hard times in the marvelous city by bryan mccann

8/13/2019 Hard Times in the Marvelous City by Bryan McCann

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From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro

Bryan McCann

HARD TIMESin theMARVELOUS CITY


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Bryan McCann

From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas o Rio de Janeiro

Duke University Press Durham and London2014

HARD TIMESin the

MARVELOUS CITY


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Contents

List o IllustrationsviiAcknowledgmentsix Introduction1

1 19

2 43

3 77

4 121

5 159

Epilogue181 Notes199 Bibliography227 Index243


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Illustrations

PHOTOGRAPHS

I.1 Vidigal, January, 1978 2



I.4 Bento Rubio and Vidigal residents, 1978 4

I.5 Garbagemen move a refrigerator, Vidigal, January, 1978 7

1.1 Nova Holanda, 1969 21

2.1 Brizola and an elderly resident o Cantagalo, 1984 732.2 Brizola visits the Alemo favela, 1983 75

3.1 Te ancredo Neves shortly after its inauguration, 1985 93

3.2 Brizola visits Cantagalo, 1985 97

3.3 Brizola parries middle-class hecklers in Ipanema, 1984 114

3.4 Residents o Pavo-Pavozinho rebuild after a

landslide, 1986 115

3.5 Te plano inclinadoo Pavo-Pavozinho, 1987 115

4.1 Rocinha residents protest the arrest o Dnis da Rocinha,1987 136

4.2 Rocinha residents throw rocks and bottles at police, 1987 136

4.3 Moreira Francos police strike back, 1987 138

4.4 A member o Cabeludos gang, 1987 140

4.5 Police occupation o Santa Marta, 1987 140

4.6 A police commander in Santa Marta, 1987 150


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MAPS

Map o Brazil, with inset o the Metropolitan Region o

Rio de Janeiro 14

Favela growth over time 23

Favela location and density in 2004 27

Loteamentos irregulares, irregular subdivisions, in 2008 30

Key sites in the evolution o favela politics 46

Cada Famlia Um Lote (One Plot Per Family) project sites 83

Centros Integrados de Educao Pblica (s) in the municipality

o Rio de Janeiro 95

Criminal tur monopolization 169


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Acknowledgments

I closed the Epilogue with Rato Diniz and will open the acknowledgments

by thanking him for his talents as a ciceronethrough Mar and othercom-

plexos. Joo Roberto Ripper and the community leaders at Imagens do Povo,

, and the Observatrio de Favelas also contributed unstintingly to

my education. Christina Vital, Cristiane Ramos, Marcelo Monteiro, and

Rita de Cssia o Favela em Memria shared their vast knowledge and al-

lowed me to participate in their discussions. Teresa Williamson o Cat-

Comm fulfilled the name o her organization, catalyzing my engagementwith multiple communities. Eliana Athayde o the Fundao Bento Rubio

shared her unswerving commitment to justice and her honest reflections.

Paulo Muniz shared his memories o the events that open the book.

Officers o many favela associations offered their deep, local knowl-

edge, most importantly those representing Chapu Mangueira, Babil-

nia, Morro Azul, Borel, Formiga, Cabritos, Pedregulho, Providncia, Asa

Branca, Vila Autdromo, Horto, and Cantagalo. Association officers from

the neighborhoods o Botafogo, Bairro Peixoto, Vila Valqueire, and Cru-zada So Sebastio were equally generous.

Many scholars, organizers and students in Rio de Janeiro went out o

their way to lead me to sources and insights. Paulo Knauss shared his deep

grasp o Rios history and his understanding o brizolismo. Mrio Brum,

Mauro Amoroso, Bruno Arago Bastos, Mrio Grynszpan, Dulce Pandolfi,

Itamar Silva, Mrcia Leite, Amrico Freire, Marly Motta, Marieta Ferreira,

Luciana Lago, Cristina Buarque de Hollanda, Slvia Muylaert, Lgia Segala,

and Lgia Mefano all shared generously and pardoned my navet. MarianaCavalcanti and Paulo Fontes stimulated further reflections. Alba Zaluar

was both encouraging and inspiring.


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x Acknowledgments

atiane Pereira Nunes Costa and Kizzy Couto helped me see the struc-

ture o favelas in transition. Ceclia Azevedo, Ana Mauad, and Martha

Abreu were gracious hosts and colleagues. Angela Magalhes amiga fiel de

muitos anos, never hesitated to do anything possible to make my experience

in Rio more enjoyable and productive at the same time.

Te staff o libraries and archives at , Arquivo da Cidade, ,

-, Arquivo Pastoral das Favelas, , , , the Secre-

taria de Habitao, and the Instituto Pereira Passos facilitated my research.

