Beaches

Do Leme ao Pontal
Não há nada igual
Do Leme ao Pontal
Não há nada igual
Do Leme ao Pontal

Among the strongest references to the beauty of the city of Rio de Janeiro are its ocean beaches. To start with — and it's always good to remember — Copacabana beach, but along with it comes Ipanema with its Girl, and right after, Leblon with its innocents — just to associate them with the best-known songs and poems. Following the shoreline, other beaches emerge, just as beautiful as they are crowded on sunny days, walking toward the city's west zone, in an endless stretch of white sands that, at times, as in Prainha, are surrounded by green mountains, forming a natural scenery that enchants.

Image description: This is a photograph of a beach with a mountain in the background. On the left side, there is a hill covered in green vegetation. Moving to the right, the mountain becomes more pronounced, with a prominent cliff at the center. The beach is located in the middle of the image, with blue waves breaking on the light-colored sand. In the foreground, green plants extend forward. The sky is light blue with a few white clouds.

Rio de Janeiro is a beach city, as many cariocas and visitors recognize — and celebrate. But its beaches were not always frequented. In the colonial city, the ocean coastline was considered outside the city limits, seen as a wild place, with rough waters and difficult access. As for the beaches of Guanabara Bay, with little sand and rocky, they were a place to dump the city's refuse, where garbage accumulated and foul odors arose. The birds that fed on scraps and debris were their most common visitors, and the sea breeze even came to be regarded as an emanation of contaminating fluids. On the beaches where fishing activity took place, the leftovers from nets and casting nets were not infrequently dumped there.

It was in the 19th century that a new era began for Rio's beaches. Prince Dom João, even before being crowned king in Brazil, started bathing at Praia do Caju to treat a skin condition, going so far as to use a residence there as his bathhouse. The beach as a medicinal place had begun to be endorsed by European health studies. And sea bathing came to be seen increasingly as a therapeutic practice, surrounded by a series of rules: it had to be very early, just as day was breaking, and of short duration. From the middle of this century onward, some beach landscapes, seen as places for romantic strolls, began appearing in literature, as in the novel A Moreninha, by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, published in 1844. In both cases, it was the beaches of the bay that were being referred to.

Image description: This is a painting depicting a coastal scene. On the left side, we see a line of green trees stretching to the horizon. In front of them are a few houses with red tile roofs. In the center, a small building with a central entrance stands out. On the right, more houses and buildings are visible, including a large building with several windows. In the foreground, the river is calm, reflecting the houses and trees. Several boats are moored along the riverbank, with people inside them.

The ocean beaches only entered the city's social map starting in the 1920s, as a residential area for privileged groups who could afford the luxury of being so far from downtown, where labor activities were concentrated. The opening of the Copacabana Palace Hotel, in 1923, is a landmark in this history. Copacabana, from the mid-1940s onward, gained standing as an elite neighborhood, and roughly a decade later, Ipanema — until then considered a very distant and unappealing place — emerged onto this scene, in which the beach was increasingly becoming a leisure space.

Image description: This is an old black-and-white photograph of a beach with buildings in the background. On the left side, there is a large hotel with many windows and balconies. In front of it, there is a sidewalk with people walking and a few old cars. In the center, there is a wooden structure that appears to be a pier or dock. On the right, the beach can be seen with waves breaking against the rocks. In the background, there are mountains covered with vegetation. The date "Rio-5-7-1925" is written in the lower left corner of the image.

The coastal neighborhoods of the South Zone become benchmarks for sports activities, sun exposure, and expressions of modernity. All of this still within a class-based framework, driven not only by the socioeconomic profile of the neighborhoods but also by urban mobility. In the 1970s, changes begin to occur in this context, and especially in the 1980s, the inauguration of bus lines running through the city's tunnels, nonexistent until then, significantly alters attendance at Rio's ocean waterfront.

Image description: This is a black and white photograph of a crowded beach. From the left side to the center, we see many colorful beach umbrellas arranged in rows. In the center, people are walking and having fun on the sand. As we move to the right, we see more umbrellas and people in the water, where some are swimming. In the background, there is a large building with many windows.

Little by little, and with the construction of expressways, Barra da Tijuca and the beaches of the west zone entered the beach-going circuit of residents from the suburbs and the Baixada Fluminense. The beaches then came to be seen as democratic places, where everyone in the city could enjoy pleasurable, free-of-charge leisure. However, they continue to be claimed by a significant portion of the residents of the beachfront neighborhoods as their place of privilege. Revealing this stance and the dispute in a good-humored and assertive way, back in the 1980s, an expression emerged that later became popular: “we're going to invade your beach,” which, in a way, still remains relevant today.

The "arrastões" (mass beach robberies), and, on the other hand, the inspections of passengers on the buses heading to the city's South Zone on weekends — young, Black, and poor, always — reinforce this refrain. Even so, the beaches are increasingly reached by the population of non-coastal neighborhoods, and the more privileged sectors end up distancing themselves from them. The augury "tomorrow will be beach weather" is a phrase accompanied by a smile on the lips of many Cariocas.