Least Essential Albums

As they do every year, the A.V. Club has spoken, and it is good. Or rather, the list is good; the music?.....well, Creed has a new album out. 'Nuff said.

An Update on the Honduran Elections

We haven't said much about the election of Porfirio Lobo (save for the possibility of a general amnesty for all actors in the Honduran crisis). Fortunately, the excellent Honduras Coup 2009 blog has been on top of it, with great analysis (including the fact that 100.7% of the votes have been counted, which, suffice to say, seems to indicate that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral is cooking the numbers). Other observations: the vote total was not high enough to give the de facto regime of Micheletti the overwhelming support it hoped to gain, but was not low enough to render the entire election illegitimate, either, leaving Honduras in an awkward position in which "the valid vote count falls in the middle ground between 1.7 and 2.3 million valid votes where Boz suggested both sides could claim victory, as indeed they have."

The possible fraud and the mediocre turnout are not surprising to me. What is particularly intriguing, though, is the possibility for grassroots mobilization in the future based on the events and elections of this year. The number of null and spoiled ballots is also fascinating (including this particular ballot, with the words "Golpistas hijos de puta" ["Coup-leaders sons of bitches/motherfuckers"]). RAJ points out that, after the two main candidates, spoiled/null votes outnumbered the vote total for any of the third-party candidates. What might this mean?

We would suggest that the relevant measure of whether this election met the expectations of the coup regime is somewhat different. Less than 50% of those listed as eligible voted in this election. Of that number, almost 7% turned in ballots that were blank or deliberately spoiled, meaning that the final presidential selection fell to about 43% of the electorate. The trend of alienation from governance that already existed in Honduras intensified with an election that was in no way free and fair.

The big difference this time: hundreds of thousands of people now count themselves as part of a resistance movement that will influence elections in the future. And that includes some large proportion of those who did not vote, or submitted spoiled or blank ballots, as well as those who stayed at home on election day. Porfirio Lobo has no mandate from the people, to add to his lack of influence in his own party and in Honduras' national government.

This could mean nothing. However, it's clear that there is some broad grassroots discontent here, and future parties (including progressive parties) could end up being able to take advantage of this discontent. The fact that half of eligible Hondurans didn't vote also seems that the field could be ripe for a real democratic and progressive alternative to the two parties that generally have ruled in Honduras up to this point. Of course, nothing is certain; Lobo could reign in this discontent through his own policies over the next four years; the global context could shift yet again and affect Honduran politics in ways that are beyond the control of political leaders; or the discontent could just fade away. Still, it's pretty clear that Lobo is in a far from enviable position right now, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens with this voter discontent in Honduras (and how the government responds) across the following months and years.

Facial Hair of the Weekend

Fransico "Pancho" Villa (1878-1923), general/caudillo in the Mexican Revolution. Villa was a part of Carranza's constitutional forces against Victoriano Huerta. Villa and Carranza had a falling-out over orders Carranza gave that prevented Villa from arriving in Mexico City before Carranza. In 1916, Villa raided Columbus, NM, leading to General John Pershing's useless "expedition" into Mexico to capture Mexico (which in turn elevated Villa's status as a popular hero). Villa finished out the revolution fairly quietly (for him), with minor mobilizations limited to Chihuahua. Upon the Revolution's so-called "end" in 1920, he lived on a ranch in Chihuahua, where he was assassinated while in his car in 1923 (and for those who aren't faint of heart, you can see video footage of the site, automobile, and Villa's bullet-riddled body here).

Top Films of the 2000s--40 to 31

40. Swimming Pool (2003)

Francois Ozon's brilliant sexy mystery film. Charlotte Rampling is awesome as always. Ludivine Sagnier is incredibly hot. Almost a perfect film.

39. Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Arguably Ken Loach's masterpiece. Generally, Loach is better when focusing on the struggles of the working-class and avoiding the more directly political films. This story of a young man from a terrible family trying and failing to get his life together before he gets in real trouble in heartbreaking.