Latin Americanist colleagues from the US encouraged, re-shaped and

improved my work, particularly Janice Perlman, Leandro Benmergui,

Michael Donovan, Ben Penglase, Maite Conde, Alex Dent, and Amy Chaz-

kel. Matt Karush, Karin Rosemblatt, ed Cohen, and Mary Kay Vaughan

helped broaden the perspective. Jeff Lesser and Barbara Weinstein have

been constant sources o support. Mark Healey has shared his understand-

ing o the ways cities work. Brodie Fischer has been an unfailingly energetic

and magnanimous friend and colleague.

Several students at Georgetown University have provided research assis-

tance or helpful readings: my thanks to April Yoder, Djuan Bracey, Amanda

Earley, Juan Pablo Barrientos, Juan Carlos Garzn, and Andria Motta. Te

Americas Seminar and the History Department at Georgetown gave me myfirst opportunity to share this work with colleagues and benefit from their

comments. Several Georgetown colleagues read parts o the manuscript

and provided constructive feedback, including Jim Shedel, David Painter,

Michael Ferreira, Shiloh Krupar, Katie Benton-Cohen, Michael Kazin,

David Goldfrank, Alison Games, Aviel Roshwald, Denise Brennan, Doug

Reed, Joe McCartin, and Adam Lifshey. A few read the whole thingJohn

McNeill, Shobana Shankar, Amy Leonard, John utino, Erick Langer, and

Adam Rothmanand their help was decisive.Beyond Georgetown, Desmond Arias and Robert Gay shared the kinds

o insights that only scholars with deep knowledge o the subject could

dispense.

I thank Valerie Millholland and Gisela Fosado at Duke University Press

for believing in the project and sticking with it. Tis project would not have

been possible without research funding from the -Charles Ryskamp

Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Gradu-

ate School o Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University.


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Acknowledgments xi

My greatest debt is to my family: Sean McCann, Moira Moderelli, Helena

Moraski, and Jay McCann, thank you for your confidence in me. o my won-

derful boys, Booker and Seamus, I hope we enjoy many more happy times

in Brazil. And to Mary Hunter, my undying gratitude and love.


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Introduction

VIDIGAL, RIO DE JANEIRO, JANUARY 6, 1978

As the sun rose over the hillside favela o Vidigal, local residents stood anx-

iously in front o their humble shacks, steadfastly defending them against

the municipal workers sent to evict them. Te men from , Rio de

Janeiros sanitation company, were there to cart away their belongings, re-

moving them to a housing project in distant Antares, in the swampy west-

ern flatlands o the city. Te favelados, favela residents, looked down the

hill, toward the upper middle-class neighborhood o Leblon, with its newapartment towers rising from blocks that had been occupied by another

favela only a few years before, and to the shimmering Atlantic that lapped

at Leblons shore. Tey knew that the citys mayor, Marcos amoio, wanted

to make way for more oceanfront apartment towers on Vidigals hill and

was pushing for a speedy removal o the favela to facilitate a lucrative real-

estate deal.

Like most favelas in the 1970s, Vidigal was a collection o barracos, or

shacks, assembled by their residents from wood, metal scraps, and any-thing at hand. A few o the homes were more stable, constructed o brick

and concrete, but these too had mostly been built by their own residents

in ways that defied any architectural code. Vidigal had a precarious, ir-

regular electrical network, no paved roads within the community, and no

schools or public buildings, unless one counts the chapel that doubled

as a community center. Although a few homes had piped water diverted

from springs higher up the slope, most residents still relied on two cen-

tral bicas, or water spigots. None o the residents had legal title to his or herhome or the lot it sat on. Most had been paying monthly rent for the use

o their lots to a local resident who acted as an agent o the putative land-


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2 Introduction

owner. Te lease o unserviced lots violated municipal laws but had been

common practice across the city since the early twentieth century. In all

these ways, Vidigal was typical o favelas in 1978. Te termfavela, as we will

see in the following chapter, is difficult to define, in part because favelas

have changed so dramatically over the past thirty-five years. About the only

things that todays Vidigal has in common with the same neighborhoodin 1978 is the absence o property title and the continuing discrimination

against its residents, yet everyone still recognizes it as a favela. Vidigal was,

however, unusually well located, making it a lucrative target for real-estate

development.

Paulo Muniz, at the time a young resident o Vidigal, recalls that the

municipal government had justified removal based on the risk o landslide.

Tey came with that story o risk o landslide. But i Vidigal was at risk,

so were hal the favelas in Rio, along with many o the luxurious homes inGvea [a middle-class residential neighborhood nearby]. When we found

out they had plans for development, we knew it was really about profit.


