The invisible suburbs of Brasilian cities

(written in 2006 while travelling in Brazil)

Dictionaries are invaluable tools. Sometimes they reveal interesting insights without really meaning to, especially when used to cross reference things. I wanted to see how the dictionary defined the word favela. My little English-Portugese Oxford version said it was a “shanty town”. I knew that but I was seeking alternate definitions to see if it had wider meanings. I also wondered why the word slum wasnt listed as an alternate meaning of favela. This is certainly how it is translated and perceived by many English speaking people. I looked up slum in the English section – the only word listed was favela. I was now stuck in a triangulated loop, grappling with my understanding of my own language. By diverting from English to Portuguese and back again, could I safely conclude that all shantytowns are slums – are they one and the same…? I wasnt sure anymore. Why did my dictionary give me ´slum´ in one direction but not the other – political correctness, or just an ommission?

 I wondered if in Brasil the word favela was evolving through eras of political correctness as favelas try and quite literally establish themselves on the map. Were they slums, shantytowns, disorganised communities, homes of the impoverished, drug dens or maybe just even suburbs? It reminded me of the American establishment’s struggle over many decades in trying to put a label on their dark skinned inhabitants. They were juggling the challenge of accuracy while trying not to offend. Niggers, blacks, negroes, Coloureds, African Americans had all had their day as possible descriptors. It struck me that maybe the Brazilian favela was going through the same kind of identity crisis especially from the point of view of Brazilian beauracracy. For the governing bodies are only just starting to officially recognise their existence, and they presumably need a more politically correct equivalent in the dictionary than slum.

 Exactly how a very dense population area of 100,000+ people fails to even make it on a city map is the kind of oddity that aroused my curiosity. At one level its an impressive form of denial. I was intrigued – I wanted to know more and Rio de Janeiro provided the perfect backdrop to find out more.

 Favelas are all over Brazil – every city has them, sprawling over the relatively uninhabitable land others wouldnt dream of trying to live on. Not necessarily dry and arid – in fact some are in quite lush surroundings (especially the ones in Rio encroaching into the National Park that surrounds the city), no – uninhabitable because they seem to spring up on the sides of mountains, on impossibly vertical rises…little boxes of tiny cubic proportions stacked literally one on top of the other. Imagine taking a large box of sugar cubes and emptying it on a table so that they stack high and randomly into a disorganised hill of cubic parts. Now paint them far from the pristine white of refined sugar to a myriad of darkish, dirtyish, reddish brick brown. On your table you have a typical Rio favela viewed from a distance.

 Even though every city has favelas, the ones in Rio are the most famous in Brasil, presumably for two reasons. The disturbingly violent movie “City of God” (Cidade de Deus) helped propel dysfunctional favela life ruled by guns and drugs onto the world stage. But secondly in an intriguing way Rio favelas are juxtaposed against some of the most expensive real estate in Brazil – literally metres from it, and amidst the stunning natural landscape that is Rio de Janeiro. Massive hills verging on mountains just rise out of the sea in Rio – covered in lush vegetation and there are great beaches nearby. Few cities in the world boast such postcard perfect vistas as Rio de Janeiro. But these days the postcard makers have to be careful where they point their lenses. For better or worse, many splendid views will show sprawling favelas sprinkled in the foreground, background and in between.

 This makes a fascinating contrast – to see amidst such natural beauty and expensive real estate (and of course its associated wealthy population) the stark bleak existence of the seriously impoverished. Many other cities manage to shuffle their poor discretely out to the outer suburbs. In Rio, the millionaires live side by side with the poor whether they like it or not. I still wanted to know more, I wanted to know what these sugar cube people were like. I was partly drawn to it from favela images I had seen in ‘City of God’ that I watched before I left for Brazil. But for me that was also a paradox because that movie was so disturbing it made me re-read the cancellation policy of my air ticket to Brazil. After watching that movie I wasn’t sure if Brasil was for me. Somehow the same thing that was making me contemplate an alternate Sth American country to visit was now at the same time drawing me into its lair…I didnt know why, but I just had to go and visit a favela.

Since Rio offers everything to visitors – even hang gliding, a favela visit was also possible. There were two ways to do it. One company offered a tour in an open jeep, driving through the streets; the other offered a guided 3 hour walk through the favela explaining how they function, meeting people who live there and visiting the local school. I felt the jeep was a very disconnected way of trying to observe and understand the people and the area, I also thought it amplified the distinction between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Driving through a poor area in an expensive jeep didnt seem like the way forward to me. For me, being allowed to visit a favela was a humbling and educational experience – not a visit to the zoo. I opted for the walk.