38. Silent Light (2007)

Carlos Reygadas' film about a Mennonite community in northern Mexico where a patriarch is cheating on his wife. Beautifully shot and the characters are respectfully portrayed despite their marginal religion. The opening sequence of the sun rising might be the best opening scene of any film during the decade.

37. Under the Sand (2000)

Another excellent Francois Ozon film, starring Charlotte Rampling as a woman whose husband walks into the sea and dies. Her inability to deal with the loss is one of the most powerful performances of the decade.

36. Persepolis (2007)

A good decade for animation, particularly from Pixar, but Persepolis is the best animated film from the 2000s. I think Pixar is fully capable of a truly great film, but I also don't think they have achieved that quite yet. Perhaps they are dealing with harder material because it is fantasy. But Persepolis' powerful portrayal of a girl escaping repression in Iran and her longing for home when in Europe created one of the best films from the decade's best year of film.

35. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Clint Eastwood is a vastly overrated director, but he sometimes creates good films and this is his best of the 2000s. Far superior than its companion piece, Flags of Our Fathers, this is a fantastic character study of loyalty and a really sympathetic look at the men who killed so many Americans of Eastwood's generation.

34. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

Arguably the best film ever made on a disability, Julian Schnabel's movie, based on a true story, about a man who suffered a crippling physical disability that kept his mind 100% intact but allowed him to only move one eye is both a powerful story on the best of people and an incredibly sad tale of a unfair break.

33. George Washington (2000)

David Gordon Green's first film. Although Green has declined in recent years, his early films are fantastic. This superb character study of people in a North Carolina town was a great debut promising great potential. Some criticized this film for not talking about race enough, but this was completely unfair. Not every movie about the South has to address race directly, even if blacks and whites are hanging out all the time together.

32. Exiled (2006)

Possibly the decade's best gangster film, by the underrated Johnnie To, Exiled is about a gang and two sets of hitmen who are supposed to eliminate them. This film highlights the best of Hong Kong cinema--choreographed violence combined with a great story.

31. The Savages (2007)

Dealing with a dying parent is always difficult, particularly when you aren't close to that parent and the children are not so stable themselves. Tamara Jenkins tells this really depressing story with incredible humor, helped out tremendously by the great acting of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, with Philip Bosco as the father. First rate film in every aspect.

Historical Image of the Day

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) picnic, Seattle, July 1919

Ebert on New Agers

Hilarious stuff from Roger Ebert:

New Age beliefs are the Creationism of the Progressives. I move in circles where most people would find it absurd to believe that humans didn't evolve from prehistoric ancestors, yet many of these same people quite happily believe in astrology, psychics, reincarnation, the Tarot deck, the i Ching, and sooth-saying. Palmistry and phrenology have pretty much blown over.

If you were attending a dinner party of community leaders in Dallas, Atlanta, Omaha or Colorado Springs and the conversation turned to religion, a chill might fall on the room if you confessed yourself an atheist. Yet at a dinner party of the nicest and brightest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and (especially) Los Angeles, if the hostess began to confide about past lives, her Sign and yours, and her healing crystals, it might not go over so well if you confessed you thought she was full of it.

All so true. New Age "beliefs" are such massive bullshit. No more or no less so than creationism, but certainly its equal.

NFL Concussion Study

You mean that you can't trust an industry-run study on the long-term effects of their own working conditions? I am shocked by this.

Top 50 Films of the 2000s--50 to 41

The end of a decade is always a great time for lists. And I love lists.

The next 5 days will have my top 50 movies of the decade. Of course, this list could change by the day. And there's some films that I haven't seen, especially from this year, but from all years. But it's the best I could do.