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4 Introduction

for over a decade. Tey joined Almeida Lima and his comrades, produced

judicial staying orders to delay the proceedings, and helped summon local

reporters to document their efforts.

ogether, the favelados o Vidigal and the liberation theology lawyers

fought a successful battle against Mayor amoio, his allied real-estate de-velopers, and the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Tey mo-

bilized to present a strong popular defense against eviction and hustled to

file a series o injunctions against removal, saving one shack at a time. All

but a few residents managed to avoid removal. By the middle o 1978, the

residents o Vidigal had won a crucial victory in court, annulling the mu-

nicipalitys standing order for removal. Te judge conceded that i Vidigal

was at risk o landslide, so was every hillside favela in the city, and therefore

risk o landslide could not itsel justify removal o an urban community.Vidigals successful self-defense set off a wave o favela mobilization

. .4 . Bento Rubio

in Vidigal. January 1978.

Surrounding Rubio and

in the background are an

assortment o reporters,

favela association leaders,

residents and sanitation

workers, participants in

Vidigals moment o truth.

Photograph by Ronaldo

Teobald, CPDoc JB.


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Introduction 5

throughout the city. By the end o 1978, dozens o favelas had joined the

struggle against removal and for infrastructural upgrading. Basing their

strategy on that o Vidigal, they founded new favela residents associations

or revived stagnant ones. In many cases, the new associations joined forces

with the Pastoral das Favelas, where Rubio and Athayde coordinated legal

efforts while ranks o volunteer pastoral assistants conducted outreach in

favelas across the city. Frequently, the new association officers were them-

selves pastoral assistants. In favelas across the city, a new generation o

favela association leaders challenged long-standing practices o marginal-

ization. ogether, they led a movement that challenged municipal and state

governments to recognize and uphold their rights.

Te favela association movement became a vanguard in the national mo-

bilization against the dictatorship, pressuring the regime to speed its tran-

sition toward redemocratization. Te favela movement, however, heralded

something more than a mere return to electoral democracy: it held out

the promise o a new imagination o Rio de Janeiro, one in which the gul

between rich and poor could be bridged and the children o Vidigal and

Leblon would attend the same schools and share the same opportunities.

Tese were well-founded aspirations. For several years, it seemed not

only that they would be realized, but that they already had been. BeforeVidigals successful resistance, favelas were subject to peremptory re-

moval by private landowners or the state. Between 1962 and 1978, dozens

o favelas were razed and tens o thousands o favelados were forcibly re-

located, usually to distant housing projects. It is no accident that this age

o favela eradication largely coincided with a right-wing military dictator-

ship that endured from 196485. Although favela removal was under way

before the armed forces seized power, it picked up pace dramatically under

military rule. Vidigals successful resistance marked a success for favela au-tonomy and a blow against the dictatorship.

Te wave o mobilization for urban reform unleashed by Vidigals suc-

cess helped pressure the military government to legalize the formation o

new political parties in 1980, and to hold democratic elections for state gov-

ernors in 1982. Socialist candidate Leonel Brizola won the gubernatorial

election in the state o Rio, based largely on his cultivation o favelado sup-

port. Brizola brought favela leaders into leadership positions in his party,

Partido Democrtico rabalhista (, Democratic Labor Party), and intostate administration, overturning decades o practice that had consigned


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6 Introduction

favelados to the role o humble supplicants before political power. He dedi-

cated his administration to a series o projects designed to bridge the gap

between Rios rich and poor, particularly the poor residing in Rios favelas.

In 1985, the first democratic mayoral elections in Rios history brought

further victories: Saturnino Braga, another socialistand temporarily Bri-

zolas allywon mayoral office. His vice-mayor, J Resende, was himsel

a leader o the urban reform movement. Like Brizola, Braga and Resende

sought to bring favela activists into their administration and to make gov-

ernment a tool for favela improvements.

In the same year, the generals finally turned over power to a civilian

president, one chosen in a democratic, albeit indirect, election. Tese

mayoral, gubernatorial, and presidential elections constituted a strength-

ening and expansion o the franchise that in effect gave many poor Bra-

zilians, including favela residents, the power to vote not just for the first

time since the beginning o the dictatorship but the first time ever. Citi-

zens eager for further reform looked forward to the prospect o participat-

ing in the impending drafting o a new constitution, one that they hoped

would reinforce the urban reform under way. By the mid-1980s, there were

many good reasons to believe that Vidigals victory had triggered whole-

sale changes in local politics, laying the groundwork for the constructiono a truly democratic city.

A FEW TROUBLING DETAILS

It is an inspiring story and it is a true story. Yet it is not the whole truth. In

its intersticesin the crucial details this inspiring summary leaves out

lie clues to the complexities o Rios history over the past half-century,

and in particular to the knotty relationship between Rios favelas and therest o the city. o begin with, it helps to know that Vidigals community

leaders served breakfast to the workers who had been sent to

evict them. Tis caf dos garis, or breakfast for the garbagemen, was a

key element in the fight against removal. Te local leaders understood that

the workers were not any better off than the favelados, had

every reason to sympathize with them, and would really appreciate a hot

meal. So on January 6and on successive mornings, as the conflict un-

foldedAlmeida Lima and his friends met the workers withhospitality and good humor and explained why they did not want to move,

while enjoying numerous cafezinhos, small black coffees. Te carioca ritual


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Introduction 7

o chatting over cafezinho can be a great way o getting business done, but

it is even better as a way o making sure nothing gets done. Te garissoon

made it clear to their superiors that they would not remove any belongings

o favela residents who did not clearly wish to leave.

