Batman, a familiar character in demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro, supports the “rolezinho” in front of Shopping Leblon with a placard reading “We are all equal.” Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 7 2014 (IPS)

They poured into shopping malls en masse to have some fun. But the reaction, a mixture of fear, admiration and heavy-handed repression, brought a new youth movement into being in Brazil: the “rolezinhos.”

In Brazilian youth slang, “rolar” means to go out with friends on a leisurely stroll, and the call to join these mass outings has become, in the view of some, a revolutionary movement, while for others it mirrors the consumerist longings of the emerging middle class.

It started in December 2013, when a group of young people used Facebook to plan a rolezinho (little outing) at a shopping centre in the southern city of São Paulo, “to have a bit of fun” in a country where entertainment and cultural events are expensive. Six thousand youngsters showed up. For social organisations and those on the left, rolezinhos express popular discontent or the fight against discrimination.

Police repression and the Brazilian government’s fears for the FIFA World Cup it will be hosting in June and July 2014 have only caused rolezinhos to spread to other cities.

“We came to prove that poor young people are consumers too,” Iata Anderson, a geography student, told IPS when a rolezinho took place Jan. 19 in front of the upmarket Shopping Leblon in Rio de Janeiro, leading to its preventive closure, in spite of the low numbers who came.

Anderson, like many other rolezinhos (a participant in a rolezinho is also called a rolezinho), is under 20. Although he lives in a “favela” (shanty town), he represents the new Brazilian middle class, who are studying at public universities and have access to the internet, credit and purchasing power, thanks to a decade of leftwing governments under former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) and current president Dilma Rousseff.

“I came to support the rolezinhos in São Paulo, which are being met with tear gas and police beatings. This only happens because the participants are Afro-Brazilians from the periphery, who are seen as out of place in the luxurious sophistication of the shopping malls,” he said.

On Jan.11 militarised police used rubber bullets and pepper spray against some 1,000 young people engaged in a rolezinho at a shopping centre on the periphery of the city. There were 60 arrests.

The Brazilian Association of Shopping Centres (ABRASCE) says the malls are “democratic spaces catering to people of all social profiles and different ages” and that they “welcome diversity and social inclusion, frequently in areas with few entertainment options.”

They are also “meeting places for the majority of young people,” it said.

In the view of sociologist Ignacio Cano, of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Violence at the University of Rio de Janeiro, the police reaction “was disproportionate”, as was the closure of shopping centres in order to thwart rolezinhos.

This episode was “in contradiction to the historical tendency of shopping malls, which are temples of consumerism and now also entertainment centres, which increasingly attract ever more diverse people, whether or not they make purchases, and recently are also providing public services,” he told IPS.

Cano says it will be disappointing if shopping centres lose their “universalist” vocation and become “more elitist” instead.

However, for many people that is already the case.

“A dark-skinned person at a shopping centre is immediately targeted for close watching by the security staff, who think we are probably going to steal something,” cargo assistant Diego Meier told IPS, adding that he regards these malls as “palaces of the bourgeoisie and capitalism.”

“At times I am badly served by staff and I notice that it is dark-skinned Afro-Brazilians who work the security shifts or clean toilets. We must have the same rights, independently of skin colour, social class and purchasing power,” said Anderson, an Afro-Brazilian like Meier.

Rousseff herself criticised the harsh police response and prejudice against poor young people.

Minister for Racial Equality Policies Luiza Bairros said that rolezinhos were “peaceful demonstrations” and that black people should not automatically be associated with the idea of crime, as is customary.

“The problems arise when white people are afraid of young black people,” she said.

“The shopping centre is a novelty. We want to get to know a place that used to be only for the upper classes,” information technology student Waldei Teixeira told IPS.

Brazil’s middle and upper classes associate the presence of overwhelming numbers of poor black youngsters in public spaces like the beaches, with the danger of “dragnet” attacks by mobs of thieves.

But rolezinhos do not loot or steal or destroy.

“There are much larger crowds in the shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season. Is that a threat to the security of the shopping centre?” asked Anderson.

What started out as a collective way to have some fun evolved largely because of the way it was repressed, which “creates a political goal, because when young people feel challenged they try to overcome the prohibitions against them,” Cano said.

The upcoming world football championship and the presidential elections next October make the rolezinhos a political instrument, Fernando Gabeira, a journalist and former member of Congress for the Green Party (Partido Verde), told IPS.

“Small movements can grow into big movements, as happened in June 2013, with the outbreak of large protests against fare increases in public transport and corruption, and demands for better health care and education,” he said.

At first, the reason for the rolezinhos was “to democratise the space for whoever wanted to enjoy the beauty of the shopping centres,” said Gabeira. Now, in his view, everyone tags the phenomenon with “his or her own political and ideological aims.”

