The Cost of Gold

Vila Autódromo, on the shore of the Jacarepagua lake in western Rio de Janeiro, was a small community of hard-working residents, who were forcibly evicted from their homes, in order to open the ground for a parking lot on the side of the Olympic village.

Hundreds of families were forced to relocate from their once calm life, to housing projects that are often controlled by paramilitary forces and gang territories. The dozen families that resisted eviction now live in an empty community where former residents return longing for a life they once had.

Four years after the 2016 summer Olympic games, Rio de Janeiro is a shattered city, abandoned to its own fate of organized crime and white elephants.