 When he was 8 years old, his parents moved the family to Rio de Janeiro, where they lived in humble circumstances in the Mangueira favela in a three-room shanty.Mangueira is home to the samba school, Mangueira and is located on a hill near Maracanã football stadium.Years later as a journalist, Lopes produced a piece about Mangueira samba and one of its founders, the Carioca sambista Carlos Cachaça.