By Daniel Rigney
If Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges had made Rio de Janeiro the subject of one of his mindbending metaphysical stories, he might have pictured it as a city that contains within itself a replica of itself. That replica would in turn contain a replica, and so on ad infinitum, rendering Rio a city-within-a-city-within-a-city. It would be Rios all the way down.
On a recent visit to Brazil’s city of marvels, I encountered miniaturized versions of its urban features everywhere I turned. In the museums. In the shops. On the streets. Around every corner I seemed to find urban fractals – stylized re-presentations of Rio’s city life at smaller levels of magnitude. Here are some views of Rio in microcosm.
Two of the city’s most recognizable features are Sugar Loaf, the graceful mountain that rises straight up out of the Atlantic at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, and Christ the Redeemer, the 98-foot-tall statue that looks out on the city with compassion from a peak further inland. These two towering icons are brought together in the elegant miniature sculpture shown at top, which I found in a local curio shop.
Rio is a modern, sophisticated metropolis of 12 million inhabitants, with a prosperous southern zone composed largely of middle and upper-class neighborhoods, and a more impoverished northern zone where many of the city’s favelas or squatter settlements cover the hillsides.
Between the two zones stands Rio’s tall, modern centro, or downtown business district. I discovered a miniature scale model of centro in the magnificent new Rio Art Museum (MAR), pictured here in the lower righthand corner of the photo.
This model of centro (seen through a plexiglass haze) theoretically contains a tiny scale model of itself, and that model a scale model, and so on all the way down. In Borges’s infinite universe (illustrations by M.C. Escher?), we ourselves, and this museum we're standing in, might also be figures in a model contained within a larger model within a larger model, rising all the way up.
Much of Rio’s downtown and urban coastline are built on artificial landfill. Even its legendary Atlantic beaches, Copacabana and Ipanema, are ‘sandfill,’ made of the finest miniature sand -- perfect for building the finest minature castles.
People of all sizes, shapes, ages, and colors come out to the beaches to enjoy varied sports and recreations, even in the warmth of winter. According to my calculations, the famed “Girl from Ipanema” (named Helô Pinheiro), 17 when she inspired the classic bossa nova tune, is now in the vicinity of 70, and probably still strolling the beach.
Old-timers will remember Rio in the early years of the automotive era when cars, planes, and other conveyances in the city were made entirely of wood (not really), and resembled children’s toys, as shown in the street market models shown here.
Today, of course, Rio’s transportation is metallic and modern. The city’s infamous traffic jams look something like this.
Squatters who live in the favelas overlooking the city build their urban villages with their own hands from cinderblock and brick. A current installation in the Rio Art Museum, created by resident favela artists from customary materials, depicts just such a neighborhood.
Residents of the outer favelas sometimes ride to and from the city center in old trains whose cars resemble the one pictured here, though most of Rio’s mass transit is considerably sleeker.
In the same restaurant where we found the model train on display, we also found this piece of folk art from the interior sentimentalizing small town life. Its romantic imagery contrasts sharply with the bustling reality of contemporary urban Brazil.
Our visit to Rio coincided with numerous mass protest demonstrations, called manifestações, or manifestations, that were erupting across the country in opposition to unpopular governmental policies and priorities. These elicited immediate and forceful responses from city, state and military police. Our hope is that these conflicts don’t escalate toward further violence. Older Brazilians remember all too well the experience of living under martial law – most recently in the years they spent under military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.
The scene below, from a miniature diorama in a Rio military museum, depicts Brazil’s army at war against Paraguay in the 1860s – one of the bloodiest wars in modern history.
Back home in Texas again, I’ve imported a miniature white Volkswagen beetle acquired from a centro street vendor to add to my bug collection. The beetle branco is seen here driving by the Alamo in San Antonio. A Brazilian parrot surveys the passing parade.
Ciao, Rio, and obrigado! We had a life-sized time.
For a more literal look at contemporary Rio, see Dispatch from Rio: The Manifestations.
Danagram
:] photos by author, picturing reality since 2011
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