As I step aboard flight TAP181, I’m starting my journey back to Rio de Janeiro, to rediscover the country where I grew up.
The plane half fills and within twenty minutes it takes off and veers out to the west, high into the luminous blue sky, over the cold north Atlantic. As the minutes pass, it leaves behind the long white beaches and green hills of northern Portugal and southern Galicia, which I know so well and which I’m bound to miss. The ocean below is unusually calm, with fishing boats several kilometers out from the ports, catching sardines in the open seas, something so typically Portuguese.
Over the next ten hours, I try in vain to nap and catch up on sleep, but the excitement is too much. My mind is alive with thoughts of being back in Rio and the start of this new phase in my life. So instead, I fill my time chatting in Portuguese to the friendly crew at the back of the cabin, listening to Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso- two Bossa Nova idols from the 70s, and watching Avatar, with its tropical jungles, wild scenery and violent struggles. All so fitting, I think, to what would lie ahead.
The plane follows the path of the first Portuguese explorers and subsequent emigrants, across the Atlantic. First, it passes between the Portuguese archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores. Then it rounds the hump of Northwest Africa, before finally traversing the Atlantic and crossing the equator a few hours later, hitting the Brazilian coast at Fortaleza. Here, as we begin to fly over land, cumulonimbus clouds mushroom up far below the plane, causing it to jolt through areas of turbulence, as it keeps on its southerly course.
But Brazil is huge, larger than the continental US, and it will be another three hours before we reach Rio. In the meantime, I keep looking out of my window, watching in interest as the landscapes of the interior of Brazil change over time- first, the khaki-coloured arid northeast, then the green hills, villages and iron-oxide dirt roads of the state of Bahia, then patches of light green pastures on crumpled foothills below rainforest-covered massifs. This looks like the mountains of Rio state, inland from Rio, to where we used to escape in the hot summers. At this point, we begin our descent. We leave the beautiful mountains behind and swoop down over the coastal plain behind Guanabara Bay. Last, we're skimming over the expanse of shambolic concrete shanty towns and industrial areas of the northern suburbs, out by the airport. From my window just before we land, I catch a glimpse of Rio’s world-renowned Corcovado and Sugar Loaf mountains in the distance, along with the high-rises behind Botafogo and Copacabana beaches, all of which, and for all their fame, take up a miniscule corner of this huge country.
Rio airport hasn’t changed or been renovated, since my family left Brazil back in 1984. So it’s quite shabby now and the carousel slowly creaks around as I wait (with young returnee emigrants, tall volleyball-players and bleary-eyed tourists) for my rather unimpressive weather-beaten rucksack.
I’m happy when I get past the passport control lady. There’s no questioning about why my military service exemption papers are out of date (I left it too late to get them stamped at the consulate!), thus avoiding a fine and potential hassle. Out in the arrivals area, there are five taxi kiosks, each with a woman inside, calling me over. I’ve never been so popular. I take the safe option and book what I feel is a rather expensive taxi (100 Reais, the equivalent of €40). I'm none the wiser though at this stage, and the alternative would have been to haggle outside with an unofficial taxi, potentially (and embarassingly!) getting ripped off on day one.
The first couple of kilometers leaving the airport are pleasant, as they always were. There’s little traffic on the modern avenue, bordered by golf-like lawns, tall palms and acacia trees, with Guanabara Bay and the Sugar Loaf off to the left. I start chatting to Carlinhos, the clean-cut twenty-something taxi driver.
