MEDIA

Video Advocacy and Forced Evictions in : An Interview With Tiago Donato Kyle Elizabeth Barron

n February 2011, the municipal government of Rio dia sites and community screenings, and have made footage de Janeiro began demolishing the do Metrô, available to news outlets in order to mobilize activists and Idisplacing almost 1,000 people.1 In its place, residents influence public policy.5 These actions are part of a larger heard, the city would be building a parking garage for the video-advocacy movement that Witness defines as “an in- nearby Maracanã Stadium, an epicenter of both the 2014 tegrated tool in human rights campaigns.”6 Their goal is to World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. The demolition is just blend the context and analysis of traditional media with the one piece of a $450 million redevelopment plan for the area immediacy and ubiquity of citizen journalism in order to surrounding Maracanã. not only document, but prevent, human rights violations. Located on the steep hillsides, the of Rio de Tiago Donato is a journalism student in . ­Janeiro are being targeted for demolition because of their He became involved with the movement against forced prime real estate value and because the people living in evictions in 2010, working with Catalytic Communities these settlements are often impoverished and lack formal and RioOnWatch to conduct video production courses for land rights. Under Brazilian law, these residents should be low-income youth. In 2011, he began to collaborate with compensated for their lost property, but even in the cases in Witness by training community activists how to use video which remuneration or alternative housing is offered, it is to advocate for human rights. The following interview took far from adequate.2 The former residents of Favela do Metrô place June 28. are only a fraction of the more than 8,000 residents who have been evicted across Brazil in preparation for the 2014 Can you elaborate on the background of the forced World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, and the more than ­evictions in Brazil? 150,000 people who face eviction over the next four years to make way for $6 billion worth of new infrastructure and We have a lot of poverty in our city, right where they want redevelopment.3 In Rio, several communities have already to develop new infrastructure. And the main reason the city been demolished.4 is initiating forced evictions now is for the transportation The evictions have sparked a backlash from Brazil- and infrastructure for sporting venues and parking for the ian community groups, social movements, and human Olympics and World Cup. They want to build a shopping rights organizations. Groups such as the New York–based center and a lot of parking around Maracanã Stadium. They ­media-advocacy NGO Witness, the Rio-based Catalytic are also working on building a bus rapid-transit system Communities, and its two-year-old offshoot Rio Olympics where there are a bunch of little favelas, and now the city is Neighborhood Watch (RioOnWatch) are using citizen- evicting everyone so it can finally widen these roads. ­driven media to pressure those in power to act. By gathering There is a long history of marginalizing the people in and disseminating footage from community members, these favelas when it comes to development. Whenever the city organizations have documented the police’s use of excessive wants to build a road, they do it in a favela rather than force during evictions, and the denial of the human right to over middle-class condominiums. That said, Brazil—and housing to thousands of people. They have halted forced Rio de Janeiro in particular—has certain squatter laws that evictions, disseminated dozens of videos through social me- protect people in the favelas, but our government is not upholding them. There are several different ways the city Kyle Barron is a graduate student in comparative politics at New can compensate someone for having to leave their home. York University. She is researching the intersection of politics and It can move them to a new home, but it needs to relocate new media. them within four miles of their original location. Instead,

28 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS VOL. 45, NO. 3 Vik Birkbeck films Francecleide Costa, president of the resident’s association in the Metrô-Mangueira favela, which is being demolished to make way for redevelopment (May 4). Theresa Williamson / Catalytic Communities the city is relocating them 25 to 40 miles away. If the city of Rio called Morro do Pavão—Pavãozinho. She still hasn’t compensates someone monetarily, the amount should be received any kind of compensation from the government, sufficient to acquire a comparable house in the same area, and she is separated from her daughter who is living with but the city is paying much less. other family until Elisângela finds a new home. There is a The government also justifies many housing evictions by lot to tell in that kind of situation, and we aim to do more saying that the areas are at risk of a landslide. We have sent of these types of videos. engineers to certain communities, and they have confirmed Before that, we had other projects that were triggered that the hillsides could be reinforced instead of removing by specific events, such as when the International Olym- the houses. But the government always chooses to clear the pic Committee officials visited Rio de Janeiro in November area, even though it’s less expensive to reinforce the slopes 2011. We documented the work of Antonieta, a former than to compensate the communities for their houses. If resident of the community Campinho, which is now com- you look at the map, almost always, the areas they say are at pletely demolished. She and other activists interrupted an risk of landslides are the locations with the best views in the official Olympic Committee visit to one of Rio’s favelas. communities. You could knock out these communities and They handed out DVDs and pamphlets and talked about build a bunch of restaurants or hotels. forced evictions and how the Olympics are affecting com- munities in Rio. After the video on her protest went vi- How is video advocacy being used against forced ral with about 13,500 views on YouTube, we believe the ­evictions? International Olympic Committee told the government, Look, you have to get your act together because you are About a year ago, Witness came to do work in Rio. They making us look bad. held an eight-day workshop they have conducted around Before that, there had been some really horrible evictions the world—in Mexico, Cambodia, and other countries— in Campinho at the end of 2010. Residents were remov- with residents who are threatened or already removed, and ing their things from inside their homes at night when the other movement activists, to start a video advocacy network government shut down power, so they didn’t have light to in Rio. We have just released our first extensive video proj- work with. One night the crews were bulldozing homes ect that we have been working on for six months, called until one in the morning, even though the law specifically We Are the Legacy: The Story of Elisângela. It is the story of a says evictions cannot go on at night. Another part of the woman who was removed from a community in the south law states that evictions cannot happen in the middle of the

