3 - Favelas are born

The next 100 years, from 1888 to 1988 brought tremendous technological changes. The rural sector began to experience the improved efficiency of adopting the new technologies. The use of tractors, fertilizers and pesticides improved efficiency, but required huge investment. It also reduced the need for labour. If you had a small piece of land though, this investment was not worthwhile. So market pressures began to push small farmers into bankruptcy, and encourage those who invested in technology to gain larger areas of land. The larger the land the bigger the economies of scale investors enjoyed.

 

For an Indian village this would be great news! They could work much less and enjoy the increased fruits with less labour. The old man we cited earlier would probably feel even more secure about his children’s future and enjoy even more free time. This technological leap however was not enjoyed by the masses. As people began to be made redundant, they had to either offer their services for a further cut in salaries, or move elsewhere.

 They heard about this other aspect of society being equally affected by this revolution. In the cities factories were being built, and they needed workers. It was the industrial revolution. It created a buzz of excitement that made the heart beat and the mind dream of a better future.  

 

Lets zoom out a little

 For thousands of years we lived in a system called feudalism. Here society was distributed in a hierarchy with the king at the top, followed by the rest of the aristocracy, the dukes and lords and horsemen. Then there were the servants of these privileged individuals, who were a step ahead of the millions of peasants who worked in the fields for large landlords. These peasants were paid in food, which they grew, and sometimes they were lucky to be promoted to work in the houses and even palaces of the elite. 

Then came money. People now had the opportunity to make things, and sell them in markets for money. They could trade this money for food and other goods at a later point in time. This gave many people the freedom to leave the shackles and the fields and become artisans. The aristocrats could become traders, buying large quantities of products and selling them for a profit.

 

Then people began to dream of having people work for them for free, and having large expanse of lush land they could exploit far from their beautiful little homes. They discovered Africa, Asia and America. 

The white, at most tanned, colonialists got really rich. They accumulated so much wealth and owned so much land their future generations would be secure for many centuries to come. The wealth was used to develop europe as well as create highly developed niches in the lands they captured. A small minority of indigenous people joined their invaders in helping them satisfy their greed. They too caught that wave and surfed above the masses left behind. 

Then we began to adopt a spirit of conscience and values. We suddenly felt bad about trading in Africans who we plucked from their families and homes and sold half way across the world to work for us. It took hard work by pro-abolition activists from slaves and non-slaves to sell this idea to the masses. Many had to devote their entire life for this cause, and many were killed for it. But eventually the masses were convinced and saw the light.

 

So here we are, Brazil 1888, we all love the ex-slaves now and recognise their right to be considered as almost equal human beings. They are now free…

 Rio’s favelas

…free to go to the cities where they can work for the owners of factories and build things for other people who could afford to buy them; white people. They were free to build slums in areas with no urban services, close to their jobs. Many chose Rio de Janeiro, where they settled in Centro, today’s bustling central business district (CBD).

 Don’t get excited. Today’s CBD is not filled with ex-slaves and peasants who carved a bright future for themselves thanks to the wonders of industrialisation. No, as we shall see, far from it.

I get out the taxi in Centro, near San Francisco Square just behind Rio Bronco, the main street in the heart of the city. I walk past a black man with what looks like an infected knife wound across the side of his stomach. In the square, as I approach the beautiful imperial entrance to the Federal University of San Francisco, I pass a group of five children and two women, most likely their mothers, who seem to have made a cosy home at the base of a statue. They were black. The entrance of the University is covered in large paper and cotton signs painted by the students, demanding ******. I find my way to the history department where I hope to speak to Prof. Jose Murilio Carvalho, a well renowned expert in Brazil’s journey towards citizenship.

 Upon entering the office a student pointed me towards, I raise the book I am holding, and compare the picture on the back cover to the man standing in front of me. It was Prof. Murilo. I explain what I am doing and he is immediately kind enough to sit face to face and answer my questions.

 

 I want to know why the 1900s saw such a huge migration of people from the rural areas to the cities. Prof. Murilo explains to me that Brazil developed one of the most modern systems of agriculture in the world, geared mainly for the export sector. This efficient system of production requires much fewer employees than the old, labour-intensive system during the slavery era. I understood that this decrease in demand for labour in the rural areas drove salaries down tremendously. On the other hand new jobs were being created in the city, and labour rights were developing in the cities as well. So to use the Prof.’s words “The push was the poverty of the rural areas, the pull was new jobs and civil rights [in the cities], and so you had the two factors working together. The push factor and the pull factor and the consequence was this tremendous growth of the cities.” Prof. Murilo went on to explain, “The administration of the cities were not prepared to deal with this. There was not the capacity to provide urban services on the part of the urban administration”. Business students must love this push and pull lingo, ooh yeah!

