Rio de Janeiro: The Untold Story of the Marvelous City | GEDEON DOC

Like so many great stories, the history of Rio began with a mistake. When in January 1502 the Portuguese explorers found a safe harbor in Guanabara Bay, they mistook it for the mouth of a river and called it Rio de Janeiro, the January River. The river itself was never found, but the name remained. Rio today may look like a collection of postcards that bring to mind a kind of magic, but behind those iconic images lies a city with many faces. The south attracts the world with its ravishing beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. And the historic center which overlooks Guanabara Bay tells the tale of a colonial era, both dark and enlightened, that many have forgotten. In the north, the legacy of an industrial past lingers. It's home of the majority of Rio's inhabitants, Coriocas, as well as the best schools of samba. While in the west, a megacity has emerged on the blink of an eye. Is this the Rio of the future? Or a cautionary chronicle of civic ambition gone too far? Each part is like a piece of an extraordinary puzzle, shaped by changing fortunes, grand designs, triumphs, madness and tragedies. This is the story of Rio de Janeiro. So the history of the city began in the 16th century. But in fact, Rio's story started long before the arrival of Portuguese ships in Guanabara Bay. Geologist Marcelo Mota studies those distant beginnings, which hold the clue to why the city is so unique. Rio de Janeiro can be seen as a great geological monument. We're actually living in between rock formations that have no equivalent on Earth. Exactly in the same way the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas and the Alps are unique, so is the site of Rio de Janeiro. These rock formations are everywhere in the city. The people of Rio call them morros. These morros are sometimes invisible under the sprawling favelas. But they can also be famous landmarks, like this one, the Sugarloaf. 130 million years ago, the opening of an ocean parted away the continents. At that moment, the activity of the layer under the crust of the Earth, the mantle, separated the continents. The rocks rose up and were lifted to form the tall peaks we see in the landscape today. This geological episode didn't just give birth to one of the most striking landscapes on Earth. It also produced the stone that would become an important building material for the future city. Fast forward 130 million years to 1555. The Portuguese were not alone in finding this well-protected bay an attractive proposition. A small French colony settled on the island at the mouth of the bay, much to the annoyance of the Portuguese, who launched a naval attack. The French fled from the island, but took refuge on the continent, where they held out for many years. In 1565, the king of Portugal, then Dom Sebastian, decided to send Estacio de Sá to the Guanabara Bay to expel the French once and for all, and to establish a city, a royal city, that would become the city of Saint Sebastian of Rio de Janeiro. So the first purpose of this new town at the base of the Sugarloaf was as a military camp to expel the French. Following some cruel battles, Mem de Sá, then general governor of Bahia, came back to Guanabara Bay and transferred the city from the site of the Sugarloaf Mountain to the Morro do Castelo, Castelo Mountain. We can't see it anymore, but it was a very safe area. Once the French were routed, the Portuguese took definitive control of Guanabara Bay. They then created a new Rio, on the Morro do Castelo. The traces of the surly town center have since been completely erased. But back then, it bore the important imprint of a hard lesson learned during the conflict with the French. Military strategy had to override all other concerns. So Morro do Castelo was chosen for the sole reason that it was the highest point of the bay, therefore the safest. One element of the Portuguese colony had been essential in the defeat of the French, the Jesuit priests. As a reward, the governor ordered a school and a church be built for them, on top of the castelo. But according to historian Nireio Cavalcanti, that gift might not have been such a blessing after all. It was a big mistake because there wasn't any water on Morro do Castelo. They dug a well that gave only brackish water, keeping them dependent on fetching water from the Carioca River. Fortunately, Guanabara Bay enjoyed other advantages. It was frequented by pods of whales, and it was also a protected natural harbor with a plentiful supply of fish. We have four Morros, mountains, which define Rio de Janeiro's urbanism. Morro do Castelo, with the Jesuits. Morro do São Bento, with the Benedictines. Morro do Conceição, with the bishop. And Morro do Santo Antônio, with the Franciscans. It's from those four mountains that you can understand the further transformations of the city. At the beginning of the 17th century, Rio was only a small town, wedged between four hills dominated by religious orders. But a few decades later, a discovery was made far inland that would change the young city's fortunes overnight. The Church of the Third Order is a testament to