Rush In Rio

Rio's favela dwellers to be displaced in the rush to be ready

"The World Cup and Olympics are good opportunities to get positive things done, but the interests behind them are not right. It's about making money in the fastest, most brutal way possible and this is allowed to happen by the international federations." So says Professor Christopher Gaffney, an outspoken critic of the way Rio's poor communities and favela dwellers, are being treated in the build-up to the two sporting mega-events.

Gaffney, an American visiting professor of urbanism at Rio's Fluminense Federal University, says 130 favelas have been marked for removal for the World Cup and Olympics, or associated transportation projects. "These projects are usually getting done for very narrow interests, mostly in real estate and big civil construction – motorways, airports etc. Only a handful of companies do these kinds of things in Brazil and their relationships with politicians are very cosy."

Gaffney said the authorities intentionally avoid collective negotiating. "This is done to fragment resistance. They negotiate family by family, so one family agrees to sell up, their home is demolished immediately and the value of the property next to it is lowered. Thus people are set against each other."

Transport plans are more often the motive for community relocations than stadiums, says Gaffney. "These erect large barriers in the city – concrete sluices cutting through communities, with high-speed buses flying down them. These projects tend to violate all statutes which are supposed to protect human rights, because they move people away to places where they know nobody, to houses which are not necessarily better than theirs and far from their jobs."

Many of these are large public housing projects in Rio's sprawling, poor north and west zones, where most residents from the affluent postcard settings of Zona Sul are afraid to go. "Many of these areas are under the control of militias [usually former or existing police, firemen and prison officers] and we have heard of cases of people arriving there and having to pay the militias 40,000 Brazilian Reals (£15,000) to stay in their new homes."

A conglomerate of social groups, NGOs and academics calling itself the People's Committee of the World Cup and Olympics Games, will march to the draw venue today to protest against the favela relocations, use of public money, role of big business and ticket costs.

Gaffney describes the heavily armed Police Pacification Units (UPPs) which have wrestled control of some favelas from drugs gangs "a necessary first step" adding that a greater sense of safety in the communities is a positive outcome. "But there should be equally massive investment in education and urbanisation. But the main thing was to provide the public spectacle of security for the outside world. UPPs do not go in quietly, they go in with heavy weaponry and are followed by media. These are invasions.

Classic Rock Radio: Alex Lifeson: Rush In Rio Archive Interview

Rush burst out of Canada in the mid seventies recording a number of progressively sophisticated albums until the late nineties when Neil Peart suffered a devastating personal tragedy. His wife and daughter both died within a short space of time. It was to be five years before Peart re-joined Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee to record another Rush album. Vapour Trails was released in 2002 and the band set out on a tour to promote the album. Demand for Rush was such that many extra dates had to be added. The tour finished in South America and the final date at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro was filmed and is due to be released on DVD as Rush in Rio. Jon Kirkman caught up with guitarist Alex Lifeson in Toronto to talk about the forthcoming DVD and CD and what lies ahead for Rush. Alex Lifeson Right. We’ve long had offers to go to Rio to play at ‘Rock in Rio’ and we’ve always avoided it because we’re not really comfortable playing in that kind of pop festival format. We’re really about our own show and representing ourselves that way. Record sales don’t give you a true indication of your popularity in places like that. Our record sales are modest you know, nothing to go crazy about but this opportunity came up to do more than one show, to do a few shows. The promoters made it worth our while to come down because it’s a very expensive trip; to get all the gear down there, all our lighting you know, it’s heavy stuff. AL Absolutely the full show, it has to be. So it’s quite a costly procedure to get everything down there and do these things. So anyway the opportunity came up. Now we had planned on shooting the DVD on one of the last American dates in upstate New York and we had some problems at the venue and decided to pull it on that last day. So really our only other choices were the shows in South America and we thought Rio would be the best choice. A lot of videos have been done in Rio, it’s a great audience and we could see from our ticket sales that it was going to be a really good enthusiastic crowd. We never expected then to be the way they were. They were just mind blowing. AL Oh yeah! We were completely surprised by it. We had 60,000 people in Sao Paolo and 44,000 in Rio.

Rush In Rio

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