For social organisations and those on the left, rolezinhos express popular discontent or the fight against discrimination.

The government, on the other hand, views them as “an expression of dynamism, social mobility and the changes that have occurred in Brazilian society in recent years.”

This mobility is expressed in the consumerism of this new “niche market”, which paradoxically, is being catered to by the shopping centres themselves, consisting of a new middle class avid for cellular phones, computers, the latest televisions or stylish clothes.

In Gabeira’s view, rolezinhos are clamouring for their right to consume, as part of the consumer society.

The transformation from a social class that up until recently had no future, into another that has dreams, is expressed in the music that young people taking part in rolezinhos listen to at top volume in the shopping centres.

The lyrics and videos of “ostentation funk” proclaim that the road to happiness involves climbing the social ladder, marked by the possession of luxury goods and, afterwards, going out with blondes.

“This kind of funk was a preview of the rolezinho phenomenon. It shows a desire, conscious or unconscious, for social integration. But it’s also part of the culture,” film student Gonzalo Gaudenzi, who studied the history and origins of the genre, told IPS.

Brazilian funk (inspired by U.S. rap music) was born in the urban peripheries with lyrics on everyday topics such as drug trafficking, narcotics, police repression or sex.

But with the spread of social welfare, it began to reflect the aspirations of many of the 30 million people, in this country of nearly 200 million people, who were lifted out of poverty thanks to an economic model based on domestic consumption as the springboard for growth.

“If the music they listen to all day is telling them that to get the best girls and the highest social status they have to have the best cars, clothes and watches, even if they can’t buy them they will want to get close to that world and feel its presence. And where can they do that? At the shopping malls,” said Gaudenzi.

A Metrobus stop on 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires, with the famous Obelisk in the background. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 6 2014 (IPS)

Sustainable transport grew in the Latin American cities of Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

The left-wing government of the Mexican capital inaugurated the fifth Metrobús bus rapid transit (BRT) system route and extended the Ecobici Individual Transport System.

It also expanded the Ecoparq parking meter system – a new parking management scheme – into new areas on the west side of the city and opened up a new pedestrian-only street in the old city.

In the Argentine capital, meanwhile, the third Metrobús line began to operate with great success on Avenida 9 de Julio, and the government expanded its “Buenos Aires, mejor en bici” (Buenos Aires, Better by Bike) programme.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the centre-right city government forged ahead with the construction of the Transcarioca and Transbrasil BRT corridors, while the second stage of the Transoeste BRT project got underway.

The network of bicycle paths was also enlarged, as part of the infrastructure planned for the FIFA World Cup, to be held in Brazil from Jun. 12 to Jul. 13, and the 2016 Olympic summer games in Rio de Janeiro.

In Mexico City, “there have been interesting projects, but they haven’t been carried out at the desired speed,” Bernardo Baranda, Latin America director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

He called for more initiatives and said they should be more rapidly implemented, aimed at “a further reduction of the use of automobiles” in greater Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people.

As part of that objective, he said it was important to expand Ecobici, which includes exclusive and non-exclusive bike lanes as well as a bike-share system.

What is happening in greater Rio de Janeiro, population 11.7 million, “is very exciting,” he said. “A great deal has been invested in infrastructure. Bicycle use has expanded. The centre has great potential for better transport conditions.”

The ITDP Latin America director said that in greater Buenos Aires, home to some 13 million people, “the use of public bicycles has been fomented, along with the idea of turning several streets in the microcenter into pedestrian-only.”

Roberto Remes, an independent Mexican expert in public policies on the environment and transportation, also pointed to interesting developments in the three cities.

He explained to IPS that in Buenos Aires, right-wing Mayor Mauricio Macri “is trying to build an alternative system to the subway,” which turned 100 years old in December.

Meanwhile, “in Mexico we see mainly plans. Apparently we’ll do ok, we’ll have an integrated system with policies focused on mobility and a person-oriented, rather than car-oriented, perspective.”

With respect to Rio de Janeiro, he said “they want their prepaid public fare cards and their institutional image to be the same across the entire country – something that not many countries have achieved.”

The three cities face similar challenges, such as heavy dependence on private vehicles, the proliferation of parking garage buildings, and virtually no progress on road safety, except in the case of Buenos Aires.

In addition, there have been social protests against the infrastructure work accompanying the development of sustainable, multimodal transportation systems.

Baranda said “the bicycle must be better integrated with mass transit, and more integrated transport is needed in order to make it easier to get around.”

On Jan. 15, the ITDP and eight other organisations will grant the Sustainable Transport Award in Washington, DC. This year’s nominees include Buenos Aires, Lanzhou, China and Suwon, South Korea. Mexico City won the award in 2013.

The prize, granted since 2005 to cities of more than 500,000 people, awards accomplishments such as improving public transportation and public spaces, reducing transport-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and improving safety and access for cyclists and pedestrians.

