To get a good view on the situation in the favelas we first need to understand how they came into existence and what the history of the slums is.
After Brazil was declared a republic in 1889 and the Republic of the United States of Brazil was a fact, a small town was founded in the northeast of Brazil called Canudos. It was founded by a preacher calling himself Antonio Conselheiro (Antonio the Counselor). Antonio was strongly against the Republic and its separation between church and state. Over the years his following grew drastically and Antonio decided to settle in their own community: Canudos. The Republic had only recently been founded, and it saw the rebel settlers as monarchists, separatists, a bad example and a threat to the new regime. After a couple of failed attempts to regain power of the area by small army forces, the army sent a much larger force to the community, they showed no mercy and ended its existence by killing nearly all its inhabitants. Alvim Horcades, an academician, witnessed the massacre and described the massacre as following: “I saw and witnessed the sacrifice of all those poor people (…) and I say with all sincerity: in Canudos almost all the prisoners were beheaded (…) To take the life of a little child (…) is the greatest of cruelties and crimes man can commit.” (wikipedia). Following this conflict and awaiting their payment by the state the Brazilian soldiers who fought against the people of Canudos temporarily settled on the Providencia Hill in Rio de Janeiro. The soldiers moved to Rio de Janeiro to await their salary, but the government never paid the soldiers, the soldiers never left their “temporary” place to live and Providencia Hill became the first favela. “Favela” refers to a flower common in Bahia, and had designated one of the battlefields in the war.
Slavery
Slavery has also had a big impact on the growth of the favelas. Before the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 it imported more slaves than any other country in the Western Hemisphere. The slavery was the heart of the Brazilian economy as most of the work was done by African slaves. Ina von Binzar, a German educates living in Brazil in the 1800’s said the following about the role of slaves in the Brazilian economy in that time: “In this country, the Blacks occupy the main role. They are responsible for all the labor and produce all the wealth in this land. The white Brazilian just doesn’t work.” (brazilian.report). Slaves mainly worked in mining and sugar cane production. In that time slavery was backed by all parts of society, including the Catholic Church. But slowly something started to change, worldwide the support for the abolitionist movement started to grow. The abolitionists wanted to end slave trade and set slaves free. Shortly after the independence of Brazil the ideas of the abolitionists also reached Brazil, because England pressured the country into abolishing slave trade. England chose quite an aggressive approach and started seizing ships carrying slaves in the Atlantic Ocean and even attacked a couple of Brazilian ports to force the Brazilians into forbidding slave trade. This resulted in the Brazilian government passing a law declaring all slaves free once they have reached Brazilian soil, but the government did not do much to carry out this law. Because the British made it harder for slave traders to sell slaves to Brazil, the supply of slave labor dropped but because the demand for slaves stayed at the same level the prices of slaves increased which made slave keeping less economically attractive for Brazilian landowners. Paying lower salaries to free men was now cheaper than keeping slaves. At that moment the Brazilian government started introducing laws that would reduce slavery. The Church stopped supporting slavery in 1887 and soon after that emperor also spoke out against slavery. In 1888 slavery was forbidden and all slaves in Brazil were freed. Now all these slaves were freed they had to take care of themselves, the landowners always managed housing for the slaves. Looking for housing and a new job the slaves moved to the Brazilian urban areas. Throughout the 20th century many freed slaves, who had lived on the plantations almost their whole lives, began to move south to the developing urban areas of Brazil in search of a job. They were too poor to afford proper housing and subject to prejudice because of their past, which made them settle on the unpopulated hills of Rio de Janeiro. Because the inhabitants of these slums were mainly freed slaves these neighbourhoods were called “bairros africanos” which means African neighbourhoods.