Tat brings up the next complication. Some o the residents didwant toleave. Despite growing disillusionment with reports o life in the projects,

several favela residents were happy to trade a precarious shack in Vidigal

for a single-family cinderblock home in a state-subsidized project in dis-

tant Antares. Contrary to fond memories, the favelados o Vidigal were not

united. Te new association leaders found themselves in a war o ideas with

rivals from the Fundao Leo XIII, an organization that had started as a

social services project o the Catholic Church but that had become a part

o local government in the 1960s. Organizers o the Fundao Leo XIII en-couraged favelados to seize the opportunity to acquire a decent home in a

new neighborhood, fleeing what they characterized as the squalid promis-

. .5. Garbagemen

move a refrigerator, Vidigal,

January 1978. Tis image

reminds us that some Vidigal

residents chose to move to the

housing project in Antares.

Te refrigerator, symbol o

upward mobility, reflects the

way some residents perceived

a move from a favela shack

to a new home in a planned

community. Photograph by

Ronaldo Teobald, CPDoc JB.


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8 Introduction

cuity o the favela. Opponents o removal argued that this was a real-estate

swindle designed to push the poor farther to the margins o urban life. At

bottom, the Fundao Leo XIII offered a vision o the moral sanctity o

the individual nuclear family in its struggle for progress. Te new favela

association, in contrast, offered a vision o the moral sanctity o the larger

community, where all worked together to protect the common good from

outside exploiters.

Te ensuing contest between the Fundao Leo XII and the favela asso-

ciation was one o door-to-door persuasion and careful stagecraft. Paulo

Muniz worked as an assistant manager in a clothing store in nearby Ipa-

nema, a job that required him to wear a suit and tie. When Muniz returned

home each evening, Almeida Lima and Carlos Raimundo Duque warned

the Fundao Leo XIII workers, Here comes our lawyer. Youll have to

talk to our lawyer! According to Muniz, the subterfuge helped put Funda-

o Leo workers on the defensive. Te Fundao Leo XIII functionaries,

for their part, alleged that Vidigals new residents association had cate-

chized everyone to appeal to the judge, a choice o words that suggested

that the liberation theology lawyers were the real force behind the resis-

tance movement. Te lawyer Bento Rubio, for his part, observed that he

and his colleagues could only win judicial protection for those residentswho had solicited their help. Rubios observation simultaneously de-

fended the lawyers against allegations o outside agitation and implicitly

suggested to unaffiliated favela residents that they would be wise to enlist

the services o those lawyers i they wished to avoid eviction.

A handful o families accepted offers o relocation, while the majority

stayed put. Not all those who stayed, though, shared the new associations

communitarian vision. Te local resident who had long collected rents for

the absentee landowner continued to live on the hill and remained a thornin the side o the communitarian activists for years. Tere are further

complications to the Vidigal story. Mayor amoio was an appointee o the

military regime, but he had exceeded his authority in pressing for Vidigals

removal. Key administrators in the dictatorship had already begun to dis-

tance themselves from favela removal. amoio was not so much a represen-

tative o the dictatorship as a middleman unaware o the real limitations

on his power.

Leonel Brizola, who rode the wave o favela mobilization to the gover-nors office, was a Socialisthe served as vice-president o the Socialist

International for fourteen yearsbut a younger generation o leftist activ-


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Introduction 9

ists in Rio considered him just an updated version o a long Brazilian tra-

dition o caudilhos, political strongmen who dispensed favors to their loyal

followers. When the military regime legalized party politics in 1980, the

university Left rejected Brizola and his party, opting for the new Partido

dos rabalhadores (, Labor Party), which they believed would advocate

for more thoroughgoing change.

What do these complexities demonstrate that was not evident in the

inspiring summary at the beginning o this introduction? Vidigal was al-

ready enmeshed in an informal real-estate network well before 1978. Its

residents were neither defenseless before the threat o removal nor united

during the struggle against it. Te claim o the new favela associations to

communitarian unity conflicted with the continued existence o divisive

internal interests in favela real estate.

Te military dictatorship was riven by internal disputes and at the local

level it remained sensitive to popular mobilization. Te political left wing

in Rio would be split between Brizola and his favela ward-heelers on the

one hand and the university Left o the on the other. Perhaps most im-

portant, favelados were participants in a war o ideas about the future o

their neighborhoods and o their city, one whose future was more open

ended than most residents cared to acknowledge.

THE DARK SIDE

Tese complexities help to explain the rest o the story. I 1985 was the high

watermark for urban reform, the rest o that decade constituted a rapid de-

cline. As governor, Leonel Brizola attempted to revolutionize public edu-

cation for favela children and to grant property title to favela residents.