This year, the Mexico City government will build another Metrobús line and will expand segregated and non-segregated bike paths.

For its part, the ITDP will focus on reducing the number of parking garages, and drew up a study on the viability of a Metrobús line on the central Avenida Reforma.

For the 2013-2016 period, the Rio de Janeiro city administration plans to build 150 km of bike paths, as well as bicycle parking stations, to reach a total network of 450 km by 2016.

Buenos Aires projects the creation of another four Metrobús routes for 2014-2015.

The December report on “Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of BRT Systems” stresses the benefits of bus rapid transit in Bogotá, Colombia; Mexico City; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Istanbul, Turkey.

The report was produced by EMBARQ, the sustainable urban transport and planning programme of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The study shows that BRT systems have led to travel time savings, a reduction in vehicle operating costs, improvements in health due to reduced pollution, and improved road safety.

But it also identifies challenges such as declining quality of service, the exclusion of the poorest residents from the system, limited integration with other transport systems, and competition with subways.

Remes warned that it was not enough to focus transport strategies on merely establishing BRT systems without addressing other possibilities, such as urban trains.

“The existing models of financing, management and planning only allow for the expansion of these systems. If we create BRT corridors, we can cover the cities in a decade, but there is still a problem: transfers and switches from one system to another. There’s something that’s not working in the long-term vision,” he said.

In the 1970s, nations like Japan, South Korea or Singapore began to build railway networks to foment a mix of transport, employment, financing and economic development in big cities.

In Latin America, “we are a millennium behind,” Remes lamented.

By IPS Correspondents
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

The controversy is on: the authorities in Brazil say there are not enough medical professionals, and to resolve the problem, they decided to import this “non-traditional product”. Doctors, on the other hand, are opposed to both the diagnosis and the treatment. But there is one thing everyone agrees on: the areas suffering from a shortage of health professionals are the poor suburbs and impoverished areas in the hinterland and remote border areas. The situation in Brazil as compared to itself and to other countries can be seen in this series of interactive maps and graphs.

Data: Fabíola Ortiz. Design: Ignacio Castañares

"The loss of Catholics is related to the conservatism of the Church. But the mere presence of Francis, his cheerfulness and charisma, will have an effect." - Sociologist Ivo Lesbaupin

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 29 2013 (IPS)

Pope Francis’ first overseas trip, to Brazil, the country with the largest number of Catholics in the world, was marked with setbacks, disorganisation and lack of infrastructure for an event that brought half a million pilgrims to the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The pope attended World Youth Day events held Monday Jul. 22 to Sunday Jul. 28 in Rio, where most of the religious ceremonies took place in well-known locations like the statue of Christ the Redeemer, the Metropolitan Cathedral and a park at Copacabana beach, the site of the inaugural masses and the Stations of the Cross.

The Jesuit former president of the Pontifical Catholic University, Jesús Hortal, admitted to IPS that during the preparations for World Youth Day, he had realised that the logistics would be “a big problem.”

“Our infrastructure is not up to scratch. We don’t have express buses, airports or transport facilities, and the metro is a joke,” said Hortal, who knew the Argentine pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires."The loss of Catholics is related to the conservatism of the Church. But the mere presence of Francis, his cheerfulness and charisma, will have an effect." - Sociologist Ivo Lesbaupin

Getting around the city was very difficult for the tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world who spent hours stranded in crowded metro stations trying to get to Copacabana.

Roads were closed in the famous Rio neighbourhood, blocking buses and forcing the faithful to walk for kilometres or to face the power outages that interrupted the metro, the only means of transport to reach the main scenario of the Catholic celebrations.

Every day long lines of people waited to take the metro, causing the stations to overflow and crowding the streets of Copacabana.

“Are you a journalist? Then report on this absurd situation; nowhere in the world is the metro as bad as this,” one Brazilian pilgrim said crossly.

The week-long celebrations surrounding World Youth Day were not only hard on the faithful, who also had to put up with cold, rainy weather, unusual in this tropical city.

Francis was taken by surprise too.

When he arrived in Rio, his motorcade was caught in a traffic jam of buses on one of the main avenues. The news spread quickly that the pope was trapped in traffic, and tens of thousand of faithful surrounded his vehicle, trying to catch a glimpse of him.

The first Latin American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church came to Brazil at a time when the country has for weeks been shaken by social unrest. Young people have been protesting in dozens of cities since early June, demanding political and social change.

It was fortunate that the pope should arrive at this time, sociologist Ivo Lesbaupin of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told IPS.

“The demonstrations put two million people on the streets, young people demanding their rights, calling for changes, reacting against a way of doing politics…that is separate and removed from society,” he said.

