| Main Index |  |
|
 |
Index City of COOP | Imprint |
|
Stephan Lanz
|
"Urbanization yes, expulsion never!"
The battle for the favela José Arthur Rios also introduced "help for self-help" as an instrument of the favela policy and thus stands for a further path-breaking novelty: "Operação Mutirão" was the name he used to designate a collective construction programme of community centres, medical stations and schools that alluded to the rural term for neighbourly help. The state government usually provided material left over from the demolition of buildings as well as engineers, while the favelados contributed their labour (Rios 2002: 69). "Operação Mutirão" for the first time counted on the participation of the inhabitants and deemed social and economic measures necessary for improving the living conditions of the favelados. Rios also stressed the qualities of the favela in terms of urban development. He compared their structure with medieval cities and merely wanted to enhance its standard. This policy, which despite its paternalistic features aimed at emancipation, came under pressure from clientelistic politicians worrying about their prospects at elections and from the real-estate industry that wanted to vacate the favelas in the now valuable southern zone. After just one and a half years, Rios had to give way to the conservative Sandra Calvalcanti (3). Lacerda now established the repressive "Programa de Remoção" (Removal Programme) to eliminate the phenomenon of the favela. Their large-scale demolition began. Inhabitants were resettled to specially erected state-subsidized flats (conjuntos habitacionais). A national housing bank (BNH) funded the expulsions and the new settlement. In these years, the Vila Kennedy, co-financed by money from the United States, was established as well as the Cidade de Deus, which today has ironically become the symbol of violence in the favelas. The residents associations, on the other hand, politicized themselves against their abuse as cabos eleitorais which immediately began again after Rios' departure and in 1963 founded the umbrella organization FAFEG to organize resistance against repression. The first FAFEG congress in 1964 in a confrontational manner demanded the favelas' right to public infrastructures. The military coup of the same year brought an end to this polarized situation, stepped up the policy of expulsion and broke resistance with force. For the military, the ideologically contested housing policy, which had secured the left a dominant position in the favelas, was of strategic importance to legitimize their regime. Shortly after the putsch, soldiers occupied Morro do Pasmado, which was defended by the FAFEG, and in the end burnt it down. Arson also destroyed Praia do Pinto with 7,000 inhabitants in the southern zone, after the inhabitants had offered massive resistance against their resettlement. In the following years numerous leaders of the association were arrested and some were murdered; after their second congress in 1968 the entire committee of the FAFEG was interned and replaced by "vassals loyal to the state" (Dietz 2000: 168). A new constitutional act, "No. 5", denied "subversive elements" their civil rights and exposed the remaining activists to the permanent threat of arrest. The authorities now controlled all activities of the residents associations: In Catacumbiwhich was later vacated, for example, the residents association was transformed into a committee of guards, according to Perlman, that allowed no construction whatsoever and strictly controlled access to the settlement (1977: 59). Many associations preferred to dissolve during this phase. Up until 1974, 80 favelas were vacated, and around 140,000 inhabitants were resettled to 35 residential complexes for the most part located far away from the city centre (Happe 2002: 93). At the same time, the BNH tried to pacify the favelados by offering them the acquisition of subsidized homes of their own in the new settlements and thus making them conform to the social norms stipulated by the military. A secret, individual form of resistance led to the failure of this policy: Despite intensive expulsions, the number of favela inhabitants rose by a third between 1970 and 1973 alone. Families often moved to a favela when its eviction was announced to get hold of a new sate-subsidized flat. Later they illegally sold them for an extra charge to persons with higher income who were not entitled to these flats and moved back to the favela. As a sign of protest, the FAFEG called for collectively denying the payment of rent, electricity or water (Happe 2002: 200). Indeed, new owners in the residential complexes frequently did not pay their instalments. Unpaid rent led to eviction, but by then the occupants had saved months of rent they would otherwise have had to pay in the favela. Without being organized, around three quarters of those affected had fallen into arrears with their payments in 1970 (Pfeiffer 1987: 135). In the mid-1070s, the BNH finally stopped the construction of housing for low-income earners. The regime's policy had utterly failed. However, the state by no means acted as a hermetic apparatus during the military dictatorship. As early as 1968, when the strongest phase of repression began, Governor Negrão de Lima, newly elected following a favela-friendly campaign, founded the CODESCO - Company for Community Development (4) which was meant to develop participatory urbanization programmes. Although it failed to a large extent due to the opposition of the regime, a symbolic victory over the repression was achieved with the model urbanization of Brás de Pina which was earmarked for expulsion. In this context, a central role was played by the young team of architects around Carlos N. F. dos Santos called "Quadra", which had close ties to the social movements and worked for the FAFEG (Pereira da Silva 2002). "Quadra" was influenced by the architect John Turner, who considered self-organized "housing by people" as a contribution to solving the problem of housing, and together with inhabitants upgraded the standard of Lima. The assertion, "They showed me solutions that are problems and problems that are solutions", which he made when visiting state residential complexes and favelas in Rio, became the motto of the fight against the politics of destruction (Pereira da Silva 2002: 109). Based on Turner's principles, Brás de Pina, which was widely politicized on account of the expulsion attempts, experienced the first participatory approach to urbanization in Rio. Architects and residents associations developed a joint master plan which they implemented with the assistance of the CODESCO. The residents themselves drew up the plans for rebuilding their houses. But a leading article in the leftish newspaper jornal do brasil gets more to the essence of the social mood at the time: "From the occupation of plots of land [...] up to the secret tapping of power lines, the favelado becomes a parasite of the state [...] Eking out a bare existence in promiscuity, these groups of the population establish a world without rights, but also without duties. The utopian wish to urbanize the favelas is opposed by the most elementary principles of administrative logic. The ideal is not to stimulate the favela, but to eliminate it". (05/18/1969, cited in Baumann 2001: 102)
|
