Life in The Brazil Favelas
A deep dive into the favelas of Brazilians; where they started, how they have developed, and the struggles and dangers favelas face.
The end of the nineteenth century Brazil was filled with political turmoil as Brazil transitioned from an empire to a republic (Brown University). The political unrest created tensions between social classes, ultimately leading to a new division of society called slums. In Rio de Janeiro, these slums grew in size and in number and began as settlements for internal migrants in addition to itinerant laborers. Rio de Janeiro experienced a housing shortage during the 1950’s through the 1970’s, which prompted the intense growth of favelas that overpowered the government’s efforts to stop the growth and remove these communities (Brown University).
The urban underclass populated the favelas and started to develop these communities. They made associações de moradores (residents’ associations), which “ served as forums for deliberating matters of community governance, in addition to acting as liaisons between favelados (favela residents) and the prefeitura (city hall)” (Brown University). These residents’ associations in favelas help with sanitation efforts, medical care, and transportation systems.
The evolution of Brazil's favelas began as an escape for the urban lower class to create their own communities and as the government tried to take this from them, the favela population and locations increased, proving that they could function alongside society despite what the government believed. In this current day, there is a lot of violence in Brazil's favelas that causes the residents to suffer greatly. Images: (1) Benedito Calixto/Pinacoteca Municipal de Sao Paulo/Wikimedia.
An uncommon piece of research is women’s impact on the violence in favelas because they are disregarded from the media when it involves urban crime, youth gangs, and police activity (Wilding, P., 2011). Most research surrounding women's involvement with the violence present in favelas argues that women have different roles in enacting violence that can be thought of as “behind the scenes”, where they are not acting with violence but are deliberately planning it. More specifically, the term “new violence” is deemed as an act of low-level violence and “captures the dampening of hopes of the reduction in violence after the political tensions after the democratization process throughout Latin America” (Wilding, P., 2011). Women are not viewed as active agents in violence, which is due to the concept of gender roles, where women are seen as less capable of inflicting violence and being violent in general. The deaths in favelas are mostly of young black males from poor backgrounds because this population in favelas faces criminalization by the police and dehumanization by the media (Wilding, P., 2011). Violence committed by women is right on the divide between private and public expressions of violence, where they affect both spheres and draw no media attention to them, which allows this violence to go undetected.
As favelas have been developing since the 1950’s, the largest in South America is Rocinha in the Tijuca National Park of Rio de Janeiro. This favela is populated by 160,000 people. The urban setting of Rocinha causes it to be vulnerable to natural disasters such as flooding and landslides (Arcidiacono, A., 2019), which destroys residents’ homes since the houses are stacked upon each other going up the mountains of the National Park. The urbanization of Rio de Janeiro and the expansion of Rocinha is causing Rocinha to grow up the mountain, which is destroying forests and also increases the likelihood of the occurrence of floods and landslides (Arcidiacono, A., 2019).
The ways that favelas can be saved in Brazil are by using green spaces and blue infrastructure to increase the provision of urban ecosystem services. Green spaces would be creating urban parks, gardens, forests, vacant lots, orchards, etc. and blue infrastructure are streams, lakes, water retention ponds, water springs, etc. Adopting these frameworks can help establish management, conservation and renewal strategies by understanding which areas are most exposed to risk from natural disasters and the appropriate actions for restoring them (Arcidiacono, A., 2019).
This map shows three locations where significant favela understandings are brought to light. Sao Paulo shows how much the envrionment and climate change affect favela life and maintainability while Rio de Janeiro is where favelas originated and therefore is home to Brazil's largest favela. In Santa Marta, Brazil's first covid case emerged in a young boy and the first case being from a child who lived in a favela shows how quickly disease spreads in these close and unsanitary quarters. https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-019-0523-5 . https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-coronavirus-rio-favela/2020/03/20/2522b49e-6889-11ea-b199-3a9799c54512_story.html . https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/4 . https://www.tomorrow.city/a/paraisopolis-brazil-a-city-of-favelas-aiming-to-be-egalitarian-sustainable-and-accessible . https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/1/4. Images: Sao Paulo: Tuca Vieira . Santa Marta: Bildagentur-online / Alamy Stock Photo . Rio de Janeiro: Ruth Hager
Hydrology is another technique that can help to save Brazil’s environment and favela communities. Climate patterns and land use and land cover (LULC) changes are the most important drivers of water dynamics (Bianchi, et al., 2021). The southeast mountain region of Brazil experienced LULC changes in the last decades and experienced a decrease in precipitation patterns over the years, which affects water availability in urban and rural areas (Bianchi, et al., 2021). Climate patterns are the main influence of historical water dynamics in Brazil and to help decrease surface runoff that could help manage the impacts of precipitation events, an increase of forest area needs to be implemented. To help enforce these developments, “socioeconomic development and public policies that favor the conservation and expansion of forest may contribute to watersheds to cope with weather extremes that are predicted to be more common in the future” (Bianchi, et al., 2021).
Brazil’s health system is characterized by public health programs that focus on the control of infectious diseases and medical assistance services for urban workers. Brazil’s health reform movement after the economic crisis and democratization in the 1980s proposed a Unified Health System (SUS) that was pushed forward by the democratic system that made it a priority to combine developmental and social agendas to develop the health policy (Machado, et al., 2019). There has been a struggle to find public funding for public services because the private sector is receiving more support. “Despite these obstacles, SUS has produced significant health-status improvements and some (although incomplete) reductions in Brazil’s vast health inequalities” (Machado, et al., 2019). The regulation of Brazil’s private sector is essential in supporting a public and universal health system, where a universal system will be made from international agendas and domestic political struggles (Machado, et al., 2019).
References
Arcidiacono, Andrea. Adopting an Ecosystem Services-Based Approach for Flood Resilient Strategies: The Case of Rocinha Favela (Brazil). Sustainability; Basel Vol. 11, Iss. 1. 2019. DOI:10.3390/su11010004
Bianchi, F.J.J.A, Cardoso, I.M Fernandes-Filho, E.I, Gomes, L.C Schulte. Disentangling the historic and future impacts of land use changes and climate variability on the hydrology of a mountain region in Brazil. Journal of Hydrology. 19 April 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125650
Brown University. Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Past and Present. Brazil Five Centuries of Change. https://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-9/favelas-in-rio-de-janeiro-past-and-present/
Machado, C.V., Silva, G.A. Political struggles for a universal health system in Brazil: successes and limits in the reduction of inequalities. Globalization and Health. 28 November 2019. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-019-0523-5
Wilding, Polly. ‘New Violence’: Silencing Women's Experiences in the Favelas of Brazil. Cambridge University Press, Journal of Latin American Studies. 8 February, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X10001343
