Paulo
Lins
"Cidade de Deus / City of God"
March
4,
2004 |
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In
a wide-ranging talk before a rapt audience that packed
the Geballe Room at Berkeley, Paulo Lins spoke on March
4 about Brazil and his experiences as childhood resident
of the slums, aspiring novelist and accomplished artist,
while also addressing the inequalities and inequities
of Brazilian society that produce the setting for the
acclaimed Cidade de Deus.
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“Cities of God” and
Globalized Violence
By Renata Marson Teixeira de Andrade-Downs
Is the everyday violence portrayed in the Brazilian film City
of God (Cidade de Deus), about a Rio de Janeiro slum wracked
by poverty and drugs, a global or a local phenomena? Indeed,
despite living in different countries, speaking different languages
and having different educational and job opportunities, many
Afro-descendants in the U.S. have much in common with the inhabitants
of Cidade de Deus: both live with juvenile gangs, heavy drug
and arms trafficking and alarming levels of violence. Paulo Lins,
author of City of God, the novel on which the Oscar-nominated
movie was based, insisted that violent local environments reflect
a global, structural violence created by the unequal distribution
of wealth, neoliberal policies, the drug and weapons trade and
racism.
Lins,
himself a native of Cidade de Deus, argued that Brazil’s
urban violence must be viewed in a historical and global context.
Brazil still bears deep scars from racial segregation and socioeconomic
inequality, born out of 300 years of institutionalized slavery
and a hundred years of American and European economic and political
imperialism. According to Lins, these legacies brought unequal
development, high rates of urbanization and the concentration
of wealth in the hands of the Brazilian elite and international
investors. The everyday violence of Cidade de Deus is a result
of this underlying, historically entrenched, structural and political
violence.
There
are several parallels between the author and his City of
God character Busca-pé. Lins, the writer, and Busca-pé,
the photographer, are both redeemed through art. In addition,
both come from the top of the “slum-pyramid,” which
he described as divided into three social layers. “On the
top of the pyramid, one finds people who can continue to keep
their family together and find jobs outside the slum,” such
as Buscapé and Lins. “In the middle of the pyramid,
one can find people with lower pay, who can still keep their
lives organized.” In contrast, Dadinho, the criminal leader
in the novel, comes from “the bottom of the pyramid, where
there are unemployed, alcoholic and drug-addicted people,” striving
to survive their social exclusion.
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An
overflow crowd packs the Geballe Room at
Berkeley. More than 150 faculty, staff and students,
as well as members of the Berkeley community and
the greater Bay Area, listened to Mr. Lins on March
4.
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Lins
insisted on the complexity of social marginalization. In the
favelas (slums), middle- and upper-class necessities
dictate
social meaning for excluded individuals. According to Lins, there
are two kinds of marginalized people: “the unwanted- and
the wanted-excluded.” Although members of these two groups
have different opportunities, both are “excluded” because
very few will gain access to education and better jobs. The wanted-excluded
provide legally sanctioned services as cleaners, bus drivers,
gardeners and dustmen. Unable to find work outside the favela,
the unwanted-excluded fall into organized crime and drug trafficking,
activities which still supply services to the middle- and upper-classes,
albeit illegal ones such as drugs and “safety.”
“If it was not possible to sell drugs, what would drug
dealers do?” Lins asked rhetorically. “Waves of robberies
would roll downhill towards Rio’s middle class neighborhoods.” By
absorbing the “unwanted-excluded,” drug trafficking
helps to avoid increases in other kinds of violence. Lins recalled
an episode in 1995, following the recording of a Michael Jackson
video, when police invaded the Santa Marta favela in Rio. Drug
trafficking was stopped temporarily, but robbery in the surrounding
middle-class neighborhoods increased tenfold. Criminals are not
born, Lins claimed. Rather, they “need to have a mix of
opportunity, vocation and courage.”
Asked
if there is hope for positive social change in Brazil, Lins
called for further incorporation of racial
issues into socioeconomic
policy. This process has already started with the United Nations
Conference on racism, held in Durban in 2001, and the proposal,
in Rio de Janeiro, to set quotas for black students among state
university entrants. It has intensified during the current administration
of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.
Recently Lins has been a consultant to the interministerial group
responsible for the creation and implementation of the Secretaria
Especial de Promoção da Igualdade Racial (Special
Secretariat to Promote Racial Equality). The Bureau is charged
with formulating and overseeing a national policy to fight racial
and ethnic discrimination, a model that can be compared to affirmative
action programs in the U.S.
In
conclusion, Lins described his work as “developing
a socially-engaged art.” In searching for hope, Lins paraphrased
Milton Santos, who portrayed the city as “a primordial
place, full of contradictions.” Lins’ City of
God challenges us all to face many raw contradictions, to create
a better future for the children of the many slums around the
world.
Paulo Lins is the author of the book Cidade
de Deus.
Renata
M. T. Andrade-Downs is a graduate student in the Energy and
Resources Group.
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Paulo
Lins holds the Mario de Andrade Chair in Brazilian
Culture at The Center for Latin American Studies at
UC Berkeley. He is the celebrated author of Cidade
de Deus (City of God), first published in 1997
and recently made into an acclaimed movie of the same
name.
Mr.
Lins book was based on "10 years of research and
30 years of life experience" in the Cidade de
Deus housing project in Rio de Janeiro and is as much
a memoir as a novel.
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