that dramatic development. In this baroque masterpiece, everything has been finished in gold. Huge deposits were found by Portuguese adventurers, and the gold rush that ensued would draw nearly a million people to the interior of Brazil. In 60 years, more than 500 tons of gold were extracted from what would now be known as Minas Gerais. But the prospectors had to overcome one major problem. This prodigious wealth lay over 300 miles away from the port of Rio itself. Renato Franco, a historian of the gold rush, retraces the steps of those early fortune seekers. Gold mining immediately begun and at a truly breathtaking pace because the gold found in Minas Gerais was mostly alluvial gold, gold found on the surface. Gold may have been the promise for the small town of Rio, but it was this highway which truly transformed its fortunes. Taking 20 years to build, it traversed mountains and thick jungle to connect the mines of Minas Gerais with the ships waiting in Rio de Janeiro. It was way more interesting to use the Caminho Novo since it was a lot faster. All of the merchants and trade had to use the Royal Road. As the towns grew around the mines, the Caminho Novo carried an endless amount of goods to and from Rio. But the road also offered the royal administration a more efficient way to collect taxes. It was very profitable for Rio, not because it was producing any specific goods for Minas, but because it was both the way to and the way from, which is why in the second half of the 18th century, we have a city whose merchants are of tremendous importance. At the beginning of the 18th century, Rio dramatically boosted its role as a hub in the Portuguese colonial empire. It benefited from an ideal position on the trade routes to India and to Africa, the land of slaves. Gold extraction and trade turned Rio into the main port for all goods, including slaves going to the Minas region. Gold was also sent back to Portugal from this port. From that moment on, the Portuguese crown started to see the city as an essential part of the administration of this entire region, the center-south territory of Portuguese America. But such a key city needed a worthy governor, so the Portuguese crown sent the very talented administrator, Gomes Freire de Andrade, whom it endowed with considerable powers. Gomes Freire built and transformed the governor's palace, where we are standing now, which was formerly used as the house of currency and as a royal repository. However, as attractive as the new city was, it had a chink in its armor, poor access to drinking water. So Gomes Freire ordered the construction of a gigantic stone aqueduct to channel the Carioca River. Bringing water inside the city not only allowed for steady water supply to the city and its dwellers, but also fulfilled an essential strategic role. In case of a siege, the city would depend on its own source of water. Thirty years after Gomes Freire's nomination as governor, the port, the gold, and the aqueduct had made Rio into the most important city in Portuguese America. In 1763, such a change was confirmed when the vice kingdom's seat was transferred from the capital of the state of Brazil, Salvador da Bahia, to Rio de Janeiro. In just 200 years, Rio de Janeiro had grown to become the second largest city in the kingdom of Portugal. After the capital, Lisbon. And it would stay that way until 1807, when a disaster rocked the Portuguese empire. Napoleon's army had entered Lisbon. Soon, the entire royal court was forced to flee aboard a fleet of 20 ships. Destination, Brazil. After three months at sea, a few hundred Portuguese aristocrats arrived in Rio, and their first reaction was one of pure horror. Everything that has since been romanticized and is now seen as beautiful, the birds, the fishes, the forest, all of that was considered hostile then, not to mention the weather, believed to be a real health hazard. The Portuguese refugees were terrified, and the royal family among them was not helping. The Queen Dona Maria I was unfit to rule by reason of insanity. Her son, the Regent Don João VI, was as anxious as his court, and his wife, Dona Carlota Joaquina, was no support to him. At least the locals had prepared a warm welcome. The entire city was illuminated with candles. Each rich house had put together an orchestra, or a small ensemble, and as the prince was passing by, they would play for him. The inhabitants of Rio went that extra mile to accommodate this court of several hundred. One of the city's rich traders gave Don João this beautiful house, perched on a small hill outside of town. La Quinta da Boa Vista would soon become his main residence. Today, only a handful of objects belonging to the family of Don João remain. One of them is kept at the National Library. For Christian art specialist Maria Beatriz de Melo e Souza, this royal treasure would play a key role in shaping the history of Rio. The entire royal library did not move to Rio de Janeiro, but its treasures, its codices did. This codex is the most beautiful manuscript from the Portuguese royal library. It's a book of hours. Many saints are depicted, especially those of importance to the Portuguese monarchy, such