Posh Leblon highlights Brazil’s rich-poor divide
Residents of the cliffside slum of Favela Vidigal have a billionaire’s view of Leblon Beach and Ipanema but cannot afford to buy a ticket to the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The billionaires and millionaires who live a few hundred metres below Vidigal in Leblon and Ipanema could buy the Olympics many times over. But the plutocrats who inhabit one of the most expensive patches of real estate in the world have little interest in Latin America’s first Olympics.
“Most of them are now on holiday in Europe or North America,” said Regina Helena Galatro Cavalcanti, who with her husband owns a company that sells real estate in Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana.
“They may have gone to the opening ceremony. They may go to the closing ceremony, but that’s all. They thought it would be too crowded here during the Olympics so they left.”
About the only time the Brazillionaires — as they have been dubbed in an new book of that name by Alex Cuadros — have expressed an interested in the Olympics was when a new Metro line was proposed that would stop in Leblon on the way to Olympic Park. The plan was opposed because it would bring many of the city’s poor through their neighbourhood.
It was one of the rare battles that Rio’s elite has lost.
While many locals are absent, their tables at the grand Antiquario Restaurant — one of the super rich’s favourite haunts in Leblon — are being filled by wealthy Americans, Europeans, Koreans, Chinese and Gulf Arabs.
“Thank God for those foreigners with money,” said Luciano Fernandes, the maitre d’ at Antiquario for 30 years. “These Olympics have been very good for us.”
The contrast between Rio’s haves and have-nots is extraordinary.
There are parallel universes of penury and bling. Nowhere is the difference more stark than in Leblon and Vidigal, which has been somewhat “pacified” by security forces, to use the Brazilian euphemism, precisely because it was adjacent to places where it was expected Olympic visitors would gather.
Brazil’s raucous, crimeridden favelas are often occupied by “traficantes.” They are always at war against the police and the army. That is, when they are not trying to kill each other in turf wars.
Brazil’s old money, its industrialists and its newly rich, who tend to be singers, soap opera stars and “futebol” players, enjoy a quality of life in Leblon that has been compared with that of Norway. They live in regal splendour in heavily guarded fortresses surrounded by high-tech perimeter fences and gates that are closely watched by closed-circuit television cameras. When they emerge from their gilded cages they motor around town in armoured cars know as “blindados.”
Canadians complain about the outrageous cost of waterfront homes in Toronto and Vancouver. But the prices there are nothing like what it costs to put down roots on Leblon’s exquisite Delfin Moreira. Ronaldo, the retired striker known as “Il Fenomeno” — arguably Brazil’s greatest soccer player since Pele — owns a penthouse eyrie of marble and glass on the beach that was valued at about $10 million last year.
Other apartments on Delfin Moreira have sold for more than $35 million. One is on sale for $31 million.
“This is the top address in Brazil for elegant people from high society,” said Ina Bloch, who sells real estate with the Cavalcantis. “Rich families and foreigners all want to live here in front of the sea.”
Bloch flipped through photographs of a new 477-square-metre apartment in Leblon that she was selling for about $18 million. Among the home’s prime features are a private elevator to the 27th floor and two broad verandas affording breathtaking sea and mountain views.
Brazil is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the Depression. One of the triggers has been the massive “lava jato” or car wash scandal. It has involved the naked looting of Petrobras, the state-owned oil company and subsequent money laundry. More than half of Brazil’s deputies have been implicated. So has the president, Dilma Rousseff, who is being impeached, as well as the interim president and the previous president.
Counting with his fingers, Fernandes guessed that over the years he has served eight presidents at Antiquario including Rousseff.
“I love my country, which is blessed with so much, but our problem is corruption,” the maitre d’ said. “It starts with the politicians and the military. They only think of themselves. Nobody ever thinks of what Brazilians could do if we worked together. There is no harmony. This has stopped the country.”
The collapse of the economy and of the currency, the real, has emptied the feeble treasuries of Rio and the state of Rio de Janeiro, which resulted in funding shortfalls for the Olympics.
“But none of this affects people with money,” Bloch said. “What can stop a sale in Leblon is if there are not enough parking spaces. These people often have four or five cars and they want a safe place to park them.”
The one well-heeled group that was not buying apartments these days were politicians, Regina Cavalcantis said.
Amid public fury and revulsion at their crimes, “they are afraid to show that they have money.”
NOBODY EVER THINKS OF WHAT BRAZILIANS COULD DO IF WE WORKED TOGETHER.