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(clique aqui para versão portuguesa)

A vida é um moinho took place yesterday in solidarity with the inhabitants of Favela do Moinho, right in the center of São Paulo, in Bom Retiro between the stations Barra Funda and Luz.

trains rails are what deliminates the favela on two sides

The day was organized by various hip hop and graffiti krews together with the Moinho community in order to collect food and clothes for the inhabitants and to raise awareness about the very serious issues Moinho has to face, but also to show the beautiful sides of the place. The chosen scenario was impressing, on the roof of the old (and now squated) industrial building, right in the middle of the favela , which was part of the previously existing Fábrica Moinho Matarazzo. More information about the history of the Matarazzo family and its industrial complex in Brazil can be found in the dossier O Grupo Matarazzo nas terras do município (Raízes, 2002) [pdf].

Nice things first: during the whole day a massive crowd of kids of all ages were around. especially attractive to them: all people that threw them in the air and played with them; all people with any kind of digital camera: impressive that kids in the age of 5 to 6 years (estimated) already know the general functioning of a digital camera, or learn it hyper fast – which button to press in order to trigger the camera – which symbol indicates that no space is left for taking pictures – how to skip through the photos – and so on; all people that painted and made graffiti with them; hip hop: one young boy from Moinho showed his breakdance skillz – a youg girl mc from Moinho sung together with two of the invited mc’s.

playing + graffitis

graffitis + mcing

Several people showed their poetical skills and work by spreading their ready and improvised poems over the roof and by singing acapellas.

From the hip hop point of view there have been several artists around, mostly male but also one female mc with her djane (sadly don’t remember the name).

powa

She made an interesting statement about the precarious water supply conditions in the favela and was more reflective than the often heard (also this day) abstract calls for resistance. Her general statement was that it is a scandal that there is no water supply in Moinho but that it is an even greater scandal that the supply that existed before was cut off due to orders by politricks who deliberately accepted the worsening of an already precarious housing and living condition, especially if one considers that several hundret families with kids life here without access to common services such as water, sanitation and electricity.

A collection of super interesting impressions and interview fragments with people from Moinho (and from Ocupacão Prestes Maia) can be found in a text called Periferia é Periferia em qualquer lugar (Sampaio, 2007, p.59-74) [pdf].

Besides the lack of sufficient water supply (which consisted of only illegally connected lines before the cut off in 2009) there have been (still exist?) many restrictions that are imposed on the inhabitants of Moinho. Two examples: the inhabitants didn’t have a legal postal address thus neighbors receive post for some of them (Sampaio, 2007, p.64); electricity supply exist only through illegally connected lines due to the fact that cities electricity supply Eletropaulo didn’t install a electricity net because it didn’t consider the inhabitants of Moinho as the legal owners of that land where the favela is located (Sampaio, 2007, p.64).

The text also draws a more nuanced picture of the different communities and individuals within the community of Moinho, like the people that life in the fabric building, the people that life in self constructed buildings, the ones close to the train tracks or the ones under the bridge at the entrance.

What remains is the impression that culture (here: Hip Hop culture) provides one way to educate people (from outside) about a non acceptable situation (here: lack of water supply among others) by just inviting them to the place they wouldn’t have access to otherwise and by doing so, learn a bit about the local situation. In fact, I would have been great if people from Moinho also talked about good and bad things they perceive in their environment, or that flyers or handouts had been distributed with more information, maybe next time..

The intentional denial of water (and electricity) supply also shows that precarious living conditions are often imposed onto the citizens by simply denying them the right for a decent life and access to the city. The question now would be how to change this situation…

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Update 2010.09.03

There is also a post available about A Vida é um Moinho at the site RapNacional.

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References