I was journeying into the Rocinha favela after taking part in a conference in the city of Belo Horizonte, which was organized by the International Association of Religion Journalists. Sampaiosilva’s main warning to the five of us was to never go alone on one of the twisting staircases of the slum.Īt the least we’d get hopelessly lost in the maze. Article content I began having second thoughts about entering the favela after reading about how drug dealers had cut off the head of a former soccer star, to terrorize his police officer wife. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. It’s one of the precious few that actually has a road through it. With 150,000 people, Rocinha is also the biggest favela in Latin America. Sampaiosilva explained the Rocinha favela is one of more than 100 slums that are home to 1.5 million of Rio’s seven million residents. If this charming, informative young woman could go into the Rocinha favela, surely I could. Sampaiosilva had been into Rio’s favelas dozens of times. However, when Caroline Sampaiosilva showed up in the morning with her jeep and driver, I began to feel things may go all right. I read about how Brazilian cops were being hauled into court for torturing some favela crack dealers to death.Īfter a restless night of sleep, I wondered: Was this adventure going to be worth it? I learned favela drug dealers had that week cut off the head of a former Brazilian soccer star and left it on the doorstep of his home - to terrorize his police officer wife. I started to do more research about the many slums perched on Rio’s hillsides. Learning from Latin America’s top religion writersĬharismatic Christians spread ‘exciting’ faith to Canadian immigrantsīut hours after booking my tour into the favela named Rocinha, I began having second thoughts. Next year, Brazil hosts the World Cup of soccer, followed in 2016 by the Summer Olympics. This year, Latin America had one of its own elected Pope an Argentine who is boldly speaking up for the poor in the favelas and elsewhere.Īnd Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic nation, is coming into economic prominence after decades of repression. Once seen as little more than a backwater to North American and European interests, Latin America is finally drawing the world’s attention on its own considerable merit. I wanted to witness Rio’s slums to learn about the increasingly tumultuous mix of crime, suffering, growth and hope in Latin America, where nine out of 10 people are Christian. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.Vancouver Sun Run: Sign up & event info.TL DR: It was a shit show, there were no winners. The triplice alliance came out of this absolutely exhausted and the trauma from the war in the Brazilian society was a deciding factor for the fall of the empire and the declaration of a republic. Most of the male Paraguayan population was dead so plenty of Brazilian soldiers were invited by the Brazilian occupational government to remain in Paraguay and take the women as wives. Paraguay was absolutely decimated by Imperial forces, the Marquis de Caxias (imperial commander) wanted to raze it to the ground and Great Britain had to step in and force the empire to stop. Solano López had something of a god complex and would not surrender no matter what happened (hence women and children) and taking Paraguay become a sluggish nightmare for the Triplice Alliance, Argentina and Uruguay lost half their armies - totalling at upwards of 60k - and withdrew while Brazil lost more than double that in absolute numbers but pressed on. Both nations retaliated and Uruguay also joined the fray. So, Solano López decided to attack both Argentina and Brazil, while they were reorganizing from the Uruguayan war, to expand it's territory. Paraguay, at the time, was becoming something of a local power and desired access to the ocean and to expand their influence, problem is, Paraguay is in the middle of fucking nowhere. As a Brazilian and a Historian I can safely say that this war was a shit show for everyone involved.
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