Long staircases, like the ones in this section of the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela, are the daily slog of residents of the steep hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – a symbol of Latin America's urban inequalities. CREDIT: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 8 2021 (IPS)

The Brazilian megalopolis of São Paulo recorded 932 flooded premises on Feb. 10, 2020. The Mexican city of Tula de Allende was under water for 48 hours in September 2021. In Lima it almost never rains, but the rivers in the Peruvian capital overflowed in 2017 and left several outlying municipalities covered with mud.

Floods have become increasingly frequent in large Latin American cities, probably due to the effects of global warming and also to local factors, such as the extensive areas of concrete and asphalt that have replaced vegetation.

Extreme weather events are aggravating inequality “in a Latin America that has the most inequitable societies in the world,” said engineer Manuel Rodríguez, professor emeritus at the Universidad de los Andes who served as Colombia’s first minister of environment and sustainable development (1993-1996).

“The poorest of the poor live in shantytowns and slums in the areas most vulnerable to environmental risks, on undevelopable land along riverbanks or in the foothills,” where they are tragically affected by floods and landslides, he told IPS by telephone from Bogotá."There is a spatial inequality that results from the low-density expansion model of cities, which pushes low-income families to the periphery, makes access to public transportation difficult and requires long commutes." -- Pablo Lazo

This is especially important in Latin America, the world’s most urban region, where one in five people live in cities.

Thus, in addition to the 932 points of flooding reported to the fire department on Feb. 10, 2020, São Paulo also suffered 166 landslides that destroyed many houses. No deaths were reported on that day, but torrential rains usually claim lives in Greater São Paulo, which is home to 22 million people.

Brazil’s largest city, which spreads among rolling hills and numerous small valleys, has many neighborhoods that have had to learn to cope with flooding in the rainiest summers. This is due to the 300 streams that crisscross the area, most of which are covered by avenues or enclosed in channels that are unable to contain heavy downpours.

A good part of the 1.28 million inhabitants of the “favelas” or shantytowns of São Paulo, according to the 2010 official census, live on low-lying land, often along streams, without sanitation, and they are the first victims of floods. The poor make up 11 percent of the population of São Paulo proper.

In Rio de Janeiro there are also riverside favelas, but the ones built on hillsides or on the tops of hills that separate the city and some neighborhoods are much better known. The risk in these areas is landslides, which have killed many people.

In Brazil’s second largest city, favelas are home to 1.39 million people, 22 percent of the total population, according to the 2010 census.

“The topography allows them to live close to their jobs” so the choice is “between formal employment or living where housing is cheaper,” said Carolina Guimarães, coordinator of Rede Nossa São Paulo, a non-governmental organization that seeks to promote a “fair, democratic and sustainable” city.

This favela is next to a middle-class neighborhood in São Bernardo do Campo, the former capital of the automobile industry on the outskirts of São Paulo. The industry attracted migrants from other parts of the country who, without the jobs they dreamed of, could only build their precarious houses on occupied land on a hillside. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Lima, which has 10 million inhabitants, and other cities in Peru and Ecuador were victims of El Niño Costero, a climatic phenomenon that warms the waters of the Pacific Ocean but only near these two countries, where it also leads to more intense rainfall.

These and other Andean countries also face the threat of melting glaciers that could deprive the population of the Andes highlands of water, said Rodríguez. In the Caribbean, the biggest threat is hurricanes, which are becoming more frequent and more intense.

Greater poverty, more impacts

In addition to the fact that these phenomena hit the poor harder in Latin America, in the world’s most unequal region the poor have fewer resources to overcome the losses caused by the climate crisis, added the Colombian expert.

“Buying a new refrigerator and other appliances damaged each time it floods costs them much more. Poverty is a cause, driving them to disaster, and also a consequence of the disasters themselves,” said Guimarães, a former knowledge management coordinator at UN Habitat, the UN agency for human settlements.

It is a perverse logic.

The real estate business drives up the costs of the best, safest sites complete with infrastructure and services. There are too many at-risk areas where the poor “build their homes with their own hands,” without the support of a public policy that ensures them housing with “access to the city,” she told IPS by telephone from São Paulo.