as Saint Sebastian. Saint Sebastian, who became the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro. This book is one of the last remaining testaments to a transformation that gripped Rio in the early 19th century. With the coming of the Portuguese monarchy, the strict austerity that characterized the colony beforehand gave way overnight to expressions of opulence, art and culture, enhanced and multiplied by the advent of the printing press. Suddenly, the Carioca cultural identity was starting to take shape. Another consequence of the arrival of the royal court was the botanical garden. The choice for its location may seem odd at first, but it was in fact highly strategic. The botanical gardens of Rio de Janeiro were created in 1808, quite far from the town center, inside a gunpowder factory, and in a context of war in Europe. It was the time of the Napoleonic invasions, and Don João, who was fleeing Napoleon, had great fears that he would invade the city of Rio de Janeiro. The plants were awarded the same level of security as the powder factory next to it because of their immense worth. They could be used as food, or for clothing, or as remedies. Pirates coveted plantations. They looked for any exotic and native plant that could become a good trade. Botanists succeeded in growing in Brazilian soil foreign species such as tea, clove, cinnamon, or even eucalyptus. The plants were a vital source of income for the colony, and as such, they were fiercely guarded. All for the benefit of a city which never stopped growing. 20 years after the arrival of the court, the population had now doubled to 80,000 souls. Newcomers from Europe began to settle outside the natural city limits formed by the Fall Moros. As Rio expanded in the north, forests were replaced by coffee plantations, teeming with African slaves. Meanwhile, in Portugal, with the war over, the country demanded the return of the king, Don Juan, to ratify a new constitution. The simple act of setting up a constitution, which also the king would have had to abide by, shows how Portugal was changing. The Portuguese courts demanded governors be sent to Brazil and the termination of the court of justice, which had been created here and gave the appearance of a state to Brazil. It's as if Don Juan, leaving Lisbon, had left one state to create another here. After 13 years in Rio, Don Juan VI returned to Portugal. He left the fate of Brazil in the hands of his eldest son, Don Pedro. But as soon as his father was gone, on September 7, 1822, Don Pedro proclaimed the independence of Brazil and assumed the title of emperor. At a stroke, Rio became the capital of the Empire of Brazil. The fledgling empire was built on an invaluable resource, African slaves. The neighborhood of Gamboa is close to the port where men, women, and children landed after crossing the Atlantic on slave ships. It used to house the families of port workers, often descendants of slaves or slaves themselves. There is only one memorial dedicated to African slaves in the whole of Rio, and its existence is due entirely to a woman who discovered it in her own house 20 years ago. We were renovating this house when we found human bones. At first, we thought they belonged to people who had been killed by their families and buried in the garden. Then we noticed there were lots of bones, many people, including children. Two days later, the city hall sent archaeologists and historians, and they said that here, in my house, stood a former slave cemetery known as Pretos Novos. Pretos Novos means recently arrived from Africa. The lead archaeologist of the team that examined Maria's house was Professor Ronaldo Tavares. I study death. That's my research subject, and of course, I was interested in the slave cemetery, which had so far been unknown to Carioca society. The cemetery location was ideal, close to the port where the human cargo that disembarked from slave ships was barely alive. But it was also close to the city's slave market, the infamous Valongo. Since many, many people passed through the slave market, many of them also died, and the practice was, of course, to bury them. But then they would be unearthed and burned to the bones, and the remains of the bones would be smashed, and this would be spread around the place to have space to bury the new corpses. The history of slavery in Brazil is a very concealed one, and a very dark one, and I think that this history needs to be told. In 1833, slavery was abolished by England, and the cemetery closed. But despite the pressure from Europe, the traffic of African slaves continued to provide manpower for the powerful coffee barons and their plantations, and enriched Rio for another 50 years. But meanwhile, Rio moved slowly away from its deeply colonial past towards a new modern era. Historian Hebi Matos has studied this transformation. The city started to attract people from other parts of Brazil that started to settle in the city. By the end of the 19th century, the elite leaves the city center and sets up in Flamengo and Botafogo, and Rio turns into the main manufacturing city, and later, the main industrial city of Brazil. Photographs dating from 1880 hold