Tese reforms were beset by deep problems and were largely scrapped bythe subsequent administration. Saturnino Bragas mayoral administration

was even less successful: by the end o his term, the city had gone bankrupt

and his social programs came to a screeching halt.

More perniciously, drug- trafficking networks targeted key favelas as

bases for their operations. Te traffickers seized on the communitarian

vision that had stoked the favela association movement and perverted it,

turning it toward their own ends. Tey took over favela associations, or at

the very least kept association officers on short leashes, not permittinganyone to speak for the community in a way that might undermine their

own interests.


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Introduction 11

panding access to primary and secondary school for favela children. And

for the first time, favelados gained entrance into higher education, includ-

ing Rios selective public universities. Favela commerce expanded exponen-

tially, as every favela became home to minimarkets, beauty salons, gyms,

auto mechanic shops, and building supply stores. Te great majority o this

commerce was irregular, but few favela residents perceived that as a prob-

lem. Favela health posts expanded across the city. In sum, favelas consoli-

dated and diversified internally.

In other, striking ways, however, life deteriorated dramatically. Favelas

became stigmatized as the source o pervasive urban violence, a vastly

oversimplified perception but one hugely consequential for favelados. Tis

stigma o favela residents as the carriers o violence seemed to replace an

older one based on class prejudice. Rios public and private institutions

eliminated codes that in practice had barred the entrance o favela resi-

dents, but deeper class divisions did not disappear. Instead, those divi-

sions, hardened into new forms o discrimination and exclusion, as the

border between the favela and the rest o the city was increasingly enforced

through heavy armament.

Rios elite retreated into closed condominiums, private schools, and

shopping malls guarded by private security; they fortified their apartmentbuildings and coveted armored vehicles and personal weapons. Even the

beach, theoretically Rios most democratic public space, became the site

o entrenched territorial claims and lingering conflicts.

Te spirit that had characterized favelado mobilization in the late 1970s

dissipated or was hollowed out by the bogus communitarian claims o

drug traffickers and militias. Te battle o ideas between individual familial

security and communitarian defense that had characterized the late 1970s

was not so much settled as exhausted: neither option seemed attainable forfavela residents by the early 1990s.

THE GLOBAL, THE REGIONAL, AND THE LOCAL

Rios favelados were living through a period o momentous change at

global, national, and local levels. For a brie period in the late 1970s and

1980s, they seemed to be in control o that change, or at least in control o

the changes in their own lives and neighborhoods. By the early 1990s, thatcontrol and the opportunity it represented were lost, for at least a genera-

tion.


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12 Introduction

Te world moved to the city in the second hal o the twentieth cen-

tury. Te green revolution o high-yield crops and mechanized agriculture

simultaneously freed most o humanity from the need to raise its own food

and destroyed sustenance agriculture, sending former peasants, campesinos,

camponeses, and other former farmhands and their descendants in search

o urban employment. Galloping urbanization took on many variations

but in the Global South was generally characterized by the proliferation o

self-built housing for the urban poor in any perch they could secure long

enough to nail together a rough shelter.

Rio de Janeiro had a head start on this pattern o urbanization, as Rios

favelas already had fifty years o history behind them: new waves o urbani-

zation then drove their expansion in the second hal o the twentieth cen-

tury. Partly as a result, Rios pattern o urban settlement differed from the

cup and saucer model o a formal core ringed by informal peripheries

common in most cities across the Global South. In Rio, favelas were scat-

tered throughout the city, including within its downtown core and adja-

cent to luxury residential neighborhoods. As a result, the urban poor could

never simply be pushed to the outskirts o the city, and conflict over urban

space became central to urban life. As elsewhere, however, the popula-

tion o the urban poor and the percentage living in self-built housing onirregular lots expanded dramatically during the second hal o the twenti-

eth century.

Most o Latin America fell under the power o right-wing dictatorships

at some point during the 1960s80s. Tese dictatorships presented them-

selves in varying forms across the regionBrazils was one o the longest

enduring but far from the bloodiestbut in general regarded poor urban

neighborhoods as potential foci o radical leftist revolt. Tey eradicated

poor neighborhoods where possible, evicting their residents and mov-ing them to housing projects. When this solution proved untenable, they

opted to contain the urban poor, suffocating popular mobilization while

distributing material benefits in the guise o patronage to loyal supporters.

In all these ways, Brazils regime was typical.

Te decline o military regimes across the region opened Latin America

up to the creation o new democracies and to new political opportunities

for the urban poor, among others. Tis was technically redemocratization,

as Latin American nations had experienced previous periods o democraticrule, but in most cases amounted to the attempted creation o an inclusive

democracyone in which all citizens would have equal rights under the


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Introduction 13

lawfor the first time. Brazil was in the vanguard, as its regime began to

cede power in the late 1970s, while others across the region were tighten-

ing their grip. And Rios favelados were in the vanguard o the vanguard,

pushing for the right to remain in their homes, as well as the rights to

habeas corpus, to public education, to freedom o speech and freedom o

assemblyrights all routinely denied under the dictatorship and in scant

supply for the urban poor in earlier periods o democratic rule.

