This is a Favela

Sunday, February 4 – Day 47

The Intercontinental Hotel, is on Sao Conrado Beach (in Portuguese, the “r” is pronounced like a “j” – no wonder the cabbies can never understood me). It’s a really nice place, and is just around the big mountain that you see in the first picture of the last post. In this picture, just beyond the nice high-rise condos is Rocinha, a favela of some 100,000 people. These little slums are squished in hard against the steep mountainsides, and in a lot of places, are right next to very affluent neighborhoods, or tourist areas. You can see Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) in the background.

Most of the poor living here are said to be pretty hard-working people. The drug dealers like living in the favelas because there is usually only one way in, and they can control it. Since the police won’t go into these areas unless they have a force numbering in the 100’s, the local crime families are the de-facto law in these areas. Like any good crime boss, you don’t want to give the police a reason to poke around on your turf, so it’s said that they do try to keep the petty crime in the adjacent tourist areas to a minimum. Step into their territory, on the other hand, and all bets are off.

The Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon beach areas are all quite interesting. Though every building along the beach is 10 to 20 floors, there are hardly any retail businesses – like bars or restaurants – that face the beach. The vast majority of the buildings are residential condos with a 10 foot fence along the front, not hotels. At night, there is almost no pedestrian traffic. The only people that seem to have an interest in walking along the beach at night are the tourists, which kind of makes them a nice fat target for the muggers. All the retail stuff is a block or two inland, and still surprisingly sparse.

I met a couple of Hell’s Angels in front of one of the few beachfront bars called “Help” (no idea why they call it that). One of the guys had a Heritage Softail like mine. I tried to tell him that I had the same bike as him, but from the expression on his face, I think it came out that more along the lines of “Hey, I want your bike”. Anyway, it was a short conversation, and we left.