The Favela
Favelas, or shantytowns, are absolutely everywhere
in Rio. Of the city's 7 million people, about 2 million live
in favelas. Here, drug lords, armed with revolvers, shotguns,
AK47s and even rocket launchers, rule the hills and compete
with rival gangs for control of drug trade in the city. Today,
three groups stand out: Comando Vermelho (Red Command), Amigos
do Amigos (Friends of the Friends) and Terceiro Comando (Third
Command). They establish and enforce their own laws in what's
been since dubbed a form of 'parallel power', rivalling that
of the state.
But it hasn't always been this bad. Throughout
much of the twentieth century, drug trade in Rio remained
a small and relatively inexpressive criminal activity. The
retail market was comprised mainly of marijuana and points
of sale were diffused throughout the city.
Things only began to change in the late 1970s
and early '80s, when cocaine arrived in large quantities.
As production and demand rose worldwide, Rio became an increasingly
important transit point for the drug.
As profits skyrocketed, organised crime emerged.
The contraband of war-grade firearms led to the emergence
of a militarised sub-culture that has heavily contributed
to the increase in violence within the city. As a police report
from 2000 indicates, Rio's drug gangs "have an arsenal sufficient
to make any terrorist group or legitimate security force jealous.
All of this apparatus is in the hands of inexperienced youths,
mostly adolescent, many of whom can barely secure the weight
of such firearms". Territorial disputes and clashes with the
police are largely responsible for the staggering 140-percent
increase in violent deaths between 1979 and 2000.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority
of the profits derived from drug trade do not stay in the
favela. Rivers of money flow down the hillsides and into the
pockets of powerful people freely operating within elite circles
both domestically and overseas. Though common sense suggests
that both guns and drugs have to come from somewhere,
brought in by someone, hardly ever anyone is arrested
outside of the slums.
While the favelas are unique to Rio,
they represent just a sliver of the growing presence of ïglobal
slumsÍ in the world today.
There may be more than quarter of
a million slums on earth. The five great metropolises of
South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Dhaka) alone
contain about 15,000 distinct slum communities with a total
population of more than 20 million. An even larger slum
population crowds the urbanizing littoral of West Africa,
while other huge conurbations of poverty sprawl across Anatolia
and the Ethiopian highlands; hug the base of the Andes and
the Himalayas; explode outward from the skyscraper cores
of Mexico, Jo-burg, Manila and SÜo Paulo; and, of course,
line the banks of the rivers Amazon, Niger, Congo, Nile,
Tigris, Ganges, Irrawaddy and Mekong. The building blocks
of this slum planet, paradoxically, are both utterly interchangeable
and spontaneously unique: including the bustees of Kolkata,
the chawls and zopadpattis of Mumbai, the katchi abadis
of Karachi, the kampungs of Jakarta, the iskwaters of Manila,
the shammasas of Khartoum, the umjondolos of Durban, the
intra-murios of Rabat, the bidonvilles of Abidjan, the baladis
of Cairo, the gecekondus of Ankara, the conventillos of
Quito, the favelas of Brazil, the villas miseria of Buenos
Aires and the colonias populares of Mexico City. They are
the gritty antipodes to the generic fantasy-scapes and residential
themeparks„Philip K. DickÍs bourgeois ïOffworldsÍ„in which
the global middle classes increasingly prefer to cloister
themselves. (Mike Davis, from ïPlanet of SlumsÍ)
Rio Breaks is more than just a
film about surfing. It showcases a group of surf kids from
one the worldÍs many ïglobal slumsÍ, focusing on the surf
club they belong to and the youth culture that surrounds it.
Presented in the style of a classic surf film, weÍll examine
life in the drug-filled, crime-ridden favela while investigating
whether surfing can offer a way out in a world where opportunities
are few. Can the elemental feeling of riding waves transcend
the difficulties of favela life for the young surfers? Can
surfing offer a glimpse of life beyond crime? This film seeks
to answer these questions.
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