Industrialization
After these events the amount of inhabitants in the favelas started growing, the first big wave of migration from rural areas in the 1930’s to the urban areas meant a big increase in the amount of favelas in the city. The biggest growth of the favelas was during was during the presidency of Getulio Vargas, who stimulated the Brazilian industrialization. Industrialization is the process when an economy changes from agricultural economy to an economy that is mainly focused on production of goods in factories. These factories needed a lot of workers that is why they were built close to the cities. Many people moved from the countryside to the city to get a job in the factory, urbanization. The industrialization process created a lot of job opportunities got a lot of people from the countryside and poor migrants to move to the urban areas, unable to afford proper housing they settled in the favelas. During these years the amount of favelas increased from 26 in 1920 to approximately 300 in 1960 (See graph by O’Hare and Barke, 2002: 233). As the population of Rio de Janeiro increased the amount of favelas grew just as steadily. Nowadays the favelas are still a “popular” place for poor migrants to settle.
Source: O ́Hare, G. Barke, M. (2002). The favelas of Rio de Janeiro: A temporal and spatial analysis.
Solutions
As the amount of favelados (inhabitant of a favela) started to increase the need for a solution for the slum problem increased. There are solutions that are focused on decreasing the criminality or focused on making the living conditions in the favelas better. But what were these solutions? And did they achieve their goal? It was not until 1947 that a commission was established with the goal of removing the favelas, but due to a lack of power and resources this plan was never executed says Perlman (1976). The growth of the favelas through the years caused politics to pay more attention to their existence. During the military dictatorship existing favelas were destroyed and favelados were moved from the favelas to special built housing blocks at the periphery of the city. But many favelados were unhappy with their new homes as they had to travel longer to get to the city center, where most of them worked says Portes (1979). These longer travel times left the favelados with higher public transport bills, leaving them in a worse economical situation than in the favelas. The removing of favelas eventually stopped because of the various institutions involved acting too much out of personal interest. After the ‘removing-program’ stopped many favelados started creating new favelas, the amount of favelas kept growing. But there was a new motif for moving to the favelas: the economical recession in the 80’s forced many lower middle-class people to move to the favelas where they didn’t have to pay any taxes (O’Hare and Barke, 2002). After many years of doing nearly nothing about the favelas the people of Brazil started to criticize the passive policy the government was implementing, forcing the government to take some action. The return of the democracy in Brazil and the new government it brought with it created room for new policies for the favelas some of these are:
– Site and service schemes, these are programs that give people the opportunity to either rent or buy a piece of land (currently favelados do not own the land on which they live) with access to services such as running water and electricity. The pieces of land are all close to health, leisure and education facilities and also have an easy connection with the city with transport links close to the area making it easy for people to get to their work.The houses are built by the people for which they can use a low-interest loan. The Bairro project is a good example of the site and service scheme, it has turned out to be a very successful project as it not only improved living conditions but also helped many people out of poverty and gave them some prospect for the future. But a lack of maintenance also caused a lot of facilities to not function anymore like clogged sewage pipes or rusty playground facilities
– Self-help schemes, this program provides people with tools and training to improve their houses. The local authority provides the people with the resources to improve their homes. The people provide the labour themselves. Money that is saved by letting the residents provide the labour is often spent on basic facilities like water, electricity, schools and health centres. This program is very similar to the site and service scheme, a big difference is that the self-help scheme is based on improving the existing houses instead of building completely new ones on a new piece of land.
– Investing in rural areas, this program’s goal is preventing people from migrating to the urban areas. The government invests in improvements to rural areas to improve living conditions in the rural areas and give people from the rural areas more local opportunities. These improvements should make people more satisfied with their life in the rural areas and keep them from migrating to the crowded cities where they often end up in the favelas. These investments will also improve the situation in the favelas as they slow down the high migration rate to the slums.
