Abstract

Ravel Gonçalves Mendonça is a seventeenyear-old beach volleyball phenom from Rio de Janeiro. He is currently training with Brazil’s national team at its state-of-the-art facility in Saquarema, a hundred kilometers north of Rio. He represents the junior national team and hopes to make the cut for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, which will be held in his home city. But his country’s preparation for the Olympics has eliminated what used to be Ravel’s home. Until recently, he lived with his family—father Rosinaldo, mother Rosilene, and brothers Ruan (eighteen) and Roger (six)—in a community known as Largo do Tanque, not far from the Olympic stadia under construction in the West Zone of the vast municipality. In the first months of this year, much of Largo do Tanque, including the Mendonça family home, was razed to make way for the Transcarioca Expressway, a rapidtransit highway for buses that will link Rio’s international airport with the Olympic village, cutting through working-class North and West Zone neighborhoods on its way. Ravel’s story illustrates both the promise and the peril of the Olympics for residents of favelas and other working-class subdivisions.

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