Three protests took place during Francis’ visit, which ended Sunday Jul. 28. First, a few hundred people gathered on Monday Jul. 22 in front of Guanabara palace, the seat of the state government, where leftwing President Dilma Rousseff, her ministers and hundreds of politicians and prelates were welcoming the pope.

Outside the palace the police isolated the demonstrators and put down the protest. Six demonstrators were injured and three were arrested.

On Friday Jul. 26, another protest was held close to the Copacabana beachfront promenade, where the Stations of the Cross were being re-enacted. The demonstrators complained that the papal visit and World Youth Day cost 53 million dollars. The police dispersed them with water cannons and tear gas.

“It was clear that the protests were not going to suddenly end, and with the presence of the pope and so many media outlets, it was very likely that some demonstrations would be organised,” Lesbaupin said.

Hortal said he felt nervous when people began to gather in front of the state government house, on Francis’ first night in Rio.

“It was young people complaining about the way politics are done in Brazil. The main question is corruption; politicians are not in a very good situation. People were there to protest against the governor, but some might also have protested against the pope, and some of the crowd were violent,” he said.

The priest was afraid violent acts might interrupt the religious celebrations.

According to Lesbaupin, the demonstrators wanted a word of support from the pope.

“He gave signs of support to the young people’s demands, we saw it subliminally. Speaking to the politicians, he communicated confidence in young people as the window to the future,” the sociologist said.

In his homilies and speeches in the favela or shantytown of Manguinhos and a hospital for people with drug problems, Francis emphasised the ideas of fraternity, community and social justice.

The pope called on young people to fight against injustice and “never be discouraged” by corruption. In reference to the local policy of pacification of the favelas, he said it would only be possible when efforts were made to integrate the poor areas surrounding the cities.

Lauro Condiran, a 30-year-old pilgrim from Brasilia, hoped that Francis would manage to bring government representatives together to listen to the people.

“The people want health, security and education. The pope will not remain neutral in the face of this situation,” he told IPS.

Hortal recalled that World Youth Days have several times in the past been the scenario of demonstrations, because of their international dimension, such as in Germany in 2005, Australia in 2008 and Spain in 2011.

“There are groups that protest against the government. That happened in Madrid, in Cologne and in Sydney. There are always some people who express their problems,” said the Jesuit.

While social agitation grows in Brazil, Catholicism is losing adherents, many of whom are switching to evangelical churches.

According to the most recent census by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, in 2010, out of the population of 190 million that year, 64.6 percent described themselves as Catholics – almost 123 million people. But in 1970 the proportion was 91.8 percent.

The proportion of evangelical Christians, meanwhile, climbed from 5.2 percent of the population in 1970 to 22.2 percent – or 42.3 million people – in 2010.

The state of Rio de Janeiro is the least religious of all. Less than half of the population declare themselves Catholic, and over 15 percent say they have no religion at all.

In Lesbaupin’s view, the pope does not appear to be very concerned with attracting new adherents.

“The loss of Catholics is related to the conservatism of the Church in recent decades, and its lack of openness to young people. But the mere presence of Francis, his cheerfulness and charisma, will have an effect,” said the sociologist.

Sexual violence against women is alarmingly under-reported and invisible in Brazil where, for example, there are no accurate, comparable data on rape in the country’s 27 states.

“We are on red alert, we are going to complain and demand changes from the authorities. We are also dissatisfied with the differential treatment given to victims from lower income classes,” Eleuteria da Silva, the coordinator of Casa da Mulher Trabalhadora (CAMTRA), a women’s organisation in the state of Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

In her view, national and state public policies for preventing and combating sexual crimes are ineffective, and measures to protect victims are equally inefficient.

“The problem is both circumstantial and chronic. Policies do exist, but they are ineffective. They are insufficient to deal with the needs, even given the extent of under-reporting,” said Silva, who is a member of the State Forum against Violence against Women, which groups 30 organisations.

On Jun. 4, the state of Rio de Janeiro passed Law 6,457 creating an integrated information and monitoring system on violence against women called “Observa Mulher”, state congresswoman Inês Pandeló of the governing leftwing Workers’ Party (PT), who drafted the bill, told IPS.

The bill establishes concerted actions in the state’s 92 municipalities, creating a system that organises and analyses data on violence against women, in which bodies that help women victims of abuse, including sexual assault, also participate.

“Dossiê Mulher” (Women’s Dossier), a report compiled by the Institute of Public Security (ISP) in Rio de Janeiro, says sexual assault accounts for the largest proportion of all forms of violence against women in this southeastern Brazilian state.

Last year, 6,029 rapes were committed in the state, and 4,993 of the victims were women. This represented a 24 percent increase in the number of women raped compared to 2011.

On average, 416 women a month were raped in 2012. The ISP said the rate of rape in the state is 37 per 100,000 population for victims of both sexes.

