Lessons at Boxing

Part 1/2

Four nights every week you can find me on the beach outside my apartment with a group of young people from Santa Marta practicing boxing. I am not aggressive and I don't have inner demons or anger to get out, so boxing isn't a release for me. On the contrary, violence, even controlled and choreographed as it is with martial arts, is a source of anxiety. Even so, I look forward to those hours each night. We start each practice running, followed by jumping jacks and other exercises like burpees, push-ups, and laterals. Sometimes Rafael plans circuit training, sometimes we put on gloves and partner up to work through various combinations of punches, blocks and dodges. I'm terrible and I'm fully aware of the fact, but I like the discipline, I'm getting in shape and the camaraderie of the group as they meet each night is lovely to watch. They will be people I miss when I leave here.

I joined the group when a friend approached them after our workout the first week I moved into my new apartment. It's a youth development project started and maintained by Ricardo, teaching young people in his community boxing, mixed martial arts, muay thai, jiujitsu and self defense so they can learn, compete and become certified coaches. More than anything, though, it's a way to teach discipline, create community, encourage aspirations and pay it forward. Those who learn within the project go on to teach others and volunteer in other ways to help their community, family and friends. Rafael (who is maybe 22) comes to every practice and often helps teach. He has spent years with the project and now competes professionally under the name of the group - Centro Esportivo Santa Marta. It's free to participate, but school-age kids must stay in school to stay in the group. In most poor communities, of which Santa Marta is one, education levels are low, dropout rates are high, and lots of kids are bored and turn to petty crime or gang membership. Ricardo started the sports groups to get kids involved in something. The community began to rally around the group, pitching in to equip a space with a/c and equipment. Shortly after opening the space however, the police force, claiming a need for a new office space, came in and took it over. The police won’t let them get their equipment back or use the space, so they started practicing on the beach while they try to take legal measures to regain control of the building, or at least of the equipment. The social project is mostly stalled since it's only a select few who can come to the beach at night and none of them children, but that doesn't stop them from showing up night after night. Usually there aren't more than eight of us, but I have to hope that the project will swell again come summer despite the setbacks. 

Police are a complicated issue, especially in the favelas. They are criticized for corruption, killings and excessive use of force, but their job is not without risk. In Rio de Janeiro alone, 97 police officers have been killed this year. The temptation is strong to strike deals with drug dealers to take a cut of the profit in exchange for looking the other way, or to force communities to pay for "protection" or face police violence if they refuse, and many police officers choose these paths. This isn't to say that all police are corrupt and violent, just as not all (or even most) favela-dwellers are gang members and drug traffickers. Most everyone from both sides of the equation is just trying to work, raise families, hang with friends and live safely. It's complicated. In this context, though, I don't find it unlikely that the police took over a community space in a favela without so much as a by-your-leave as soon as it was renovated.  

I’m trying to understand what it means to live here and I get a lot of different responses. Talking with Ricardo was particularly interesting, since he runs what he says is the only functioning community development group in Santa Marta. The community doesn’t unite around a cause or pool together resources or voices to lift the community up. “Acomodados,” he called them. They complain, but don’t agitate. The older generation thinks that if they lived without, then their children and grandchildren can live without as well. Money becomes an obsession and quick money even more so. I wondered aloud if part of the problem came from the example set by politicians and the political system which creates cycles of corruption and injustice that make it very hard to operate honestly. "How can we critique politicians," he said, "If we do not examine ourselves?" So many little things, little acts of avarice, keep accumulating and we are no better than the politicians we elect. You won’t ever see someone find a wallet on the street and look for its owner, he explains. They’ll take the money and toss the wallet, a finder’s keepers philosophy taught from childhood.  

My roommate talks a lot about this issue, which she thinks of as a cultural curse that drags the country down from top to bottom. It’s that sense that everyone wants to get the cheapest result possible with the highest reward regardless of the means of obtaining it. It’s a reason so many semis are hijacked in Rio - criminals know they can steal the cargo and sell it on the street in no time flat. Stolen goods cost less to the buyer than buying in the store, and stealing is *free* for the seller, so everyone walks away happy. Except for the company. And now the military. And now the city. And the public. That search for the quick buck and willingness to buy stolen goods doesn’t just threaten the big guys - it threatens everyone. Companies don’t want to send goods into Rio because the risk is too high that everything will just get stolen on the road, so now the military has been put out in force to try to stop carjackings and protect drivers. More military means more confrontations, and not just for heists. Carjacking isn’t limited to big international companies. Sitting in traffic going across the bay you may find a motorcycle cruise past your open window, its rider indicating with a gun for you to hand over any valuables. It’s all over in a matter of seconds and they disappear into the sea of cars as everyone inches forward.  

Scams are everywhere and they’re not just the “prince in Africa” scams either. They’re the stealing public money and building private pools scams, the closing public hospitals, clinics and universities and blaming economic crisis scams. It’s ego and selfishness and greed, rather than honesty, integrity and common good. Insecurity isn’t an isolated incident - security is a common good and a right that must be demanded and defended. If you’re willing to steal, you’re part of the problem. If you’re willing to buy something stolen, you’re part of the problem. If you’re willing to be bought so the stealing isn’t punished, you’re part of the problem. If you’re willing to misuse funds to line your pockets instead of providing programs and health that communities need to maintain a decent quality of life legally, you are part of the problem. Yes, theft is a problem, but it is not the problem. One of the graduate students I work with noted that thieves are rarely blamed - it’s the person who was robbed who shouldn’t have been flashing their phone around, not the thief who shouldn’t steal. These are not issues exclusive to Brazil, but they are mentioned in conversation time and again while I've been here, so I've been taking note. 

You ask a kid on the corner delivering drugs why he does it, and he tells you that there’s no food at home, Ricardo says. Education levels are low, and community organization is lower. Activities, especially for young people, are virtually non-existent, which is why social programs are so important. If you see no other alternatives and you don’t have opportunities or a stable home life, it’s logical to join a gang. This group in Santa Marta has trained young people to become coaches in muay thai, boxing and jiujitsu, and those young people are now teaching classes. Ricardo hopes that even with the few who grow up within the project, he will have an impact on their lives that they will pay forward. The future is the children, he says, and seems disillusioned at best with the current generation of Brazil. I am always surprised at those who despair of adults, but are adults themselves. I understand that it’s easier to influence a kid or teen and to hope that he will follow a better path, but I don’t think that by age 25 we’re hopeless. I hope not. I’ve passed that milestone and I hope I can still learn and be active and push for social change and work in development. Ricardo's older than that and he's working towards a different future all the time. Like most Brazilians I’ve met, Ricardo fluctuates between cautious hope and outright despair. He points out five, ten, twenty obstacles that range from cattiness to lack of sanitation to community inertia to police brutality to corruption to desperation, but still fights every day in the hopes that people will show up. He says the sport project is dying because the community is letting it die. His frustration and worry are evident, but he stubbornly refuses to accept them and refuses to become another “acomodado.” His dream is to build a sport and cultural center to create a future for these youth, and it's not impossible. Fraught, yes, but not impossible.