Inside View of a Favela in Sao Paulo - NOT What You Think

Sculpture by Berbela

When planning my trip to São Paulo, I admit, I found the safety warnings unsettling. “Don’t wear expensive jewelry. Actually, don’t wear any jewelry. And definitely don’t wear a watch. Any watch. Even your old cheap Timex”. People who had traveled to Brazil advised not bothering with São Paulo at all. Too commercial. Too dangerous. And if you do go, avoid the favelas.

Fortunately, I worked with a local trip planner, Matuete. When I said I wanted to see local contemporary art, they suggested going with a guide to visit two artists in one of the largest favelas, Paraisopolis, with population about 100,000. Translated, the name Paraisopolis means Paradise City. Compared to other favelas, it is a paradise. A favela is a group of houses established without permission or ownership, where people live in cramped conditions, often lacking basic sanitary facilities. Sao Paulo is full of favelas, numbering in the hundreds.  Some are extremely poor, with houses made of paperboard. Inhabitants of many of them resort to begging. We were told that Paraisopolis deserves its name.

In Paraisopolis, I was told, 75% of those who live there have a regular job, either in or outside of the favela. Nearly all were poor when they moved there, but many stay because they feel safe, have a community of friends and have achieved a comfortable life. Nevertheless, it is a favela. Visiting it was an eye opener to me.

It was both a myth buster and a power intro to São Paulo’s stratified society. First, the myth buster part. Before visiting, my impression of São Paulo’s favelas was that they clog the hillsides surrounding the city and are a hodgepodge of densely packed shacks, maybe made of tin; overcrowded, teeming with desperately poor people who rob visitors daring to enter. That they are controlled by drug lords who engage in armed contests for control of a geographical sector, not caring if they murder innocents, even children, in their crossfire.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. While it is true that the favela is a dense urban district, so are lots of cities all over the world. And it is true that Paraisopolis is controlled by a cartel. But, they do not tolerate trouble. Robberies and fights would attract the attention and visits by police—-which they don’t want to happen. The result is a peacefully safe community. Seems strange, but I felt 100% comfortable strolling the streets, window shopping, even taking street photos.

A key thing that makes the favela’s living conditions unique is the ownership. Favela dwellers built their homes on land they do not own. The city of São Paulo owns the land. Over the years, people in Paraisopolis have built homes of brick and concrete, intentions of permanence. They have plumbing, electricity, modern windows, and solid roofs. When an owner wants to sell, a buyer pays an agreed on price, like a regular real estate sale, except that the seller can’t prove that they own what the buyer pays for. Apparently, that does not stop transactions. We passed a sign affixed to a 2 bedroom, 1 bath home for sale, asking the equivalent of $US 30,000.

As to electricity, the utility serves the favela by running a line through it. However, from the tangles of wires hanging over the streets, it seems that hundreds, maybe thousands of illegal lines could be spliced into it, siphoning off power used for free.

The city is in a tough spot. The favela has evolved into a second city, built on illegal squatting.

I’m not gonna lie. Butterflies were hopping around in my stomach as our driver turned the car into the entranceway to Paraisopolis. My husband and I sat in the back of a clean, new Ford sedan. It stuck out as very different from the dented, dusty cars lined up along the steep narrow street. In the front was our guide, a local who frequently takes tourists to Paraisopolis, and our driver who occasionally goes in, but it’s not his favorite place to go. Before proceeding even one car length, a big beefy man in a wife beater shirt and shorts walked up directly to our car and slapped his hand vigorously on the hood. Our guide pushed his window down button and stuck his head out to talk to the lid-slammer. After a brief interchange in Portuguese that was incomprehensible to me, our guide smiled at the guy, waved his hand cheerfully and then turned to my husband and me. “We’re fine. Just roll down all the windows and keep them open the whole time we are here.”

The people who live in the favela, by all appearances, live a fairly routine urban life in their community. While I walked around the paved streets and sidewalks, I saw a supermarket with every kind of refrigerated and frozen foods case like you would see anywhere, dry goods and fresh produce.

Rotisserie Chickens for Sale at a Grocery Store; Brazilians call Rotisseries "Dog Televisions"

I looked into a gym whose exercise machines were as new and plentiful as those in the gym in my condo building in the United States.

I passed a bridal shop (door closed to keep the air conditioning inside) with three ornate samples in the window. I was astonished to see signs for things like children’s dentistry, ultrasound, manicures and facials. People patiently waited in line for their turn at a panel of three Banco Santander ATM machines.

Brazilian Style Shaves (for the head)

Appliance stores featured new gas stoves, apartment size. A city garbage truck collected trash from bins lined up neatly in designated location spots. A city bus route winds though the favela to service the residents, many of whom have jobs in other parts of the city.

