The inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro have decided to go beyond the harsh Brazilian reality of inflation and skyrocketing prices in view of the upcoming World Cup and the Olympics in 2016. And to overcome the reality, they have adopted the best technique: madness . And so they coined the Surreal, a surreal mockery of the real Brazilian currency, the real.
The birth of the “Rio $urreal – We don't pay” page, recently documented by a article in the British Guardian newspaper, has in a short time gathered something like 150 fans. The goal is "to highlight and boycott the exorbitant prices charged by bars, restaurants and shops".
The page uses the word $urreal because, in fact, this is how the inhabitants of the Brazilian megalopolis define the prices reached in the city. A toast costs 6 euros, a simple green salad 12 euros. Seven euros asked for a hamburger which – according to the description of a user who also posts a photo to prove what he claimed – “is served with dried meat, a handful of chips and a watered-down cheese sauce”.
But, in addition to food, what worries residents most is the price of houses, which has grown by 15-20% a year in the last 24 months.
Local resistance to the phenomenon can only take refuge in irony and, in this case, in $urreal. A banknote showing the effigy of the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali.
It all started with an article published in O Globo, Rio's main newspaper, joking about the fact that the city needed to mint its own currency. And so some Cariocas have decided to create uses of them, using Dali's face instead of the usual Brazilian heroes.
In addition to the aforementioned satirical intentions, the Facebook page tries to give advice on how to save money, from bringing your own deck chair to the beach to banning the most expensive bars.
The movement has now expanded beyond Rio, with $urreal groups in São Paulo, Brasilia and even Belém in the Amazon. An ironic journey to the edge of reality and, above all, of the laws of gravity. Those that continue to bring down the real, the real one.
