Rio's "Favelas": The Rural Slum Within a City
Bonilla, Frank
Until mid-June of 1961 when Life magazine's millions of readers saw Gordon Parks's photographic essay on poverty in Rio's hillside slums (favelas), the American image of the life of Rio's...
...Not all of the housing in Rio that would be considered substandard by even very moderate criteria is in the favelas...
...The favela throws into focus long-standing inequalities that by and large continue being actively exploited or regarded with complacent indifference as much by "modern" as by traditionalistminded Brazilians...
...Though Negroes are numerically slightly in the ascendancy within the favela (about 38%), they are accompanied in their misery and hardship by sizable contingents of mixed bloods (29%) and whites (33°x...
...both Camus and Parks catch essential aspects of the meaning of life in the favela...
...The three men named were Janio Quadros, the president elected in 1960, his predecessor, Juscelino Kubitschek, andAdhemar de Barros, another candidate for the presidency in 1960...
...When I am hungry," she wrote, "I want to kill Janio, I want to hang Adhemar and burn Juscelino...
...Goulart, Jose Alipio...
...Favelas do Distrito Federal...
...No one can quarrel with the artist's right to select and blend what he finds in reality to his purpose...
...The favelas crawl in cancerous disorder up the steep morros, divided by labyrinthine paths and gullies that serve as precarious avenues of movement and natural sewers...
...But these remain prevailing conditions not only in the favela but elsewhere in the city and throughout the vast rural spaces of Brazil...
...3, No...
...The forced intimacy of the urban slum breeds conflict but also a variety of simple forms of organization to deal with common problems...
...But the favela is in part an outgrowth of the elimination of the city's more conventional slums...
...But in many of these cities the blight of the slum can be more easily ignored...
...But even that degree of adaptation to city living has not accompanied the migration of the rural dwelling to the Rio hills...
...Statistically, his choice was not indefensible...
...In a present estimated population of aboutthree million that would give about 400,000 pretos...
...Living conditions in Rio favelas have been documented in exhaustive detail by a group of researchers under the guidance of Father Louis Joseph Lebret, an internationally known student of problems of economic and social development, and Jose Arthur Rios, an American-trained Brazilian sociologist.* In broad outline, that account of the life and problems of Rio's poor holds no surprises...
...Recent estimates put as many as a third of Rio's three million inhabitants within these jerry-built, vertical islands of squalor...
...Until mid-June of 1961 when Life magazine's millions of readers saw Gordon Parks's photographic essay on poverty in Rio's hillside slums (favelas), the American image of the life of Rio's poor was based largely on Marcel Camus' moving film fantasy, Black Orpheus...
...Rio's favelas relentlessly meet the eye of anyone who walks the city's streets and lifts his gaze above eye level, no matter how elegant the neighborhood...
...By contrast, Parks's favela family is a proto-human band, weakened by chronic illness, callously indifferent to each other's suffering, living in a monotone degradation punctuated only by flashes of violence...
...Pages 11-18...
...Structurally, the favela dwelling represents the intrusion into the city of a type of construction which still is the basic shelter for Brazil's rural population...
...In the Brazilian countryside the same crude habitation is the standard when not a remotely aspired-toluxury...
...His favelados are a race of handsome blacks, who within the heart of a modern city manage to retain a natural, almost bucolic way of life...
...If the favela did not provide a framework for some working forms of human coexistence and social cohesion, the explosion of violence that some fear may some day descend on the city from the hills would have come long ago...
...7. April 1958...
...The frequent rainfalls bring flash floods, landslides, and undermine the fragile hold of stilt foundations on the hills' flanks...
...Camus' movie fully exploits the magnificent scenic backdrop provided by the city as well as the exuberant sound and color of carnival...
...It there is still magic and an authentic human quality in a Rio carnival, these spring directly from the infusion NOTE: This article is reprinted, with permission, from an American Univer sities Field Staff Report...
...Educacao e Ciencias Sociais...
...Rio de Janeiro: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1957...
...Thus the human waste and tragedy that the favela represents is only a small part of the problem, as is the health, police, and welfare burden the favela creates for a city lacking both capacity and practice in dispensing effective social services...
...The inhumanity of Rio's favelas is matched in the "villas miseria," "callampas," and "colonias proletarias" of other major Latin American cities...
...A nation that is embarked on a massive program of industrial expansion simply cannot leave half of its population behind without compromising its possibilities for future growth...
...The favelado is plagued by all the ills that beset his kind everywhere...
...of vitality and joy in sound and movement that invades the city from the hills during the pre-Lenten festival...
...Correio da Manhd, July 1, 1961...
...The median age among 169,305 favelados counted in the 1950 census was just over 20 years...
...See "Aspectos Humanos daFavela Carioca," 0 Estado de Sao Paulo, Suplemento Especial, April 13, 1960, page 8. Part II of this report appeared in a second supplement on April 15, 1960...
...But the very intensity of that collective catharsis suggests the explosive potential that is built up day by day in the more than 100 favelas that scar the city's morros (hills).* Camus and Parks each fasten on separate phases of the emotional cycle of the favela...
...As dificuldades corta o afeto do povo pelos politicos...
...new social and political skills...
...Vol...
...The fact that Parks, himself a * Researchers at UNESCO's Latin American Social Science Research Center in Rio identified 132 favelas on aerial mapsof the city taken in 1960...
