there. There was a life story. And that's the correct way to deal with this type of tragedy. The problem is that we're talking about an audience that's largely middle class, and the people who are dying in Brazil are largely young and poor."

There's a flipside to the coverage of the Rio Grande do Sul tragedy. Santoro gives the example of Salvador, the city that has the largest number of homicides in Brazil. "The New York Times did a very good special on Salvador, talking about violence and urban decay. I never saw that in a big Brazilian publication," observed Santoro. "It's partially because the Brazilian media does a lot of coverage of Rio, São Paulo, and Brasília, and does little about the North and Northeast. During one of Salvador's police strikes, over 80 people died in the metropolitan area. I don't know the names of these people. And it's possible that more people died in Salvador in those three days than in Syria during its civil war. The media didn't talk about these people's stories."

Public Transportation as a Human Right

Because transportation affects the right to come and go and the right to the city, it's considered a human right, Santoro says.

"Last year, an official from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited and met with mothers who had lost children to violence in Rio. She asked them what they considered a priority human right, and which rights they thought were being violated. And their answer surprised me. They said it was the 'right to time.' And they explained that they have to work and care for their families, but waste a lot of time in traffic during their commute. They felt bad for leaving their children with others who may not have been the best influence."

Transportation affects many in Rio, Santoro explains, and it impacts citizens' participation in their communities. "You imagine someone, for example, who lives in Rio's West Zone, which is now the most populous area of the city, where it easily takes three hours to get to and from work in very poor conditions. Buses, trains, overcrowded and dangerous vans. These things accumulate and make Cariocas' day-to-day very hard and there's a loss in quality of life. It affects families and community life. Someone who spends three or four hours a day on public transportation every day won't want to participate in a community board meeting, or would want to sit and debate what's happening in their neighborhood. It's also very common for transportation to not only be very bad, but very expensive, so that people don't circulate much in the city of Rio and instead stay confined close to their neighborhoods. In a city like Rio that's unequal in terms of access to culture, this means that generally these people won't be able to get to see much of the city's cultural side, which is largely concentrated in downtown and the South Zone."

There's also the issue of prejudice. Back in April, an actress was photographed on a public bus. "It was absolutely a normal thing, but it became a scandal," Santoro notes. But because the middle class uses public transportation, there's more pressure to improve the quality of service, he adds.

This differs from the issue of sanitation, for example. "For the government, sanitation is an investment that has low electoral returns, and it takes a long time to build sanitation infrastructure. So it's probable that a government that starts one of these projects won't finish in a single term, and the person that finishes the projects is the one who will get the visibility of victory, likely the original person's successor. So this acts as a strong mechanism to not incentivize this type of activism. It's different from, say, constructing a school and putting up a plaque."

Favela Protests: A New Phenomenon?

I asked whether favela protests represent a change, and he said yes--with a caveat.

"The novelty is not that there's protests in the favelas. This is something that dates back to the 1970s, if not before. What I think is new about these favela movements is that in general it's something very local in each community, and now they're managing to create alliances with middle class movements and other activist groups. So for example, during last year's protests, there were protesters who left en masse from Rocinha and Vidigal and crossed Leblon, Rio's upper-middle class neighborhood, and went to demonstrate in front of the governor's house. That, I'd never seen before. Maybe it happened at some point, but I'd never seen anything like it. Also, it was interesting because they knew they had to take certain precautions, different ones from that of the middle class activists. None of them had their faces covered, no masks or bandannas. Because the kids who come down from Vidigal or Rocinha to protest know they have to be very, very careful not to give any excuse to the police to intervene."

The World Cup's Human Rights Legacy

I spoke to Santoro a few months before the games started, and he said that ahead of the games, the Cup had had very negative consequences. "There were a certain number of favela removals associated with the World Cup, and perhaps the most symbolic one was the Metro Favela close to Maracanã where a good portion of homes were removed to build a parking lot. This is very powerful symbolically, removing people from a favela right in front of the stadium."

Another question is the future of the stadiums. "In places like Brasília and Manaus, who is going to use them? Is there really no better destination for those funds? I don't mean to say that the money used for the World Cup could solve Brazil's social problems. Not even close. These investments represent a small fraction of the Brazilian federal government's budget. But it's clear that when people have access to poor-quality public schools, public health, and public transport, these stadiums stand in contrast, and it's like rubbing salt in the wound."

