duque de caixas slum visit
i'm still in Rio, at least until tonight or tomorrow.
two days ago i went to visit a slum that my organization supports with one of our schools. the slum is literally on a pile of trash, and the people who live there make a "living" by going through the trash for stuff to eat and sell. if it sounds insane, it is. the shacks they live in are surrounded by trash, and the kids can't go to school because they have to work combing through the trash. the government does nothing about it because the people who live in the slum are seen as a necessary part of the recycling/environmental process/policy, which is to say it's easier to just ignore them. i have pictures which i'll post when i get back to salvador. you may not believe that i was actually there - it might be easier to think that i just PhotoShopped some images together. the police don't go there because the drug cartels control the area. we had to get what is essentially indirect permission from the drug lords to tour and take pictures, and we were accompanied at all times by members of the union of catadores (trash-pickers - yeah, they're unionized), because otherwise we would have been schaperoned out, or just as likely, shot.
UPDATE: I posted the photos of the Lixão, as it's called (means "big trash" in Portuguese) here. For the most part you don't see any of the people who live there up close. I was accompanied by Ivanildo (black shirt) and Rita from the organization, in addition to two residents of the Lixão (green shirt, blue shirt) who were (or still are) catadores at one point, and who are active members of the union now. There was also another resident, a woman, who was a school teacher there who met us as we were walking through the favela and told about some of her (insane) experiences of living there.
There are more details on the living conditions in the Lixão here.
You can see the smokestacks of the Petrobras Brazilian oil refinery from the Lixão, which only adds to the hellish image of the whole place, since they spout fire and are surrounded by a huge cloud of smoke from both the burning trash and the refinery. It is also an incredibly ironic image since Petrobras is the biggest contributor to gross national product in the country.
One of the people at the organization pointed this out to me in one of the pictures I took, and he said "Look, it's hell (pointing to the trash in the foreground) and heaven (pointing to the Petrobras smokestacks in the background)."
I disagreed - "No," I said, "It's hell (lixão), and the devil (smokestacks)."
two days ago i went to visit a slum that my organization supports with one of our schools. the slum is literally on a pile of trash, and the people who live there make a "living" by going through the trash for stuff to eat and sell. if it sounds insane, it is. the shacks they live in are surrounded by trash, and the kids can't go to school because they have to work combing through the trash. the government does nothing about it because the people who live in the slum are seen as a necessary part of the recycling/environmental process/policy, which is to say it's easier to just ignore them. i have pictures which i'll post when i get back to salvador. you may not believe that i was actually there - it might be easier to think that i just PhotoShopped some images together. the police don't go there because the drug cartels control the area. we had to get what is essentially indirect permission from the drug lords to tour and take pictures, and we were accompanied at all times by members of the union of catadores (trash-pickers - yeah, they're unionized), because otherwise we would have been schaperoned out, or just as likely, shot.
UPDATE: I posted the photos of the Lixão, as it's called (means "big trash" in Portuguese) here. For the most part you don't see any of the people who live there up close. I was accompanied by Ivanildo (black shirt) and Rita from the organization, in addition to two residents of the Lixão (green shirt, blue shirt) who were (or still are) catadores at one point, and who are active members of the union now. There was also another resident, a woman, who was a school teacher there who met us as we were walking through the favela and told about some of her (insane) experiences of living there.
There are more details on the living conditions in the Lixão here.
You can see the smokestacks of the Petrobras Brazilian oil refinery from the Lixão, which only adds to the hellish image of the whole place, since they spout fire and are surrounded by a huge cloud of smoke from both the burning trash and the refinery. It is also an incredibly ironic image since Petrobras is the biggest contributor to gross national product in the country.
One of the people at the organization pointed this out to me in one of the pictures I took, and he said "Look, it's hell (pointing to the trash in the foreground) and heaven (pointing to the Petrobras smokestacks in the background)."
I disagreed - "No," I said, "It's hell (lixão), and the devil (smokestacks)."
posted by n10471 at 9:53 AM
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