 

Professor Jose Murilo de Carvalho put this migratory process into perspective: “If you check your demographics you will see there was a complete reversal of the demographic picture from 80% rural in the early 30s to 80% urban in the 1980s. So it is a tremendous demographic transformation, which some sociologists compare to the Stanlist period in Russia... The impact of this was tremendous. Look at the favelas! They are the people who migrated from the rural areas, not only to big cities, but also to small and medium sized cities. You find also cities of two to three hundred thousand people who also have favelas”. No shit. I even come a cross a favela in Paqueta, on a chilled out week-end brake to a small island 25 minutes away from Rio. 

 The health hazard of having allowed a large part of the city to be built with no government regulation and no infrastructure and basic services was high and unsustainable. Thank god the mayor at the time, a man called Pereira Passos, backed by the republican government, realised something had to be done. But of course it would be too much to ask, after 400 years of exploitation, to offer these workers a well-thought out plan of action with their well-being and future development at the centre. Instead the 4-year plan (1902-1906) destroyed the homes of these workers, their little homemade shacks, and the process of modernisation began.

 

Even that would be fine had a contingency plan been put in place for the evicted to fall back on. But there was no such thing. On the contrary, a decree number 391, in 1903, banned any alterations to existing homes in the slums of Centro, and at the same time legitimised the construction of primitive shelters in the steep un-inhabited hills. To add salt to the wound, they imposed a high tax on the construction of official houses in the hills. So of course this inhibitive measure forced most workers to effectively refute ownership of their own homes6.

 

 Well at least a large proportion of the 3 million well to do immigrants who arrived between 1884 and 1920 enjoyed the face-lift of ‘their’ new capital. Although they originally headed towards the coffee regions around Sao Paolo, many eventually moved to the city drawn by the opportunities of industry and commerce. They initially chose to live in the flourishing Centro district of Rio de Janeiro, which was being systematically ‘cleaned’ of poor people who made everything look ugly and smell really bad. [edit from 2019: I deleted the word 'disgusting' after 'poor' because at the time I meant it as expressing the voice of white immigrants and their descendants, but as I plan to share this with people today I feared some might mistakenly hear it as my own voice].

 

These middle-class traders and industrialists offered job opportunities to the recently dispossessed and the constant stream of new arrivals from the poor rural areas. The hills close to Centro therefore began to get filled with cheap labour for the elite, until something really annoying happened: the elite decided to move to the next fashionable spot in Rio, the South side. They had good taste I must say. I am staying in Ipanema, which is in the south, and situated between the lake and the sea; it was a good choice.

 The only problem though was that there wasn’t exactly a public transport system to transport the cheap labour from the slums near Centro to the south side. They certainly couldn’t afford the emerging new mode of transport, the car. And thank god for that, can you imagine the traffic…? So many moved their homes to the hills surrounding the latest fashionable district.

 Consequently, the initiative to solve the hygiene and regulatory crisis only exacerbated the problem. Only nature and its generous gifts had something to offer the poor: fresh water streams. This migration of the poor from the rural areas of Brazil continued, and intensified during the 1940’s.

 In the 1950’s things managed to get from bad to worse. Industries continued to boom, especially in Sao Paulo, Rio lost its title as capital of Brazil to Brasilia, a city built in record time, and the rural poor continued to pour into the suburbs and favelas of the urban jungles. Rio de Janeiro grew denser, wider and, most noticeably higher as new arrivals had to contend with a space further from the roads connecting the city to the hills. 

 

 By 1960 the urban population was 44.7%, almost half the total population, up from 10% in the late 19^th century. But that was nothing compared to what was about to happen over the next 20 years. 

In 1964 the military took over the country, and Brazil was ruled by military dictators until 1985. During that period the migration continued to intensify, undeterred by the living conditions of new arrivals to the cities.

 This period of repressive iron-handed military rule was loved by the international capital markets. In the business community Brazil earned the reputation of ‘Miracle Economy’ during that period, an ironic title given by the business community. I asked Dr. Jose Murilo de Carvalho if this stability was the magnet that attracted investments. He explained to me, “It is very clear that the worst faze of military repression coincided with the highest period of growth. And so it also helps to explain why on one side there was a very harsh repression and at the same time the middle class during this period was growing very fast as a lot of jobs were created and many people began to work.”. In his book he explains that the value of the minimum wage in 1974 was half its value in 1960. The wealth of the average family didn’t change much though, as women entered the job market, cancelling out the slashing of wages. It just took two people to work to make what one alone used to earn 20 years earlier. 

 

The military leadership had its own solution to the favela problem: To reclaim the land with rising real-estate value and build modern luxury buildings on it. They moved the poor to the equivalent of council estates, built on the outskirts of the city, far from their work. 

The living conditions there were so low that even the ex-favela residents couldn’t handle it. Not only was it too far from work, impersonal with no communal areas or community atmosphere, but they were expected to pay rent to live there. So many returned to favelas not affected by the modernisation. Between 1964 and 1974, 80 favelas with over 139,000 residents were expelled from the land they had claimed as home. That’s over 26,000 home-made shacks re-claimed by the government in the name of development and modernisation. Today this reclaimed land is known as Barra da Tijuca.