50. In the Valley of Elah (2007)

Paul Haggis' film was unjustly ignored by a public unwilling to think about the consequences of Iraq. While voters turned against the war because we weren't winning, the last thing a nation enamored of its own kickassitude wanted to think about was the horrors soldiers and their families faced. Clearly the best of the early Iraq War films, Tommy Lee Jones gives a fantastic performance as the father of a soldier killed after his return from Iraq. Also, it was shot in Albuquerque. Of course, so is every film these days, but I do like seeing good actors driving past my favorite restaurants.

49. Summer Hours (2008)

Oliver Assayas' film about a family dealing with the death of its matriarch and what the kids are going to do with her rural estate. Very French in all the good (great acting, good writing) and bad (oh poor France--look what globalization is doing to us!) ways, but also a very solid film.

48. Climates (2006)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Turkish film about a sterile relationship. Very Bergmanesque, which definitely appeals to me. This is exactly the kind of film that separates people who like film and poseurs--its slow pacing and ambiguous ending really irritates those who don't want to think too hard about their films, even if they have reasonably good taste. Like anyone who is exclusionary, you can guess where I see myself.

47. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)

Ken Loach's best film of the decade. About the Irish independence movement and its fractures upon the limited success it achieved in 1920. Literally brother against brother. That Loach frames it this way gets at the less than subtle propaganda his critics accuse him of. They aren't really wrong and Loach is wildly inconsistent, but his commitment to the cause of freedom around the world buys him points. Plus he doesn't take the easy way out in this film, making it very difficult for the viewers to pick sides between the Irish factions--though we can all hate the British. That conservative Britons were pissed at Loach for this film also recommends it.

46. Samaritan Girl (2004)

Kim Ki-Duk might take the title of most interesting director of the decade. With widely varying films, some of which include great violence and other Buddhist meditations, Kim consistently challenges the viewer. Samaritan Girl is about a pair of girls--one of whom becomes a prostitute and the other serves as a sort of pimp. When the prostitute dies, her friend takes her place, but not in the ways you'd expect. A really interesting movie.

45. Kings and Queen (2004)

This is probably about 10 spots too low, but I'm going to go with it. Arnaud Desplechin's parallel story of 2 ex-lovers is just fantastic. Mathieu Amalric is one of my 5 favorite actors of the decade and he certainly shines here.

44. Goodbye Solo (2008)

Ramin Bahrani films about the immigrant experience have been a highlight of American film this decade (such as Chop Shop). His film about an African immigrant working as a tax driver and estranged from his Mexican wife trying to keep a cranky white guy from killing himself by throwing himself off a mountain might scream indie overwroughtness with a less sure director, but Bahrani makes it work.

43. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Perhaps a surprise, but this film holds up to repeated viewings better than most from the Apatow factory. There are some amazingly funny bits through this film. This has been a real strong decade for American comedy (particularly the Will Ferrell films from early in the decade and the Apatow-related films from late) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of the highlights.

42. Head-On (2004)

Another great immigration film Fatih Akin's masterpiece about Turkish immigrants in Germany does a great job getting at the divided identities so many immigrants face. He migrated 20 years ago and has become a drunk. She is the daughter of immigrants who wants to party and have sex but comes from a conservative family. Desperate she attempts suicide, they meet in the hospital, and a fitful and tragic relationship results. If it sounds like a good time, you're right!

41. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Sidney Lumet's great comeback film (really one of the most underrated directors in American film history) features Philip Seymour Hoffman as a complete sleazeball who convinces his idiot brother (Ethan Hawke) to rob their parents' jewelry store. Mom dies as a result and complications set in. The end may not shock you, but it's a well-executed first-rate film.

Historical Image of the Day

William Seward, Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, 1861-69

Nader

Still an self-obsessed egomaniac.

Film Review: Avatar (2009)

Avatar is the 3-D, 22nd century version of Dances with Wolves with blue people. Same use of Noble Savage stereotypes, same white man coming to save the day, same indigenous embracing of the white man as their leader, same story of Europeans destroying indigenous civilizations because of greed, same directorial arrogance.

