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Overlooked by Olympic upgrades, Rio’s favelas carve out recreation opportunities where they can

Favelas crowd a hillside as seen through the Olympic rings at the archery center in Rio de Janeiro.
(Paul Gilham / Getty Images)
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Atop a steep mountain overlooking Brazil’s most renowned beaches, a dozen local boys play a game of indoor soccer in the city’s largest favela.

They play without shoes, kicking the ball with a force that would leave bruises on less-weathered feet. They slide and dive, not caring that the concrete pavement is unforgiving to kneecaps and hip bones.

In Rocinha — a sprawling slum that is home to more than 100,000 people — futebol-obsessed children can’t be picky about where they play. They simply don’t have options.

Brazil has spent about $12 billion in public and private money to host South America’s first Olympic Games, building several new athletic facilities. Yet, its poorest communities still struggle to provide even the most basic recreation opportunities for their residents.

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Despite Rocinha’s large population, it has just four places to play soccer.

The most popular spot is the Academicos da Rocinha, a converted samba school with an indoor field about the size of an elementary school basketball court. Smelling of urine and sweat, the dusty building is in constant use by both children and adults for organized leagues and pick-up games.

The favela has even fewer outdoor play areas for children, though there are hopes to build the first American-style playground in the coming months.

Until then, Rocinha, like the more than 1,000 other favelas in the Cidade Maravilhosa, must endure with the barest of resources, much as it has for the past century. Its children still will be left to play on rooftops, in narrow streets as cars and motorcycles zip past or in alleys — one of which has an open sewer running through it.

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Rio indeed may serve as the world’s grandest playground this summer, but Rocinha’s residents do not expect to see many rewards.

“There will be no benefits for Rocinha,” said Alex Elias, a 34-year-old motorcycle taxi driver who has spent his entire life living and working in the favela. “There’s nothing for the people who live here.”

It’s against this backdrop the International Center for Research and Policy on Childhood has worked to build spaces where the favela’s children can safely gather. CIESPI, as the organization is known here, has led the effort to build the first official playground in the community, which is home to an estimated 17,000 children under age 8.

“Rocinha basically has no outside area for children to play,” says Malcolm Bush, a social scientist from Chicago who serves as a senior advisor at CIESPI. “There are some pick-up ... soccer places, but you can have drug traffickers with AK-47s over their shoulders watching on.”

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With a combined population of about 1.5 million people, Rio’s sprawling slums began appearing in the late 19th century after slavery was abolished and darker-skinned Brazilians migrated to cities in search of work. Ex-slaves and soldiers settled in Rio’s hillsides, where they built low-level, high-density shanty towns that received little or no government oversight.

Favelas grew throughout the 20th century, blanketing Rio’s mountains to the point that it now can be difficult to tell where one begins and another ends. Caught in a violent power struggle between drug traffickers and police, the communities, like much of the city, have struggled with crime and allegations of police brutality amid Brazil’s economic and political turmoil.

The informal growth of these sprawling communities meant there was no government oversight to ensure open spaces in their development. If given the choice between creating a park or building a house, residents naturally chose to shelter their families.

Still, parents have long lamented the lack of recreation space throughout the city’s expansive favela network, experts say. Without places to play, the children are left to hang out in the streets where they can more easily fall under the influence of local gangs.

“A lot of parents see the lack of recreational opportunities as a major threat to the safety of their children,” said Benjamin Penglase, an anthropology professor at Loyola University in Chicago, who studied Rio’s favelas for nearly 25 years.

The Olympics – even with the $7.5 billion the government has spent on so-called legacy project such as an overhauled transportation system – will do little to reduce that threat in Rocinha.

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The national Olympic committee has donated some sports equipment and uniforms to the favela’s local multisports center, residents say. And a few Brazilian Olympians made an appearance in the favela to stoke excitement about the competition.

The Brazilian government contends all residents will benefit from the new Olympic venues, though many of the new facilities were built in Rio’s tonier neighborhoods. For example, the golf course, which will become public after the competition with the hope of promoting the sport here, is located in Barra da Tijuca, a beachfront neighborhood that’s home to some of the city’s wealthiest citizens.

But Madureira Park in the city’s north zone and the slalom whitewater course in the disadvantaged Deodoro neighborhood could prove the exceptions. Organizers made improvements to the park, located in one of the city’s poorer areas, in an effort to benefit all residents. And in Deodoro, residents began swimming in the slalom venue last November, prompting organizers to incorporate a public pool there once the Games are over. It will become part of an X-Park, which will also include BMX and mountain bike tracks, a skating rink and barbecue areas.

“It is a lovely story,” said Carlos Nuzman, president of the Rio 2016 organizing committee. “Some of the venues can make a difference. It is the poorest region of the city. If they want to go to the beach it is almost impossible; they have no money to take the bus. But now with this, you can open it up and organize both the sport and give the people the opportunity to use the facilities.”

Rocinha is located more than 25 miles from Deodoro. And though residents should see an improved public transportation system, there are no new athletic venues within an easy distance.

Researchers also have cast doubts about the Olympics’ long-term benefits for the favelas, citing the failure of the 2007 Pan-American Games to increase recreation opportunities. None of the four major venues constructed for the multisport competition are currently being used by the broader population, in part because the public isn’t aware of their general usage, according to research led by Arianne C. Reis, a professor at Southern Cross University in Australia.

“The reason for this, according to participants, was the lack of long-term planning and policies to encourage and promote sport participation,” the researchers wrote.

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Without a public policy shift, Rocinha residents and local advocacy groups largely will be left to their own ingenuity.

In Laboriaux, an area in the favela’s peak, residents last month created a public plaza, complete with makeshift play spaces, a vegetable garden and a whitewashed wall where movies are projected on Sunday nights. Organized by the local neighborhood association, CIESPI and other advocacy groups, the park was built on a site where private houses once stood.

After the hillside homes had been declared a safety risk and demolished, the community claimed the property for common use. Without the fancy equipment or niceties found in American parks, the residents worked with what they had. Old tires were painted light green and nailed to the side of a fence to create a climbing wall, wooden pallets were turned into benches and old refrigerators were painted Pepto-Bismol pink and stocked with books to become a library.

“Residents in the favelas have always relied upon their own creativity,” Penglase said. “But that can only go so far and last so long.”

sstclair@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @stacystclair

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