Brazilian malls look down on young, lower-class strollers

The recent series of lower-class youth gatherings at shopping malls in large Brazilian cities have been met with prejudice and suspicion by well-off customers, and fear by shop owners who view gatherers as potentially violent gangs.

These flash mob-style excursions, which became known as “rolezinhos” (slang for “little strolls”), began in São Paulo in the end of 2013, set up by funk singers in response to a law prohibiting funk parties from taking place on the streets (Brazilian funk is a music style which became popular in favelas, mostly among poor, black people, played and danced to in slum parties, especially in Rio). The law was eventually vetoed by Mayor Fernando Haddad, but the “rolezinhos” continued.

Many malls have resorted to legal injunctions to bar these groups of young, mostly black, slum dwellers, from entering, arguing that their presence impacts business negatively, because it scares off higher class customers.

Last Saturday (Jan. 18), a demonstration in support for the “rolezinhos” and against racism led to JK Iguatemi Mall closing its doors in São Paulo, in order to keep protesters out. In response, lawyers of social movements that supported the protest filed police reports. One of them compared the malls' reaction to the police's “double-standard approach to whites and blacks.”

Shopping Leblon, an upmarket shopping center in Rio, remained closed on Sunday (Jan, 19) following a court decision to authorize an evening “rolezinho” to which 9,000 participants confirmed attendance. In a statement, the mall's management claimed that the decision was designed to “protect customers, shop owners, and staff.”

According to one funk artist from São Paulo, MC Danadinho, the purpose of the rolezinhos is to “meet people to whom we had only exchanged WhatsApp and Facebook messages. Before that, fans of teenage social media celebrities had arranged to get to know each other in malls, (…) which are public-access locations that everyone knows.”

He conceded that these events “eventually started to attract troublemakers. They became widely-known on TV and people started coming from other places just to mess around. Just because of a few, everybody lost out, even those who just wanted to have some fun. There didn't use to be such a mess at first.”

MC Danadinho anticipates that after the riots have become well-known, “the rolezinhos are going to wane. But fans gatherings will still take place in other places. Folks on Facebook will surely come up with some square or other large place that can work out fine, with nothing to steal from.”

Translated by Mayra Borges