The next 100 years, from 1888 to 1988 brought tremendous technological changes. The rural sector began to experience the improved efficiency of adopting the new technologies. The use of tractors, fertilizers and pesticides improved efficiency, but required huge investment. It also reduced the need for labour. If you had a small piece of land though, this investment was not worthwhile. So market pressures began to push small farmers into bankruptcy, and encourage those who invested in technology to gain larger areas of land. The larger the land the bigger the economies of scale investors enjoyed.
For an Indian village this would be great news! They could work much less and enjoy the increased fruits with less labour. The old man we cited earlier would probably feel even more secure about his children’s future and enjoy even more free time. This technological leap however was not enjoyed by the masses. As people began to be made redundant, they had to either offer their services for a further cut in salaries, or move elsewhere.
Lets zoom out a little
Then came money. People now had the opportunity to make things, and sell them in markets for money. They could trade this money for food and other goods at a later point in time. This gave many people the freedom to leave the shackles and the fields and become artisans. The aristocrats could become traders, buying large quantities of products and selling them for a profit.
Then people began to dream of having people work for them for free, and having large expanse of lush land they could exploit far from their beautiful little homes. They discovered Africa, Asia and America.
The white, at most tanned, colonialists got really rich. They accumulated so much wealth and owned so much land their future generations would be secure for many centuries to come. The wealth was used to develop europe as well as create highly developed niches in the lands they captured. A small minority of indigenous people joined their invaders in helping them satisfy their greed. They too caught that wave and surfed above the masses left behind.
Then we began to adopt a spirit of conscience and values. We suddenly felt bad about trading in Africans who we plucked from their families and homes and sold half way across the world to work for us. It took hard work by pro-abolition activists from slaves and non-slaves to sell this idea to the masses. Many had to devote their entire life for this cause, and many were killed for it. But eventually the masses were convinced and saw the light.
So here we are, Brazil 1888, we all love the ex-slaves now and recognise their right to be considered as almost equal human beings. They are now free…
…free to go to the cities where they can work for the owners of factories and build things for other people who could afford to buy them; white people. They were free to build slums in areas with no urban services, close to their jobs. Many chose Rio de Janeiro, where they settled in Centro, today’s bustling central business district (CBD).
I get out the taxi in Centro, near San Francisco Square just behind Rio Bronco, the main street in the heart of the city. I walk past a black man with what looks like an infected knife wound across the side of his stomach. In the square, as I approach the beautiful imperial entrance to the Federal University of San Francisco, I pass a group of five children and two women, most likely their mothers, who seem to have made a cosy home at the base of a statue. They were black. The entrance of the University is covered in large paper and cotton signs painted by the students, demanding ******. I find my way to the history department where I hope to speak to Prof. Jose Murilio Carvalho, a well renowned expert in Brazil’s journey towards citizenship.
Professor Jose Murilo de Carvalho put this migratory process into perspective: “If you check your demographics you will see there was a complete reversal of the demographic picture from 80% rural in the early 30s to 80% urban in the 1980s. So it is a tremendous demographic transformation, which some sociologists compare to the Stanlist period in Russia... The impact of this was tremendous. Look at the favelas! They are the people who migrated from the rural areas, not only to big cities, but also to small and medium sized cities. You find also cities of two to three hundred thousand people who also have favelas”. No shit. I even come a cross a favela in Paqueta, on a chilled out week-end brake to a small island 25 minutes away from Rio.
The health hazard of having allowed a large part of the city to be built with no government regulation and no infrastructure and basic services was high and unsustainable. Thank god the mayor at the time, a man called Pereira Passos, backed by the republican government, realised something had to be done. But of course it would be too much to ask, after 400 years of exploitation, to offer these workers a well-thought out plan of action with their well-being and future development at the centre. Instead the 4-year plan (1902-1906) destroyed the homes of these workers, their little homemade shacks, and the process of modernisation began.
Even that would be fine had a contingency plan been put in place for the evicted to fall back on. But there was no such thing. On the contrary, a decree number 391, in 1903, banned any alterations to existing homes in the slums of Centro, and at the same time legitimised the construction of primitive shelters in the steep un-inhabited hills. To add salt to the wound, they imposed a high tax on the construction of official houses in the hills. So of course this inhibitive measure forced most workers to effectively refute ownership of their own homes6.
These middle-class traders and industrialists offered job opportunities to the recently dispossessed and the constant stream of new arrivals from the poor rural areas. The hills close to Centro therefore began to get filled with cheap labour for the elite, until something really annoying happened: the elite decided to move to the next fashionable spot in Rio, the South side. They had good taste I must say. I am staying in Ipanema, which is in the south, and situated between the lake and the sea; it was a good choice.
In 1964 the military took over the country, and Brazil was ruled by military dictators until 1985. During that period the migration continued to intensify, undeterred by the living conditions of new arrivals to the cities.
The military leadership had its own solution to the favela problem: To reclaim the land with rising real-estate value and build modern luxury buildings on it. They moved the poor to the equivalent of council estates, built on the outskirts of the city, far from their work.
The living conditions there were so low that even the ex-favela residents couldn’t handle it. Not only was it too far from work, impersonal with no communal areas or community atmosphere, but they were expected to pay rent to live there. So many returned to favelas not affected by the modernisation. Between 1964 and 1974, 80 favelas with over 139,000 residents were expelled from the land they had claimed as home. That’s over 26,000 home-made shacks re-claimed by the government in the name of development and modernisation. Today this reclaimed land is known as Barra da Tijuca.
Then something captivating took place in 1969: The residents of Bras de Pina, a favela targeted by the military regime for modernisation, resisted. They stood up and defended their land, refusing to be pushed around by a system that had treated the likes of them with complete and utter disregard. They fought and not just won the right to remain on the land they had claimed, but achieved the urbanisation/formal recognition of their community.
Together with the people of Bras de Pina, the architect Carlos Nelson F. do Santos turned this favela into an urbanised quarter of Rio de Janeiro. To this day this victory remains a symbol of resistance and hope to the people of the favelas.
By 1980 there were over 718,000 people living in the favelas, and just over 5 million in the urbanised city. Over the years the shacks were fortified, and those nearer the city and its public services became 4 to 6 storey buildings. Many residents managed to build their own water and sewage networks, albeit precarious. The few houses legally connected to the electricity network sold it on at a premium. Shops such as small groceries and bakeries opened, and rents began to rise.
Many poor people couldn’t even pay the rent in the slums, and were forced to move either further away, further up, or into the urban city. Shelters were built under bridges, aqueducts or in narrow streets and anywhere unlikely to be used by the official market. Between 1982 and 1990, 205 new favelas were built in remote lands far from the city centre.
The expansion of favelas, whether in the hills or on the streets, were a process of reclaiming the land. This was done either by groups of people taking advantage of political changes that distracted the authorities, or by families and individuals desperate to find a place to sleep.
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