Rocinha - Rio's biggest favela with just a bad reputation!?

Rocinha is the biggest favela in Rio and there are different estimations of the population that vary quite a lot. The estimations are between 200,000 and even 400,000 inhabitants and it has a hmmm...well, not so good reputation. Nowadays almost all of the favelas are ‘pacified’ and the pacifying process started around 2008 with brutal force to clean up and take control over the favelas before the 2014World Cup and Rio Olympics in 2016, and nowadays they should be quite safe. We wanted to visit and see how life in Rocinha is. Markus had found a blog for few years ago about life in Rocinha and he noticed that the writer organizes also tours there. It seemed like the organization tries to help locals, tries to make living a bit easier, give different education to kids (such as dance, dj’ing, martial arts etc.) and show how Rochina is to outsiders. The description of the tours was promising. Not just normal tourist sights, but more of the normal life in Rocinha and local places. We booked a tour from favelatour.org together with Maria and Johan (the Swedish couple) we met in Peru on the Inka Trail. 

View over one part of Rocinha

First a short explanation what the ‘pacification’ of favelas is. The meaning of the word pacification, is to get to a stage of peace, and when it is about the favelas, the police together with the special forces took over favelas one by one with massive troops. It was like a war where the drug gangs and police forces were fighting. The government sent almost an army to Rocinha. They cut all the leading roads to and from Rocinha, and sent around 7000 - 8000 special force troops to clear the area. As in all events involving guns, there were a lot of unnecessary casualties, and most of them have been claimed to be done by the UPP troops (Pacifying Police Unite (eng.)). Nowadays the area is in the “control” of the UPP even if there are a few favelas that were not totally pacified, and now when the Olympics are over, it can be that they will never be pacified.

We met our guide, Pedro, at the stairs to Vidigal. Vidigal is (was) also a favela and was one of the first favelas that was pacified. We didn’t have a long way there, because our Airbnb house was just a five-minute walk away. Maria and Johan were already there when we arrived. Our guide seemed a bit quiet and he just said that “now we go”. We took a minivan / bus to Rocinha. First we walked a bit uphill and went through a gate, took stairs up and got to a balcony with a very nice view over Rocinha. We looked at all the houses down there and Pedro told that there are over 300,000 inhabitants in Rocinha. He told also that the post system is not normal. There are no well marked streets or allies and no house numbers so the post is left usually in one store on the main road and the locals go and pick up their post from there. Quite interesting! After this we walked a bit more uphill from where we could see to the center of Rio. We could also see a private school close to Rocinha that looked more like a spa or a hotel.

Pedro, Markus, Edda, Maria and Johan in Rocinha

Colorful walls

When we continued our tour, we also met Zenzinho, the writer of the blog “life in Rocinha” and the organizer of the tours. He was an interesting person and seemed to be very warm hearted. He told a bit about what he does and about his guides. He has many charity projects and he tries to give opportunities to the locals and keep them away from bad habits. He asked us if we knew Pedro’s age… He was only 15 years old! :O He didn’t look that young, and we would have guessed around 18 - 20. This tour was his 5^th and the first one on his own. He was a bit nervous but the longer the tour took, the more relaxed he became.

Zenzinho and his many Rocinha tattoos

Some trees grow on strange places

Pedro took us through really narrow allies where we would never had gone on our own. They looked just like in the news where the drug dealers wait for you with the guns. The allies were surprisingly clean and no trash could be seen, and no guns or drug dealers were there either. 😉 Pedro told about the pacification and that the police stormed in the whole favela at once. When we asked whether if it’s better now, he wasn’t sure. He said that he does not like or support the drug gangs at all, but that some things were much better before the police came. There were almost no killings, rapes, robberies or other crimes done by normal people, just by the gangs. The gangs kept order and acted a bit like the police, but the punishments were quite harsh, even for small crimes, so it had a preventing effect. Some say that it is now better when the gangs are not carrying weapons openly and they have less powers. When the police took over Rocinha, all the crimes started to occur again, but especially after 2012. Between 2012 and 2016 the murder rates have gone up by around 40%. The police don’t do anything about the crimes. They do not even start to investigate them.

