Rio de Janeiro, it is said that God spent 6 days creating the world, and on the seventh day, He created Rio de Janeiro. People of all colors and races gathered, extreme luxury and excessive poverty mixed together, demonstrations and carnivals collided together, as its name "Extraordinary City", Brazilians created Rio de Janeiro with samba, their footsteps have not stopped, rio has also shown the world its true self in the process of conquering the world.
Heaven and hell are the AB sides of the city, and the city that God spent a whole day building is not so simple, where is her charm? Where are her scars? Travel through the limitations of time and space, explore this unique world from the text, and take a true Rio adventure.
Urban flair
Brazil's annual carnival attracts the attention of the whole world, as the largest festival in Brazil and the largest carnival in the world, especially known for its unrestrained, millions of people at home and abroad participate in carnival parties, and the most prestigious is the Rio de Janeiro Carnival, which is the most fascinating place.
This is due to the fact that the locals do not want carnivals to be eroded by capital, so they maintain the most traditional customs and show the truest carnival spirit in Brazil with authentic performances.
During the festival, regardless of the men, women and children all out, everyone has no status of high and low, everyone takes to the streets to dance, use body language to vent the pressure of life, samba parade means that the atmosphere of the whole carnival reaches its peak, "king" and "queen" ride gorgeous large floats through the city, surrounded by many handsome men and women, Latin women wearing bikinis or even upper body nude, specially showing the beautiful figure that makes people breathe fire, male dancers use the most unrestrained dance posture to pull the atmosphere to the highest place, It is difficult for tourists to refuse to fall into this atmosphere, everyone unconsciously joins the parade, from morning to night there is no concept of time, this is the true meaning of carnival.
In Brazil, no one can not samba, this is a portrayal of the Brazilian spirit, many years ago samba from Africa introduced brazil, get the Latin American obsession, gorgeous costumes and unrestrained dance posture is to make people intoxicated, and the Portuguese brought carnival, Brazilians will combine the two, in the carnival samba, watch samba become an indispensable part of the life of all Brazilians.
Rio de Janeiro is the "City of Carnival", the most attractive thing is the samba makeup parade, more than 150,000 actors are present at the same time, experience a full 5 nights, every night is the beginning of the carnival, people crowded in the streets to see the beauty of samba.
If you want to see it, there are many samba clubs in the city that offer performances so that people can enjoy this dance all the time.
Carnivals generally last three days, people dress up in various roles, mostly men and women, and people use paint to dirty themselves and dress up as Indians or rogues, and another climax of the carnival is the costume competition.
Bards of the Middle Ages, even the archbishops of the Church of Rome, appeared, and behind these roles was the core of the procession, the Samba School Parade.
This mix of European and African styles of dance shines in Brazil, and if anything can be used to describe Brazilians, samba is the most appropriate, as if they have learned to dance samba since birth, and for Brazilians samba is as important as speaking.
As we all know, Brazilians and football have a natural connection, their love of football is more than all places, and Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Brazilian football culture, a group of football teenagers can be seen everywhere on the street, in them were born Ronaldo, Ronaldo Jr., Rivaldo, Romario and other top stars, they will be the gorgeous integration of samba into football technology, in the green field to show the fans the essence of samba football, their style is ordinary people can not imitate, playing agility and freedom to show the true meaning of samba. In such a grand football atmosphere, Rio de Janeiro has created the world's largest football stadium - The Maracanã Stadium.
Maracanã was just finished to accommodate 150,000 people, and later only 105,000 spectators were allowed for safety reasons, which could not stop the enthusiasm of the fans, and every match day rio was a place to watch the ball, and people gathered like a festival to spend the day with beer and dance.
The Maracanã Stadium is the epitome of Rio football, and this green field has left the footprints of many stars who have realized their dreams of conquering the world from here.
At the same time, the stadium has witnessed countless important moments in football, where pele achieved his 1,000th goal. It also witnessed this samba team conquering the world's fans again and again, leaving Brazil firmly tied to football.
Urban scarring
Half heaven, half hell, the other side of Rio is the slums, home to the world's largest slum, which the locals jokingly call a place where the devil will turn around and leave. No order is the only rule, crime rates remain high, drug trade is rampant, police officers are often seen in some corners secretly colluding with gangsters, girls exchanging their bodies for drugs, and poor people rummaging through garbage heaps for food.
Slums are just a street away from the wealthy quarters, but for two centuries, the American media has done surveys in which up to 4,000 people die each year in gangfights, and that number is rising, surpassing the death toll in war-torn countries.
Here, drugs are the biggest winners, Brazilian gangs control the drug trade, and a large number of minors and teenage girls are targeted.
Women in the slums, it seems that they were born to serve this drug dealer, they are forced to take drugs, they can only sell their bodies for drugs, according to the Brazilian police statistics, the slum drug use and provide special services more than 70% of the women, this is only the number of people who can be found, there are more can not see the truth.
All the rules in the slums are made by the gangs, the government has no effect on the crackdown every year, of course, corruption has occurred, many policemen will not really go to the bandits, but have made dirty deals with the gangsters, they also want to intervene in the drug trade to share this cake, while receiving government funds, while doing business in the slums, the profits are much higher than the big drug lords, this is the biggest problem in the slums.
As for the gangsters' arms, they all come from the support of the military, the police and the military want to fight for territory here, and this is already a well-known secret, but who can change this situation? Successive Brazilian presidents have been full of ambition, hoping that they can completely change the situation of collusion between officials and bandits, but which one is not slipping out of office.