Across the region and indeed across the Global South, the expansion o

democratic rule coincided with the exacerbation o urban violence. A small

percentage o the rise in violence can be attributed to the inability o the

new democratic governments to exercise the kind o arbitrary containment

characteristic o their military predecessors. But not much o it: in Rio, the

police became far more homicidal under democracy than they had been

under dictatorship, though this violence only produced further violence,

rather than suppressing it. Tis too, was not unusual, as partially demobi-

lized security forces o the Latin American dictatorships became interest

groups in the new Latin American democracies, exacerbating violence in

attempts to secure their own position.

Tese militarized interest groups, along with their rivals and occasional

collaborators in criminal networks, operated in an expanding illegal eco-nomic sector. Te two principal commodities were cocaine and guns. Rios

favelas had little o the former and few o the latter in the 1960s, when a

bandit with a .45 was a notable rarity and domestically grown marijuana

the only common illegal substance. Te favelas were awash in both these

things by the end o the 1980s, undermining the democratic experiment in

progress within them.

Rios transitions over the past fifty years have thus been typical in some

ways (sharp rises in population and informal housing) and prefigurativein others (an earlier expansion o democracy than in much o the Global

South, coupled with an earlier spike in urban violence). Its transitions have

also been more intense than in most places. On the one hand, popular mo-

bilization swept a socialist governor to power in the midst o a right-wing

military dictatorship. On the other, as the drug and tur wars raged from

the late 1980s into the twenty-first century, Rio became one o the most

violent cities in the world.


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Introduction 15

THE ARGUMENT IN BRIEF

Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s favela activists led a movement

to bridge the long-standing divide between favelas and the formal city in

Rio de Janeiro. Tey challenged the practices that had long consigned favela

residents to difficult livesinsecurity o land tenure, limited access to

formal employment and public education, and the expectation o routine

harassment by the forces o law and orderdemanding equal rights to the

city. In a rush o Mobilization, they built a movement that redrew the politi-

cal map o the city and helped push the nation toward redemocratization.

Having played a decisive role in the election o a crusading left-wing gov-

ernor, these favela activists joined forces with political allies and attempted

to institute a thorough process o Reform. Te reforms this alliance insti-

tutedparticularly in regards to land titling, education, and public secu-

rityshaped the city for the next two decades. Although these reforms

brought some benefits, they fell well short o early aspirations. Teir short-

comings owed partly to external and partly to internal forces. Externally,

national recession and hyperinflation hampered attempts to upgrade Rios

favelas. Changing patterns o international drug trafficking turned Rio into

a valuable export node, triggering violent tur battles. Internally, each o

the reforms had two key strategic flaws. Tey assumed the continuationo popular mobilization but provided few incentives for its support, and

they strengthened middlemen who connected favela residents to munici-

pal and state benefits without instituting any conditions to enforce the

middlemens accountability. Tese middlemen became irresistible targets

for corruption. In consequence, these reforms did not unite favela and city,

but reconfigured the boundaries that separated them.

Trough the mid-1980s, energetic reformers struggled to hold together

a fraying coalition against mounting odds. By 1988, Rio de Janeiro reacheda Breaking Point. Floods and landslides wracked the city. Municipal govern-

ment went bankrupt trying to respond to the emergency while staving off

the effects o hyperinflation. Drug wars and police violence ravaged the

city. Self-styled donos do morro, owners o the hillwell-armed traffickers

who protected their tur through a combination o violence and patron-

agebecame the new lords o Rios favelas. Criminal tur monopolization

became the new expression o the barrier between favela and city.

Tings got worse before they could get better, in the Unravelingo the1990s. Drug lords formed criminal networks, intimidating and co-opting

local political and civil representatives. Favela associations, recently the


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16 Introduction

spearhead o mobilization, became moribund husks lightly concealing

criminal tur monopolization. Emergent nongovernmental organizations

(s), powerless to confront this state o affairs, instead operated within

it, making necessary accommodations while achieving what they could.

Defense militias ostensibly organized to drive out traffickers themselves

became new criminal interest groups, exercising leverage over local com-

merce while limiting political representation.

Favela leaders began their movement in order to guarantee the right

o favela residents to remain in their homes. By the early 1990s, that right

o occupation and possessionalbeit not the legal title to favela land

itselfwas largely guaranteed. But rising urban violence and criminal tur

monopolization imposed new limits on the rights o favela residents. In

practice i not in law, favelados lost the right to choose their own political

representatives and the right to circulate through the city free o police ha-

rassment. Tis attenuation o rights became routinized in the daily opera-

tions o the city, in everything from policing strategies to provision o pub-

lic utilities.

