Bem-vindo a Santa Marta #001

About 1.3 million people live in more than 900 “favelas” in Rio de Janeiro.

Rich neighbourhoods co-exist next to the poorest slums, with a continuous visual relation, but without a social interaction. Favelas in the middle of the formal city are the best expression of the duality that is a peculiarity of Rio: heaven and hell, luxury and poverty. Rio is an emblematic example of a city that is the representation of spacial and social segregation inside the city itself.

Many social programs are promoted by local government (as Favela-Bairro Program, or PAC Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento) to improve the integration between this informal parts and the formal city, but a lot of critics and considerations to improve the reality of favelas can be done.
To develop my research I’ve chosen the community of Santa Marta as a case study: it is located in the “Zona Sul” of the city (the richest one), in a really visible position on Morro Dona Marta, just at the feet of Cristo Corcovado Mountain, it is safe from drugs dealers and it has a medium-small dimension with about 10.000 inhabitants.
Especially because of this high visibility in the “Zona Sul”, Santa Marta became a kind of model for Government’s programs, but most of the promoted projects had the purpose to improve more the image of the community from the formal city, than life and conditions of inhabitants.
One year ago, Santa Marta became the first community to have a police force specially assigned: the UPP (Unidade de Policia Pacificadora), so the favela has been freed from drug dealers, but as well it became the first community to be surrounded by a concrete wall to avoid a possible expansion. Being a model causes a lot of controversies: from one side the community received some improvement projects, but from the other, it is becoming a “lab experiment” where population is not questioned. This duality is always present: visiting the favela the feelings could be really contrasting; one day you can think the community is working in a harmonious way, that dimensions of spaces are human , and relations between people are proximate, but the day after you can see just desperation, poverty and degradation.
But in the end somebody will say to you “Seja bem-vindo, e volte sempre!” and the idea that it’s worth to go back.