Not that the people who live there aren’t poor. They are. Many came to São Paulo with nothing, seeking refuge from the violence in their region. Uneducated and without resources, many lived on the streets and gravitated toward the favela, which grew and expanded until it bumped up against the adjacent wealthy neighborhood of Morumbi. There is nowhere for either to expand. Some of the homes in that area employ women from the favela as domestic workers in their homes.

We met an artist named Berbela who had moved to São Paulo in 2000 at age 36 from the Pernambuco state in the northeastern region of Brazil. He built a business and reputation as a skilled motorcycle repairman and supplier of used parts. He welded for fun as a hobby. Years ago, he created a bicycle for his young son.

Later, he added a motor. From that, he became a "recycler," collecting discarded materials and incorporating them into sculptures.

Berbela says he would rather spend more time on his art but it doesn’t pay enough. His wife works as a cleaner in the city. He experimented with sculpture, using food cans and other metal findings, but always returning to his roots in motorcycle parts. His projects include tables and bar stools, representations of musical instruments and little items that visitors can buy and take with them. We bought a map of Brazil made of chains, gears and screws, and probably other components that I can’t identify.

But as we discussed (with our guide translating), his experience showing in a gallery in São Paulo, the challenges of conducting business in the favela emerge. It’s complicated for him to ship a heavy item by FedEx or the like, because he would be confronted with intimidating details like invoices and taxes.

Crossing the line out of the favela is difficult.

Sao Paulo Street Art - from Batman Alley to New York City

Batman Alley in Sao Paulo; Batman Hugging Pele

There is spray paint on many of the buildings in São Paulo. Some of it looks like the hurried marks of a gang member seeking to mark his territory like a dog peeing on a tree. Such marks were put there by “tagging” and are particularly concentrated on abandoned buildings.

Quick Impromptu Sketch, because Why Not?

Tagging is illegal, but the likelihood of getting caught is less for taggers who do their deeds in quiet places where it’s unlikely that anyone will see them. Sometimes tags are on daring locations, like the sides of buildings that lack balconies. The words are often angry ones. There is little esthetic. Spray the stuff and move on to the next one. The result is defaced buildings.

Other spray painters get fancier. They spend more time, making fat bubble letters to write their names or someone or something they want to honor. They bring along more than a can of black paint; spicing things up with color and shading. The result is called a “bomb”.

Mural, Tags and Bombs: The Whole Package

Tags on the Left; Bomb on the Right

And then there are the graffiti artists. They are painters in the oil-on-canvas sense. Their works are large, often covering the side of a building, sometimes multi-story ones at that. Their works are head-turners. Batman Alley, a street in the trendy Madalena Vilage neighborhood, seems like a gallery that showcases one painting next to another. It is now a tourist attraction, a closed-off street where people come to photograph the murals.

Tourist Squatting to Get Just the Right Angle on Batman Alley

Posing

Cartoon characters, geometric, abstracts and even a botanical trompe l’oeil that seems to melt into the tree branches hanging over the wall it is painted on.

Some graffiti artists, Kobra and Osgemeos (which means the twins, which the duo artist team actually is), take advantage of outside recognition of their work. They accept paid commissions. Kobra’s international visibility of his kaleidoscope-themed work led to commissions in U.S. cities including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Kobra Mural in Rio de Janeiro, Commissioned for the Olympics; 5 Faces of Indigenous People from Every Continent

Kobra now relies on mechanical pumps and on helpers to get the work done (mostly for big, big walls). Some graffiti artists cry foul, saying that Kobra has strayed from pure graffiti. Some call him a muralist. Okay then, that doesn’t sound to me like such a terrible insult, but if being a muralist means getting kicked out of the graffiti camp because your productions are too big and too professional, and you get paid for doing them, that’s not such a bad thing, right?

...and a postscript...

I showed a draft of this blog post to a Sao Paulo local, a guide named Leo Pimentel, who made the following comments.

"Recently, a graffiti artist, friend of mine, gave me a wide definition for works with a spray can, no matter if it is tagging or graffiti. He called it a 'manifest of demarcation, complaint and protest'.  For me this phrase fits perfectly the tagging scene but I would not use it for graffiti, mainly those that have an artistic appeal or artists that are commissioned.

Words written by taggers are, most of the times, strong ones like 'chaos', 'freedom', 'repression', 'against the system', 'rage', 'revenge'. But they also seek for recognition. So, sometimes they tag their own nicknames or code-names. Finally, words can be of someone/something they want to honor: an unknown person/friend/lover, a band, a celebrity they admire, etc." 

Thank you Leo.
I admire the art.