However, this figure cannot be compared with national statistics because precise and standardised information in the other states is lacking. But Silva, Pandeló and other women’s rights activists believe it is indicative of the overall situation when it comes to sexual violence in this country of 198 million people.

“It is a huge figure, nearly 5,000 cases of women raped in Rio, when one alone would be an outrage. Society cannot tolerate this state of affairs, which is the result of repressive, sexist, patriarchal, machista and racist education,” Silva complained.

High-profile incidents of rape on public transport in Rio de Janeiro, in a hospital, and of under-age girls have alarmed public opinion.

This month a nursing assistant was accused of raping two patients in the intensive care unit of a private hospital. He could be sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In May, the surveillance camera on a bus captured images of a 16-year-old teenager with a gun who raped a passenger while the bus was in motion. He was under the influence of cocaine, and according to Brazilian law, as he is under age, his maximum sentence will be three years in a reformatory and community service.

The civil police reported that in the first four months of 2013 there were 1,822 rapes committed in the state, while only 70 persons were arrested for these crimes.

The victims are generally women between the ages of 20 and 30, mainly black, and coming from any social class.

“An assault of this kind can destroy a woman’s life. She becomes terrified and fearful of leaving the house. Often she feels guilty and ashamed, so many women do not report being raped, especially as they know the extent of existing impunity,” Silva said.
Victims of sexual violence are often revictimised when they lodge their complaint at the police station and when they undergo a physical exam at the forensic medicine institute (IML) to provide the necessary physical evidence. “It is humiliating,” Silva said.

State congresswoman Pandeló recognised that protection for rape victims is precarious in the initial stages.

“The woman is revictimised and her body probed. There is already a national decree to collect physical evidence at private and public hospitals. There is political will, but it must be made effective,” she said.

“It is infuriating to see these statistics in the 21st century. It’s terrifying. People imagine that human thinking processes are evolving towards accepting that we are all equal, but the fact is a machista culture persists. Violence exists, and it is important to report it in order to help the formulation of public policies,” she said.

In Brazil, only the state of Rio de Janeiro has instituted an annual survey of cases of violence against women.

That is why, Pandeló said, it is not possible to compare figures for Rio de Janeiro with those for the other 26 states, “nor our national figures with other countries.”

Pandeló was recently elected Women’s Secretary of the National Union of State Legislatures and Legislators (UNALE), and from this position she plans to work to extend the annual survey to every state.

But CAMTRA’s Silva said that institutions for the care of women in the state of Rio operate inadequately.

She pointed out that there are very few specialised women’s centres providing legal and psychological support for victims of violence in the municipalities of the state.

There are only 30 shelters for women victims of violence, while there are 92 municipalities in the state.

There is one national centre for women victims of gender violence, a 24-hour helpline (dial 180) and special women’s police stations in states and municipalities.

In spite of the number of official organisations devoted to women’s rights, activists like Silva do not expect short-term improvements in the concrete support offered to victims of violence and particularly of sexual assault.

“In general, these bodies do not dialogue with each other; none of them is aware of what the others are doing,” she said.

Articulated bus in dedicated lane, part of the BRT system in Curitiba, Brazil. Credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Mariordo CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Brazil, and especially the city of Rio de Janeiro, is experiencing a boom in bus rapid transit (BRT), a public transport system that now has an internationally-recognised quality standard.

According to Brazil’s National Association of Urban Transport (NTU), there are 113 BRT projects in 25 cities, with 1,270 kilometres of dedicated bus lanes. By 2016 they should all be operative.

“BRT is the star of sustainable transport; it is an environmentally friendly, economical solution for big cities that have serious congestion problems,” Helena Orenstein, the country director for Brazil of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

The system does not exclude other methods of transport; on the contrary, it creates an integrated network of different kinds of transportation, Orenstein said.

But a common definition and quality assurance were previously lacking, she added.

The ITDP helped formulate quality guidelines known as the BRT Standard, in partnership with a commission of experts and various organisations.

The BRT Standard, launched in March, analyses and gives points for 32 items divided into six categories, such as service planning, infrastructure, integration and access, as well as others which carry negative points, like overcrowding or lack of maintenance.

The result is a tool with common parameters of quality control for BRT all over the world, which will also guide and motivate improvements in these transport systems, according to Orenstein.

“The idea is that BRT should deliver an excellent form of transport, paying attention to the requirements of safety, comfort and practicality. It’s about time people no longer had to waste three hours a day to commute across cities,” said the head of the Brazilian office of the ITDP, an NGO that offers technical support in a number of countries.

The quality certification functions as a checklist that adds or subtracts points and is easily understood by authorities, consultants and operators.

The BRT Standard issues bronze (55-69 points), silver (70-84 points) or gold (85-100 points) certificates.

The aim is “to certify BRT systems that are already operating in order to correct any flaws and reward good examples,” Orenstein said.

