The end of Latin America’s largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho

Fiona Hurrell – Rio Times, 04/14/2012

Jardim Gramacho in Rio, the largest dump site in Latin America will be closed, leaving some out of work, photo by Andre Gomes de Melo/Imprensa RJ.

Latin America’s largest landfill site, Jardim Gramacho in Duque de Caixas, is set to shut down on May 6th. The closure, which was announced by Mayor Eduardo Paes earlier this week, will come just in time for Rio to host to the Rio+20 UN environmental conference.

Putting an end to decades of environmental strain, the landfill will be transformed in to a park, however the government’s waste department, Companhia Municipal de Limpeza Urbana (COMLURB), has estimated that it will take at least fifteen years for the land to fully recover.

The closure means that many of the people working at the dump site, those who trawl through the landfill recovering materials for recycling, will be out of a job.

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*On March 09, 2011, the Brazil Institute held a screening of Waste Land, the Oscar-nominated documentary about artist Vik Muniz’s project to chronicle the lives of garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho.

Slum dwellers are defying Brazil’s grand design for Olympics: pictures

Simon Romero – New York Times, 03/04/2012

RIO DE JANEIRO — It was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Brazil.

Gearing up for the 2016 Olympic Games to be held here, officials celebrated plans for a futuristic “Olympic Park,” replete with a waterside park and athlete villages, promoting it as “a new piece of the city.”

There was just one problem: the 4,000 people who already live in that part of Rio de Janeiro, in a decades-old squatter settlement that the city wants to tear down. Refusing to go quietly and taking their fight to the courts and the streets, they have been a thorn in the side of the government for months.

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Rio’s collapsing buildings raise doubts as World Cup and Olympics approach

Jonathan Wheatley – Financial Times, 01/26/2012

Rescue workers carry an injured victim after a building collapsed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday Jan. 25, 2012. A multistory building in Rio de Janeiro collapsed after a possible natural gas explosion. There is no official word on deaths, but Globo television cites unidentified Brazilian authorities as saying two bodies have been found so far. (Felipe Dana / AP)

The collapse of three buildings in the centre of Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday night – leaving at least 19 people missing – raises fresh questions about the city’s infrastructure as it prepares to co-host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.

It should also give pause to those who say Brazil’s recent rise to prosperity has allowed it to leave behind its “emerging market” status. No matter how much has been achieved and no matter how great Brazil’s potential, it must still deal with a heavy legacy of the past.

It is too soon to say what caused the accident. Three buildings of 20, 10 and four floors behind the city’s Municipal Theatre – also damaged – collapsed at about 20:30 local time. A gas explosion – a common occurrence and the first suspect in this case – was ruled out by Eduardo Paes, Rio’s mayor, in the early hours of Thursday.

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Festival postcard Rio: cool potatoes – and torpor in the favela

Jonathan Romney – British Film Institute, 10/28/2011

Tomorrow Never Again. Credit: BFI

This year, Rio is big in Rio. The Fox/Blue Sky Studios animation, set in Rio de Janeiro, is everywhere in the city, its blue macaw hero selling everything from sweets to batteries, with an exhibition of the film’s artwork on display at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

But it’s not entirely a case of Hollywood selling the city back to itself; director Carlos Saldanha is himself a carioca (Rio native) and has gone out of his way to present a dream image of the city that will appeal to Brazilian as well as international tastes. In April, the film grossed $8.4 million in its opening weekend in Brazil, and I’m told by Sergio Sa Leitão, head of local film body RioFilme, that city mayor Eduardo Paes considers the film “as important for the city as the Olympics or the World Cup.”

Overall, the cheerful birds and beasts of Saldanha’s film offer a brighter, more upbeat vision of Brazil than recent, more adult Rio-set national exports such as City of God and the Elite Squad diptych. Inevitably, you find yourself going to the Festival do Rio hoping you’re going to see the successors to these, the latest art-house batata frita (hot potato to you).

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Rio 2016: Is Brazil going to be ready for the Olympics?

