The metro is one of the wonders of Sao Paulo. It is the third largest in Latin America, after Mexico City and Santiago, Chile. It is not as large as Beijing or Tokyo or Cairo, but it is about the 12th largest in the world. 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.
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.
The first of five lines, each named by color, was inaugurated in the 1970s. Line 1 — the Blue Line — connects the center of the city with outlying stations with indigenous names — Jabaquara and Turucuvi. The four other lines cross-cross the city, and a fifth is being built to add more of the city’s sprawl to the network.
It is fast, clean, modern and well-managed. 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. But at peak times it moves hundreds of thousands of passengers. Its stations are fitting for a large industrial city — busy and pretty efficient.
It does not have the vast commercial network that the Japanese subway does. 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. No so in Sao Paulo. 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.
For an older rider (over 60) the metro is free. 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. 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.
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.
The first of these images depicts the European colonizers and the bandeirantes who opened the interior of Brazil and challenged the Spanish for its possession. Enslavement and displacement of the indigenous population following them, as did the slavery of Africans and African descendants.
This mural overlooks one of the busiest metro stations along the Blue Line, which runs some 20 kilometers between Jabaquara and Turucuvi, both stops ironically honoring indigenous names for parts of present-day Sao Paulo. The colonizers and adventurers kept the land, but they gave back the names.
This subway mural is another example of the ambivalence in portrayals of Brazilian history. An earlier post describes this ambivalence in other public art: In Sao Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park there is the Afro-Brazilian Museum which honors the Africans and their descendants. At one of the entrances of the park is the Bandeirantes Memorial which honors the adventurers who defied the 15th Century Treaty of Tordesillas in which the Pope tried to divide South America between the Spanish and the Portuguese. The bandeirantes crossed that imaginary line to create the modern outline of Brazil, displacing and enslaving indigenous people along the way. The Pope didn’t know where they were, and perhaps neither did they.
The indigenous people proved not to be good slaves. They died in captivity or escaped into the forests they knew better than the invaders. By the 16th Cenury Brazil turned increasingly to the Azores, then to Africa, to provide slaves to power its agricultural economy.
The Luz metro station is a Victorian train station that carries the trademark style of the British engineers who designed and built it. The British guaranteed Portugal’s dominance and Brazil’s existence against various European powers, but it extracted a high commercial price. The early rail lines were a British contribution and Luz Station is a symbol.
It houses the Museum of the Portuguese language. One of the most interesting museums in Sao Paulo, it burned on December 21, 2015.