Soon after, the reality of poverty-stricken urban Brazil hits and the memories of chaotic and unsightly Avenida Brasil come flooding back. The taxi ends up creeping along, through congested traffic, and tries to meander between herds of belching buses, carrying patient-looking working-class Brazilians to work. At the side of the road, graffiti is on virtually every building. At least the spray-canners don't seem to discriminate. Whether the building is garish pistachio, dirty white, orange bare brick or grey concrete, it gets sprayed. As we continue our crawl, there’s plenty of interesting street life to watch. Loud samba music blares out from megaphones outside busy bars, competing with honking horns. Teenagers in flip-flops walk on crumbling pavements, joking as they go, avoiding the occasional dog and puddle. Mechanics in monkey-suits lean against the wall of a garage, watching traffic and women go by. Beyond all of this, up the hill, rises the Complexo do Alemão, one of Rio’s roughest favelas.
As Carlinhos tells me, the police haven’t pacified this area yet, so it’s still plagued by armed gangs who wield power over its inhabitants. Shootings are frequent and life is apparently made a misery for those who live there.
Further along, we get on to the Linha Amarela (Yellow Line), a highway built since we left, that passes around the back of the hills of Rio to the beaches of Barra, down the coast. An armed police van screeches by, with several machine guns jutting out of windows, followed soon after by another car, marked as being that of the homicide police. Carlinhos tut tuts repeatedly and, at the end of his tut tutting, sighs one word- Jesús (which in Portuguese sounds softer and less blasphemic than in English!).
Further on, the extensive favelas can be seen for miles below and around us. Carlinhos points out a steep landslide-afflicted hill, which has been cleared of its shacks by the local government. Close by, a row of five-storey council apartment blocks, painted green, have been built to replace them. This sort of thing wasn’t happening when we lived in Brazil, so I'm quite impressed that the favelas are finally being given some attention by the local government and I imagine the families who have moved are pretty happy to have gone from shacks on unstable ground to decent housing.
When a favela gets pacified, the first thing that happens is that the army-like BOPE Police move in. Founded in 1978, they’re a unit of the Rio police, specially trained for urban combat. As their name suggests, the Batallion of Special Police Operations are more akin to an army unit than a regular police force. They go in to the favela armed with full protective gear, helmets, machine guns, grenades and heavily-armoured vans, which can carry up to 12 men. Part of their ensign is the skull and, despite their dark blue uniforms, Carlinhos says they are known as the black army. The armed drugs gangs have no chance against them, he says. It would be suicide to try to fight. So, either they flee the favela or give up their weapons and drugs trade and surrender (to be imprisoned and then hopefully reintegrated back into society). It’s all shown in the Tropa de Elite film.
The pacification of Rio’s favelas has been quite a success. Starting with the areas close to the Zona Sul, Rio’s wealthy coastal stretch, including Copacabana and Ipanema, whole areas are returning to normal life, with a huge reduction in violent crime, both in the favelas themselves and in adjacent wealthy neighbourhoods (and crucially, to help Rio avoid further bad press internationally, also in the touristy areas). A small team of the BOPE stays in the re-conquered favela, and gradually the city government builds schools and sheltered housing, just like the ones mentioned, puts in sanitation and brings in social and education programs.
Through the tunnels, out of the hills and onto the coastal plain, we pass the Cidade de Deus (City of God) favela. A movie of the same name was made, which I watched several years ago in Europe, showing the horrors of armed gangs of children involved in the drugs trade. That was based on the situation back in the 1970s, but Cidade de Deus has been fine for many years- it was one of the first favelas to be pacified.
We're now into a more American-looking sort of place and the final stretch is past the sprawling shopping malls and high residential apartment blocks of Barra. We get to my friends’ apartment an hour after leaving the airport.
Carlinhos and I say goodbye, joking between us that he would be a great tour guide, and I go over to check with a smiling porter, in his crisp white shirt, whether this is where Anouk and Ricardo live (and whether they’ve left me the key to the apartment, as agreed last-minute by email!). As I enquire, Carlinhos comes running over with my jacket and newspaper which I had left on the back seat. As he sees my surprised and relieved reaction, he says "here you go friend", gives a smile, pat on the back and trots back to his taxi holding up his thumb in the air and still smiling. Such a simple human touch and it feels great to be back in positive and happy Brazil!
