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Dystopia::021 The project of a Global City In Greek, the particle DIS means: pain, deprivation and unhappiness.

The word TOPOS means place. Therefore, DYSTOPIA means - unhappy place. (VITO) Rio de Janeiro lives a singular moment of its history. It is under way a city project of criminalization of life, of the spectacle of death, of the erasing of the collective memory. While a new ideal of city is being constructed, by means of removal of the poor people away from the sea, more and more resistance processes are emerging. (VERA) The expression that Walter Benjamin uses of monumentum, of the city as the living memory of a history and a past. (CUNCA) As it is a city impossible to leave, it is the tension of a city that lives together. (SASKIA) I believe that the "Global City" has become a borderline space to, let's say, implant a globalized culture, standardized, in a more complex level, in national economies, that are still labeled by their own specificity. (VITO) Will be invested in Rio de Janeiro 8 billion reais over the next years. In an operation directly connected to the building industry and the militarization of the urban territory. It will make Rio de Janeiro a maximum security regime as well as the biggest "Global City" project of the present days. (VERA) That's the great model, the urban paradigm of an obsidional mentality, which means, a fortress mentality. The rich people entrenching themselves, and the removal of the poor people. (SASKIA) I believe that, nowadays, if I ask myself: What's the logic of the system? And if I put myself in the limit of that system, do I see a process of incorporation as a consumer? No. The process nowadays is to expel. (VITO) The segregation is produced in Rio de Janeiro by the ways of use and ocupation of the urban space. Criminalizing homeless workers, street vendors and young residents of slums, to strengthen the tourism and entertainment industries, as well as the real state speculation. The government, associated with private companies, set the boundaries between the slums and the urbanized city, and the relations in these boundaries are guided by the consuming potential and by the creation of flow zones exclusive to the city elite and to the foreign tourists.

(LULA) We need your support and forward thinking. Rio is ready. Those who give us the opportunity will not regret. Be sure that the Rio olympic games will be unforgettable. Because they will be full of the passion, the joy and the creativity of the brazilian people. Thank you. (VITO) Due to the 2014 World Cup and to the 2016 Olympic Games projects, thousands of people that live in slums and occupations has been suffering with illegal evictions and with fascist elements within the government habitation politics, promoting the removal of the poorest people to regions far away from the center of the city. (RAQUEL) The citizens, when it's happening an intervention in the territory where they live, before anything else, must be informed. Informed properly and in advance, and more than that, the citizens must have the right to participate in the processes that will define the alternatives for that removal, because it is always possible to change the projects in a way so that the removals are minimized, if not avoided completely, and also of the ressettlement alternatives, of what they could be, when they could happen, how they could happen And this process of respecting and working together with the affected communities is not merely an ideological option of a certain government. It is a duty, from the point of view of human rights and from the point of view of the international agreements in the human rights field. (VITO) A clear example of the expelling of the poor people from the regions near from the sports stadiums is the removal of the "Favela do Metr" slum, at Mangueira, in the north zone of the city. The place will supposedly be used as a parking lot of the Maracan Stadium for the 2014 World Cup finals. (MONTANHA) The fate of the people who work (automobile mechanics) here is uncertain. The owners of the machine shops behind the train station, where they will build the mall. Supposedly, I mean, nothing on paper. And we, who work by ourselves, have an uncertain fate. I don't know if the government is thinking about us all this time. Are we supposed to figure out our "brazilian way" out of it? Everybody is watching lots of things going on in Rio de Janeiro, but we, the disadvantaged (VITO) In the occupation "Guerreiros Urbanos" [Urban Warriors], in Santa Teresa, touristic region of the city, the speed with which the court reinstated possession of an abandoned building to a private university, that owed 15 years of labor taxes, outraged all who were occupying the place. One eviction, another occupation! There's no money for the employees, but there's money to pay the lawyer!

