Rio community climbs out of slums

Rio community climbs out of slums
REUTERS

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, FEB 20: Brazil's biggest shanty town, Rocinha, has seen its fair share of drug wars and police occupations over the years, but this month it is gearing up for a new kind of invasion -- from college students.

A blossoming working class has already lured three banks,two lending agencies and even a McDonald's and a glass-fronted mobile phone store to the 200,000-strong hilltop Rio slum.

And this month the winding streets and bustling shops aredue to receive another stamp of legitimacy when the Estacio de Sa university opens the doors on a Rocinha campus in a neighborhood still marred by open sewage and the odd shootout.

"We carried out a study to see where students at ourexisting campuses live, to see where we could expand, and Rocinha kept coming up on the radar screen," university marketing director Marcelo Campos said.

"Rocinha has always been THE favela, but a lot of residentshave completed high school there, showing that every day it is more and more a neighborhood," he said.

In fact, Rocinha, long considered Latin America's biggestshantytown or favela, was officially named a neighborhood in 1992, meaning residents got property titles and public services such as garbage pickup and mass transit from the city.

But most of Rio's 10 million residents still think ofRocinha as one of the city's hundreds of favelas -- precarious shantytowns where neither sewage nor drinking water are guaranteed. One in five Rio residents live in these slums, paralyzed by poverty and drug gang warfare, while the rest of the city refuses to go there.

DRUG TRAFFICKING AND TOURIST HOTSPOTS

Just last month, Rio police occupied Rocinha to preventretaliation after the local drug lord was killed in prison. Some residents who still view the drug bosses as Robin Hood figures hung black mourning banners out their windows.

Ironically, it is Rocinha's favela fame, combined with adeclining crime rate, that has made it a popular stop on the tourist trail. Five-star hotels offer guided tours of the winding streets in safari-style jeeps.

Still, Rocinha has struggled to free itself of the favelaimage. A mix of community activism and government measures has transformed the cobbled-together community of immigrants from Brazil's northeast into a busy working class neighborhood that is almost a city unto itself.

Estacio de Sa's campus will provide another symbol of thedeep changes gripping Rocinha. In its first term, 300 students passed entrance exams and will start majors in everything from pedagogy to business administration to systems analysis.

By the second semester, the university plans to open anextension campus at the other end of Rocinha and within three years it hopes to be giving classes to 3,000 people in Rocinha. Estacio de Sa will adapt to the Financial limitations of many Rocinha residents by offering undergraduate courses at discounts of more than 50 percent and by providing professional training in less academic careers such as hairdressing and child care.

The university is renting classrooms from the communitySports center, which served as a hillside country club for Rio's rich and famous before it was expropriated by Rocinha.

But university officials still have to overcome resistancefrom surrounding neighborhoods worried about the increase in traffic and zoning problems.

WILL RIO'S WEALTHY CLIMB THE HILL?

Rocinha hopes the campus will finally convince its wealthyneighbors to "climb the hill," lured by the cheaper prices of undergraduate courses at the branch of a university that has already established a reputation in the city.

Rocinha's brick-and-cement homes, looking like matchboxes,have a privileged position overlooking the ocean and swank apartments in Ipanema and Sao Conrado beaches.

"We want people to see that we are just like they are. Wehave stores and families and a community that we have fought hardfor," said Paulo Cesar Martins, known as "Amendoim" or "Peanut," the President of Rocinha's residents' association.

But on the streets of Rocinha, people say the fight is farfrom over.

"Rocinha isn'T like other shantytowns that are ruled bygangs but it isn'T a full-fledged neighborhood either," said taxi driver Antonio Vale de Souza, 31, whose younger brother is a drug addict. "Community leaders have made sure that there are other options to drug gangs, but they still have a strong influence."

He and many others hope the new university will help provideoptions for a community that desperately wants to abandon its favela trappings.

"I've already signed up for law school," Souza said. "Itried going to university before but the money kept running out. Hopefully with these prices and the proximity of the school, I can make it through."