clues to this metamorphosis. Factories rose, murals disappeared. A dramatic population growth made the city swell. One more event would drive urbanization to unprecedented levels, the emancipation of all slaves in Brazil. This was the work of Isabel, Princess Imperial. In 1888, she signed the Leoréia, or Golden Law, after the pen that was used to sign it, now kept in the Petropolis Museum. But Isabel's heart might not have been entirely in it. Unlike what is believed, Princess Isabel only became interested in abolition during the holiday season, say in January and February of 1888. Until then, she had never given her opinion on slavery, whereas in Brazil, an abolitionist and feminist press existed, and many women were actively pro-abolition, especially in the Nordeste. So on the 13th of May, Princess Isabel's signature was merely the honorific and formal conclusion of a process that had started much earlier. By 1888, several political forces had considerably weakened the Empire of Brazil. One of them was so powerful that it had its own temple in the neighborhood of Gloria. This temple celebrates positivism, the philosophy of French thinker Auguste Comte. This secular religion encourages scientific, technological, and industrial progress, and resonated with Rio's intellectuals and scientists. They saw positivism as a banner under which they could get rid of the old Brazil, imperial, colonial, Catholic, and usher in a modern era. Here in front of us, we have the altar with a representation of humanity. We have a woman holding a child in her arms, and Auguste Comte asked that her features be those of Clotilde de Vaux. Clotilde de Vaux was the real-life muse of Auguste Comte. Every Sunday, large groups gathered before her statue, plotting the rise of a new order, the Republic of Brazil. The Church played an essential part in the creation of the Republic, both before the Republic was founded to enable the proclamation, and after, to shape the Republic, which was proclaimed on the 15th of November, 1889. Among the treasures of the positivist Church are the sketches for the new flag of Brazil, the crowning achievement of the actions of the positivist Church is the national flag that bears the national motto taken from Auguste Comte, Order and Progress. So only 18 months after the abolition of slavery, Brazil became a republic. Rio kept its place as capital, and the presidency settled in the Palace of Catete. The arrival of many freed slaves and the development of a trams further boosted the expansion of Rio to the north, where the factories were thriving. In the old center, however, slums called cotizos started to grow. In no time, a quarter of Rio's population had made their home in its unsanitary streets. And soon enough, TB, yellow fever, and typhus had settled there too. The city is becoming more and more menacing, which is directly connected to the demographic growth. So attempts to control and civilize the city center become more pressing. The rejuvenation of the city center was entrusted to Francisco Pereira Passos. Inspired by the boulevards in Paris, he decided to create a broad avenue running through the old Rio. And here comes the decision to showcase the city, to make it look like the most wonderful city. But that comes at the price of expelling the population from the city center. Pereira Passos had full powers to erase the cotizos and create his masterpiece, Avenida Central. More than a mile long and 100 feet wide, it was meant to be lined with the most magnificent buildings. But Pereira Passos' grand vision would not have been realized were it not for another crucial factor, all too often forgotten. Deep beneath the jungle canopy of Rio's second largest forest, Pedro Branca, expert Rogério Ribeiro, has been studying what remains of a remarkable treasure trove. This is a charcoal production spot. We're right in the middle of it. The problem with those is that they're very hard to find. This was happening more than 100, 150, or even 200 years ago. And they've been completely covered by plants. For those who know where to look, traces of a once thriving coal industry are still visible today. The ground around charcoal production spots is characteristically black and full of charcoal fragments that you can easily identify. They're the leftovers of the manufacturing process. But behind the exciting discovery, there lies a dark secret that hints at the complexity of Rio's history. It's interesting to note that the official history of the city leaves untold the charcoal makers' history. They've been completely ignored because of prejudices. Charcoal makers were black, they lived in the forest, they were foul and dirty with charcoal. These three characteristics made it a profession of great social invisibility. And yet society was in great need of that energy produced by charcoal. The impressive Teatro Municipal, inspired by the Paris Opera, is one of the last remaining buildings of the period. But its ornate facades and decorative detailing reveal more than just the stylistic tastes of time. For all of these buildings, we must remember that there was no concrete. So all the structural elements were in stone. The