Pedro Torres, the ITDP’s urban development manager in Brazil, explained that a technical committee would carry out annual reviews and updating of the certifications.

Following pilot trials in 2012, the first full certification exercise this year analysed 67 BRT systems in 41 cities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and the United States. Twelve of them were awarded gold certificates, 28 silver and 24 bronze.

The remaining three systems, two in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh and one in New Delhi, India, did not earn enough points for the bronze certificate but met the minimum requirements to be regarded as “basic BRT systems.”

Among those that won gold, the highest points were earned by the Zhongshan Avenue BRT in the Chinese city of Guangzhou; four TransMilenio services in Bogotá, Colombia; and the Linha Verde (Green Line) in Curitiba, the Brazilian city that pioneered this type of mass transport in 1974.

“It was a very positive experience. It’s an opportunity for society, governments and companies to have a public evaluation and monitoring tool for these systems,” Torres told IPS.

The head of NTU, Otávio Cunha, praised the BRT Standard initiative and said the NTU has passed the list of items to be evaluated on to its members.

“We are in favour of dedicated bus lanes as a sustainable transport option that has a higher cost-benefit ratio. The idea of a quality standard is a good one,” Cunha told IPS.

Traffic creates stress, increases the accident rate and causes economic “disbenefits” because of the waste of fuel and time involved in urban transportation, he said.

“Brazil is going through a mobility crisis and there is too much fuel and time wasted in cities because of traffic. Dedicated bus lanes can make journeys faster. BRTs are a new concept in surface public transport, inspired by the requirements for excellence in underground rail systems,” he said.

A dedicated corridor can transport 10,000 passengers an hour by bus, compared to only 750 by car. A bus can take all its passengers on board in barely 15 seconds before leaving a station.

In many cities, the time interval between buses can be as little as 20 seconds, making the service highly efficient. In Brazilian BRT systems, the interval between buses may be two minutes, Cunha said. One busload of passengers can replace 120 cars, he said.

Another benefit is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle traffic. In Mexico City the BRT system, which is 20 kilometres long, has reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from traffic by 80,000 tonnes a year, according to the ITDP.

Constructing BRT systems takes time and money, but much less of both than a subway line, which can take up to 10 years to build.

Building and equipping 10 kilometres of BRT takes an average of 18 months and 10 times less money than a metro line.

Brazil’s 113 BRT projects, operating in 25 cities, represent 30 percent of total BRT systems already functioning all over the world, according to NTU estimates.

The government’s current investment commitments amount to six billion dollars, including what it has already spent. By the end of 2013, more projects in medium-sized cities will bring the total to nearly nine billion dollars.

Four new BRT projects are under way in Rio de Janeiro: TransCarioca, with 39 stations, which is to be inaugurated in December at a cost of 900 million dollars; TransBrasil, with 25 stations, which began to be constructed in 2012 at a cost of 600 million dollars; TransOeste, with 64 stations, the second phase of which will be completed in August, at a cost of 380 million dollars; and TransOlímpica, with 18 stations, which is due to begin operating in January 2016 at a cost of 1.1 billion dollars.

TransOeste was awarded a gold BRT Standard classification, in spite of problems with overcrowding and poor road surfacing along some stretches of the bus corridor.

However, Torres said, the average journey time was halved from two hours to one, and TransOeste has new units with air conditioning and onboard cameras, is accessible and offers frequent service.

TransBrasil promises to be one of the biggest rapid transit corridors in the world in terms of passenger numbers, transporting close to 820,000 passengers a day, according to the project.

Recently reconstructed Maracaná stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Governo do Rio de Janeiro CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 17 2013 (IPS)

As Brazil prepares to host several sporting mega-events, human rights abuses and authoritarian interventions by the authorities are going on behind the scenes, favouring major urbanisation projects and stadium remodelling, a study says.

The state has forced almost 30,000 families across the country to leave their homes, according to the Comité Popular da Copa e das Olimpíadas (World Cup and Olympics People’s Committee), made up of around 50 social movements, researchers, NGOs and trade unions.

The Committee’s report, “Megaeventos e Violações dos Direitos Humanos no Rio de Janeiro” (Mega-events and Human Rights Abuses in Rio de Janeiro), says that in this city alone, which will host the 2016 Olympic Games, 3,000 families have already been displaced from their homes and another 7,800 are facing eviction.

The forced displacement of thousands of people and the privatisation of public areas constitute the dark side of Brazil’s sports projects, claims the study which was presented in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday May 15.

Brazil will host the FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup, which is to be held in 12 cities, in 2014. A dress rehearsal for this will be the ninth FIFA Confederations Cup, a tournament between the top national teams from each continent, from Jun. 15-30 this year.