 

 I visited Barra da Tijuca a few days ago. The natural market forces that were unleashed on this community have created the mother of all markets: Barra shopping! This is a huge, and I mean absolutely enormous, in-door shopping experience, commemorated with a replica statue of liberty, proudly standing at one of its many entrances, as a symbol of capitalist victory.

 This monstrosity is home to every mass-market US brand under the sun, from TGI Fridays, MCI cinemas, McDonald’s restaurant and the long talked about Mc.Café which we haven’t had the pleasure of seeing in London yet; and the list goes on and on. The teenage kids looking like US stereotype beach bums chill outside in the car park with their branded t-shirts, long Bermudas and Nike trainers, just five minutes away from the beach. I guess for these kids being a beach bum is about being closer to the image than the beach itself, even if that means hanging out in a car park. They were all whites.

 

 Getting back to the story of those brought over from Africa, notice how so far all action has been centred around pushing the poor further out, as opposed to helping them develop themselves and integrate into the rest of society; a society happily surfing the wave of the industrial revolution. 

Then something captivating took place in 1969: The residents of Bras de Pina, a favela targeted by the military regime for modernisation, resisted. They stood up and defended their land, refusing to be pushed around by a system that had treated the likes of them with complete and utter disregard. They fought and not just won the right to remain on the land they had claimed, but achieved the urbanisation/formal recognition of their community. 

Together with the people of Bras de Pina, the architect Carlos Nelson F. do Santos turned this favela into an urbanised quarter of Rio de Janeiro. To this day this victory remains a symbol of resistance and hope to the people of the favelas. 

By 1980 there were over 718,000 people living in the favelas, and just over 5 million in the urbanised city. Over the years the shacks were fortified, and those nearer the city and its public services became 4 to 6 storey buildings. Many residents managed to build their own water and sewage networks, albeit precarious. The few houses legally connected to the electricity network sold it on at a premium. Shops such as small groceries and bakeries opened, and rents began to rise. 

 

Many poor people couldn’t even pay the rent in the slums, and were forced to move either further away, further up, or into the urban city. Shelters were built under bridges, aqueducts or in narrow streets and anywhere unlikely to be used by the official market. Between 1982 and 1990, 205 new favelas were built in remote lands far from the city centre. 

The expansion of favelas, whether in the hills or on the streets, were a process of reclaiming the land. This was done either by groups of people taking advantage of political changes that distracted the authorities, or by families and individuals desperate to find a place to sleep.

 

 As a result of increases in rents in the favelas, the ‘street favelas’ continued to grow. These were the first favelas produced by the city as opposed to by rural poverty. Soon there were tens of thousands of people sleeping in the roads without even a roof above their heads. These were not drunks as was often thought, but were either workers who could not afford the transport back to their homes on the outskirts every night, or pensioners, or people who lost their jobs and were left homeless, or just entire families who’s salaries was not enough to pay rent anywhere. Yesterday I witnessed such an act of survival next to my house.

 I am staying in Ipanema, a residential neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro. The street is lined with large residential blocks, guarded by porters who service the buildings 24 hours a day. Without exception, every single building is protected from the city by a large iron gate. One building however is being completely refurbished, so its entrance, although boarded up, is not guarded. As I walk home I pass by this building and see a man building a cardboard home around a woman and her child, presumably his family. He is surprised to hear me greet him with a respectful “bona notche”, evident by his startled glance up at me. He responds with a semi-trusting semi-weary “bona notche” and quickly resumes his business. He has a job, evident from the mountain of cardboard on wheels. His job consists of collecting cardboard from the streets of the city and selling them for recycling.  This was a shot-term occupation of space as the family is gone in the morning. They are back every second or third night though, evidently attracted by the quiet and safe street of one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in town. Here in Rio light, silence and security are luxuries afforded by very few of its residents.

 

 That famous Copacabana beach that resonates in song all over the world, well, take a step off the beach and it’s not all singing and dancing. The streets are dark, it’s crowded, and on my first day walking around at night I am driven back to the beach by a sense of unease. Too tired to explore parts of the city a cab ride away from the hotel, I settle for a restaurant next door. I cut through my cheese and mushroom pizza and look up while taking a bite. My attention is grabbed by a young man, baggy jeans shorts to just below the knees, skin covered grey by the city’s dust, motioning his hand towards his lips, finger tips joint. It took me a few agonisingly long couple of seconds to come to terms with the fact that he was asking me for something to eat. I signalled the OK, and on my way out about fifteen minutes later, saw him materialise tactfully from behind a car. I gave him half my pizza, which I wouldn’t have finished anyway. He thanks me with a soft, gentle voice that contrasts his rough demeanour.

 Since then I always take a ‘doggy bag’ out with me if there is any food left, and yes, it does feel weird to call it that. I never fail to find someone happy to receive it.

 In the 1980’s, following the 20-year military rule failed to tackle the huge social problems, a change in attitudes began to take shape. The policy of destroying the favelas and moving the poor was replaced by the idea of integrating the favelas into the urban city by urbanising them. Policy finally tuned to action in 1994, but until today, although some work has been done, not a single favela has been successfully transformed into a barrio.