rest was brick and wood, but the structural element was stone. To shape blocks of stone into imposing facades, the masons needed tools made of steel. And the large furnaces necessary to forge and sharpen the blades required coal. Hence, there has been a great need for charcoal to develop Rio de Janeiro. And that's the link between the forest and the city. By 1908, the clearing of the slums and the completion of Avenida Central had earned Rio the moniker it would keep to this day, the Cidade Maravilhosa, or the Marvelous City. With the Grand Avenue establishing a link to Guanabara Bay, the city was now open to the beaches in the south. But it was the construction of the Lem Tunnel that would change Rio's fortunes as it connected its center to a small strip of land on the coast. Little did the planners know that the little beach would one day become one of the most famous places in the world. Its name was Copacabana. The mere opening of both those tunnels prompted the fast development of Copacabana. And it's safe to say that Copacabana was completed in little over a decade. The building of the opulent Copacabana Palace Beach Hotel in 1923 cemented the international reputation of the resort. In a few short years, Copacabana saw a steady stream of new residents lured not just by the sandy beaches, but by modern civic amenities such as working sewers. Cariocas, as we see them now, who love music and indulge in bohemia, they appeared in Copacabana. The Carioca was born in Copacabana. Gradually, the old colonial Portuguese history was discarded. A new Carioca identity was born. And to celebrate the centenary of Brazil's independence, the Morro do Castelo was to be razed to the ground to make space for a spectacular World's Fair. But Morro do Castelo was still home to thousands of residents, not least amongst them, Estacio de Sá, the founder of Rio itself, whose remains were interred in the church of São Sebastião. Morro do Castelo, unlike other morros in the center of Rio, was a morro that was represented and had a civic function in the city's organization. Any joy that the republicans might have felt at this symbolic erasure of the old order was soon tempered by the task that lay before them. Obliterating the morro would require the removal of over 4 million cubic meters of earth and rock. Two years later, the Morro do Castelo was no more. The spoil was used to reclaim even more land from the sea, and to build an impressive esplanade. The blank canvas that had awaited Rio's architects was soon to be filled by a new type of architecture that was sweeping the world. The phases of the urbanization of Rio de Janeiro include demolitions and destructions. One of the most important was that of Morro do Castelo, and that area ended up showcasing the highest number of Art Deco buildings, starting in the 1930s. With architects on hand to build in the latest style, the state embarked on a massive program of construction designed to project the prestige of those in power. A kind of Brasilia was literally created inside the city to house new ministries, and the new buildings Getúlio Vargas wanted for the city. And if we look at those buildings, the ministries, the federal police, the official press, all of them are Art Deco. The growing fashion for seaside pursuits, combined with a ban on building in the city center, meant that developers were quick to follow the government's lead. Art Deco soon all but dominated the neighborhoods of Flamengo, Botafogo, and Urca. In Rio, Art Deco didn't end in 1939 with World War II, as it did in Europe. It went on up to the 1950s. Some buildings were still being built in the 50s in the middle of Leblon and Ipanema. As Art Deco architecture flourished close to the beaches, many buildings were inspired by the design of transatlantic ships, such as this one, the Itoca building. But another theme hid between the modern Art Deco lines of Rio's buildings, indigenous art. In Brazil, we have a specific national Art Deco style, the buildings in which people live take on native Indian names, like Itai, Itau, Itauca, Itecoloni, and Ibu, always in reference to the real owners of the country. But without doubt, the most famous standard bearer of the Art Deco style is the colossal statue of Christ the Redeemer. Built to celebrate the centenary of the independence of Brazil, the statue sits atop the Cocoledo, the highest morrow inside the city. Art historian Edun Peres has long studied the work of the statue's sculptor, Paul Landowski. He lives in Geneva, Switzerland, only a few steps away from another of Landowski's great works, the Reformation Wall. As it turns out, Landowski was not the Brazilian government's first choice. The first project to be selected was one by Heitor da Silva Costa. But when that project was revealed to the press, it was a real fiasco, because the sculpture was in a 19th century style. Heitor da Silva Costa was not an artist. He was an engineer. His conservative design was so loathed by Brazil's intellectuals that it was mocked as the Cristo da Bola, or Christ with a Ball. With the help of artist Carlos Oswald, the project acquired a more modern style. Then da Silva Costa traveled to