Prime real estate?

Last week I did what a lot of ex-pats end up doing for money, and went to a casting for an advert. Foreign-looking types are in demand, even in Rio, where almost anybody could pass as a native Brazilian. I went with Lars, a German property developer who possesses the white blonde hair and crystal blue eyes of unmistakable Gringo genes.

Don't think I got the role (as a tourist coming to Brazil for the first time), mainly due to my diabolical acting skills, but now I'm on their books it could be another way to make some money.

Lars was telling me that efforts to clear away some of the favelas, at least in the Zona Sul close to the tourist attractions of Copacabana and Ipanema, will eventually lead to that land becoming prime real estate. On first arriving in Rio, especially at night as I did, it's difficult not to imagine the twinkling lights on all the hills as belonging to the kind of idyllic villages that populate the mountains of, say, Amalfi. Now I`ve been up there myself a few times, I can confirm they've got some of the best views.

This process of sanitation, starting with the police occupation (which as far as I can establish only extends as far as the visible spots in Zona Sul), also perhaps inevitably extends to the language. I was informed by one resident not to use the word "favela", because this has derogatory connotations. Instead, we must say "comunidade", which means community. As often happens in these cases, the choice of an apparently neutral word has itself become tainted. Another friend told me about a friend of his from the countryside who had formally used the phrase "rural community" to explain where he lived, but was now at great pains to point out he doesn't like in thatkind of comunidade.

It is unclear in the long-term what the "solution" will be to the favela situation, and even if one is actually needed. Sociologist Janice Perlman, in four decades of studying the favelas of Rio, discovered far greater social mobility than generally supposed, as well as the often overlooked necessity for people with low-income jobs to live near their work in order for the city to continue to function. The Indian approach of building vast housing blocks at a distance from the city seems depressingly inevitable but likely to cause problems for those workers and the city as a whole.

Their presence stuck out to me at first, but now it seems to tie in with the rest of my experience here. To do things the "proper" way is so difficult, expensive and impossible for most people, they find their own jeito, or way, whether that be building your own house on a landslide-prone hill or paying someone to get you the right papers. Somehow it all trundles along, not the way it is supposed to, and not without problems of course.