(RENATO) The repossession procedure was one of the less instructed that I have ever seen in my life. And I have seen more than 50, because I advocate with such things in the Homeless Movement of Bahia. But this procedure was one of the less instructed, and yet the judge has conceded the repossession in the same day They managed to do an agreement with the judiciary in such a way that the the whole bureaucratic process of the suit entering the justice and taking two, three, four days to end up in the hands of the judge, they did it in a few hours, and the injunction came out immediately, and by the evening they were here to enforce it. So it were these kind of relations with the judiciary, which we don't know how are made, that allowed the repossession to happen so quickly. But you can see in the process that they don't have any evidence of the possession of the building, they have evidence of the property only. But property issues are dealt with a petitionary action, in which we would discuss the property and this is a repossession. (VITO) The hostility of the foreign neighbors demonstrate the extent to which the place has been taken over by tourism and has systematically expelled the poor people from the region. (GRINGA) I live here, and I don't support the idea, and I can make a movement against you, or we can make a movement together, because I'm against the idea of people living here, I agree with making a cultural center, a collective work, but nobody should live here, because this thing of living here will solve the problems of a few, and create problems to many. (VITO) The city stops being a business place to become itself the product at sale in the international tourism market. And its main advertising is Wonderful city full of charm wonderful city heart of my Brazil birthplace of samba and beautiful songs that delights our souls you are equality in our hearts which sing happily (PEDRO) The arrival of the colonizer, of the white men, here in Brazil, is characterized by a trace of violence and oppression, and not by the acknowledgement of the local culture. And the colonizer's estate brings a full apparatus of disciplining institutions which refers us very much to what is happening today in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro. (VITO) The great project of gentrification of the central region of the city is the urban consortium operation called Porto Maravilha [Wonder Harbor]. Under the allegation of the revitalization of Rio's harbor, thousands of families are

living the carioca dystopia routine. (NEUZIMAR) It's abusive, you are in your house, and suddenly arrive some people saying: "I work for the City Hall and I am here because you have to leave your house." And they start painting numbers on the walls. Nobody calls us for meeting, nobody notifies the residents that they will be removed to somewhere else, because they will make improvements, for the people to have a more dignified life, a better basic sanitation, or whatever improvements. No! They send petulant guys, with no ethics and no respect, going from door to door intimidating the people, saying: "You have to leave because you have to leave." And if we ask the reason why, they say that we just have to, because the City Hall has bought everything, and it doesn't belong anymore to the residents. (ROSANA) We have heard of people that received compensations and are now living in the streets, others that are having difficulties because are living in houses with poor hygiene conditions. With a 400 reais rent you end up creating a situation of extreme violation of the housing rights. So we are here trying to help this resistance processes, and to create a political embarrassment to the Municipal Housing Department and to the City Hall. And to see, as much as it's possible, how we can set and press the government for a democratic management of all these projects that are taking place in the city, especially at the harbor region, which has been the brainchild of the Housing Department and of the City Hall iself. (MARCIA) If you find some house to rent, today, you will not be able to find anything around 400 reais. It has changed a lot already. So one has to pay attention to everything that's going on and make a study. Inside the community and with the community, to see if things are really like this. However, none of these were done. And I am in the resistance. I will not leave the place where I live, that house over there, to live in a 400 reais rented house. My income today is 622 reais, than they give me the 400, supposing that I will ever find a place around this price. Because most of the people that receives this 400 support has to complete the real price of the rent with about 200, 250 apart from the water and energy taxes. (ROSANA) The harbor region, as we all know, holds the beginning of the urban life of Rio de Janeiro. It mainly holds the history of the poor people, the black carioca people, who have been forgotten for the past century. A region that has been abandoned for 50 years. And I believe that it's exactly for this reason, because it holds this history of a huge part of the brazilian population, the black people, it was not of the government interest to renew it, to make improvements and interventions that could give the region better life conditions, equal to the central region of Rio de Janeiro. (VITO) With an intervention that aims to recover the colonial aspects of the

