Wordless Wednesday: Favelas

Brazilians Lose Home for the Sake of the Olmypics

This kind of situation breaks my heart! A favela near Maracana is being destroyed and members of the community removed to make way for buildings for the World Cup and Olympic games. Rumor is that they would like to build a parking garage.

In true form of lack of planning, the city of Rio de Janeiro has been knocking down houses here and there and everywhere. They have essentially made the entire area unlivable without providing proper homes for those they have expelled.

It has been acknowledged that some people may have "slipped through the cracks" of bureaucracy. I'm sorry but I believe that to be an extremely LARGE understatement. It seems more like the members of this community have all been shoved into a hole the size of the Grand Canyon.

Check out the video below posted by the Guardian. Not the best translation nor timing of subtitles but you get the picture. It is very powerful in Portuguese.

The most amazing thing to me is that this can be done in the first place. There is a law here stating that people have the right to the land in which they live if they have lived there for 5 years without being asked to move. Something tells me that said law could be applied to practically all the favelas in Rio.