Andrew Downie – Time, 09/16/2011

Rhythmic gymnasts perform during the inauguration ceremony of the Athletes' Park in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 6, 2011. The park will serve as recreation space for Olympic athletes Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

Out on the far west side of Rio de Janeiro, in a zone where a host of Summer Olympics events will take place five years from now, stands a great example of how to plan for a major sporting event. And how not to.

On one hand, there is the Athletes’ Park, an $18 million 1.3 million-sq.-ft. (123,000 sq m) space for competitors’ relaxation between events. Formally opened in July, the park was delivered early, on budget and will be a “legacy venue” that the general public can use before and after the 2016 Olympics. But just a few miles away is the 970,000-sq.-ft. (90,000 sq m) Pan village, built to house athletes during the 2007 Pan American Games. Today, almost four years after the athletes moved out and Brazilian residents moved in, part of the village and the roads around it have caved in, sunk by the effects of haphazard, last-minute construction. (See a long photographic history of Olympic politics.)

The question is, Which example will Brazil be known for after it hosts both the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics two years later? Aside from racing to build venues for those events, the country is adding the infrastructure necessary to meet the demands of its booming economy — and on both counts, Brazilians seem as anxious as they are energized. As encouraging as the Athletes’ Park may be, Brazil’s World Cup preparations are late and over budget, and officials now acknowledge they took so long to start work at some sites that temporary structures may have to be used. The proposed bullet train between Rio and São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, stalled in the planning stages. More generally, public-works programs across the country are routinely late, over budget and subpar: new metro lines often shut down during rush hours, cracks have appeared in recently built government buildings and highways have developed craters just months after being inaugurated.

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Rio de Janeiro aims to become world capital of gay tourism

Tom Phillips – The Guardian, 07/11/2011

The theatre lights dim and a Brazilian supermodel takes to the stage, tanned legs emerging from a skintight miniskirt.

In the audience, an A to Z of Rio de Janeiro‘s great and good: pop stars, sports stars, soap stars and would-be stars, flanked by an army of local paparazzi. Clutching a microphone, the model addresses the crowd. “My name is Lea and I am a transsexual,” she says, triggering a frenzy of applause and whistles.

The model in question is Lea T, Brazil‘s first transsexual supermodel. And this is the champagne-soaked launch party for Rio’s inaugural diversity week – a celebration of the city’s cultural and ethnic differences and an attempt to position Rio as the global capital of gay tourism.

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Rio reborn, declares mayor, as police recapture infamous drug gang slum

Tom Phillips – The Guardian, 11/28/2010

Security forces were deployed to a poor area of Rio de Janeiro to tackle a wave of gang violence. Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features

More than two thousand heavily armed police operatives swept into Rio’s most notorious shantytown today following a week of explosive confrontations that have left at least 50 people dead.

The operation, unprecedented in the city’s history, began at around 8am and focused on the Complexo do Alemao, a gigantic network of slums that is the HQ of Rio’s Red Command drug faction and houses around 70,000 impoverished residents.

According to police the favela had been “conquered” by around 9.30am, with drug traffickers offering little resistance.

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Rain multiplies woes of Rio de Janeiro’s squatters

Alexei Barrionuevo-The New York Times, 04/14/10

The incessant rain that killed at least 251 people last week has raised lingering questions about this Olympic city’s emergency readiness and revived a long-dormant debate over the poor squatter communities that have sprung up in areas at risk of flooding and landslides.

One of the worst storms in 40 years hit Rio last week, overflowing the banks of the Lagoon, crippling public transportation and sending dozens of homes built atop an old garbage dump crashing down a hillside in a neighboring city.

Sérgio Cabral, the governor of the state of Rio, announced over the weekend that the state would spend more than $570 million to build 10,000 new homes for people at risk of floods or mudslides. Eduardo Paes, Rio’s mayor, said the city would immediately remove some 4,000 families from eight slums in high-risk areas and give them a monthly stipend to help them relocate.

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