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Articles on Rio de Janeiro

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Ever since a 1904 revolt against the smallpox vaccine, Brazil has run extremely successful vaccination programs. Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Brazil’s president rejects COVID-19 vaccine, undermining a century of progress toward universal inoculation

A 1904 revolt against mandatory smallpox inoculation taught Brazilian health officials a deadly lesson on how to vaccinate a skeptical public. Today President Bolsonaro seems to ignore that history.
A market area in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, crowded with people despite the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020. hmed Salahuddin/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Megacity slums are incubators of disease – but coronavirus response isn’t helping the billion people who live in them

COVID-19 is spreading fast through not only the world’s richest cities but also its poorest, ravaging slum areas where risk factors like overcrowding and poverty accelerate disease transmission.
In Rio de Janeiro, practitioners of the Afro-Brazilian faiths Candomble and Umbanda are increasingly under attack by evangelical crusaders. AP Photo/Leo Correa

Evangelical gangs in Rio de Janeiro wage ‘holy war’ on Afro-Brazilian faiths

As evangelicalism spreads across Brazil, some of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious gangs see minority religions as an affront to God. And they’re using guns to spread their gospel.
The view of Cartagena, Colombia from Tierra Bomba. Despite being one of the most visited cities in South America, Tierra Bomba remains highly impoverished. Why doesn’t large-scale tourism benefit such a community? Carter Hunt

The travel industry has sparked a backlash against tourists by stressing quantity over quality

At many popular destinations, residents are protesting against crowding, rowdy visitors and low wages. With some research, travelers can use their visits to enrich host areas instead of harming them.
Brazil’s jailhouse preachers may not explicitly condone violence against people of other faiths, but they’ve remained largely silent as their well-armed followers wage a holy war. Reuters/Ricardo Moraes

In Brazil, religious gang leaders say they’re waging a holy war

As hard-line Pentecostalism spreads across Brazil, some drug traffickers in gang-controlled areas of Rio de Janeiro are using religion as an excuse to attack nonbelievers.
Rio’s new mayor, a former evangelical bishop, has called homosexuality a sin, but Rio is proud of its tolerance and diversity. Sergio Moraes/Reuters

Rio de Janeiro’s new evangelical mayor could threaten the city’s famed diversity

Famously freewheeling – but also violent and unequal – Rio de Janeiro has elected a right-wing former pentecostal bishop as mayor. What’s at stake for this ‘gay, black and tolerant’ Brazilian city?
For Rio de Janeiro and for Brazil, these Olympic Games arrived at the worst possible time. Reuters/Bruno Kelly

Why the spectacle of the Olympics will go on despite Rio’s disappointments

Instead of showcasing a rising global power with a booming economy, the 2014 Games put a spotlight on Brazil’s most serious economic recession since the 1930s, along with a host of social problems.
A JR giant. © Beatriz Garcia

Why art needs to retake the Olympic stage

It’s time to finally put art on the Olympic map, prove the sceptics wrong, and renew and advance some of the more tired aspects of the Games staging process.
Partially demolished houses in the Vila Autodromo favela, with the Olympic Park in the background. Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

As the Olympics approach, stains on Rio’s architecture, infrastructure

An architect rides through the streets of Rio amidst a cacophony of drills and jackhammers. He wonders: Is it worth it? What will the legacy of all this construction be?

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