Yes, it looks cool. But the story is not only a joke, it's borderline offensive. Theoretically, viewers could take this movie and realize we should be more environmentally friendly and treat indigenous people better. But in reality, they are going to watch this movie and then wish we had these weapons to kill brown people in the Middle East.

Technically interesting, but a bad movie.

Eduardo Paes Determined to Destroy Rio de Janeiro through Useless Policies and Class Warfare

This past February, Rio de Janeiro's mayor, Eduardo Paes, launched the first step in his efforts to "clean up" Rio by banning beer vendors on the streets during Carnaval, a drastic and useless move that I hoped would be temporary. When I went to Brazil in June, I had a chance to see just how ugly and damaging Paes's clean-up efforts had become, undoing much of the harmless and enjoyable street life in Rio. Apparently, it has officially become Paes's goal to strip Rio of all of the harmless activities that one finds in public spaces, as he now has launched his assault on the most sacred sites in Rio: the beaches.

Under rules aimed at bringing order to Rio's famous beaches, ball games are among the undesirable activities being curtailed or banned as the city that will host a World Cup and Olympics within seven years seeks to clean up its act. [...]

The beach is just the latest target of a city-wide campaign to bring order to Rio, where traffic and other rules are often seen as optional. Though in place for nearly a year, the effort gained urgency with Rio's selection as 2016 Olympic host.

Rio state this month hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who takes credit for cleaning up the Big Apple, to help advise it on the Brazilian city's crime problems. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes recently told Cariocas, as Rio residents are known, to stop being such "pigs," referring to their habit of leaving piles of garbage on the beach.

The man in charge of carrying out the new policy, public order secretary Rodrigo Bethlam, said the beach's central place in Rio life made the battle for order there crucial.

"The beach is an emblematic place. If we can succeed in organizing the beach, it means we can organize the city," he told Reuters

This is just ridiculous in so many ways (and keep in mind - we're talking about soccer in Brazil - this isn't just some passing hobby among a handful). Firstly, the beaches are in fact public spaces, meaning they are for use by the public. The notion that playing soccer on the beach (in areas that are informally designated as athletic areas) is somehow "disorderly" and cutting into the power of the state is absurd. Secondly, the idea that if you can organize the beach, you "can organize the city" is stupid beyond description. The beach is in no way representative of all of the non-beach aspects of the city - it is a place of leisure for most, and business for an handful. It is not the financial district. It is not the favelas. True, you do get to see the wide income gap play out on the beach, but solving the "problem" of people playing soccer or volleyball on the beach does nothing to address that income gap, nor to address the issues of murderous police, the drug trade, the enormous gap in wealth, or the troublesome and often disgusting racism and classism of Rio's elites and middle class. Cleaning up the pollution on the beaches is a great idea, but again, has nothing to do with pick-up games of soccer. And it's not like there's an absence of space - while the beaches do get crowded on hot weekends, Copacabana and Ipanema alone are 9 km (about 6 miles) long, and Rio has over 50 miles of beaches.

In other words, this is yet another effort on Paes' part to A) "clean up" the city through absolutely useless gestures that accomplish no real good and detract much from the quotidian in Rio, and B) are specifically targeted towards the middle- and upper-class cariocas who lament how the beaches have become so "dirty" in the last decade or so, as the poor from the northern zone had increasing access to the richer southern neighborhoods in Copacabana and Ipanema. It's the worst kind of "high-modernism" one can find - the state's efforts to control everything end up stripping daily life of all of its harmless joys, all so the state can impose its presence in an obvious way that does nothing to deal with the actual substantial economic, social, and political problems facing a city (or country). Paes could use his office to try to improve the social conditions in the favelas and build up a beneficial state structure; instead, he makes sales of beer on the streets illegal at Carnaval. He could try to end the impunity police face as they enter favelas and kill indiscriminately; instead, he wages a war on beach-front soccer. The uselessness and stupidity of this is just mind-boggling.