– Pacification, this program is focused on removing criminality from the favelas. Criminality is a big problem problem in the favelas, there is a lot of drug use and some parts of the slums are completely ruled by criminal gangs. With the World Cup and the Olympics coming up the government wanted to clear the favelas of its criminal gangs. To drive out gangs, armed police backed by the army and marines go into the favelas. There are often clashes between the police and the gangs. Once the gangs are driven out of a favela, the government will build basic facilities needed for improvement of the lives of the favelados. As of now around 30 favelas have been pacified But there is also a lot of criticism on the pacification. There is a lot of corruption in police forces, for example last year almost 100 police officers had been arrested because they are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for providing a variety of services to criminals, including protecting drug traffickers, providing them with weapons and even carrying out kidnappings on their behalf. Also a lot of innocent people have been killed during these pacification actions. The pacification also cause a lot of favelas to become less “stable”, João Pina, the author of a book about murders in Rio said the following about this: “There are more than a thousand favelas, yet at the height of the pacification campaign, only 45 were pacified. What happened? When you pacified one place, it just moved to another place. There were calm neighborhoods that became super violent. All ‘pacification’ did was disperse ecosystems that were already formed and controlled.” We can conclude that the pacification definitely is not the best solution to the problems in the favelas.
Picture by Joao Pino
Current political situation
If you have followed the news recently you have maybe heard about the presidential elections in Brazil and its new president. The far-right Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential elections, he deeply divided the country with his controversial comments and polices. Why did people vote for this former army captain and what are his solutions for the favela problem?
Jair Bolsonaro is a former army captain who joined Brazilian politics in 1989. The far-right president-elect focused his campaign on the increasing violence, the current corruption scandals, and the weak Brazilian economy and stole the hearts of many. But not everyone is happy with his election; his conservative ideas about abortion, gay rights, death penalty and his praising of the military government are reasons for a lot of Brazilians to dislike him. The man known for lashing out at women, minorities, and indigenous groups has been compared to the American president calling him the ‘Trump of the Tropics’. But despite despite being so controversial Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil after receiving 55.2% of the votes in the second round of the elections. After failing to win the required 50% of votes in the first round Bolsonaro did win the second round beating the left-wing Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad. Fernando Haddad replaced former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva who has been in prison since April because of a 12-year sentence for passive corruption and money laundering. Which is also one of the reasons a lot of people voted for Bolsonaro; they are sick of the corruption by members of the Workers Party and in Brazilian politics.
Corruption
Fernando Collor de Mello, the first directly elected Brazilian president following the military dictatorship (1992), is impeached due to corruption. His follower president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Worker’s Party come to power in 2003, he pledges to improve the economy, usher in social reforms and end government corruption. But in 2005 his intentions to end corruption are questioned, when in a scandal known as Mensalao members of his party are accused of bribery and illegal campaign financing. His party paid congressional allies in return for support for its legislative agenda. In 2010 Dilma Rousseff, the first female Brazilian president, comes to power with the support of Lula, who was forbidden to serve a third consecutive term. Dilma had served as chair of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil company, from 2003-2010. In 2014 Dilma wins her second election but by close, because members of her administration are dogged by corruption allegations. In 2015, dozens of businesspeople and politicians had been indicted as part of a widespread investigation called Lava jato (Operation Car Wash). The operation started off as a money laundering investigation, but soon expanded to include allegations that Brazilian corporations, including construction companies, had kicked back millions of dollars to Petrobras officials, the Worker’s Party and its coalition partners in return for contracts with Petrobras. Although Dilma was chair of Petrobras during the scandal she denied having to do anything with it. A year after the start of Operation Car Wash, Lula is charged with money laundering for hiding ownership of a luxury apartment. Just a few days later Dilma Rousseff appoints him to be her chief of staff, ensuring that he could not be prosecuted by a federal court. A judge had tapped their telephone conversation to show that Dilma appointed him to protect him and so blocked Dilma’s move. After all these corruption scandals and the fall of the country in a recession in 2015, there arises a good example of a mass civic engagement to prevent the situation from going any further. People have had enough and in march 2016 an estimated 1.4 million people march through the streets of Sao Paulo (according to the BBC) calling for President Rousseff’s removal. In August of 2016 the Brazilian senate votes 61-20 for Rousseff ‘s impeachment. With the accusation of her misusing state bank funds to hide budget deficits in the run-up to her second presidential election in 2014. According to Rousseff the impeachment was a parliamentary coup. Michel Temer becomes the interim president for the next remaining two years of Rousseff’s term. But also he goes down the wrong path in 2017., when it comes to light that a former food company executive had secretly recorded Temer endorsing the payment of hush money to a jailed former politician who was very important in the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Brazil’s Surpreme Court releases a plea-bargain testimony accusing Temer of taking 5 million reais in bribes from the food company.
