Rio de Janeiro

REACT Cities

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

About Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro is a city with 6,731,133 inhabitants, the 2nd most populous capital in Brazil. Divided into zones, the capital of Rio is considered a divided city, where the place where you are born determines the access and opportunities you will have in life. The South Zone is the Rio of the postcard, the marvelous city, the stage for the Olympics, the Pan American Games and one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup. Composed of mountains and a coastal landscape, the South Zone of Copacabana’s sidewalks is a place for the few.

Meanwhile, the North Zone is hidden behind construction barriers and relegated to the second category in this tourist Rio. The favelas of Rio de Janeiro are a chapter apart. With around 21% of the city’s total population living in them, they are an agglomeration of lack of urbanisation and survival. Having their lives constantly interrupted by police operations in a so-called “war on drugs”, these spaces survive through community ties. A school in Maré, for example, can remain without classes for 18 to 42 days in a year as a result of police operations. But at the same time, the inhabitants of these places organise themselves into collectives, institutes and community media to create identity, reinforce a sense of belonging and memory, with many young people playing a fundamental role in this process.

Emerging Themes

Faced with official data that contradict local reality, collectives such as data_labe and organisations such as Redes da Maré and Observatório de Favelas have produced their own data to demand action from public authorities. data_labe’s most recognised project is CocôZap, a Citizen Data Generation project that mapped the incidence of basic sanitation in the Maré Complex in order to challenge the official narrative that around 80% of Maré had access to sanitation.

In the same sense, the Maré Census, produced through a partnership between Redes da Maré and Observatório de Favelas, reached the figure of 140,000 inhabitants, around 15% more than the estimate made by IBGE. This underestimation directly influences public policies directed at the area, since these are based on the number of inhabitants and other official data.

From the tribes of enslaved Black people who came to sustain colonial Brazil emerged Umbanda and Candomblé, two religions of African origin that were constituted in Brazilian territory. Umbanda, more syncretised with Catholicism, has equivalents of Catholic saints among its orixás. Umbanda brings the people of the street; Candomblé, among its orixás, brings Exú, the orixá of communication and the king of crossroads.

Luiz Antonio Simas, a Brazilian historian, states that from the 7 crossroads of Rio de Janeiro emerged the 7 landmarks of Rio: macumba, the occupation of the suburbs, urban samba from Rio de Janeiro, football, the formation of the first samba schools, the consolidation of the botequim as a space of sociability for the working class, and the popularisation of the jogo do bicho.
The survival of these spaces amid the urban chaos of Rio is, in many ways, the survival of the influences of the Black diaspora in Brazil.

These favelas are a fertile field for the emergence of community media, those engaged in reporting what the hegemonic and traditional media do not publish. These outlets construct news collectively and with the participation of the population and focus on disseminating another view of the favelas, a view that is not solely one of marginalisation and violence. Examples of these media include Jornal Cidadão in the Maré Complex, with almost 30 years of activity, which, in addition to acting as citizen media, has also constructed the identity of being “mareense”.

In addition, there is Fala, Roça in Rocinha, which currently already calls itself a communication association because it encompasses other projects beyond the community newspaper. The newspaper Voz das Comunidades is located in the Alemão Complex and has more than 20 years of history of telling the story of the favela from the perspective of those who live within the territory. In 2023, in a post-pandemic context, the Coalition of Peripheral, Favelada, Quilombola and Indigenous Media emerged to distribute information of public interest in vulnerable territories with precarious access to the internet.

The Media Coalition brings together media outlets from the five regions of the country (North, Northeast, South, Southeast and Central-West), and in Rio de Janeiro, those that make up this space are the community media Frente de Mobilização Maré – which emerged during the pandemic to combat disinformation in the dissemination and treatment of COVID-19 and to act in loco in the community – and Fala, Roca.

Historically, student movements in Rio de Janeiro have had a strong presence in urban issues and questions concerning the right to the city. After the process of redemocratisation, the Movimento Passe Livre won free public transport and the Lei do Grêmio Livre (1985) — which guarantees the right to the free organisation of student unions as autonomous entities.

The Movimento Passe Livre continued to consolidate itself and became involved in different revolts such as the Revolta do Buzu (Salvador, 2003) and Revolta da Catraca (Florianópolis, 2004-2005), building the foundations that would lead to the June Journeys of 2013. June 2013 was when social mobilisations emerged throughout the country against fare increases.

Also noteworthy as a youth mobilisation were the university occupations against the adoption by some institutions of REUNI (Programme for the Support of Plans for the Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities) between 2007 and 2012; and the occupations of secondary schools in 2015 and 2016 against the educational policies of the Temer government, national mobilisations that nevertheless had great prominence in the capital of Rio.

Despite being considered an essentially urban territory, Rio de Janeiro’s agroecological movements challenge their place as important mobilisations in the city, especially those dealing with Urban Agriculture. The Rede Carioca de Agricultura Urbana (Rede CAU) describes itself as a social movement that brings together organisations and individuals with the aim of promoting agroecology in the city, working both with urban farmers who cultivate in their backyards and with those who cultivate in larger spaces. Its purpose is also to promote integration between the countryside and the city, advocating for public policies for urban agriculture, in order to demystify the idea of Rio as an essentially urban city and, therefore, devoid of family or urban agriculture.