Published in August 2016, this profile by Instituto PACS tells the story of Mariza do Amor Divino, 60, evicted from Vila Autódromo to make way for the Olympic Park. Her house was demolished while she waited at a hospital, leaving her medicine for diabetes and depression, her savings and her personal documents buried under the rubble. Through Mariza’s own words, the text traces a life marked by three successive evictions — from her early years as a fisherwoman on the Jacarepaguá lagoon to her work as a housekeeper — exposing the human cost of the city’s Olympic-driven removals. The narrative dwells on the absence of compassion in the demolition and frames Mariza’s loss as emblematic of the dispossession suffered by Rio’s poorest residents in the name of the Games. It is part of a series of life stories of women in the Olympic city.

The text was originally published on PACS’s Medium and later made available in PDF for public consultation in the library’s digital archive.

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