“There is a spatial inequality that results from the low-density expansion model of cities, which pushes low-income families to the periphery, makes access to public transportation difficult and requires long commutes,” said Pablo Lazo, director of Urban Development and Accessibility at the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Mexico.

WRI Mexico designed the Urban Inequality Index (UDI), a tool for the formulation of public policies, which initially covers 74 metropolitan areas. It measures the public’s access to formal employment and services such as education, health and transportation, as well as food and culture.

This urbanization model also gives rise to shantytowns in risky areas, “a constant pattern that is repeated in Mexico City, whose eastern neighborhoods are built on hillsides, where water runs off very quickly, fueling landslides,” he said in an interview with IPS via video call from the Mexican capital.

Greater Mexico City is home to nearly 20 million people.

Rodríguez said this precariousness “is a widespread phenomenon in Latin America and the Caribbean, where 25 percent of the urban population lives in informal settlements.” Pushed to the periphery, where land is cheaper, but there are no jobs or public services, nor urbanization, the poor prefer slums near the center, he said.

Each one of hundreds of tents in a Homeless Workers Movement camp in 2017 represents a family that dreamed of obtaining a plot of land in the center of the industrial city of São Bernardo do Campo. The land they occupied had unclear ownership, but the attempt did not pan out. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Making inequality even more glaring

“The covid-19 pandemic laid bare the inequalities,” Lazo stressed.

As an example, he said “there were more deaths on the eastern periphery of Mexico City, where inequality is greater. One factor is distance: it takes five times longer to get to the hospital from the periphery than from the center, so many people don’t even take patients to the hospital.”

In addition, without water for hygiene and hand washing, the disease spreads more readily among the poor.

There is also a disparate power relationship between cities themselves. Tula de Allende, a city of 115,000 inhabitants located 70 kilometers north of the Mexican capital, suffered a major two-day flood in September 2021, not only because of the rains.

Mexico City’s water authorities discharged an excess of rainwater and wastewater into the Tula River that could flood the capital and its outlying neighborhoods, to the detriment of the city downstream, where the river overflow displaced more than 10,000 people and left a hospital without electricity, resulting in the death of 16 patients.

Concerted action is needed. A new governance model based on planning and coordination at a citywide level could be the way forward, said Lazo.

In Rio de Janeiro, Aruan Braga, urban policy coordinator for the Favelas Observatory, told IPS that “building a more equitable and democratic city requires including, in planning, low-income areas that sustain the city in day-to-day life but don’t have the right to participate in decision-making.”

Favelas lining hills are the best-known image of Rio de Janeiro, but there is also a large vulnerable population in low-lying, flood-prone areas. One example is the Maré Complex, where some 130,000 people live in 16 favelas.

On the shores of Guanabara Bay and the Cunha channel, so polluted they are like an open sewer, the complex suffers “floods every year,” said Braga, a sociologist with a master’s degree in development policies, who explained that the Maré Complex was built on a large piece of land reclaimed from mangroves and flood plains.

It was built by settlers relocated from more central favelas or from wealthy and beachside neighborhoods five decades ago, in a wave of “expulsion” from favelas that continues today. Maré also grew because it is next to Avenida Brasil, the main access route to the city center, and because it is home to industrial facilities.

View of a favela on a central hill in Rio de Janeiro, Santa Tereza. The upper part is a middle-class neighborhood of intellectuals and artists. The city’s hillsides are home to many favelas known for their high rates of violent crime. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

New policies for a new model

The four interviewees agreed that public policies are needed to make it possible to start reducing urban inequality in Latin America.

Lazo highlighted the need for mechanisms to control the market’s “greed”, such as a requirement that private housing projects include low-cost units.

“In France that proportion is 50 percent,” he said, to illustrate.

Braga said one good possibility for reducing the housing deficit in Rio de Janeiro would be by allocating empty public buildings to social housing. There are many unused state-owned buildings because the city was the capital of the country until 1960.

Movements seeking community solutions, “social urbanism”, urban agriculture and mobilization of the population for a more equitable and inclusive city point to the future, according to Guimarães.

