Cidade de Deus

Cidade de Deus is a complex movie from 2002 that gives an in depth look at a favela that produced many hoodlums and many social problems for the people who lived in the favela. The movie gives insight into the tangled weave of gangs and violence and the monetary constraints of the people of this favela. It centers around a few main characters, Rocket, the narrator, Lil' Z, Benny, Carrot, and eventually Knockout Ned. These characters become inter weaved with each other through a complex social system that they themselves created.

It could be said that the reason these people, Lil' Z, Benny, and Carrot, were driven to drug dealing and being hoodlums in general, was the lack of money/jobs available in the favela. The Pino article says it best in the opening paragraph, "Favelados have served the city of Rio de Janeiro in every imaginable capacity, but when their services were no longer required they have been discarded like rotten fruit."The opportunity for jobs for people living in the favelados was small, depending on which one you lived in. Pino goes on to compare three different favelados all of which had different economic issues and job opportunities than the others. Pino goes on to discuss how laborers from the favelas were lucky to get a full-time permanent job. It was very rare for these workers to get a permanent job until he discusses the last favela which was lucky enough to have plants such as GE right beside itself and gave its people more job security than most people had. On pages 24-25 in the Pino article it says that "Nineteen hundred shanties reported an average income of Cr$245 per household." This lack of income can explain why these kids felt the need to steal and in the end become drug lords, these actions gave them the opportunity it have money that they could have never gotten their hands on before.

Oliveira goes on to compare the Brazil favelas with ghettos in New York City to help people comprehend what it was like to live in these areas. It is clear that the mentality of these areas were much different than the ghettos in America. The ghettos came about from whites leaving the urban and going to the outskirts of the city while favelas were formed by people who built their houses where they thought work would be. It was cheaper to build a house in a favela than rent an apartment in the city. They have very little political weight and Oliveira goes on to discuss the differences in these areas by comparing their political involvement. "In Brazil much of the progressive black political leadership that achieved political office arose from the community-based movement, while in the United States it arose from the civil rights movement." pg. 84. The favelas had to stick up for themselves in politics, no one else was looking out for them like the civil rights movement did in America and this fact could also play in the creation of hoodlums in the favelas. No one was watching their back and they make it clear in the movie that the cops did not come there.

These two articles give a bit of insight into why these kids become the drug lords that they did; however, there is always more factors than one can explain in a simple article. In the favela, one had to look out for themselves and the ones that they cared about and that mentality produced the scenes that happened in the movie.

The Beginnings of El Che, The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries is a film about two young men who journey through South America while on break from school and who discover a world far more complex than their social structure in Argentina had ever showed them. The movie begins very lighthearted and comical but slowly gets darker as the story progresses. The inconsistency between life of city dwellers and indigenous Indians is shown and is depicted as having a huge effect on the two boys. The leper colony is what is shown last and is presented to have the biggest effect on their perspective of this inequality. If one did not know anything about this movie or the people depicted in it before hand than it comes as a surprise at the end that one of the boys, Ernesto Guevara, goes on to become a Latin American hero and plays a role in the Cuban revolution and will become known throughout the world as El Che.

His life is one that us heavily speculated on and it seems as if everyone wants to give an opinion of what it is that shaped his world view, what it was that made him make the transfer from Ernesto Guevara to El Che. Elena speculates that Guevara’s upbringing as a middle class boy in Argentina played a role in his transformation. He had access to books and education that provided him the sight to see what was really going on in the world. His eyes were open to the differences between middle class, working class, and indigenous people. Also, his lack of opinion on the Peron government is a huge topic for Elena. HE is depicted as have respect for the equalization that the working class got under Peron but utter disgust with the tourism market that was opened up. He seemed to scoff at people that traveled  to resorts or the coasts, he was a believer in what seems to be traveling to learn and see the world. It is brought to light in this article though that his trip with Alberto was not his first out, he had previously traveled around Argentina and this fact could explain why he wanted to go out farther this time.

Drinot and Zulawski focus on Peru and Bolivia and their effect on the shaping of El Che’s worldview. Both talk about how little Che seemed to know about the indigenous people, it seems by the time it came to care, he cared much more for helping the people inside of knowing truly where they were coming from. Drinot points out that Guevara still played into many social stereotypes of the Indians, which is quite odd considering they were who he seemed the most interested in during his travels. He does not seem interested in politics though, very little writing exists, he focused much more on the people than the politics.

Overall, the movie is a pretty good depiction of what could have been a mile marker in Ernesto Guevara’s transformation in El Che and it seems that he will be written about by many people for years to come and the speculation about his life will never end.