Walking in narrow alleys 

We heard also that there are rumors about the gangs. The gang that is not in “charge” over Rocinha, plans to attack the gang that is currently in “charge” and this would mean that the favela becomes again an unsafe place. There have been signs that now when the Olympics are over, the gangs try to take back the control over favelas. It does not help the situation that, at the time of writing this, the police haven’t got paid for the last two months. Zenzinho is using only local guides, so Pedro knew the allies pretty well even if he is a bit young. 😉 At one point he stopped and told that for some years ago, a man who lives there had an accident with his propane tank. It had started to burn, and the man did just throw the tank out to the ally to burn. This resulted in that the electricity cables burned and the neighborhood was without electricity for about a month. Pedro told that this man is not so popular in the neighborhood anymore. 😜

There might be a need for an electrician 😅  

Our next sight was the library. Pedro was really excited about it. He told he had learned to speak and read English there. One could watch movies and series for free there so he had watched movies and series and learned English. The library was built only for four years ago. Hmmmm… He told that there were elections that year, and well…the preparations for the Olympics had started. It’s good that they built it, but, unfortunately the Olympics are over, so they are closing the library because “lack” of money and Pedro was quite upset about it because it’s one of the few places where locals can read books, watch movies and study. We went inside the library and it looked nice. There is a big balcony on the third floor. There we were told how the favela houses get new floors. The owner of a house can sell his roof and the new owner then build his home on the roof and stairs from outside, quite crazy! 😵

View from the library's balcony. On most of these roofs one cannot build new homes, but the one on left has still a roof where one can build 😜

Another thing that happened four years ago was that the inhabitants got water to their homes as well as some really basic facilities, but not as much as the government had promised. This happened only four years ago! Before this they had to go every day to a water place where they could get water and carry it with canisters back home. It does not sound like fun! We could read quite easily between the lines that the government is not that popular in favelas. The reason is simple. The government basically does nothing to help the favelas. According to Pedro, the government says Rochinha has only around 10,000 people which is a fracture of the real number of inhabitants. Of course, this is only one side of the story, but it was really interesting to hear what the locals think about things. The “official” number of people living in favelas is around 1,5 million, and in Rocinha around 70,000 people according to the government.

This was the only place where one could get water before they built new water pipes in 2012. 

We stopped also on a place where the houses looked a bit better. Surprise, they were built four years ago. Most of the people living there were from the side of a mountain in Rocinha. Next to the mountain is often floods and stones and rocks are falling down. When we were there a young girl came and tried to sell miniature Rocinhas. She had made them herself and they looked quite nice. We cannot buy everything when we are traveling, but we wanted to support the girl so we "bought" one for half price. We just took a photo on the miniature favelas and the girl. 😊

The new homes the government build for the people who lived previously next to the mountain

Girl selling selfmade miniature favelas

From here we walked to a Acorda Capoeira group. They were extremely skilled and gave a nice show! We had seen capoeira a few times during our trip, but these guys and girls were amazing! After their show, we tried also some capoeira with them but with, well, not as glorious results, but we had fun! 😂

We visited also on a small emergency hospital. Also this was built four years ago for "some reason" and it serves the population of Rocinha. It is open 24/7. It is very small so with more complicated things, one has to go to a bigger hospital, but it is good to have even some kind of health care also in Rocinha, and they are not closing it for the moment.

Emergency hospital

Graffiti wall next to the hospital

These kind of graffitis we could see everywhere

We were told already in the beginning of our tour about one artist who does graffities in Rio. We had seen them already many times. The artist is called Wark and he paints funny looking “angels” everywhere. They are also colorful so it’s nice that someone is giving a bit color to the grey concrete. He is quite famous and we thought we would like to have a t-shirt with the “angel”. After the tour, we tried to contact him but with no luck. 😒 Rocinha was full of other graffities as well and also Pedro had made a graffiti next to his old school. He showed where he goes to school and hi told he is going in the 8^th grade and he would like to go also to high school and university. We wish him luck and hope he manages with that! 😊

Pedro's old school

 Pedro's graffiti on the school wall (they had permission 😉)

In the end of the tour we had lunch in a local restaurant. They had delicious meat from the grill and their other food was quite good as well. The only bad thing was that it was a bit pricey. It was very interesting to visit Rocinha and hear stories and opinions from a local and see how and where they live. After the visit in the favela, we see Rocinha not just as an unsafe and poor place where tourist should not go, but as a colorful and lively place where people with not-so-good situation or opportunities try to survive and make their living even if the government has basically forgotten them. We hope the situation does not get worse now when the Olympics are over and that the government would take more care about its citizens. The favela was not that scary or dangerous place but a lively and colorful community! 😊