Rio de Janeiro

THE London Olympics concluded Sunday, but the battle over the next games has just begun in Rio, where protests against illegal evictions of some of the city’s poorest residents are spreading. Indeed, the Rio Olympics are poised to increase inequality in a city already famous for it.

Last month, Unesco awarded World Heritage Site status to a substantial portion of the city, an area that includes some of its hillside favelas, where more than 1.4 million of the city’s 6 million residents live. No favela can claim greater historical importance than Rio’s first — Morro da Providência — yet Olympic construction projects are threatening its future.

Providência was formed in 1897 when veterans of the bloody Canudos war in Brazil’s northeast were promised land in Rio de Janeiro, which was then the federal capital. Upon arriving, they found no such land available. After squatting in front of the Ministry of War, the soldiers were moved to a nearby hill belonging to a colonel, though they were given no title to the land. Originally named “Morro da Favela” after the spiny favela plant typical of the Canudos hills where soldiers had spent many nights, Providência grew during the early 20th century as freed slaves joined the soldiers. New European migrants came as well, as it was the only affordable way to live near work in the city’s center and port.

Overlooking the site where hundreds of thousands of African slaves first entered Brazil, Providência is part of one of the most important cultural sites in Afro-Brazilian history, where the first commercial sambas were composed, traditions like capoeira and candomblé flourished and Rio’s Quilombo Pedra do Sal was founded. Today 60 percent of its residents are Afro-Brazilian.