And the useless enforcement goes beyond just soccer, touching everything that makes beach life enjoyable in Rio:

Among other cherished beach freedoms being withdrawn are sales of food on skewers such as shrimp and cheese that are hawked by entrepreneurs plying the sands. No longer will beach-goers, known here as "banhistas," be able to bring coolers for drinks or play music on stereos.

The main targets of the new policy are the hundreds of "barracas," or huts, that dot Rio's beaches, renting out deck chairs and selling everything from beer to barbecued meat.

Often emblazoned with their owner's name, they are colorful, if chaotic, fixtures of beach life that laugh in the face of sanitation rules but have their own loyal following.

Under the new rules, names or advertisements are out and they must accept being outfitted with all-white tents and equipment that, while smart-looking, are somewhat bland.

You want to eat on the beach? Sorry - that's no longer an option. You'll have to go to one of the high-end restaurants on the beach-front (restaurants that, not coincidentally, the poorer segments of Rio's population who come from the northern part of the city cannot afford). You want to rent a chair to sit on? Sorry - the guy who has a little tent and rents them out isn't allowed to do that anymore. Bring your own (which won't fit on the buses, again meaning that if you're not from that neighborhood, you're out of luck). Are you gay, and do you want to join other gay individuals in their own section of the beach? Sorry - the tents and flags that the gay community set up so others know where to find them aren't allowed, either. In short, Paes, in his increasingly ego-maniacal effort to control Rio, has launched blatant open class and cultural warfare, all in an effort to strip Rio of its vibrancy in the name of "order."

Fortunately, the people have begun overrule Paes on this one.

They are putting in place their own law, but it's wrong," said Marcel Damasceno de Matos, a 39-year-old who said he has worked his patch of Ipanema beach for 10 years.

"I have customers from the United States and other countries who come back year after year and look for my name. Now there's going to be a lot of confusion."

Still, in a country with no shortage of laws but a glaring lack of enforcement, not everyone on the beach is convinced that the shock of order will end up being so shocking.

"The law exists, but you're in Brazil," said Bernardo Braga, a 26-year-old model and student who was playing "keep up" on the Ipanema seafront.

"You just have to walk along here to see all the rules being ignored."

I already hope cariocas elect him out of office at the end of his term (which, unfortunately, is not for another 3 years). He has made it clear that important changes in the social and economic landscape meant to actually better the lives and existence of cariocas is not on his agenda. Instead, he is intent on imposing the state on the most mundane and harmless aspects of life, driving many out of their livelihoods, while issues like police violence, the drug trade, and disparities in wealth continue to plague Rio.

Top Cartel Lord Killed in Mexico

I don't follow Mexican politics or the nuances of the drug war as closely as I probably should, but this is big news:

Two hundred sailors raided an upscale apartment complex and killed a reputed Mexican drug cartel chief in a two-hour gunbattle, one of the biggest victories yet in President Felipe Calderon's drug war.

Arturo Beltran Leyva, the ''boss of bosses,'' and three members of his cartel were slain in the shootout Wednesday in Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, according to a navy statement. A fifth cartel member committed suicide during the shootout.

This in no way means the end of the drug trade, or the end of the cartels' power in Mexico. Still, this is definitely good news for President Calderon, who has been needing good news. And as pc points out, the news is everywhere in Mexico today.

Ruling in Case of Father Whose Son Is In Brazil

A Brazilian court has ruled that David Goldman's son be returned to him. Goldman had married a Brazilian woman who in 2004 took their son (who at the time was 4) with her to Brazil on a "vacation." Goldman's wife remained in Brazil with the son, divorced Goldman, remarried, and died in childbirth. Since her death, Goldman's son had remained with his dead ex-wife's family, and he'd been fighting for years to have his child returned to him. The ex-wife's family had filed numerous appeals (and appears ready to file another), but at the end, this is a pretty clear-cut case in terms of morals and legal standing: regardless of possible language or cultural barriers, the kid should be with his father, from whom he was effectively kidnapped. Hopefully, the Brazilian Supreme Court will uphold the ruling, and Goldman can finally be reunited with his son after 5 years.

