Going underground

I’ve been to the States a few times and have just come back from Europe, where I visited several west-bank countries. When it comes to public facilities and conservation, comparing Brazil to these countries is like throwing a rat in a snake pit. No competition.

But one thing that actually surprised me was the fact that here, in Rio de Janeiro, we do have a much more well preserved subway than Paris, London, Lisbon or Madrid. I’m not talking about the quantity of lines or their length, nor electronic devices available in these first-world subway systems. I’m just referring to cleanliness.

It may seem a little unnecessary to write about this, but I saw in this comparison an interesting subject to be analysed.

Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil and the main tourist port of the country. But the city is a huge mess. As a native, I feel around every corner the lack of public conservation and care. Sometimes I feel there’s no State looking for us. But when I go underground, it’s like a new world.

Here, and I imagine in the rest of the world also, subways are used mainly by lower classes men and women. People that live far from the city centre, sometimes in favelas (slums, ghettos), and have little school education. In rush hours, subways get packed with workers, and people travel inside the trains like they were matches in a box. A true chaotic scenario.

But once the storm passes by, you can easily see that there’s no consequences left behind. No trash on the floor, no windows or benches broken, no bad smells, no graffiti. This last item specially was the one that surely popped in my eyes when I traveled first-world subways. In Paris and in New York, I’ve seen graffiti not only on the station’s walls, but on the trains bodies!

That surely is something that I can’t understand. I’m not saying here that brazilians are concerned about keeping everything clean, because sadly, we aren’t. As I said, it just take a simple walk on the streets and dirt will come around sometime. But the metro seems like an outsider. Something that crosses under a city that has nothing to do with it.

Some may say that our subway system is public service run by a private company, but that’s no demerit for saying in a loud voice: we have a clean subway. The same partnership between government and private happens with our bus system, but the vehicles and drivers are terrible, and I’ve already seen cockroaches inside.

It’s hard to find a reason for this subway-care-phenomena. Maybe it’s because the system is new (opened in1979) and was a huge improvement in people’s lives; maybe because it’s a very, very popular mass transit system that works fine, unlike buses. Or, the reason could be simple: rich or poor, people can treat well things that are public and useful to them. Too bad this last sentence can’t be said when it comes to the aboveground city.

Born in the R.I.O.

Brazil is living its days of mayor’s campaigns throughout every of it’s cities. It certainly is a madness. Street signs with propaganda everywhere, television, radio and Internet announcements, cars with speakerphones at maximum volume cruising the streets, pamphlets given at every corner, wow! Campaigns are set-off and nothing can stop them.

As usual within an electoral moment, candidates try to sell their fish talking about many subjects as possible. Tons of (sorry about the following word) bullshit are being spoken. Sometimes, just sometimes, a few discussions that really matter are held. One of them is abortion.

Well, there is one candidate in particular here in Rio de Janeiro, a lady who is a doctor and mother of two, the only woman running for mayor in this city, that rises the flag of turning abortion into an legal act. I believe she’s the only candidate that has already spoken openly about abortion so far. But she’s not lonely. Our actual governor has already said a few words before the electoral period, some of them quite controversial, defending the legalization of abortion.

When the subject hit the streets, many opinions around it were formed. As you may know, despite Brazil’s unbelievable beauty of it’s land and people, we have a lot of poverty around. Favelas, which may be translated as slums, dominate a major part of Rio de Janeiro’s hills and other cities around the country. As the icon of poverty, they were the first to be remembered as a reason to make abortion legal.

The main idea is: by making abortion legal, poor women will be able to choose safely if they can or cannot raise their children. People who think this is right usually says that nowadays, even with the law punishing abortive acts, many procedures of this type are being made “under the sheets”, which submits the mother to several clandestine clinics with no proper equipment and cleanliness. Also, poor families are obligated to raise several kids at once, even though sometimes they don’t want that. And by “poor families” we must think the mother with kids, or the mother and grandmother with kids, because its a common fact that fathers usually don’t recognize their babies and run away from home, leaving many sadness and difficulties behind.

The cons say that life should be preserved no matter what, and that we, humans, are not able to tell when a person should live or die.

An obvious fact is the fast growing of favelas in Brazil, and something must be made. But, is turning abortion legal an effective way? Maybe, or maybe not. I believe that the success of public policies depend on how they are implanted and based on the proper interests _ in other words, the interest of the people, not only for the rich or for the poor, but for both.

You may feel curious to see a favela. Just look for “Rocinha” in google images. That’s the largest favela in the country, located here at Rio de Janeiro.