MobilizationandReformhad offered an opportunity to erase the bound-

ary between favela and city. After reaching the Breaking Pointand enduring

the Unraveling, that opportunity seemed more distant than ever, and favelaswere perpetuated as zones o exception, where the rule o law and guaran-

tees o citizenship did not apply.

At each o these stages, the fates o Rios favelas and their residents were

determined largely at the nexus that connected the favelas to the rest o the

city. For this reason, most o this book is devoted to the rise and evolution

o political leaders within Rios favelas and their interaction with civil ser-

vants, elected officials, and public intellectuals. More than any other fac-

tor, these interactions determined where the bold strategies o Mobilizationand Reformwould succeed and where they would fail. Te drug lords and

militia leaders were also political actors, and I analyze their role in pushing

Rio to the Breaking Pointand in exacerbating itsUnravelingwith that under-

standing.

Mobilization, Reform, and the Breaking Point each get one exten-

sive chapter exploring their inner workings. Te Unravelingbecause it

has been treated in depth elsewhere and because, in my analysis, it largely

played out in accordance with conditions already determinedgets ashorter chapter.

Tese chapters are followed by an epilogue, which considers the current


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Introduction 17

state o Rio de Janeiro and the fragile new beginning under way. Although

the reforms o the 1980s failed, the dream o the extension o full and com-

plete citizenship to the residents o Rios favelas did not die. Many o its

staunchest advocates, along with their acolytes, remain influential policy-

makers, civil servants, and organizers. Over the last several years, they have

seized a new opportunity to build a Rio de Janeiro that lives up to its demo-

cratic promise and to its nickname: the Marvelous City. Te strategies they

have crafted explicitly seek to revive the animating vision o the reforms o

the 1980s while eliminating the design flaws that undermined them in their

earlier incarnation. Like those earlier efforts, current experiments are both

hugely promising and risky. Favela residents stand to gain tremendously in

the current transitionsmany already havebut those gains are not uni-

versally shared among all favela residents and do not always offset asso-

ciated risks. Tis new beginning is far too indeterminate for a historian to

treat it in depth. As a result, the epilogue is short and speculative. But first,

we must take a brie look at the big questions.


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Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Paulo Roberto Muniz, author interview, April 2011.

2. Eliana Athayde, author interview, March 2006. Rubio and Athayde were both

assistants to esteemed advocate Herclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto, who served as

head counsel in the Vidigal case. Rubio and Athayde played a more prominent

role in mobilization on the hill and in the subsequent development o the Pastoral

das Favelas. On Sobral Pinto, see John W. F. Dulles, Resisting Brazils Military Regime:

An Account o the Battles o Sobral Pinto(Austin: University o exas Press, 2007).

3. Arquivo Pastoral das Favelas (hereafter, ), Vidigal, caixa 1, pasta 1, Docu-mentos referentes a remoo. Te s records pertaining to Vidigal contain

extensive documentation revealing a series o achievements and setbacks on the

path toward this judicial recognition in mid-1978. Tese documents make clear

that civil servants (judge, prosecutor, and expert witnesses from the states geo-

graphic division) were strongly divided on Vidigals future; that other private

claimantsin addition to putative landowner Yvette Palumbohad also filed suit

requesting removal o favelados; and that only community mobilization and per-

sistent efforts by the Pastorals lawyers forestalled removal.4. For a general overview o favela removals in this period, followed by close

investigation o one case, see Mrio Srgio Brum, Cidade Alta: Histria, mem-

ria e estigma de favela num conjunto habitacional de Rio de Janeiro, Ph.D. diss.,

(Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2011). For a complementary case, see Janice

Perlman, Favela: Four Decades o Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro(New York: Oxford

University Press, 2010).

5. Some observers have argued that Brizola was not really a socialist, but an old-

school populist in socialists clothing. Tat is as may be. He described himsel as

a socialist and the party manifesto for the , his new party, explicitly identifiedthe party as socialist. In addition to serving as vice president o the Socialist Inter-

national for fourteen years, he was Honorary President o that body at the time o


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200 Notes

his death in 2004. His resum supports his self- identification as a socialist. Te

party he founded, however, was one o several competing socialist parties in Brazil

in the 1980s. Terefore I describe his self-identification with a lower-case rather

than a capital s. Troughout the book, I use lowercase to describe socialist and

communist ideology, and uppercase to refer to specific entities or institutions,such as the Brazilian Communist Party and Saturnino Bragas Prefeitura Socia-

lista, or Socialist Municipal Government. For an insightful collection o essays on

Brizola, see Marieta de Moraes Ferreira, ed.A fora do povo: Brizola e o Rio de Janeiro

(Rio de Janeiro: , 2008). For analysis o Brizolas base, see Joo rajano

Sento-S, Brizolismo: Estetizao da poltica e carisma(Rio de Janeiro: Fundao Getlio

Vargas, 1999).