The Day the Music Died

The Rock Hall of Fame was a joke years ago. But this? ABBA is awful enough (words cannot express the hatred I have for them), but knowing Phil Collins will be inducted in any capacity at the same time? If there is a just god, the rock hall will spontaneously combust and fall into Lake Erie, never to be revived in any capacity.

And Iggy, to answer your question "Am I still cool? Or is that over now?", the answer is, You're getting inducted with ABBA and Phil Collins. That's over now.

(And the fact that some new scrolling message board on google had numerous people declaring ABBA the "best rock group ever" without tongue planted firmly in cheek is just one more bit of evidence that parody is dead.)

Honduras: one bad apple, etc.?

I usually don't wade into the depths of Latin American politics around here, mostly because Trend and Erik do it so much better than I do. So I still don't have a heck of a lot to say on the subject--but I thought I'd share this from my day job.

GRITtv: Will the coup in Honduras create larger problems for Latin America? What will its effects mean for the rest of Latin America, a region trending leftward in recent years? Greg Grandin, Nation contributor, NYU professor, and author of Empire's Workshop and Fordlandia, Roque Planas of Latin American News Dispatch, and Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College professor and author of Cuba Represent! and the upcoming Who Can Stop The Drums: Urban Social Movements in Chavez's Venezuela join us in studio to discuss. We also have updates from inside Honduras from Andres Conteris of Nonviolence International and Democracy Now! and freelance journalist Elyssa Pachico reports from Chile.

Facial Hair of the Weekend

Venustiano Carranza (1859-1920). Carranza became political leader of Mexico in 1914 upon the overthrow of Victoriano Huerta. Carranza marked a return of revolutionary leadership (and amazing facial hair) to the presidency, but was unable to satisfy the forces of Emiliano Zapata to the South, Francisco "Pancho" Villa to the north, and increasingly later in his term, his own generals, whom he did not want running for president in 1920. While Carranza did push through major reforms during his time in office, his term was also marked by corruption. Carranza was assassinated by one of his former general's supporters in 1920 as he tried to flee Mexico City.

Historical Image of the Day

Calf ropers, Nevada, 1978

Breakdowns in Negotiations Over Zelaya's Status in Honduras? Shocking!

Color me unsurprised:

A plan for the ousted Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, to leave the country for Mexico ran aground late Wednesday when negotiations over his safe passage fell apart, the leader and the Mexican authorities said.

As the news about Mr. Zelaya’s possible departure spread, along with considerable confusion, his supporters gathered outside the police barricades erected in the streets surrounding the Brazilian Embassy, where he has been a virtual prisoner since September.

In an interview with the Mexican TV network Televisa, Mr. Zelaya said that the de facto government had placed a “denigrating” condition on his departure from Honduras, offering him safe passage out of the embassy only if he would seek political asylum. He added that he has not asked for political asylum.

Wow. Efforts between Micheletti and Zelaya to come to a negotiated conclusion over something ended in no results, miscommunication, and a dogmatic refusal to bend to any type of agreement on the part of Micheletti? This has never happened before!

More seriously, Greg is saying (and the Times article backs this up) that Zelaya isn't opposed to leaving; he just doesn't want it to be as a political asylee. The fact that the Micheletti government has decided to stonewall on a point that means very little to it (it's gone in a few weeks), but so much to Zelaya, is just symbolic of how incompetent and authoritarian the Micheletti regime has been. A refusal to give in to any negotiations that cause you no harm but are beneficial to your opponent while insisting all of your own demands be met is not negotiating. Micheletti pretty much alienated everybody who wasn't a political elite pal of his a long time ago, but his shtick got old months ago. Hopefully, history will remember what a reprehensible, unbending, undemocratic, authoritarian "leader" he was for the six months he served as the head of a government that overthrew a democratically elected president.