Paris. With the recent completion of the Statue of Liberty in the Eiffel Tower, Paris was seen as the best place in the world to realize monumental works of art. The mammoth task of turning Oswald's sketches into three dimensions was finally given to Landowski, winner of the coveted Prix de Rome, and then at the peak of his powers. Landowski immediately accepted their project, but he asked to have full artistic freedom to create the sculpture the way he was imagining it. Despite the complexity of a mission that combined architecture, engineering and sculpture, Landowski, undaunted, threw himself into the project. Landowski was meant to create a model, which would then be sent to Brazil, where the sculpture would be made. Landowski made several small-scale models such as this one. Gradually, the design became recognizably Art Deco. For the internal structure supporting the 1,145 tons of statue, da Silva turned to French engineer Albert Cacot. Cacot was an expert in the emerging field of reinforced concrete, and had developed a lattice-based technology that would provide da Silva Costa with all the guarantees he needed. However, for the head and hands, they decided to adapt an altogether different approach. Landowski created the hands and head in actual size in clay. These were then sent to Brazil, where they were built in reinforced concrete. What the Brazilian team did next was no less than heroic. Working at the top of a small mountain from one-tenth-scale models sent from France, they successfully assembled all the elements. As a final touch, Hector da Silva Costa had the idea of covering the concrete with a local soapstone, both to protect it from the elements and to magnify its brilliance. With this outer layer made in soapstone, this piece hailing from France took on a sort of Brazilian aura. Did da Silva Costa, Landowski and Kako ever suspect that their collaboration would become the symbol not just of Rio, but of Brazil itself? The iconic figure of Cresta Redeemer casts his gaze over Guanabara Bay, welcoming visitors from afar, as well as watching over all the humbler dwellings on the slopes of the mall. These communities, or favelas, as they are sometimes called, present a chaotic face that is very different to the carefully laid-out city that lies below. Historically, three characteristics define the favelas. First of all, highest levels of poverty. Second, urban infrastructure and services that are considerably precarious. And third, space was illegally or radically appropriated. Up until the 1940s, the self-made buildings erected here were classified as illegitimate. The only formal policy that applied to them was that they could be demolished without warning. You have the first census in 1940 that tallied also the favelas. So you have in the 40s a collection of information on all the favelas that started to appear. But at the same time, you have the first experiments with temporary proletarian settlements put in place by the Vargas government that forcibly relocated residents of Caju, Leblon and Gavea favelas. In 1940, 119 favelas were identified. And today, there are more than 700. But the decision of the government to accept them as legitimate made a big difference in the lives of its residents. So you have those investments that are increasing in the 80s, and parallel to those interventions on a large scale, we've seen services such as garbage collection and schools enter favelas. But for the 80s, it was really hard to find a school in a favela. Nowadays, you will find plenty of them. As the favelas were absorbed into the fabric of the city, their distinctive features began to fade. Some of them became gentrified and the spiraling value of real estate meant that the poorest inhabitants were again driven out to the distant periphery. If one building incarnates the transformation that Rio underwent after the Second World War, it's this stadium, situated in the neighborhood of Tejuca, in the north of Rio. In 1950, Brazil was asked to host the first post-war World Cup. The answer to that challenge was the Maracana, now called the Mario Filho, a radically different type of stadium and an ambitious undertaking in many more ways than one. First, the oval layout of the arena was intended to allow all Coriocas, whatever their origins, to truly see each other. At the moment the Maracana was built, it was decided to make it become a traditional place, a crossroads that would unite residents from the periphery and from the city center, the rich and the poor, and that it would be easy to access by public transport. Twelve years before, the Brazilian team, made of black, white and mixed-race players, had put up a good performance. By 1950, the World Cup host country was betting on a win not just from its own team, but from a Brazilian society transcending racial differences. For Brazil to be elected to host the World Cup, FIFA demanded a great public stadium to be built, a great stadium to host the event. 