Bolsonaro’s plans
Bolsonaro pledged to combat corruption which attracted a lot of voters who are done with the corruption scandals. But we do not know whether this promise is a smart campaign trick or that Bolsonaro is really committed to combatting the corruption. Recently Bolsonaro himself has been under pressure after a government financial crime unit questioned payments made to his son and wife that totalled more than $300,000 (France 24, 2018). And some say that giving power to an authoritarian like Bolsonaro only increases corruption. “Unfortunately, voters have no way of gauging who is truly committed to rooting out corruption. And, by delegating this task to a leader with authoritarian tendencies, they empower him to repopulate the swamp rather than draining it – to simply replace the mainstream’s alligators with his own. We have already seen this tendency in the US. We are about to see it in Italy and Brazil(….)Voters will learn the hard way that authoritarianism exacerbates rather than mitigates corruption, because it abolishes checks and balances on those pulling the levers of power. Once they learn this lesson, they are likely to give mainstream politicians and the democratic process another chance. Unfortunately, political institutions and civil society can suffer very considerable damage in the interim. ” (The Guardian, 2018).
Next to his promises of battling corruption Bolsonaro also promised the Brazilians to increase their security. Recent studies showed that Brazilians are getting more concerned about the rising levels of violence. The main reason of this rise of violence is the lucrative drugs trade. Rival gangs fight for the control of important drug transport routes, causing a lot of deaths. Many criminals are young men from the favelas who had no future and became criminals just to make ends meet. A social solution to avoid these young men turning into criminals could solve the problem. But Bolsonaro chooses to fight criminality with violence. A “good criminal is a dead criminal,” Bolsonaro said during his campaign. One of the ways by which Bolsonaro wants to increase the safety is by allowing the ownership and carrying of guns to the Brazilian people. “Every honest citizen, man or woman, if they want to have a weapon in their homes – depending on certain criteria – should be able to have one.”, he said in a recent radio interview. He also wants to give the police a license to kill, making it easier for police officers to shoot a suspect which could lead to more innocent victims of the war between gangs and the police.
During his campaign Bolsonaro visited the favelas twice, both visits he only had contact with local police and not with any of the favelados which is symbolic for his approach to the
Favela problem. The plans I previously discussed show Bolsonaro’s approach to the favela problem: pacification. When Bolsonaro spoke about the favelas he spoke about the police and increasing their powers, but never said anything about the residents of the slums. By giving the police more power Bolsonaro is choosing the harsh way to “solving” the problem. He wants to protect officers on-duty for being tried for their assassinations and other immoralities so that they won’t face any consequences for the actions taken.
This could make police officers more reckless knowing that their crimes won’t be tried which could lead to more deaths from police violence. Bolsonaro has no plans for upgrading or building new homes for the favelados.
When it comes to education Bolsonaro wants to introduce distance education which means children will do most of their schoolwork at home and only be at school for practice-based lessons and exams. Despite the low standard of education in public favela school, school still is a very important place for the children to socialize and to spend their time. Introducing distance learning will not only take away those benefits but will also make them stay at home longer increasing the chances of children getting involved in criminal activities and eventually becoming gang members.
We can conclude that Bolsonaro’s plans for the favelas mostly involve police action fighting against the ruling gangs. HIs proposed changes for the educational system could possibly increase the amount of criminals in the favelas. Many people voted for Bolsonaro because he is willing to end the crime in Brazil using all possible resources. Also the corruption scandals in which the Workers Party is involved influenced the votes of a lot of people, in favour of The Trump of the Tropics. To see what the results of Bolsonaro’s policies will be all we can do is wait.