During our interview, Timo talks about the risks of gentrification in Vidigal, a process he knows from Berlin, and he tells how he moved to Vidigal also out of interest for the ongoing neighbourhood processes, with “the new middle-class moving into here and all the gringos” (app. C.18). As he sees the process as problematic, he tells how he has been thinking about putting his knowledge at work to help the community. His goal would be that of preparing and educating people to some of these changes, as well as sensitise residents about the consequences of selling their homes, as some of them might decide not to sell, if they were aware of all the consequences. Interestingly, Timo talks about the role he and other foreigners could have, as in opposition to Brazilian newcomers:
[Most Brazilians] know of course what happened here, but it doesn't mean as much to them as it maybe does to the gringos that are more sensible about where they go to. Especially the one that come to Vidigal and not the ones that book their three weeks of summer holidays in Rio de Janeiro at Copacabana. So yeah, the gringos that come here, mostly have I think, are sensible to the fact that they live together with a lot of people that aren't as privileged as them.
Timo, app. C.18
Paul assumes a similar position:
Chasing the Real: Place Construction and Authenticity
We foreigners I think don't want to change the favela so much, and people from the rich society from Brazil, who are investing in the favela, they do want to change the favela. […] For us [foreign- ers] it's exotic, it is part of what we like here. Because it's different from where we live. And that is a big difference, […] I think that we can protect a bit Vidigal, […] if more foreigners would buy than people from the Zona Sul.
Paul, app. C.12
Both Timo and Paul see Brazilian newcomers as a bigger threat to Vidigal than for- eigners are. Brazilians are presented as investors, while foreigners as those that care about the future of Vidigal. However, taken outside our interaction, this position seems very contradictory. Timo and Paul are part of the causes of the current changes Vidigal is undergoing, even if they see themselves as more thoughtful than other newcomers. Paul has bought a house on top of the morro together with his friend Oscar, thereby contrib- uting to the rise in real estate prices (see section 7.1.1). Timo, despite his thoughts about gentrification and his desire of starting preservation projects, has mostly foreign friends and has not yet managed to reach a positive interaction with the old-timers. At the same time I meet him at a party in the lower part of Vidigal, where the entrance fee is between R$ 25-50, a prohibitive price for lower-class residents (field notes, January 25th, 2013). At the same party I meet most of my newcomer informants: Ida, who lives in
party venue, Joaño, Paul, Reneé, Hugo and Lisa. Despite some of these informants' con- cerns, their practices show a different aspect of their life in the favela and on their role in the current changes. Timo's, Paul's and most of the other informants' everyday lives and activities are traditionally middle-class, except for the lack of infrastructure in their neighbourhood. Furthermore, the 'exoticism' Paul talks about seems to have a very colo- nial aura to it. The Vidigal that is attractive is the one that demarcates its difference from the rest or Rio and from the Western capitals that are well known to many of the new- comers. But the charm of the favela, as I also discuss in section 7.2.3, is limited to a piece of scenery for everyday practices and lifestyles that are middle-class, and that does not represent a break with the life of the more alternative middle-class in the rest of the city. The same Paul contradicts this vision of all foreigners as social preservationists, when he reports a conflict with a French woman:
Part II – The Analysis
One month ago I met a lady, a French, this one I told you, she is making a restaurant. And she started to say to me 'Oh, after three months here I started to have a depression, because it's so filthy, and my neighbour puts music all the day, I can't stand it, I want her to stop and bla bla'. I couldn't stand that. I just told her: 'Why the hell are you coming here?' […] I was straight with her: I don't want to be like that, to do… come to a place because I like it the way it is and then make it change because of the stuff I don't like. […], that's a trap and that is what happened in many places, and that is what is dangerous for Vidigal. Because otherwise it is going to become like Ipanema, quickly.
Paul, app. C.12
Here Paul underlines how it is not acceptable that newcomers come to Vidigal without respecting its authentic origins, and with a desire of changing what they dislike. Allowing this to happen would lead to a homogenisation of Vidigal, although Paul does not believe that this will happen.
Both Paul and Timo have arrived to Vidigal because they felt attracted by its authenti- city, and they now want to preserve it. Their operation reflects what Wendy Shaw has highlighted in her study of gentrification in post-colonial Sydney: “gentrification has be- come a celebration of whiteness and in its selective appropriation of history, a form of neo-colonialism that excludes competing legitimate voices in the history of many neigh- bourhoods now experiencing sudden upward social trajectories” (Shaw, 2005 in Atkin- son and Bridge, 2005:12). To claim to have understood Vidigal's authenticity becomes a very political and normative operation, by which social preservationists exclude other voices in defining what is good and what is bad for the favela. They have come to Vidigal and want to close the door behind them: they see authenticity in Vidigal's origins, and they lay claim to which behaviours are appropriate and which are not in the favela. This highlights the inherent contradictions in Brown-Saracino's social preservationists. Brown-Saracino's work, effective in highlighting different approaches to gentrification on the side of the newcomers, points out how it would be “easy enough to point to social preservationists' hypocrisy” (Brown-Saracino, 2009:20). Nonetheless, in her work the social preservationists' practices seem to shine as inherently good and well-intended. While Brown-Saracino (2004:136) acknowledges that these newcomers can be self-
Chasing the Real: Place Construction and Authenticity
reflexive about their role in gentrification, she has little or no recognition for the fact that their preservation practices are part of the problem all the same. In Vidigal, social preservationists and social homesteaders are probably the main cause of gentrification, and not just a minority. Ironically, they are the newcomers that are taming the wilder- ness, by constructing new representations of the favela and thereby attracting busi- nesses and homesteaders perhaps less interested in preservation.
My informant Julio (app. C.8) criticises those newcomers with an academic back- ground that come from abroad and try to apply what they have learned in university to Vidigal. Their attempts are doomed to fail, as newcomers are incapable of adapting their solutions to the local situation and do not respect what Julio calls the “rhythm” of the favela. More in general, the social preservationists' interest for the neighbourhood emerges as somewhat egoistic, as they so much want to be in it that they are not willing to relocate somewhere else. This, despite their presence spoils that very authenticity they had come looking for.
As we have seen on page 79, Cresswell discusses how place is relational, and meaning about it is created through power struggles and assumes a normative connotation. So- cial preservationists enter the favela as newcomers but partake in this power struggle by defining who, among the other newcomers, has the right to be there, and who does not. The authenticity this type of gentrifier claims is a construction, and it talks about a sanitised, safer version of the urban village or of the gritty neighbourhoods that are be- ing gentrified. A version ready for consumption. It's like Williamsburg without social problems, says Zukin (2010:52; see section 3.6).