{"id":1658,"date":"2016-01-09T04:51:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T10:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/?p=1658"},"modified":"2019-07-29T16:04:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T21:04:30","slug":"the-sao-paulo-metro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/?p=1658","title":{"rendered":"The Sao Paulo metro"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>The Sao Paulo Metro<\/strong>\n

The metro is one of the wonders of Sao Paulo.\u00a0 It is the third largest in Latin America, after Mexico City and Santiago, Chile.\u00a0 It is not as large as Beijing or Tokyo or Cairo, but it is about the 12th largest in the world.\u00a0 Currently moving something less than 900 million riders a year, it is has a major expansion in progress that will bring even more of the faro-flung city into the network.<\/p>\n

This is a bit daunting when you realize that metropolitan Sao Paulo already has some 20 million inhabitants and is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.<\/p>\n

The first of five lines, each\u00a0 named by color, was inaugurated in the 1970s.\u00a0 Line 1 \u2014 the Blue Line \u2014 connects the center of the city with outlying stations with indigenous names \u2014 Jabaquara and Turucuvi.\u00a0 The four other lines cross-cross the city, and a fifth is being built to add more of the city\u2019s sprawl to the network.<\/p>\n

It is fast, clean, modern and well-managed.\u00a0 Stepping from the train to the street is often a bit of a surprise, since the areas around some of the stops seem a bit sketchy, particularly at night.\u00a0 But at peak times it moves hundreds of thousands of passengers.\u00a0 Its stations are fitting for a large industrial city \u2014 busy and pretty efficient.<\/p>\n

It does not have the vast commercial network that the Japanese subway does.\u00a0 The metro in Tokyo has stops that are named for the department store there, and there is a feeling of being in an underground city at times.\u00a0 No so in Sao Paulo.\u00a0 This is a huge mover of people through the city, a no frills transit machine to carry people through its capillaries as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

For an older rider (over 60) the metro is free.\u00a0 This means that showing some form of identification with your face and birthday will get you through a special access gate where an attendant will swipe a special magnetic card that will open a gate for you.\u00a0 If you are unsure how to do this, you can usually identify the access point by the short line of older folks, or a large swinging gate marked for handicapped access.<\/p>\n

This was a ride up and down the Blue Line, spending time in Santa Cruz, Praca da Se, Liberdade, and various stops along the way.<\/p>\n

The first of these images depicts the European colonizers and the bandeirantes<\/em> who opened the interior of Brazil and challenged the Spanish for its possession.\u00a0 Enslavement and displacement of the indigenous population following them, as did the slavery of Africans and African descendants.<\/p>\n

This mural overlooks one of the busiest metro stations along the Blue Line, which runs some 20 kilometers between Jabaquara<\/em> and Turucuvi<\/em>, both stops ironically honoring indigenous names for parts of present-day Sao Paulo.\u00a0 The colonizers and adventurers kept the land, but they gave back the names.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9606\"<\/a>
In the tradition of progressive muralist art, this work shows the iron hand of the Portuguese colonizers and the adventurers\/explorers (bandeirantes<\/em>) who opened the Brazilian interior.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This subway mural is another example of the ambivalence in portrayals of Brazilian history.\u00a0 An earlier post describes this ambivalence in other public art:\u00a0 In Sao Paulo\u2019s Ibirapuera<\/em> Park there is the Afro-Brazilian Museum which honors the Africans and their descendants.\u00a0\u00a0 At one of the entrances of the park is the Bandeirantes<\/em> Memorial which honors the adventurers who defied the 15th Century Treaty of Tordesillas<\/em> in which the Pope tried to divide South America between the Spanish and the Portuguese.\u00a0 The bandeirantes<\/em> crossed that imaginary line to create the modern outline of Brazil, displacing and enslaving indigenous people along the way. The Pope didn\u2019t know where they were, and perhaps neither did they.<\/p>\n

The indigenous people proved not to be good slaves.\u00a0 They died in captivity or escaped into the forests they knew better than the invaders.\u00a0 By the 16th Cenury Brazil turned increasingly to the Azores, then to Africa, to provide slaves to power its agricultural economy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9500\"<\/a>
Three trains running, Praca da Se<\/em> metro station. Above ground is a cathedral square that gathers tourists, downtown workers, galleries and stores, and a small army of street people and sketchy touts for buying gold and selling, well, all sorts of things.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9621\"<\/a>
Metro, Praca da Se<\/em>. The display above warns of the Aedes Agiptii<\/em> mosquito that carries dengue fever and a host of nasty diseases (including the Zika and Chikungunya viruses and possibly microencephalitis).\u00a0 This is the underground traffic for most of the day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9610\"<\/a>
Urban geometry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9568\"<\/a>
Even in the age of cellular telephones, the Sao Paulo metro actually has rows of colorful telephone \u201cears\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Luz metro station is a Victorian train station that carries the trademark style of the British engineers who designed and built it.\u00a0 The British guaranteed Portugal\u2019s dominance and Brazil\u2019s existence against various European powers, but it extracted a high commercial price.\u00a0 The early rail lines were a British contribution and Luz Station is a symbol.<\/p>\n

It houses the Museum of the Portuguese language.\u00a0 One of the most interesting museums in Sao Paulo, it burned on December 21, 2015.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9664\"<\/a>
During the Christmas holiday the Sao Paulo Museum of the Portuguese Language burned down to the building shell. The museum was in the building of the Victorian-era train station, Estacao Luz<\/em>, which was able to continuing functioning. This was one of the most popular museums in Sao Paulo, and its loss brought attention to long-standing deficits in fire protection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9688\"<\/a>
Street vendor, in front of the now-dead museum and a closed subway entrance.\u00a0 There were almost no customers on the street now \u2014 just the police, wrecking crews, and photographers. The shell is intact, but at the upper right of the building you can see the charred timbers. The \u201cBig Ben\u201d clock allegedly never stopped running during the fire \u2014 a symbol of Victorian engineering, perhaps as the fire itself is a reflection on Brazil\u2019s stewardship of its artistic institutions (there is an investigation of lapsed and unenforced fire codes).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sao Paulo Metro The metro is one of the wonders of Sao Paulo.\u00a0 It is the third largest in Latin America, after Mexico City and Santiago, Chile.\u00a0 It is not as large as Beijing or Tokyo or Cairo, but it is about the 12th largest in the world.\u00a0 Currently moving something less than 900 … Continue reading The Sao Paulo metro<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sao-paulo-brazil-images"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1738,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions\/1738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meredithwwatts.com\/MWBrazilBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}