The most speechless thing is that the slum people have completely disappointed in the government, and they will support the gangs, because the gangs will manage the slums very carefully in order to maintain the drug trade.
One slum dweller told the media: "Local drug dealers will fund the community's medical causes for free, they want to be accepted by the locals, and the government has little influence, so they do these things instead of the government." We don't pay taxes, and the government is gradually abandoning us. ”
The money that should have been taxed has become the pocket of the gang, with which the gangsters take the initiative to manage the community, especially when the slums have not received help from the government since the outbreak, but need the gangs to maintain order, they are worried that the epidemic will disrupt the drug trade, warning residents not to go out without permission, and everyone stays at home.
It's all too weird that some gangsters even distribute daily necessities to their own turf, but that's the reality in Rio de Janeiro. Inside and outside the walls are like two worlds, under the eyes of the police, gangsters use weapons to manage the slums, and who is the policeman and who is the bandit, no one can say clearly.
If you really want to say it, it should be a defect in the system, the government will not provide services to the slums without money, the gangs will naturally want to maintain local management after collecting protection fees, and the poorer the poorer the government, the more the government does not want to care, this vicious circle has lasted for nearly half a century, and this is how the world's largest slum was born.
There is, of course, another reason that needs to be found in the long history. Rio de Janeiro can be called the City of God, naturally inseparable from the glorious past, and the brand of Sin City is deeply engraved in the genes of the city, and reading this place should understand its history.
Once the capital
Brazil is not the original country of Latin America, when the Age of Discovery allowed Europeans to discover the New World, the Portuguese took the lead in occupying the southeast coast of Brazil, because of the great temptation of gold rush and sugarcane cultivation, more and more explorers came to this place and settled, so in the next three hundred years the prototype of Brazil began to appear, Portugal firmly controlled the colony's life and death power, until September 7, 1822, the Portuguese royal family Pedro I decided to declare independence, the establishment of a sovereign state - the Brazilian Empire, This is the first time Brazil has appeared in the form of a state, and Rio de Janeiro has been chosen as its capital.
After the establishment of Brazil, it experienced several upheavals, and finally entered the republican period, which stabilized the country and Rio de Janeiro began rapid development.
Brazil is very backward in productivity and has long existed as a plantation in Europe, and the historical gap in development indicates a huge market prospect.
In the 1930s, when there was an unprecedented economic crisis in the world of capital, capitalists set their sights on it, a hot land full of opportunities.
The convenient natural port on the southeast coast gave them hope, and with the influx of technology and capital, Rio de Janeiro's urban construction ushered in a new life, and in just a few decades the urban center was close to saturation, the government had to move south and west, and a super-large city was formed.
In the process of industrialization, Rio de Janeiro was built into the economic, political and cultural center of the country, the world's major cities have opened up routes here, and the Brazilians who have tasted the sweetness have decided to use their national strength to transform Rio into the world capital, which seems to be not so far away.
Rio is full of busy factories, where people from all over the country gather, and crowding is the biggest label of the city. Brazilians don't think that it is because of the crowding that Rio de Janeiro has completely fallen.
The problem of over-urbanization began to stand out, rio's resource carrying capacity could not accommodate so many people, and at that moment the city collapsed. In 1900, the urban population was less than 500,000 people, but half a century later it was as high as 2.5 million, and in the 1980s it grew to 10 million, and the population quadrupled in just thirty years, and it has to be said that Rio has reached an irreparable point, and this deformed development has superficially improved the competitiveness of the city, even in the international Rio.
But the influx of people into Rio, a large number of rural people abandoning their farmland to become white-collar workers, almost all young people are no longer engaged in agricultural production, causing damage to the foundation of the country, the gap between rich and poor widening at an unstoppable rate, and the urban problem is getting worse and worse.
When penniless young people can't find their dreams in the city, everything changes, they begin to find ways to vent their dissatisfaction, and the crime rate rises sharply.
The most interesting thing is out, in the process of creating a world-renowned economic miracle in Brazil, the slums are also growing at a rate of more than 7% per year, this problem makes Rio worried, but no one is willing to press the pause button on this fast-growing city with national strength, where should Brazil go in the face of such a dilemma?
With the plan to relocate the capital under the game of interests on the table of policymakers, seeing that the spread of slums could not be stopped, and the decline of Rio was inevitable, Brazil finally made up its mind to choose Brasilia as the new capital on the central plateau, which is a place where industry has not been contaminated, the infrastructure is very backward, and the space for transformation is quite large.
From the completion of the first building in 1956 to the official relocation of the government in 1960, Brazil left Rio in four years, and when they thought rio could get rid of their suffering, Rio was still a metropolis of tens of millions of people at the end of the century, with nearly three million poor people living in 763 slums, who lived different lives from the outside world.
The beautiful beaches and dances on TV don't seem to belong here, the slums begin to live after nightfall, and for many years countless explorers have tried to uncover the scars of the slums, but the scars left in the City of God cannot be eradicated by any means.
Perhaps this is the charm of Rio de Janeiro, the soul of Brazilians trapped in the samba dance, samba tolerance is inherently destined to coexist with wealth and poverty, light and darkness together.
The icon of Mount Kokova, Jesus, protects the believers below, but the slum at the foot of the mountain looks up at it, and all kinds of sins are happening, and everything seems to be so harmonious and harmonious, which can be a kind of irony or a reality, the future country of Brazil, half heaven and half hell, when the first rays of sunshine fall on the icon Jesus, the sadness and joy of the city begin.