The Old Man and the Lagoon

Part 1 in a 6-part series on the forced removal of Vila Autodromo

Vila Autdromo on the margins of the Jacarepagua Lagoon.
Photo credit: favela.info

Grizzled, deeply tanned, and with cataracts that fail to obscure a pair of animated green eyes, Seu Francisco is the spitting image of Hemingway’s old fisherman. Like his fictitious Cuban counterpart, Seu Francisco’s life is characterized by his relationship to water. The Jacarepagua Lagoon, where Seu Francisco and 3,000 other residents have made their home, laps languidly at the shore below as he gazes out from his rooftop across the vast expanse of turbid blue. He recalls the days when fish were abundant in the lagoon, and provided him with a sufficient income for his family. He gestures to the opposite shore of the inlet on which his two-story house is perched, and directs my attention to an area of the lagoon where construction for the Olympic Games has begun. “See that? They pollute the water. They cut down trees. They dump their construction waste in the lake,” he explains. “I can’t fish here anymore. Now I must travel two hours to the next lagoon, where there are still fish.”

“What about the fish here?” I ask. “Where are they now?”
Seu Francisco shakes his head slowly. “Sumiram,” he says. “They disappeared.”
Thanks to an October 9th, 2009 decision by the municipal government to bulldoze his home to make way for Games-related construction, Seu Francisco may soon meet the same fate as his fish.