O retrato do Minhocão pelo New York Times

Que o Brasil nunca mais será o mesmo após essa Copa não resta dúvida. Principalmente em relação ao turismo, já que os visitantes não se cansam de elogiar a recepção que estão tendo no Brasil e dos serviços que funcionam muito melhor do que imaginavam.

 

O detalhe é que até mesmo o improvável pode acontecer. O New York Times fez até uma reportagem simpática ao famigerado Minhocão em São Paulo.

 

A Highway Doubling as a Haven

Minhocão Represents São Paulo’s Crumbling but Welcoming Heart

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Near dusk on a recent Sunday afternoon, a crowd of about 50 people mingled around a makeshift stage while warbling, in sloppy karaoke, the lyrics to the Brazilian song “Que Se Chama Amor” (or “That Is Called Love”). Nearby, a group of women sipped wine from paper cups while watching a group of boys kick a soccer ball back and forth. Next to them, a pair of families pushed strollers.

None of this would have been particularly notable, except for the fact that all of it was taking place in the middle of a four-lane highway.

In the heart of a city known for its concrete skyline and perpetually choked roads, there is, at least once a week, a slice of relief. Technically, this 2.2-mile stretch of road is named the Via Elevada Presidente Costa e Silva, but every Paulista knows it simply as the Minhocão.

The English translation of Minhocão is earthworm, though the highway’s name also evokes a mythical 80-foot long creature that, legend has it, has been slinking its way through South American backwaters for more than a century. In this city, the Minhocão is not a creature; it is a haven.

On weekdays, the highway is packed with cars that creep along its elevated path at 10 or 20 miles per hour — still an improvement over the crushing gridlock of the surface streets below. After 9 p.m., however, and, more important, for the entire day on Sundays and holidays, the Minhocão is closed to traffic. At these times, it becomes that alluring combination of ugliness and beauty.

The road is not pretty. It is cracked and crumbling (it opened in 1970), and graffiti covers its skin. Its charm, though, lies in its pieces: the median, where families sit cross-legged and have picnics; the sides, which are so close to the apartment buildings flanking the road that it feels as if you could turn on an oven from the right lane; and the ramps, which welcome joggers and skateboarders and strollers and dogs and cats and children and wheelchairs and, of course, boys juggling soccer balls with well-worn covers.

Almost from the moment it was built, there has been public discussion about tearing down the Minhocão. It is, by all objective measures, a blight: Its presence crushed the housing market in the area. After all, living near a highway, let alone within touching distance of one, is not desirable. The Minhocão’s underbelly, too, has become a focal point for drug users and the homeless.

Yet the people of this neighborhood are hesitant. Yes, it is loud. Yes, the smoke and exhaust can be suffocating. But on Sundays, yes, on Sundays, there is peace.

“For us, it is like when we see the movies and there is San Francisco,” said Geraldo Souza, 57, stopping for a moment to lean against a barrier at the side of the road. He waved his hand. “In the movies, there are always the trolleys on the streets in San Francisco — that is what people know.”

He shrugged. “Here, there is the Minhocão. It is not perfect. But it is ours.”