My heart was racing as we began the walk through Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela (pop 127,000). A lot of eyes were on our group of 10 + guide. But my racing heart quickly settled down when I realised that the people going about their lives were smiling and if you said ‘Bom dia’ to them they would smile and say ‘Bom dia’ back to you. These people seemed happy…This was not what I was expecting.

The internal transport linkages within Rocinha are best described as a cross between a labyrinth and a rabbit warren. Without our guide I would have been hopelessly lost in here. Tiny little alleys, sometimes verging on tunnels, muddy paths, backstreets all criss crossing in a seemingly impossible pattern. A fairly constant smell reminiscent of a lack of sanitation was always around the next corner. For a while I wondered where all the sewage went to, but then thought it was better not to and distracted myself with something else. Rocinha is one of the more developed favelas, it had electricity and a small school. It had also been elevated to the status of a district in 1992 by the Rio Government – so unlike many favelas Rocinha was officially on the map!

 

Many cities act as migration magnets at times in their history as newcomers arrive seeking work, opportunities or better conditions. But in many cases this growth in new arrivals is either a steady trickle or could perhaps be coined ‘organic growth’ as it represents a gradual increase in population that can be assimilated and planned for by governing bodies. For Brazil it was a bit different, the abolition of slavery in 1888 literally displaced 800,000 slaves overnight. Illiterate and unskilled many moved to the cities en masse. This spike in population arrivals heralded the birth of many favelas – for no city could possibly plan for or cater for such a rapid rise in population. It would seem that the local governments method of planning was very simple and fiscally effective – they pretended they weren’t there. An interesting strategy and probably one today’s planners are lamenting because in a simplified sense if you add 100+ years to the pot and sprinkle on a lack of contraception [1] then you end up with todays situation where favelas make up big parts of the cities that tried to ignore them – and they still fail to make it on the maps. 19% of Rios 7 million people are estimated to live in favelas. They are clearly at the point where they cant be ignored (well presumably many decades ago actually), but exactly what solution is available today? – i wouldn’t want to be on that think-tank committee.

Like many places in the world, the falevados are just people doing their best to survive on a daily basis with what little they have. On one level, the duality of slave-master still exists in a watered down form. 100+ years after its abolition, the maids, cleaners and porters at all those expensive Rio homes and hotels…well you can guess where they live. A hard fact to verify but I was told most Rio dwellers wouldnt set foot in a favela, but they are happy to pay a falevado to come and do all the jobs they dont want to do. Was this capitalism and market forces at work, or just another form of modern day slavery in a more digestible form? Thats a tricky one…

The visit to a favela was one of the most fascinating, humbling and educational things Ive done in Brazil, yet for some reason it doesnt even get a mention in Lonely Planets list of “If youve got 5 days in Rio de Janeiro”. If you visit Rio, then I can highly recommend a favela visit.

What I took away was that Rocinha was a functional community of people living in an incredibly densely packed environment. And without suggesting that favelas are happy places, the people I saw were smiling. It was nice to see a different side and at least put a chip into the stereotype that surrounds the word favela, or slum, or shantytown… depending on your dictionary [2].

To balance this ‘optimistic’ view of a functional favela with another extreme, just watch City of God….

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Footnotes:

[1] Presumably at points over the last 100 years contraception would have been at times totally unavailable in favelas. However a recent study in one favela revealed that even though the median age at first pregnancy was 17, about half of the (female) survey respondents reported wanting their first pregnancy and having access to contraception. The study concluded that a desire for early motherhood was therefore a stronger contributor than a lack of contraception or knowledge about the topic.

 But to temper the above view, at Escola Estrela do Mar in Maceio, the teachers arranged field trips to various community members: cardioligists, electricians, police. Months after these visits when the 3-6 year olds were asked what they wanted to do when they grew up, the responses from young girls were “cardioligist, electrician, policewoman”….In the absence of such role models, the standard response from the young girls was ´mother´. Therefore to me, it seems likely that the lack of alternate role models that normally exists within favelas seems certain to be a contributor to teen-age motherhood.

 [2] Well for the record, it seems there are actually subtle distinctions: wikipedia.com gives interesting definitions of the words below:

Slums are generally started as poorer residents from the countryside come to larger cities in search of work, whereas favelas are unique in that they were created as a large populations became displaced. Most favelas are inaccessible by vehicles, the houses being randomly built, circulation provided by stairways, passageways or simply tracks. In a typical favela there is an anomalous form of social life that diverges from mainstream culture and way-of-life.

Shanty towns are units of irregular self-constructed housing that are occupied illegally and are unlicensed. They are usually on lands belonging to third parties, and most often located on the urban periphery.