How to make a Favella
Outside of South America and in English, favellas are either an abstract term taught in urban geography, or as Beatriz Jaguaribe has argued in Space and Culture, are settings which are becoming romanticized scenes for films such as City of God. What follows applies specifically to Salvador, Bahia Brazil (a distinctive Afro-Brazilian capital comparable in significance or more important than New Orleans and New York for the African diaspora). However, it provides an glimpse of the economic geography of favellas, which began to take on their current characteristics only in the mid 20th century. For example, the neighbourhood of Pero Vaz began as the Invasão do Corta-braço in 1946 and was one of the first to be recognized.
New favellas begin with an occupation or ‘land invasion’ (invasões). A Tarde, a Salvador daily, reports that in 2006, occupations in Salvador took place not only on the outskirts in Praia de Tubar o (in the neighbrouhood of Paripe), on Rue Chorroch (Pernambué), but centrally on Rua Monsenhor Rubens Mesquita (Toror ). This last is home to 700 families. Two months on, people are building houses.
Dwellers come from the neighbouring barrios. Even if the initial shelters (’barracos’), whether shanties or terracotta brick houses, are pulled down 4 or 5 times by the municipal authorities, the areas are re-occupied and they are resurrected in the next hours. People often have nowhere else to go.
Rents are a factor driving people to participate in land invasions. Only 2% of the Brazilian population can afford to own their own apartments or houses (Relat rio Global sobre Assentamentos Urbanos 2005). Typically, rent requires half of a ‘good’ wage of around USD200 per month. Others rent a single room and bathroom at around USD30.
The last surveys are out of date: in 1992 (how can anyone plan on this basis?), 60% of the population of Salvador, 1.6 million people, lived in informal dwellings. Today it is certainly a higher percentage and a higher figure (2 million people).
The Movimento Sem-Terra (MST) does not automatically define occupations as the sort of political acts discussed by geographers and urban theorists. An informal market in these lots and dwellings means that speculators become involved.
Small lots (’quadratos’) can be sold on in an informal market in land - About USD250 for about 4 or 5 square metres (about 15 square feet). About USD100, or perhaps a television set, serves as a down payment with the rest paid in small installments. Access to power is via jury-rigged connections to nearby electrical lines. The cost of threading services through informal neighbourhoods is much higher than laying services into undeveloped land (Gordilho, Conder). Municipal authorities - to whom development funds only trickle down in minor quantities - struggle to replace latrines and open sewers with municipal services and to install lighting and staircases to navigate the city’s steep slopes. Drinking water and gas cannisters are delivered by hand (there are no gas mains as far as I can tell, gas is delivered everywhere in cylinders and most apartment buildings do not have gas lines). These services are topped off by the mobile phone network.
In favellas, the dominant building mode is based on construction as personal and family resources permit. This means that houses are always works in progress. One approach is therefore to allocate service lots and let people build as they are able. However, in the last decades the preference of states and the World Bank has been for the building of finished houses (casas populares) which must be purchased at a cost of 25% of their value, paid in installments at a rate of 10% of the minimum salary rate (currently around USD160 per month). However, this excludes the very poor - even at a record low, 20% of the population, lives below the poverty line a household income of USD60 per month Even a record low unemployment within the city of Salvador is over 23% and much higher in the surrounding region (Superintendência de Estudos Econômicos e Sociais da Bahia (SEI)). These declines reflect the continuing strong growth and changes in the local economy of Bahia. The latest figures are for 2004, which was a boom year: local GNP increased by 9.6%, double the average of the rest of Brazil (Instituto Brasileiro de Geographia e Estatistica (IBGE)). Even so, these figures show that the changing economy in Bahia is still is unable to absorb a quarter of the population, amongst whom inequality, illiteracy and disadvantage are starkly distributed along racial lines: in Salvador “whites” made R$1749.90 while the majority in the city, “blacks and mixed” race individuals made R$644.91(terms such as “whites” (not defined in similar ways as they would be by North American social science) and figures are those of the IBGE). “The evolution of social indicators did not accompany the increase in GDP” is how Armando Avena, of Bahia’s Secretariat of Planning, put it to the Salvador daily A Tarde (17/11/2006).
Partnerships with neighbourhood associations representing occupants have increased the rate at which land titles are being allocated and formalized. A lack of housing and of serviced lots means that there are inexorable pressures driving the creation of new informal settlements. Favellas reflect the rising importance of cities as economic centres since the 1950s. Over the same period, rural agricultural economies have changed: commodity prices declined, mono-crop agriculture mechanized and opportunities stagnated, encouraging families and youth to seek better futures in Brazilian cities. Favellas are less alternative “counterspaces” to capitalism and more a product of global flows of capital and neocolonial relations of ruling.
Corrections and nuances are welcome - please check comments.
Sources: Various articles, A Tarde 5/11/2006 http://atarde.com.br; Companhia de Desenvolvimento Urbano do Estado da Bahia (CONDER) http://www.conder.ba.gov.br ;
Further Reading: Carvalho, Eduardo. Os Alagados da Bahia: Intervenções públicas e apropriação informal do espaço urbano (M.A., Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo UFBA, Salvador Brazil. 2002/2003)
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
The fast population growth
without proper infrastructure was (and still is) one of the most important reasons that led to people to rearrange into favelas. According to data from IBGE (1992) 33% of Salvador’s city area was populated without any parameters of urbanization or in improper lots.
High taxes and the expensive cost of electricity, water, telephone service, and public transportation make these people find other ways of getting access to these services, like the “gato” (stealing from public resources through an inmproper connection) of water and eletricity. This generates a deficit of the public resources leading prices to rise.
The government has been trying to legalize these illegal areas, building houses and apartments (like the ones recently built in one of Salvador’s most violent area, “Paraíso Azul”) and giving these to the people there, completely free of charge.
SUCOM (Salvador’s organ in charge of the land control) admitted that it’s almost impossible to control the increase of favelas and that the cost to prepare invaded lots for living is much higher than preparing new urban lots.
This problem is not only related to Salvador, but to all the states of Brazil where there is poverty, lack of education and unemployment.