Her Rede Nossa São Paulo has conducted studies on inequality that pointed to a difference of up to 22.6 years – from 58.3 to 80.9 years – in life expectancy between poor and rich neighborhoods in the city.

Bogota is in the process of organizing its territorial planning and there is talk of the “30-minute city”, following the example of Paris, which seeks to ensure that no one has to walk more than 15 minutes to do everything they need, Rodriguez said, describing a new model in Latin America.

UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov on a visit to the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 10 2013 (IPS)

Tuchinha was once a drug lord in Rio de Janeiro’s Mangueira favela. But today he is helping youngsters in this Brazilian city turn their lives around and leave behind crime, prison and the likelihood of an early death.

Franciso Paulo Testas Monteiro, better known as Tuchinha, climbed to the heights of the criminal world. Because he could read and write – he went to school through the fifth grade – and was good with numbers, he was put in charge of the accounts of one of Rio de Janeiro’s main criminal bands.

He became an almost mythical figure in the world of organised crime as the drug baron of Morro da Mangueira, a violent shantytown where drug traffickers held sway. Half of his life – 25 years – was dedicated to the drug trade.

He had plenty of ready cash, women and other perks. But in his ascent, he paid a high price. He spent a total of 21 years in prison, serving two different sentences, and both he and his family lived with death threats.

Today, at 49, he says he is repentant. “I grew up in Mangueira, I was a leader,” he told IPS. “I had money, women, jewels, but I didn’t have freedom. When I ventured outside my neighbourhood, I had to hide, or else I had to actually leave Rio. If I had had an opportunity to do so, I would have changed my life earlier.”

It was Aug. 5, 2011 when he left drug trafficking behind forever, after he was invited by the local NGO AfroReggae to give workshops to help young people leave behind a life of crime.

“I did many bad things, and gave orders for many others to be committed,” he said. “I paid heavily for it, with my freedom. Today my role is to rescue those who want to leave crime behind, and I am the living proof that a life lived in peace is worth it.”

Tuchinha visits prisons to talk to young inmates, and he helps mediate in conflicts in violent neighbourhoods.

“We want to give the same opportunity I had to people who want to get back on track, abandon crime, and live in peace with their families. Many of them feel hopeless, but I tell them there is hope.”

The former drug boss is an advocate of amnesties for prisoners, so they can have a chance to begin a new life.

He is confident that he will be able to finish school, and hopes to live in a safer city, for the sake of his children.

Tuchinha works to convince young drug dealers and traffickers to join AfroReggae’s “employability” programme. Created in 2008, the programme has so far managed to find jobs for more than 3,100 people.

Daniela Pereira da Silva, 35, spent three years in prison and is now one of the programme coordinators.

“I form part of the statistics on women, which show that most women in prison are there because they had a boyfriend or husband who was a drug trafficker,” she told IPS.

The aim of the programme, she said, is to help ex-convicts enter the labour market. “Demand has been strong, and we’re also open to residents of communities where drug trafficking groups operate, and to relatives of ex-convicts, to boost family incomes and keep them from falling back into crime,” she said.

Tuchinha and Silva formed part of the group of former drug traffickers supported by AfroReggae who met with the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, on his first official visit to Brazil, May 7-9.

The meeting, which was attended by IPS, took place in AfroReggae’s main offices in the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela or shantytown, situated behind the world-famous Ipanema beach.

Pavão-Pavãozinho is one of the favelas “pacified” by the authorities under Rio’s strategy of regaining state control over areas ruled by armed drug gangs, by means of a heavy, permanent police presence combined with increased spending in the areas of health, education, sports and income-generating activities.

Fedotov visited the city to learn first-hand about the social and public security programmes underway in Rio’s favelas. “I came to Brazil to see how successful experiences of combating crime in Rio de Janeiro could be adapted to other places with similar security issues,” he said.

He added that the favela pacification project was apparently working, and said it was the first time he had seen anything like it and he was “very impressed”

“Such initiatives are enormously instructive for UNODC as they can provide a roadmap on how to reintegrate ex-traffickers in an effective and creative way as part of overall crime prevention interventions,” he said.

