Remember that a lot of people, especially online, especially on Reddit, even here in the neoliberal sub, see favelas and say stuff like, ‘Actually I think it looks very nice. It’s very walkable and they have a strong sense of community. They live a simpler life and prove you don’t need money to be happy (granted that last part nobody has ever said on neoliberal, posters here like to rub themselves raw over how wonderfully dense favellas are, the actual loving conditions in them be damned, if you want a decent quality of life you should be able to pay for it, yada yada.)
They’ve never heard a tiroteio in their life. They’ve never seen kids who got their forearm melted off from a downed puxadinho. They’ve never had to hear someone talk about losing family members after a particularly bad rainstorm on a morro caused a bunch of ragtag houses built without foundations to collapse on top of each other like dominoes. They’ve never seen a 9 year old out standing out at a curb at 10 o’clock at night barefoot and selling candy. They’ve never heard of a 10 year old slicing another 10 year olds throat.
Don’t bother. Don’t waste your time. People around the world only want to imagine grinning samba dancers. They want to imagine the cute pastel colored favelas from the kids movie Rio. They don’t want to stop and actually think about what life inside the favelas actually is like.
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To every Brasilian reading this:
Remember that a lot of people, especially online, especially on Reddit, even here in the neoliberal sub, see favelas and say stuff like, ‘Actually I think it looks very nice. It’s very walkable and they have a strong sense of community. They live a simpler life and prove you don’t need money to be happy (granted that last part nobody has ever said on neoliberal, posters here like to rub themselves raw over how wonderfully dense favellas are, the actual loving conditions in them be damned, if you want a decent quality of life you should be able to pay for it, yada yada.)
They’ve never heard a tiroteio in their life. They’ve never seen kids who got their forearm melted off from a downed puxadinho. They’ve never had to hear someone talk about losing family members after a particularly bad rainstorm on a morro caused a bunch of ragtag houses built without foundations to collapse on top of each other like dominoes. They’ve never seen a 9 year old out standing out at a curb at 10 o’clock at night barefoot and selling candy. They’ve never heard of a 10 year old slicing another 10 year olds throat.
Don’t bother. Don’t waste your time. People around the world only want to imagine grinning samba dancers. They want to imagine the cute pastel colored favelas from the kids movie Rio. They don’t want to stop and actually think about what life inside the favelas actually is like.