6. For Saturnino Bragas own perspective on these goals, see Roberto Saturnino

Braga, Governo-comunidade: Socialismo no Rio(Rio de Janeiro: Paz e erra, 1989). Note:Saturnino Bragas bona fides as a socialist are similar to those o Brizola: through-

out the 1980s, he self-identified as a socialist, described his administration as the

Prefeitura Socialista, or Socialist Municipal Government and attempted to imple-

ment explicitly socialist policies. I am taking him at his word.

7. Muniz, interview, April 2011.

8. Marcelo Monteiro, Paraso Cobiado, Favela Tem Memria, July 5, 2004,

http://www.favelatemmemoria.com.br/publique/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm

?sid=4&infoid=77&from_info_index=6, accessed on May 23, 2103. O prefeito e o

Vidigal, Luta Democrtica, December 29, 1977; Favelados do Vidigal entram na jus-tia contra remoo,A Notcia, December 28, 1977, 3.

9. Muniz, interview, April 2011. , Vidigal, caixa 1, pasta 1, Documentos

referentes a remoo.

10. Fundao remove mais trs famlias do Vidigal mas s duas vo para

Antares,Jornal do Brasil, January 12, 1978, 16; Favelados do Vidigal entram na jus-

tia contra remoo.

11. Muniz, interview, April 2011.

12. Regarding amoios connections to Rios real-estate sector, see the inter-view with urban planner Pedro eixeira Soares in Amrico Freira and Lcia Lippi

Oliveira, eds., Captulos da memria do urbanismo carioca(Rio de Janeiro: Fundao

Getlio Vargas, 2002).

13. For further analysis o this point, see Bryan McCann, Te Political History

o Rio de Janeiros Favelas: Recent Works, Latin American Research Review41, no. 3

(2006): 149162.

14. Te literature on urban violence in Rio is vast and multifaceted. For particu-

larly insightful work researched and written during the peak years o violence, see

Michel Misse, Malandros, marginais e vagabundos: Acumulao social da violn-cia no Rio de Janeiro, Ph.D. diss., (, 1999). See also Luiz Eduardo Soares,

ed.Violncia e poltica no Rio de Janeiro(Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumar, 1996).


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Notes 201

15. On Rios milciassee, for example, Alba Zaluar and Isabel Siqueira Conceio,

Favelas sob o controle das milcias: Que paz? So Paulo em Perspectiva21 (2007):

89101.

16. For an influential journalistic account o the Vigrio Geral massacre, its con-

text, and its consequences, see Zuenir Ventura, Cidade partida(So Paulo: Compan-hia das Letras, 1994).

17. Mrio Srgio Brum, Entrevista: Eliana Sousa Silva, Interview, (Rio de

Janeiro: Laboratrio de Histria Oral e Imagem, Universidade Federal Fluminense,

2005).

18. For pathbreaking analysis o similar phenomena in So Paulo, see eresa

Caldeira, City o Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in So Paulo(Berkeley: Uni-

versity o California Press, 2000). For insightful journalistic coverage o the beach

conflicts o the early 1990s, see the opening chapters o Ventura, Cidade partida.19. See, in particular, Enrique Desmond Arias, Drugs and Democracy in Rio De

Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security(Chapel Hill: University o

North Carolina Press, 2006); Marcos Alvito,As cores de Acari: Uma favela carioca(Rio

de Janeiro: , 2001); Luiz Eduardo Soares, Meu casaco de general: Quinhentos dias no

front da segurana pblica em Rio de Janeiro(So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000);

and Alba Zaluar, Condomnio do Diabo(Rio de Janeiro: , 1996).

CHAPTER ONE. THE BIG PICTURE

1. Lcia Valladaress analysis o the invention o the favela explores the evolv-

ing construction o the favela as distinct and different, including the unintentional

role o social scientists in reifying the category o favela. See Lcia do Prado Valla-

dares,A inveno da favela: Do mito de origem a Favela.com(Rio de Janeiro: Editora ,

2005).

2. Bryan McCann, roubled Oasis: Te Intertwining Histories o the Morro dos

Cabritos and Bairro Peixoto, in Cities from Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban

Latin America, ed. Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero (Durham,NC: Duke University Press), forthcoming.

3. Maria Lais Pereira da Silva, Favelas cariocas, 19301964(Rio de Janeiro: Contra-

ponto, 2005).

4. Instrues para reviso do trabalho da base organizacional geogrfica,

Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatstica (), Rio de Janeiro, 2000, 14.

5. For influential journalistic usage o this term, including a chapter on

Rocinha, see Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World

(New York: Routledge, 2005). For the early history o informal real-estate markets

in Rios favelas, see Brodwyn Fischer,A Poverty o Rights: Citizenship and Inequality inTwentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2008).

6. Favelas are also not generally arrival citiesin the sense o peripheral

hard times in the marvelous city by bryan mccann

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