Apartment City

RIO DE JANEIRO ― Seven years ago, Vila Autódromo was little more than a tranquil fishing village on the edge of Jacarepagua Lagoon, next to the racetrack for which it was named. Like the hundreds of other favelas that dot Rio de Janeiro ’s landscape, it had long been neglected by the city government , and it lacked many basic public services that are standard in the fast- growing wealthier neighborhoods just across the water. But to the more than 600 families that lived there, it was home. “This was a paradise,” said Luiz Cláudio Silva, who lived in Autódromo for more than 20 years. “I thought that I would live here for the rest of my life.” By the time the Rio Olympics are over, just 20 of the families who lived in Autódromo in 2009, the year the International Olympic Committee chose the city to host the games, will remain. The community, which sits less than a mile away from Rio’s Olympic Park, was crushed so that the city could build new access roads to connect Olympic venues . ...

On the morning that Alfonso Maldonado Silva was set to argue his first case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Ca., he was too nervous to even drink a glass of juice for breakfast. So he decided to head to court early to review the case one last time. He said a short prayer asking for wisdom, then he showered, dressed in a neatly pressed gray suit , and on an overcast morning last April, headed out the door with his evidence binder in hand. He had been up since 5 a.m. Maldonado, a third- year law student at Western State College of Law in Orange County, had left nothing to chance. This would be his first time arguing a case in court before any judge. So he had arrived the night before to stay in a Pasadena hotel to avoid the clogged commute from his Corona apartment during rush-hour. The only thing on the 28-year-old’s mind was the law. Much was riding on this case. Maldonado and his fellow law student , Cristel Martinez Medina , were representing an undocumente...