The Russian diplomat said he could see the changes since he visited Rio 10 years ago. He also expressed his admiration for the people who had the courage to leave behind a life of crime.

Mangueira and Pavão-Pavãozinho are two of the 32 favelas in Rio de Janeiro pacified by the police. The authorities’ goal is to set up a total of 40 police pacification units (UPPs) in the city’s poor neighbourhoods by 2014.

At least one million of the six million people in Rio proper (Greater Rio has a population of 11 million) live in some 750 favelas, a number of which are still ruled by drug gangs.

“Our policy used to be focused on repression, which generated more conflicts and deaths,” the commander of the local UPP, Major Felipe Magalhães dos Reis, said at the meeting in Pavão-Pavãozinho. “The police didn’t tackle the causes of violence, but its effects. Meanwhile, criminals had increasingly powerful weapons.”

The cost of the “war on drugs” was high in terms of loss of life, he acknowledged.

The police say more than 2,000 police were killed between 1991 and 2008, another 10,000 people died in confrontations with the security forces, and 170,000 guns were seized.

“There was no solution in sight, until the idea of creating the UPPs emerged,” Magalhães dos Reis said.

“Social inclusion and community development are essential components in preventing crime,” Fedotov said, adding that the experience could be adapted to other countries, especially the elements of social integration, pacification and alternative means of life.

Brazil is a transport point for the international drug trade. In addition, internal consumption has spiralled and it is now a major market for drugs.

During his visit this week, Fedotov met with government officials to discuss future cooperation, in regional and global associations.

In Brasilia, he told reporters that Brazil was a global actor, and that UNODC was interested in its support and participation in global issues like the fight against transnational organised crime and illegal drugs.

Morro da Providência. Credit: Daniel Garcia Neto CC BY 2.0

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 12 2012 (IPS)

Opinions are divided in Morro da Providência, Brazil’s oldest favela, over construction works for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. While some residents are optimistic about the improvements that lie ahead, others point out that hundreds of dwellings will be demolished.

The letters SMH painted on the walls of some of the houses in this Rio de Janeiro shantytown were at first a complete mystery to local people. But now they know only too well what is in store for the houses that they say are branded “like cattle.”

“SMH means Secretaria Municipal de Habitaçao (Municipal Housing Secretariat) which is the agency that is going to evict us,” Morro da Providência resident Jailce Felix dos Santos told IPS.

“It’s depressing. Many people have fallen ill. Arriving home and seeing those letters and knowing that your house is marked for demolition is terrible,” dos Santos, whose house was marked even though the area is regarded as part of the city’s historic heritage, told the press.

A total of 832 houses have been earmarked and 140 have already been demolished, according to the Port Community Forum, made up of people in Rio’s port area affected by works being undertaken for the 2014 FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The Rio de Janeiro city government says the house clearing is necessary to build an overhead cable car across the favela that will connect to the “Central do Brasil” railway station, Rio’s most important train terminal and a transport hub.

But as the favela has some of the most beautiful views of Rio de Janeiro, it will also attract large numbers of tourists. A funicular tram that will take people to the top of the “morro” or hill, and other works such as a sports centre, sanitation and upgrading of the roads, most of which are so narrow as to be barely passable, are also being built.

Jorge Carvalho, who has worked as a dockhand at the port – which is also being upgraded – for 45 years, pauses for breath on a landing of the steep stairway of nearly 200 steps that is currently the only way up into the favela.

“I’ve given up counting the stairs,” he said. “Now, with the cable car and the funicular, it will be like flying up in a jet plane!”

But another local resident, who preferred not to be identified, said he had nothing to be happy about, because the house where he has lived for over 40 years, and which he now shares with seven relatives, has been marked for demolition. He built it brick by brick, and said the money the municipal government is offering as compensation is too little, while the alternative housing they offer is too far away from his place of work.

But the main issue for this resident, who took us proudly around historic places in the favela, is how the planned transformation will wreck a neighbourhood regarded as part of the city’s history. The Morro da Providência, where the earliest settlements date back to the late 19th century, was the first favela to emerge in Brazil.