FALL 2012 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 29 school year, but that is exactly what happened to Elisânge- provided the picture, the video, and access to the resident la’s daughter. Their house was torn down and they had to in the video. Their story, in turn, got republished on The move away. Her daughter missed so much school that she Huffington Post. had to drop out for a whole year. The law says you can’t do that, but they are doing it. Now you don’t see that sort of What is your relationship with the mainstream media? thing anymore. The city has kind of gotten its act together and is working more subtly. Catalytic Communities originally created RioOnWatch to serve as a source for traditional journalists to get their in- Has video advocacy been used to stop forced evictions? formation directly from residents and activists. That is the same thing we want to do at Witness. If anyone contacts In the community of Taboinha in late 2010, the police had us from traditional media, we will assist them in writing a fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd of residents report, we’ll give them all the photographs they want. Like who were trying to block the entrance to the community WikiLeaks, we encourage big newspapers to write some- because the government wanted to come in and knock thing about our work rather than limiting ourselves to only down houses. The next day, two video activists went back, posting our work on YouTube. and when they pulled out their cameras, the driver of the bulldozer turned the vehicle off and left. Then the police How is the work that you are doing different from tra- approached and started giving them trouble, asking, “What ditional media? are you doing here? Why are you filming?” The police said they had to hand over their equipment. While this was hap- I have a journalistic background, but video advocacy is dif- pening, some residents arrived with their camera phones. ferent. Take this video we just finished, We Are the Legacy. Just as the video activists had stopped the bulldozer, the ­It took us six months to make. This was an intense learning residents used their camera phones to stop the police from experience for me, because the movie not only needed to interfering with the activists. move but also to inform the audience. It also had to be re- ally solid. We couldn’t have any holes in our story. At the Who are you trying to reach with your advocacy, and same time, I wanted it to be powerful. You need to touch how do you disseminate your work? your audience. You need to move your audience. But you also need to get them to act, with a link at the end of the We work to have a very extensive strategy of dissemina- video that the person can click to learn how to get involved. tion. When each video comes out, we try to already have At Witness they ask, “Why are we making this video? What a screening set up with the City Council, hopefully with do we want our viewers to do at the end of the video? How a member who is connected to the forced-evictions issue will we do that?” That is something that I am still learning. who can help us. Alternatively, we have screenings at state I want to get to people—like my own mother—who are assemblies and other communities. We have screenings part of middle-class families and often have predetermined wherever we can, together with releasing the videos on opinions on the subject of evictions and probably have YouTube and promoting them on . never­ been to a favela. We also use the activist community, which is more likely The Elisângela video is a combination of journalism and to help spread our videos and our work. For example, [the advocacy, and we had to make our story really complete, news agency] A Pública from São Paulo wrote a report on with an emotional narrative. The rest happens outside the our video about Elisângela. They found it on Facebook or video with the website campaign. We don’t expect 100,000 on one of our activist networks, and they published it on people to see every video. Maybe only two people will see the front page of their website as their own story, but we it, but those are two people who can make a difference.

1. Tom Phillips, “Rio World Cup Demolitions Leave 3. Comitê Populares da Copa e das Olympídas, “Ar- 28, 2011,” available at lib.ohchr.org. Favela Families Trapped in Ghost Town,” The ticulação Nacional,” webpage, available at co- 5. Simon Romero, “Slum Dwellers Are Defying Guardian (London), April 26, 2011, available at mitepopulario.wordpress.com; Dossiê da Articu- Brazil’s Grand Design for Olympics,” The New guardian.co.uk; Tom Phillips, “Pushed Aside: lação Nacional dos Comitês Populares da Copa, York Times, March 5, 2012; Sam Faigen, “Media Families Make Way for 2014 World Cup,” The “Megaeventos e Violações de Direitos Humanos Presence Halts Demolitions in Vila Taboinha,” Guardian, April 27, 2011. no Brasil,” 2011, available at comitepopulario RioOnWatch, November 15, 2010, available at 2. Felicity Clarke, “Favelo do Metrô Terrorized .files.wordpress.com. rioonwatch.org. Through Drawn-out Eviction,” RioOnWatch, May 4. Andressa Caldas and Thiago Hoshino, “Universal 6. Witness, “Our Mission,” webpage, available at 9, 21012, available at rioonwatch.org. Periodic Review: June 2012—Brazil, November witness.org.

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