“Our fears are being confirmed. The benefits and social legacy that are so widely trumpeted really hide a dark legacy: an elitist, segregated and unequal society. It is a sad thing to see,” said Orlando Alves dos Santos Jr., a sociologist and urban planner and one of the study coordinators.

In the view of dos Santos Jr., a researcher at the Observatório das Metrópoles and the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the multi-million dollar investments carried out under the cloak of preparations for the World Cup and the Olympic Games go beyond the scope of sports facilities and are part of a grand project of urban reform.

Interventions in cities, like evictions, are having an immense impact in terms of social exclusion, the report says.

“We show that poor people are being relocated outside the areas of investment, which are concentrated in the centre, south and north of Rio de Janeiro. These are areas where real estate has vastly increased in value,” dos Santos Jr. said.

He said the rise in housing prices has been largely based on the displacement of the poor towards the outskirts of the city.

“All this has been accompanied by a complete lack of information for the evicted families, as well as coercion, the use of violence and human rights abuses. What is happening in the city is extremely serious,” he said.

Christopher Gaffney, a U.S. geographer who studies public policies on sports and security for big events, told IPS that evictions and the privatisation of public spaces represented a great failure of democracy in this country of over 195 million people.

“The policy is a big step backwards. It represents a reversal of values that eliminates the role of government as the guarantor of essential citizen services, like housing and culture. Forced evictions are a clear violation of the right to housing. Real estate speculation is rife in Rio,” he said.

Gaffney, who is also a member of the People’s Committee and a researcher with the Observatório das Metrópoles, said that there is no “coherent practical criterion” being applied in the eviction of thousands of families, and that those affected by the policy complain of a lack of dialogue, transparency and information.

“The uncertainty associated with being made homeless creates constant panic, and terror methods are being used to expel these people from their communities at any price,” he said.

“There have been cases where families have been told they must vacate their homes, without any time for them to collect their belongings; and others where their eviction has been negotiated right alongside the bulldozers that were ready to demolish the houses. This is enormous psychological pressure,” he said.

Only a few families received a decent house after their eviction, Gaffney said. The authorities provide indemnities for expropriation that are not enough to buy a new house, or they put families into housing plans that have requirements that many of them cannot meet, such as that the head of household must have a formal sector job and a bank account.

The report argues that the real Olympic legacy in Rio de Janeiro will be that of “an even more unequal city, which will exclude thousands of families and destroy entire communities…a project that will appropriate the majority of benefits for a select few economic and social agents.”

One of the main criticisms is the privatisation of public spaces worth millions of dollars. In Rio de Janeiro, sporting facilities like the legendary Maracaná stadium are being renovated, as well as infrastructure and transport facilities, and urban remodelling projects have mushroomed.

The initial budget for investment in the city for the upcoming events has risen by 95 percent, from 1.1 billion dollars to 2.1 billion.

Construction and renovation of stadiums represent nearly 25 percent of this total. Maracaná stadium, where the finals of the 2014 World Cup will be played and where the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games will be held two years later, is the focus of controversy because it has been granted in concession to a private consortium for 35 years.

The cost of the works undertaken was 600 million dollars, compared with the 370 million dollars initially envisaged. The concession of the stadium into private hands for the first time led the public prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the state’s investments for the sporting mega-events.

In Gaffney’s view, the sporting facilities will be transformed from cultural spaces into consumption centres.

“Stadiums are the platforms where local culture is expressed in football. It would be virtually cultural assassination to substitute faithful, traditional fans with ‘clients’ or higher class consumers,” he said.

Moreover, the private initiative will also lead to the demolition of a major aquatic park, a public school, an athletics track and a prison, in order to build two multi-storey car parks for 2,000 vehicles, a heliport, a shopping mall and a football museum.

“This shows the vulnerability of Brazilian democracy, even as Brazil is trying to build stronger institutions. The FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games are accelerating anti-democratic processes,” Gaffney said.

Dos Santos Jr. said that society has taken the multi-million dollar renovation passively, and that construction of the Maracaná complex “will bring about the destruction of multi-purpose facilities that were used to practise other sports.

“It will only be a space for show and a commercial centre. Athletes in other disciplines will not have a place to train. And the entrance tickets will be too expensive,” he said.

The People’s Committee intends to present its study to public authorities, FIFA, the International Olympic Committee and international organisations such as the United Nations through its Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.

UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov on a visit to the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 10 2013 (IPS)

Tuchinha was once a drug lord in Rio de Janeiro’s Mangueira favela. But today he is helping youngsters in this Brazilian city turn their lives around and leave behind crime, prison and the likelihood of an early death.

Franciso Paulo Testas Monteiro, better known as Tuchinha, climbed to the heights of the criminal world. Because he could read and write – he went to school through the fifth grade – and was good with numbers, he was put in charge of the accounts of one of Rio de Janeiro’s main criminal bands.