The origins of the favela, located between the “Central do Brasil” and the port district, date back to another instance of housing injustice in the history of Rio, formerly the capital of Brazil.

The national government failed to make good its promise to provide housing for soldiers returning from the 1896-1897 War of Canudos – a civil rebellion against the central government, in the northeastern state of Bahia. So they occupied the hill they called Morro da Favela and built their own houses.
According to historical accounts, the word favela was probably taken by the soldiers from the Alto da Favela, a hill overlooking Canudos that was named for a shrubby local tree.

Some of the existing buildings, like chapels and churches, date from that time. The earliest houses were made of clay, so it is easy to identify their ruins. Morro da Providência was also the cradle of one of the first “escolas de samba” or samba schools in Rio’s carnival.

Dos Santos sold a bar she owned, where funk and other music popular among young people in the favelas is played, and opened another called “Favela Point” close to one of the cable car stations, anticipating the arrival of foreign tourists.

Morro da Providência, the scene of new “battles” between drug trafficking organisations and the police in the 20th and 21st centuries, is one of the favelas in Rio where “Police Pacification Units” (UPPs) have been set up.

“The Providência community was neglected for a long time, but after the UPP arrived it became better known and changed a great deal,” dos Santos said enthusiastically. “Recently, the number of firefights has gone down, and now there are job opportunities in the community because of the infrastructure projects.”

But as someone who was born and raised in the favela, she is compelled to recognise the “sad” side of the “progress” that has arrived and the changes that her community will have to accept, not just in physical terms. “They are taking away our friendships, and creating distances between people,” she said.

Carolina Pacheco, who works at the Casa Amarela, a cultural centre in Providência, also fears the social changes coming to the community. She predicted that the cable car would bring up “all sorts of people and we will have to keep a closer eye on the children, because anyone will be able to come to our neighbourhood, and some of them may not be good people.”

This future scenario, which scares her, contrasts with the life of the community, where “things are safe because there is no public transport; everyone knows everyone else, everyone looks out for the kids, and when a stranger appears we all know he or she is an outsider.”

However, Pacheco also said the coming “transformation”, as such, “has a good side and a bad…The positive side is that these projects will bring development.”

But while some people are happy with the changes, no one can hide their distress over the forced departure of those whose houses are marked. “They will have to leave at a moment’s notice, after living here all their life,” she said.

In some cases, the Rio de Janeiro city government argues that the evictions are for safety reasons, because the houses are built where there is a risk of landslides.

But in the view of Caroline Rodrigues da Silva of the Port Community Forum, this is just another chapter in real estate speculation that has unleashed an endless spiral of price rises in property sales and rentals.

“There are two major issues behind it. One is state violence that legitimates the implementation of the infrastructure projects. An example of this are the UPPs in Rio de Janeiro, deployed only in the favelas that surround the sites of the big sporting events. This is a city for sale. The population control measures are to make people accept what’s coming,” Rodrigues da Silva said in an interview with IPS.

“The other is the use of public spaces that had been left aside for many years. Now, that land has become valuable and the entire area has been restructured, so there is more and more speculation,” she said.

The people who know this best are the residents of Morro da Providência, who lived with the effects of neglect by the state for decades, and now fear that after the mega sporting events, they will once again be forgotten.

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 18 2012 (IPS)

The “pacification” of the favelas in this Brazilian city, aimed at driving out armed groups and fighting drug trafficking, has not yet become a fully effective public policy, says Eliana Sousa Silva, who has lived in one of Rio’s shantytowns for nearly 30 years.

The pacification process begins when elite military police battalions are sent in to crack down on drug trafficking gangs.

Once the drug mafias have been run out of the favela, permanent “Police Pacification Units” (UPPs) are installed to carry out community policing, and spending is increased in the areas of health, education, sports and income-generating activities for local residents.

Despite the initial wariness with which the strategy was met, it has already scored a few successes.

The police in Rio have not changed their attitude, says Eliana Sousa Silva. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

However, local residents have not been made part of the pacification process, says Sousa Silva, a social worker and the founder of two non-governmental organisations, the Observatório das Favelas and Redes da Maré.