10,000 workers were mobilized to build what would be the largest football arena in the world. They managed to complete it just two weeks before the start of the tournament. On the day of the final, a crowd of 200,000 people, equivalent to 10% of the population of Rio, massed together inside the Maracana. They came to see their team, the very symbol of racial harmony, secure a triumphant victory. But it was not to be. Uruguay won instead, two goals to one. Brazil was said to have lost because of the carelessness of a few players, but the blame was put on the Afro-Brazilian players. In the end, the defeat in the Maracana was only a misstep. Brazil would go on to dominate World Cup football, making it the pride of Brazilians of every color. Today, the Maracana is named after a sports journalist who did much to promote Brazilian football, Mario Filho. But his legacy lies not just on the field, but also in a yearly event that has become an essential part of Brazilian culture. In the summer of 1932, Filho was searching for a way to boost readership of his newspaper in between the seasonal lull in football tournaments. He hit upon the idea of a competition between rival schools that taught a form of music and dance, then little known outside of a northern neighborhood of Rio, the samba. The competition was a great success, and in 1935, the carnival declared a day of celebration. This culture that is crucial to the creation of samba, the samba that is born here in Praça 11, Square 11, in the community of this square, is a culture made by the sons of former North African slaves. They arrived with the last wave of slaves and could preserve their family ties and ties to their community. It was very important for them to develop a collective feeling, giving them the strength to create a strong, cultural notion for Brazil. It was within this samba school Rio's oldest that they developed a version of the dance that is seen in the carnival parades today. In Estacio, you have the other hand, the invention of a definite format, a format that's much more polished, which is the batida of the samba. The batida is moving forward. It's a rhythm that makes people want to walk, a perfect rhythm for the parade to enter the avenue, to invade the streets, a rhythm that flows with joy and positivity. Football and carnival allowed Brazil's extraordinary diversity to be melded into a common identity. And at the heart of it all was its vibrant capital, Rio. But on the 21st of April 1960, this heart was ripped out and transported 1,000 kilometers away in a move that would further erase Brazil's colonial past. A brand new city built in just 41 months was proclaimed the new federal capital, Brasilia. Cariocas were stunned. Their city started to decline. But one project allowed them to bounce back. In the late 60s, with its population approaching 5 million, Rio once again expanded by conquering yet another natural burial. The Joa Tunnel gave rise to the fourth part of modern Rio, the Western Zone. Known locally as the Barra, it only consisted of a few farms, but soon developed. Its master plan was designed by the man responsible for the layout of Brasilia, Lúcio Costa. Lúcio Costa's plan for Barra da Tijuca's neighborhood will reproduce the same features in modernist solutions already seen in Brasilia and other cities that were thought according to this framework. Large expressways connecting a territory along its two main axes, east-west, north-south. This extension of Rio, organized around urban highways, would eventually become, according to Lúcio Costa, the center of a sprawling metropolis. Lúcio Costa then launched the idea of covering the seafront with very tall high rises. Regarding the urban structure of Barra da Tijuca, the buildings have different shapes. The public space is not integrating the different blocks. There are no blocks to speak of. The emphasis was on the development of expansive private condominium complexes. This meant that there was little room left for public spaces. We know the social consequences of this model, but we also know that it's part of this juvenile makeover of cities. Despite its dynamism and rapid growth, the Barra was made for the automobile. So it also lacked any public transport links to connect it to the rest of the city. The Olympic Games will allow better access to Barra da Tijuca through public transportation. Today, investments for the Olympic Games are a chance for Rio to see its historic center finally remodeled after decades of neglect. The redevelopment of Porto Maravilha is meant to revitalize the heart of the city, transforming the dock that used to house great ocean liners into a museum of the future. Public spaces are being reconfigured, tram lines added. Rio is going through yet another metamorphosis, but this time, it seeks to celebrate its past rather than to erase it. What does the future hold for this ever-changing city? Will urban expansion be left to continue indefinitely to the north, south, and west? Can the ever-changing population, the social tensions, and the economic crisis weaken the common identity they fought so hard to forge? The discoverers of Rio were justified in saying that it was an earthly paradise. Today, despite its difficulties, this still holds true. What reinvention will the city undergo next? What will the Carioca of Tomorrow look like? Will Rio forever remain the Marvelous City?