He became an almost mythical figure in the world of organised crime as the drug baron of Morro da Mangueira, a violent shantytown where drug traffickers held sway. Half of his life – 25 years – was dedicated to the drug trade.

He had plenty of ready cash, women and other perks. But in his ascent, he paid a high price. He spent a total of 21 years in prison, serving two different sentences, and both he and his family lived with death threats.

Today, at 49, he says he is repentant. “I grew up in Mangueira, I was a leader,” he told IPS. “I had money, women, jewels, but I didn’t have freedom. When I ventured outside my neighbourhood, I had to hide, or else I had to actually leave Rio. If I had had an opportunity to do so, I would have changed my life earlier.”

It was Aug. 5, 2011 when he left drug trafficking behind forever, after he was invited by the local NGO AfroReggae to give workshops to help young people leave behind a life of crime.

“I did many bad things, and gave orders for many others to be committed,” he said. “I paid heavily for it, with my freedom. Today my role is to rescue those who want to leave crime behind, and I am the living proof that a life lived in peace is worth it.”

Tuchinha visits prisons to talk to young inmates, and he helps mediate in conflicts in violent neighbourhoods.

“We want to give the same opportunity I had to people who want to get back on track, abandon crime, and live in peace with their families. Many of them feel hopeless, but I tell them there is hope.”

The former drug boss is an advocate of amnesties for prisoners, so they can have a chance to begin a new life.

He is confident that he will be able to finish school, and hopes to live in a safer city, for the sake of his children.

Tuchinha works to convince young drug dealers and traffickers to join AfroReggae’s “employability” programme. Created in 2008, the programme has so far managed to find jobs for more than 3,100 people.

Daniela Pereira da Silva, 35, spent three years in prison and is now one of the programme coordinators.

“I form part of the statistics on women, which show that most women in prison are there because they had a boyfriend or husband who was a drug trafficker,” she told IPS.

The aim of the programme, she said, is to help ex-convicts enter the labour market. “Demand has been strong, and we’re also open to residents of communities where drug trafficking groups operate, and to relatives of ex-convicts, to boost family incomes and keep them from falling back into crime,” she said.

Tuchinha and Silva formed part of the group of former drug traffickers supported by AfroReggae who met with the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, on his first official visit to Brazil, May 7-9.

The meeting, which was attended by IPS, took place in AfroReggae’s main offices in the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela or shantytown, situated behind the world-famous Ipanema beach.

Pavão-Pavãozinho is one of the favelas “pacified” by the authorities under Rio’s strategy of regaining state control over areas ruled by armed drug gangs, by means of a heavy, permanent police presence combined with increased spending in the areas of health, education, sports and income-generating activities.

Fedotov visited the city to learn first-hand about the social and public security programmes underway in Rio’s favelas. “I came to Brazil to see how successful experiences of combating crime in Rio de Janeiro could be adapted to other places with similar security issues,” he said.

He added that the favela pacification project was apparently working, and said it was the first time he had seen anything like it and he was “very impressed”

“Such initiatives are enormously instructive for UNODC as they can provide a roadmap on how to reintegrate ex-traffickers in an effective and creative way as part of overall crime prevention interventions,” he said.

The Russian diplomat said he could see the changes since he visited Rio 10 years ago. He also expressed his admiration for the people who had the courage to leave behind a life of crime.

Mangueira and Pavão-Pavãozinho are two of the 32 favelas in Rio de Janeiro pacified by the police. The authorities’ goal is to set up a total of 40 police pacification units (UPPs) in the city’s poor neighbourhoods by 2014.

At least one million of the six million people in Rio proper (Greater Rio has a population of 11 million) live in some 750 favelas, a number of which are still ruled by drug gangs.

“Our policy used to be focused on repression, which generated more conflicts and deaths,” the commander of the local UPP, Major Felipe Magalhães dos Reis, said at the meeting in Pavão-Pavãozinho. “The police didn’t tackle the causes of violence, but its effects. Meanwhile, criminals had increasingly powerful weapons.”

The cost of the “war on drugs” was high in terms of loss of life, he acknowledged.

The police say more than 2,000 police were killed between 1991 and 2008, another 10,000 people died in confrontations with the security forces, and 170,000 guns were seized.

“There was no solution in sight, until the idea of creating the UPPs emerged,” Magalhães dos Reis said.

“Social inclusion and community development are essential components in preventing crime,” Fedotov said, adding that the experience could be adapted to other countries, especially the elements of social integration, pacification and alternative means of life.

Brazil is a transport point for the international drug trade. In addition, internal consumption has spiralled and it is now a major market for drugs.

During his visit this week, Fedotov met with government officials to discuss future cooperation, in regional and global associations.

In Brasilia, he told reporters that Brazil was a global actor, and that UNODC was interested in its support and participation in global issues like the fight against transnational organised crime and illegal drugs.