By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 21 1996 (IPS)

A horse gallops through the streets of San Sebastian, a Rio de Janeiro shanty-town, but without raising a cloud of dust. Its rider is testing the feel of the asphalt – the first sign that this area will soon become a neighbourhood without stigma.

The horse disappears around a bend in the road, making way for a municipal tractor ladened with construction materials for a school. The paved road also welcomes a truck that for the first time in the history of San Sebastian will collect the garbage that is an eyesore at every corner.

A mechanical digger takes its last bite of earth to open up a drainage ditch, near a sign that reads “Favela Barrio” (Shanty- town Neighbourhood). That is the name given to a municipal project that aims – with Inter-American Development Bank financing – to convert Rio de Janeiro’s nearly 800 shanty-towns into inhabitable places.

The city government of Rio de Janeiro – dubbed the “Marvellous City” in a famous song – is seeking to make the moniker applicable even to its slums.

“This is the first big project to integrate the shanty-towns with the city. The shanty-towns are like ghettos, not only because they lack social services, but because their design separates them from the city,” Rio de Janeiro Mayor Cesar Maia told IPS.

The programme should benefit some 600,000 people, with housing, access roads, sewer services and potable water. The first neighbourhoods will be inaugurated in July.

But this project differs from traditional urban development initiatives in its emphasis on community participation, in job creation and training schemes, for example. It also aims at a feeling of community by creating sports and recreation areas.

Severino dos Santos is taking part in the transformation of his community because he does not want his children to feel ashamed of where they live.

“Now we’ll live in a neighbourhood,” said dos Santos, “a poor, humble one, but a neighbourhood that those from the Zona Sur (a residential area) won’t be afraid to pass through.”

The city’s shanty-towns, most of which arose with the massive rural exodus of the 1950s, became a deposit for the broken dreams of peasant farmers seeking jobs and opportunities.

According to the organisation “Strategic Plan” which elaborates revitalisation programmes for Rio de Janeiro, the population of the city’s shanty-towns grew 34 percent from 1980 to 1990, and makes up 20 percent of the city’s over 11 million inhabitants today.

The inaccessibility of the slums lining the mountains that provide a backdrop to the city, and the lack of opportunities available to their inhabitants, have made them fertile ground for the drug trade.

Small children are posted to warn drug traffickers that police are coming. In the shanty-town “the Officials’ Hillside”, a boy no older than six clambers onto a rooftop and flies a white kite at the sign of strangers approaching.

“The drug trade occupies a space in the shanty-towns because of its urban disorder and the absence of the State,” said the mayor. “With the ‘Favela Barrio’, we aim to respond to those two questions: public services, and integration with the rest of society through a new urban design.”

Jose da Silva, president of the association of residents of “the Officials’ Hillside”, admits that although the shanty-towns “always have that aspect” or stigma of poverty which frightens those living in other areas, they are not only home to thieves and murderers:

“There are also those of us who want to work, send our children to school and be able to take a bus that drops us at our front door and isn’t afraid to come to our neighbourhood after dark.”

“Now our neighbourhood will be a legal one,” adds Rosie, with a play of words because “legal” also means “very good” in Brazilian slang.

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