city, erase the social memory of the region with a logic of "Tomorrow's Museum" and "Utopia Warehouse". (VERA) Any harbor city evokes encounters, and the harbor is the place of the great encounters, of great arrivals And Rio's harbor, especially for the slavery tradition of the city, configured around it the slaves cemetery, the slaves market, which are part of this cruel memory of the city. FRENTE 3 DE FEVEREIRO Ogum i Salute the orixs Salute my people Salute the orixs (VERA) The great ghost of Rio de Janeiro is the fear of a slaves revolt. Rio de Janeiro, at one point, has been the largest african city of the world, in middle of the XIX century, so high was the concentration of africans brought here. Therefore, we have the historical remains in the subjectivity, in the collective memory of Rio de Janeiro, of this ghost. That's what we call an urban "phantasmagoria". Which are the fears, the updating of the fears of the slums, of the concentration of poor people. There is a fantasy in Rio de Janeiro that the slum will come down. But the slums come down everyday to work in the people's houses That's because in a place where there had been slavery, persists an ancestral fear of the slaves revolt, of the the poor people taking over the city. (OFF) "the ancestral fear of the slaves revolt, of the poor people taking over the city" (DEMONSTRATION) "We are here today to fight for a fairer society, where there is no boss and no employee, where everyone is equal to each other. This is the greeting of the Internationalist Homeless Front." (VERA) And the Porto Maravilha [Wonder Harbor] project is part of this great fear, promoted by the brazilian media, which is monopolized and had turned the carioca population into imbeciles... The carioca was for many years a resistant, and the average carioca today is a fool, a fool that watches Rede Globo. (XUXA) I would like you to join the choir with me to cover up other things that some people are saying: I am carioca, with a lot of pride, with a lot of love (OCCUPY RIO) Out Rede Globo! Out Rede Globo! The people are not fools! Out Rede Globo!

(NEGRI) Now it's a global capitalism crisis. And something very important that we must always bear in mind, as someone once said: One divided into two. The capitalist capability that is to unify society and development is torn apart in two. The capability of the government to enforce the law, the consensus and the agreement with the laws, is torn apart in two. The representativity, that was the fundamental channel through which the expression of the popular wills were forming institutions, is torn apart in two. It is a very deep crisis that passes by social politics, something of social ethics, of ways of life. (ELIZABETH GRITO EXCLUIDOS) In Rio de Janeiro several communities are organizing themselves against the World Cup committee, because today we have more than 178 listed slums to be submitted to the negative influences the World Cup brings. Here in Brazil we've been through activities (Pan American Games) of which the only heritage left to the population were "white elephants". And today only violence and removal are being brought to these communities. So we are getting organized and rising up against the removals at the communities and slums and for the construction of urban reform in Brazil. (ALBERTO TINOCO) The removals that are happening in the city are a real absurd. These removals serve only the real estate speculation and not the workers. We are not against the World Cup, but we don't want an empty cup, we want a full cup, with all our rights. (CAND) In Rio de Janeiro we have been through a process of extreme autocracy from the government, in which it has been implementing a politics of control and coercion of the poor people. (PALHAO PEREBA) I am here, at the 7th of September, to unmask the farce that is the 7th of September, the independence day. While thousands of people are being removed from their houses, they are being massacred in their daily lives. Since they arrived here they started to remove, remove There's 511 years we are suffering with removals and once more we will continue here, firm and strong, because the city center belongs to the population. (KATIA) Rio is not as violent as many people expect, what I didn't expect was so many injustice within such a beautiful city. I was scared to witness people who want to work being beaten up in the streets because they didn't have a license to work in the street, and the police taking money from you just because you are walking in a "suspicious" area. (MTS) Here in Rio we have the Social Movements Plenary, where several social movements, unions and students, meet to expose their fighting agenda. From there we can start a common fight, a joint, unified fight. There is the land

reform agenda, the housing agenda, the unions agenda, the students agenda, and in the plenary we try to organize actions following these. We try to see ourselves in each other's fights, both in resitance and fight. (GUERREIROS URBANOS) Oh, dear Doctor, Racism is not over It has just changed the ornaments If yesterday was the whip Todays it's suits and ties But the black people resist

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