Santoro added that it's possible many Brazilians won't use these stadiums. "Because what's happening in Brazil is also happening in Europe: the gentrification of football. It's becoming very expensive to attend games. Where there used to be standing-room only, there are now seats. And this is happening in a very unequal country like Brazil, where a football stadium is one of the few public spaces that were in fact frequented by all social classes. It was a place where the poor could go together with the middle class and the elite to watch a game and cheer for the same team. So this has a negative social, psychological effect, and I don't think we understand its totality yet in Brazil. Last year, I noticed that during the Confederations Cup, the spectators you saw in the stadiums were mostly white, in a country where the majority of the population is black or mixed race." (Sidenote: this turned out to be the case during the World Cup, too.)

Gentrification: In Rio and Beyond

With a rise in the cost of living, it's not just stadiums that are becoming gentrified. "It's happening in various Brazilian cities, but it's especially acute in Rio due to geographic and policies. Rio is a city that historically has been squeezed between the ocean and the mountains. There's not a lot of space, and Rio apartments are generally small in comparison to other cities. In the 1940s and 50s, the city began to grow west, with neighborhoods like Barra da Tijuca, Bangu, Realengo, Vargem Grande, the same parts of the city that are growing today and the only place left for the city to grow. And because of limited heights for buildings, you're not going to see a South Zone with highrises like in São Paulo."

As a result of limited space, Rio has become an expensive place to live, Santoro says. "There's also things like the mega-events and the pre-salt discovery. And then there's the public security policy to construct pacification units in favelas. This resulted in security improvements in several middle-class neighborhoods that used to have problems like stray bullets and shoot-outs. This raised prices, too, in the neighborhoods and in the favelas themselves. Vidigal is one of the best examples; it's becoming a bohemian neighborhood, with lots of artists and foreigners moving there."

Follow Santoro on Twitter, Facebook, and the Brasil Post.

Photo: Mauricio Santoro at Rio's Amnesty International offices. Image by Eliseu Cavalcante.

Issue to Watch: Rio's Transportation Fares

This past week, Rio experienced a three-day bus strike, affecting close to a million workers in the city and leading to commercial losses of around R$700 million. And though buses are now operating again, Rio commuters will see another change starting tomorrow: subway and train fares are going up.

On May 19, subway fares rise to R$3.50, a 9 percent increase, and train fares go up R$3.20, a 10 percent increase. To make matters worse, the city's train operator, Supervia, already stopped selling metro cards for those taking the train into the city, causing huge lines at Central Station when I was there in April. During rush hour, metro employees were accepting exact cash amounts at the turnstyles to let people avoid the ticket line.

But given last year's nationwide protests sparked in part by transport fare hikes, the government is offering a compromise. (Also because bus fares went up in February.) It's been heavily promoting the Bilhete Único, a rechargable card that works on most of the city's buses, as well as trains, subways, ferries, and legal vans. For those using this card, fares won't go up for the train or the subway, and the government will subsidize the difference. In a bid to have fewer people affected by the fare hike, the government dispatched workers to sign people up at train and subway stations. Around 3.7 million people already use the Bilhete Único.

But even with a Bilhete Único, Cariocas who have to commute long distances may end up paying more for two reasons. The first is if their commute is really long, since there are time limits for transfers of between 2.5 and 3 hours. The second is if their commute includes buses or illegal vans not included in the card, common for those with long commutes that depend on multiple forms of transportation For those who don't live walking distance to train or metro stations, multiple buses may be necessary, or paying cash for vans. And without the Bilhete Único, getting around can get expensive and exhausting. For example, staying in Zona Oeste in April, I spent around R$18 round trip to get to Ipanema, spending over four hours in total on a van, bus, train, and metro.

Will these fare hikes result in protests like last year? There were some small protests in January before the bus fare hike, but big transportation protests in Rio don't seem likely at the moment. But the fare increases are another source of annoyance for Cariocas frustrated by expensive and insufficient transportation system, as well as an increasing cost of living in the Olympic City.

Rio's Sanitation Situation

This year, I decided that at a time when more foreigners are paying attention to Brazil, I would write at least one freelance piece from the ground. Last month, I traveled to Rio with the idea of working on three stories, but ended up focusing on one: sanitation.

The story of Rio's sanitation problems is no secret, but hasn't gotten much coverage in the foreign press. I'd been researching it for months, and managed to make some great contacts in Rio. My husband/photographer and I were lucky enough to connect with one of Rio's top environmental activists who arranged a helicopter flyover of the city, which resulted in some impressive photos. GlobalPost picked up the story, which was published today.

Here's the lede:

Brazil’s “Marvelous City” will play host to around 400,000 tourists during the World Cup next month. And there’s one thing visitors may be unable to avoid, be it on their way to the airport or at the beach: human feces.

Read the full story here.

Update: Given the World Cup peg, the story has begun to spread, appearing Australia, France,  Italy, Romania, and the UK, as well as other sites in the U.S. It's also appeared in several news sites in Brazil, including O Dia and Época.