Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

To expel the French, who were allied with the Indians, the Governor-General of Bahia sent his nephew, Estácio de Sá, to the south. In the battle that gave the Portuguese victory over the French, Estácio, “a boy of gentle presence,” was killed by an arrow in the face, but he became the lay-patron of the city he had founded on “Dog Face Hill,” at the foot of the Sugar Loaf. For reasons of defense, the town moved across the bay to the Morro do Castelo (Fortress Hill), and it was there that the old colonial city grew up. Although still outlined by the oldest of Rio’s churches, the Charity hospital, the Arsenal, etc. — the morro, or hill, itself was removed during the first Centenary of Independence, 1922—one of those amazing land-moving and scene-shifting operations that are so characteristic of the city and so surprising to visitors. “What has happened to Rio?” the Brazilian Carioca who has been away for two or three years always asks sadly — one who had been away for twelve years had to buy the latest map of the city before he could find his way around in his home town again.

The topography of Rio is fantastically beautiful, but sadly unsuited to any geometric mathematical-minded city-planning. The city has spread out and penetrated like the fingers of a hand between the towering peaks of granite and the steep hills, which were left uninhabited until the fairly recent (about twenty years or so) growth of the notorious favelas, or slums. Although poor people had always lived on the morros it is only during the last twenty years or so that they have become covered with shacks, mostly inhabited by immigrants from the north and northeast. It is estimated that one million of Rio’s three million inhabitants now live in these slums, creating the worst of the city’s many problems. Although life in the favelas would seem to offer nothing at all, except superior views and breezes, to the poor who come to them, nevertheless — as soon as a housing project removes a thousand or so people to better quarters, the same number stream into the city and fill up the old ones. Such are the attractions of city-life, even at its worst, as compared with the same poverty, plus boredom and isolation, of life in small towns in the interior. In the city there are the lights, there is radio and television (it is surprising how many aerials for both appear above these shacks), the futebol, the lotteries, the constant excitement and a sense of participation, even if on the lowest level, in the life of a great city, to offset the misery, the standing in line for water, & the frequent visits of the police.

Rio is a city of surprises. Right at the end of its Fifth Avenue, Avenida do Barão de Rio Branco, looms up a gigantic ocean liner. A dead-end street turns into an endless flight of steep steps. Since because of its peculiar physiognomy there is, or was usually, only one way to get to any one place, tunnels have been put through in all directions, or deep cuts right through the granite mountains. Upper-class dwellers in upper floors of apartment houses often look straight into favelas only a few yards away and are awakened by roosters crowing, at the level of the 10th floor, or babies not their own crying. One story, told as true, illustrates the intimacy of this chaotic mixture. A couple returning to their 8th-floor apartment at night heard a terrific bumping and crashing going on inside and thought “Burglars!” But when the door was opened a panic-stricken horse was found inside. So close are the protrusions of rock and earth to the buildings that he had managed to fall from his minute pasture on one straight onto their terrace — and it is perfectly possible.

Between the exuberant outcroppings of rocks and mountains on one hand, and the marshes and mangrove-swamps on the other, Rio developed as a huge city, but an isolated one, and its problems of transportation have always been very difficult. There is one highway leading from it into the interior; the main streets and avenues either wind between the mountains or are built on filled-in land along the bay. Almost all the old squares and plazas were originally lagoons or mangrove-swamps. The city could not expand along the coast because the marshes were uninhabitable because of the malarial mosquito. Now, however, modern sanitation has changed all this and enormous suburbs have spread out over the former swamps.

When the Portuguese court arrived in 1808, the capital was still only a dirty colonial village. The new arrivals quickly solved the housing-problem in a summary way: the King’s quarter-masters requisitioned all the best houses for the members of the court. A bailiff merely painted on the door the letters P and R (Prince Royal). The Cariocas translated the letters in their own way as Ponha-se na Rua —“Get out in the street,”—and that was that.

The city made rapid progress under the Empire, but the biggest period of growth came after the consolidation of the Republic. In the euphoric days before the First World War it took on its present appearance. The mayors of that period destroyed many ancient alley-ways and streets (and unfortunately along with them many priceless fountains and old buildings), flattened out hills, filled in stretches of the bay, and opened up the avenues. They built the long line of quais and handsome warehouses where the black stevedores work in their ragged shorts and straw hats. The Copacabana section grew from almost deserted beaches to be the overpopulated, apartment-house crowded “south zone.” The cable cars to the top of the Sugar Loaf date from this period, as does the little funicular railway that ascends the Corcovado (hunchback) mountain. The 100-foot-tall figure of Christ the Redeemer was placed on top of Corcovado in 1931.

What will become of Rio now that the capital has been changed to Brasília? Opinions vary. The pessimists prophecy poverty and decay; at best Rio will turn into an immense Ouro Prêto, living on the memories of the past. At the other extreme, the optimists believe that the city, rid of the excess population it has attracted as the capital of the country, will actually improve. Without the thousands of government workers, bureaucrats, and people from the “provinces,” they say that Rio will begin to function better than it does at present. Its position as the best-loved of Brazilian cities, the cultural capital of the country, the natural gaiety of the Cariocas, Carnival, the beaches — all its charms and advantages remain unchanged in spite of dire financial straits, lack of water, and all the rest of it. Rio gives no signs of realizing that it is no longer the capital. Although the capital has been in Brasília for almost two years, the greater part of the government remains still in Rio, and it is far easier to find a Deputado, or a Judge of the Supreme Court, in Rio than in his official place of residence.

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Today, Brasília is looked on with great disfavour by many people, and not without some very good reasons. However, long before President Kubitschek began the construction of the new capital, the change from Rio to the Central Plateau had been a Brazilian dream, a sort of exodus for the land of Canaan, promised since colonial days, that would solve all the country’s problems as if by magic. A capital in the interior would be a romantic repetition of the marches of the bandeirantes through the wildernesses, bringing civilization to the remotest areas and even as far as the western frontier. It was the myth of the city of gold, with the possibilites of providing wealth and opportunity for all.

José Bonifácio, the adviser to Pedro I (patriarch of independence), also dreamed of this capital in the hinterland; he may even be responsible for the name of “Brasília.” In the middle of the 19th century, the Brazilian historian Varnhagen argued for a capital which would be at the meeting point of the principal drainage systems of Brazil — from the Amazon, the Paraná, and the São Francisco Rivers — more or less the actual location of Brasília. And the first constitution under the Republic, influenced by the Positivists, included the marking out of a quadrilateral in the geographical heart of Brazil, where the future Federal District was to be situated. After the Vargas dictatorship ended in 1945, the new constitution insisted on a new capital in Goiás, and ordered a commission to prepare for the change. Every political candidate looking for popularity, every opportunistic journalist, spoke against the “crabs” who wanted to cling to the coastal regions and ignore the fertile interior. “The march to the west” had always been a Brazilian national aspiration.