The activist, who has lived nearly three decades in the Complexo da Maré favelas and has been a witness to extensive violence and human rights abuses, recently published the book “Testemunhos da Maré” (Testimonies from Maré), which reflects life in the city’s most populous shantytown complex. (See sidebar.)

In the book, launched Aug. 23, the author presents the viewpoints of local residents, police and traffickers, with respect to the violence in the neighbourhood.

Q: Since 2008, Rio de Janeiro has been experiencing a wave of changes with the installation of the UPPs in the favelas. What do you think of this process?

A: The UPPs are a response from the State, based on a project designed by the state government’s Secretariat of Security. They are part of an ongoing action that has a positive side: they are attempting to disarm the armed groups.

But at the same time, the strategy leaves something to be desired. It must take a step forward, in order to become a real public policy. And an important aspect is missing: understanding the population of the favelas and how they relate differently to the police.

Progress will come when the people start to see that the arrival of the state, through the police, is designed to guarantee their right to security, and not to turn local people into victims.

The residents must be incorporated into the process of pacification; they must become active participants.

Q: Since 2008, Rio de Janeiro has been experiencing a wave of changes with the installation of the UPPs in the favelas. What do you think of this process?

A: Until the 1980s, Maré was made up of six favelas; today there are 16. These communities have become part of it since then as a result of a housing policy based on the government-financed construction of (low-income) apartment blocks.

That might explain the aspects that characterise Maré, which has become a huge favela, the biggest in Rio in terms of population. Figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics indicate that the complex is home to 129,400 people – a larger population than that of 80 percent of the cities in this country.

It is a complex of favelas, but with a population the size of a medium-sized city, and with structural problems of urbanisation, sanitation, rainwater drainage networks, conservation, the environment, spaces for art and culture, and the quality of its 16 schools.

Because it is near (the heavily polluted) Guanabara Bay and major freeways like the Linha Vermelha and Avenida Brasil, the air breathed in Maré is the worst in the city. There is a set of problems arising from the way the favelas emerged in the first place: the arrival of the population without the necessary infrastructure.

Q: Soon Maré will have its first UPP. What kind of expectations does the local population have?

A: There is both anticipation and fear. The UPP could have positive aspects, but the lack of clarity about how the process will play out has caused uncertainty among the local people. The police haven’t changed their attitude. (The arrival of the police) is expected to be very violent.

Q: At the ceremony held to launch your book, more than 200 copies were sold. What prompted you to write it?

A: My main motivation was to understand the process of violence of the state expressed through the police – something I have wanted to get a grasp on since I was just a girl. I saw it, and I didn’t understand why it happened.

My community activism in Maré is aimed at improving the quality of life. I helped found the Observatório das Favelas and Redes da Maré, to have an impact on the social reality there.

But the issues of violence and security had to be addressed, in order for activities on the social front to have an effect. And understanding public security became a question of utmost importance.

Q: In the book, you discuss the banalisation of violence, and you compare it to the acceptance of the Nazis: violence as an institutional approach, to maintain order. How do you explain that comparison?

A: In the favelas, it’s important to work on understanding security as a right, similar to healthcare or education, because local people there don’t have any notion of their right to security.

And in designing public policies, the idea of the right to security must be taken into account. Police actions in the favelas follow a “logic of war”.

I mention the example of the Nazi state to help people understand the gravity of the situation. Even though it is unacceptable, in that context there is a command and an order that naturalises violence, or makes drug trafficking seem justified. Even I, who was disturbed and bewildered by this phenomenon, had a way of looking at things that was influenced by these acts of violence.

Q: In your research, you gathered the first-hand accounts of local residents, and you also followed the routine of the police and of illegal armed groups. What was that experience like?

A: I wanted to understand how those three groups approached the idea of public security. How the police, important protagonists of the process, felt; how the people, who are supposed to receive that public service, felt; and what things are like in the terrain of illegal activity.

I saw a vacuum and found a lack of dialogue among the three protagonists. And I found a deeply embedded preconception about the people of the favelas, on the part of the security agents, which leads to a distorted vision of what kind of people live there, as if the entire community were involved in illegal activities.

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