The Favelas, Infra-Structural Development, and the Eco-Wall: Good and Bad Manifestations of the Brazilian State

To build on Erik's post below, I wanted to add a little more on the so-called "eco-wall" put up around a favela in Rio. In addition to the report that CNN put up (it was actually the major story on cnn.com when I woke up yesterday morning, much to my shock and satisfaction, as stories about the favelas, and particularly the repression they face, are usually buried deep within CNN's site), there was another report that involved eyewitness journalistic accounts of the favela, which was not too far from where I lived in Rio (within 10 minutes, I could see the favela, and within 20 minutes, I could be in it).

For all of the talk of how "violent" the favelas and their residents are, I thought this part of the journalist's account was worth highlighting:
According to officials it’s an “ecobarrier” built to protect the surrounding rainforest, but a lot of people we talked to were offended.

They felt they were being caged in and saw it as an attempt to further separate the crime-ridden slums from the affluent condos on the beaches below.

But what struck me was just how safe Santa Marta was.

When I lived in Rio eight years earlier it was unthinkable to enter any favela without a police escort.

At night you could hear shoot-outs between rival drug gangs and nearby neighborhoods complained of “lost bullets” that tore through their homes while they slept.

That’s changed with Rio’s “pacification” plan. Santa Marta is one of the favelas that’s been occupied by police. They built a permanent headquarters in the community and have set up checkpoints where gangs used to sell drugs.

We actually saw very few police when we hiked along the winding paths, but the sense of security was palpable.

I commented on this "'pacification' plan" a couple of days ago. I don't know how "accurate" this journalist's report is - it is possible that it was just a particularly peaceful time when he was there, or that this was "pra ingles ver" ["for the English to see"], as they say. Still, I think there's a very real chance that his sentiment reflects the broader atmosphere in Santa Marta, and if what he saw and felt were the permanent conditions in Santa Marta, then I think the new approaches of the police may actually be working, at least in this favela. I've long said that infrastructural development in the favelas would be central to a shift in the policy towards Brazil's poor and marginalized; it seems that Santa Marta has only reinforced that suggestion.

That said, I think the eco-wall is absolutely the wrong kind of infrastructure to establish in the favelas. As I said in comments to Erik's post, I think the problems with the eco-wall are twofold. It was nearly impossible for Santa Marta to spread into the forest due to its location - the mountains around it are simply too steep. While the favela did manage to creep into a part of the mountains, the settled area is already steep enough that they have to have a tram to take residents from the bottom of the hill to the top. In that part of Rio (Botafogo), the mountains simply are unable to even support favelas, so deforestation for settlement is near impossible. My second problem (as much with the article Erik originally commented on, as well as the broader question at hand) is that it treats eco-protection and segregation as an "either/or" proposition, when it's not. It's absolutely possible (and, in this case, likely) that you could do eco-protection while (further) marginalizing sectors of society. Ultimately, this to me is segregation, plain and simple: where Santa Marta is located butts up against the federally protected forest of Tijuca, which is the largest urban forest in the world. What is more, Santa Marta simply cannot expand, and really hasn't - it was the same this past summer when I went to Brazil as it had been when I was first there in 2005. If this were an earnest effort to protect the environment without segregating the poor, it would have happened elsewhere in the city - not Botafogo.

Given the new tactics in São Paulo and the apparent success (though I'd like to see more reports) of the new tactics in Santa Marta, I feel that for the first time, there is a not-illegitimate hope that the violence in the favelas may have a real chance to decline. To re-state my original skepticism, the fact that Santa Marta is one of over 1000 favelas in Rio alone means there is a very long way to go. Still, these efforts indicate that, for the first time ever, the federal state and state government of Rio may actually be taking measures to establish infrastructural improvements that could decrease the violence. But eco-walls like the one in Santa Marta are counterproductive, as they produce no real benefits and antagonize residents that the state is trying to win over.