LIFE IN THE FAVELAS

Life in the Favelas

Life in the Favelas

Introduction

Favela is a Portuguese word which illustrates unusual settlements of the urban areas occupied unlawfully by the poor population. It basically specifies unstructured settlements in Brazil which includes all sorts of illegal, informal occupations, slums, invasions, and unlawful settlements.

Urban slums are self organized systems that are commonly portrayed as complex and apparently disorganized space built by the poor. This universal trait is recurrent, as are many others. All around the world, slums emerge from similar necessities: to find shelter and to survive amid the lack of resources, scarcity of land, and the external threats. All these settlements present similar spatial morphology because of their dynamic of growth. However, this spatial resemblance could be misleading; slums evolving from different social and cultural backgrounds present great diversity, which could be better understood regarding dwellers' socialization patterns, political organizations, and their beliefs about the future.

The Emergence of Favelas

The name favela was initially given to a hillside settlement in Rio de Janeiro, which, by the end of the nineteenth century was occupied by soldiers who had become homeless after a regional war. Soon after, shacks on other hills were informally built and occupied by a new incoming urban population of freed slaves and workers excluded from rural areas and now seeking opportunities in the city. The inhabitants were named favelados and from early on were stigmatized as poor and unskilled people living at the edge of society. They were also depicted as lazy people, scoundrels, and prone to criminal activities. Carioca on the other hand is a Portuguese adjective that is used to refer to the native inhabitants of the city of Rio de Janeiro capital of the homonym state, in Brazil (Robert, 1994).

The twentieth century witnessed the growth of the favelas in the state capitals of Brazil. The first wave of rural urban migration was mainly caused by drought in the rural areas, land expropriations arising from conflicts, or extensive farming. In cities, the favelas usually occupied unwanted land, such as the steep hills in Rio de Janeiro and the mangrove swamps in Recife. Given the nature of the illegal occupation of urban space, other locations were also favored: river banks, public land alongside railways or near electricity power lines, vacant public lands; later, there was also squatting on privately owned land.

The favelas in Brazil are considered as a consequence of poor distribution of income and deficit housing in the country. The migration of the population rural to urban areas in search of work, not always well paid, together with the historical difficulty in creating public policies adequate housing are factors that have led to the growth of households in slums (Davis, 2006).

Over 500 slums or shantytowns exist within Rio de Janeiro, covering more than one third of the population of this city. Favelas of Rio de Janeiro were built in the era of rapid industrialization to keep the poor isolated from the center of the ...