...When the asthmatic adolescent who was the central figure in Parks's Life report was taken to the United States for medical treatment, one Rio weekly proposed that cariocas counter by bringing a boy from Harlem to Rio, where he could live like a white man...
...Though the petty crime and violence of the favela fill the front pages of Rio's more sensational press day after day, a great many favela families are relatively stable, have fairly regular employment, and are even rigidly conventional by middle-class standards.* The core of the problem lies not within the favela itself but is national in scope...
...A government that seeks to mobilize political support for economic policies that demand continued sacrifices and forebearance from those least able to give cannot expect that support to flow easily from those whose participation in national life is • Pearse, Andrew, "Notas Sabre a Organizacao Social de Uma Favela do Riode Janeiro...
...The improvised shack of odd scraps of lumber, packing cases, tin sheeting, canvas, or rough tile is an anomaly when perched above the gleaming glass and concrete of modern Rio...
...For if the relative racial representation reported above has remained more or less stable and the favela population has grown in line with most estimates, Rio's Negroes may not be alone in the favela, but they are almost all th ere.* * According to the 1960 census 13% of Rio's population was Negro (preto...
...5, No...
...The inadequacy of both rail and bus transport as the distances became longer and the population mushroomed has continued to feed the climb upward in search of space within the city.* The growth of the favela is thus linked to the general flight from the countryside into the cities in Brazil, to a generally high rate of demographic growth, to the excessive concentration of industry and commerce in a few major cities, and finally to an almost absolute absence of serious concern with the process of urban expansion among city officials...
...By current calculations more than a half million youngsters under 15 are living in Rio favelas.** The family chosen by Life photographer Parks to represent those many thousands had eight children who along with their parents were crowded into a six-by-ten-foot shack...
...From one point of view the favela can even be optimistically viewed as an integrative element—as a sort of staging area in which the recently arrived rural migrant is initiated into the mysteries of city life, learns new forms of solidarity, acquires * "Aspectos Humanos da Favela Carioca," op cit., footnote three, especiallyPart II...
...See also Josildeth Gomes Consorte's "A Crianca Favelada e a Escola Publica," Educacdo e Ciencias Sociais, Vol...
...Negro, featured a white favela family in his pictures and that his essay makes no allusion to race provoked some comment in the local press...
...ing up of the Avenida Rio Branco, the leveling of the Morro Castelo, and the addition of a second main artery (Avenida Pres...
...It is the fragility of the social bonds, the lack of organic connections between the favelado, together with his rural counterpart, and the rest of the national community that threatens the hope for a peaceful social revolution in Brazil...
...matically eliminated from the housing market by their low incomes...
...A substantial part of that population and of the constant flood of migrants from surrounding rural places put up their makeshift shelters on the city's outskirts and along the main rail lines running out of the city...
...about 35% were under 15 years of age...
...The favored Harlemite, the story ran, would in Rio be able to study in any school, pray in any church, bathe at any beach, ride on any vehicle, bury his dog in any cemetery, and go to any movie...
...As a group, the favela population is on the wrong side of every standard index of social disorganization, whether it be illiteracy, malnutrition, disease, job instability, irregular sexual unions, alcoholism, criminal violence, or almost any other on the familiar list...
...Maria Carolina de Jesus, a Sao Paulo favelada whose diary created a literary sensation in 1960, made a memorable entry in her notes on a day in May of that year when she was too tired to do her daily foraging through the city's trash in search of something to eat or to sell...
...The anarchic growth of the city marked by large-scale profiteering and speculation in real estate and construction simply took no account of the housing needs of the large number of people auto...
...If the present favela population is close to 900,000 as estimated by the police, and the proportion of pretos among favelados is still close to 40%, practically all of Rio's Negroes must bein favelas...
...11, August 1959 marginal in every way...
...The writer neglected to note that the boy would also almost certainly be assured of a place to live in one of the city's favelas...
...Getulio Vargas) not only required the demolition of the crowded warrens (cabecas de porco and corticos) that housed Rio's poor but also dramatically increased land values in the central area...
...New York's single-room occupancy flats and rat-infested tenements belong to the same savage family...
...The open...
...The most unsightly housing clusters on the periphery of the city or is pushed into out-of-the-way pockets of undesirable land...
...When reformers and government officials talk about "urbanizing" the favelas, they raise the hope born of despair that a collection of rustic hovels can become a habitable city if provided with water, electricity, rudimentary sewerage, and streets...
...Children and adolescents make up a large part of that population...
...Correio da Manha, June 30, 1961...
...They are sleek and carefree, full of boundless energy and rhythm, with an unfettered zest for life...
...Brazilians, in fact, often point to the heterogeneity of the favela population as evidence of the country's racial democracy...
...A recent policereport put the number at 194 and estimated the total favela population as closeto a million...
...Tu quando estou corn fome quero tnatar o Jdnio, quero enforcar o Adhemar e queimar o Juscelino...
...The drama is not just one of the confrontation of what is old and what is new in Brazil —of the existence side by side of "developed" and backward sectors in the nation...
...Though the number of favela children who achieve more than two or three years of primary schooling is extremely small, it is still higher than in some rural areas where often there is simply no school...
...Hardship dims the affection of the people for politicians...
Vol. 9 • September 1962 • No. 4
