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DO YOU THINK SANTA MARTA IS A MODEL OR POLITICAL PROPAGANDA?
“The community of Santa Marta is now living a new phase, after the occupation of UPP, that is a conquest for all the inhabitants, and whose who dreamt a different community, for all who fought, persevered, hoped for having a free community. We never thought to be a model community, but we all had a dream to became a “better favela”.”
Santa Marta: the complexity of problems
OBSERVING
“As every model it is complicated to define, and as well a model is not compatible with reality. My big preoccupation is about the future of this model: we have such a strong control from the State happening in Santa Marta now, but will it always be as it is now? Is it necessary such a strong control? What will happen with this population? Politics change, but what will happen in 10 years? If we don’t defend our territory now, with its specific aspects and problems, we’ll never have the conditions to define it in the future. So for me this is the biggest problem that we have, we have totally lost the capacity to interfere with politics. Everybody is having particular interests, sometimes really specifics, so we risk to loose the identity of the community.” Then there’s an exaggerate tendency to focus on these problems from the media: I’ve never seen since the ’70’s in television and newspaper from “O Globo”, such a positive attitude to evaluate public politics in favelas, as it’s happening with Santa Marta. If you read Globo, it’s terrific to realise that there are no critics. How can you be against this, when all the media, and so many people are saying that this place is really cool to live? That so many investments have been done? Inhabitants have no instruments to react; there’s a big difficulty to debate with inhabitants about problems, about things that are rights for the community. What in the beginning could have been considered as a model of intervention, respecting diversities and participation, thinking about a favela as an alternative space of living, that was a resistance of inhabitants and so needs to be preserved, has been replaced by a logic that starts from the fact that is not possible anymore to remove favelas”
PIERRE AVILA
ANDRE GONSALVES
ITAMAR SILVA
GLAUCE MAGALHAES
PADRE VALDECI
U P