A favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros Africanos (African neighborhoods), and they were the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in. However, before the first settlement called “favela” came into being, poor blacks were pushed away from downtown into the far suburbs. Most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s, due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to cities. Without finding a place to live, many people ended up in a favela.
A favela is fundamentally different from a slum or tenement, primarily in terms of its origin and location. While slum quarters in other Latin American countries generally form when poorer residents from the countryside come to larger cities in search of work, and while this also occurs to some extent with favelas, the latter are unique in that they were chiefly created as large populations became displaced. Many favelas now have electricity, a situation that 20 years ago was unheard of. Favelas differ from ghettos such as those in the United States in that they are racially mixed, and it is chiefly economic forces, rather than ethnic or cultural issues, that drive people there.
Most favelas are inaccessible by vehicle, due to their narrow and irregular streets and walkways and often steep inclines. These areas of irregular and poor-quality housing are often crowded onto hillsides, and as a result, these areas suffer from frequent landslides during heavy rain. In recent decades, favelas have been troubled by drug-related crime and gang warfare. There are often common social codes in some favelas which forbid residents from engaging in criminal activity inside their own favela.
Some of the older favelas were originally started as quilombos among the hilly terrain of the area surrounding Rio, which later grew as slaves were liberated in 1888 with no place to live. The favelas were formed prior to the dense occupation of cities and the domination of real estate interests. The housing crisis of the 1940s forced the urban poor to erect hundreds of shantytowns in the suburbs, when favelas replaced tenements as the main type of residence for destitute cariocas (residents of Rio). The explosive era of favela growth dates from the 1940s, when Getulio Vargas’s industrialization drive pulled hundreds of thousands of migrants into the Federal District, until 1970, when shantytowns expanded beyond urban Rio and into the metropolitan periphery.
Most of the current favelas began in the 1970s, as a construction boom in the richer neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro initiated a rural exodus of workers from poorer states in Brazil. Heavy flooding in the low-lying slum areas of Rio also forcibly removed a large population into favelas, which are mostly located on Rio’s various hillsides. Since favelas have been created under different terms but with similar end results, the term henrietta has become generally interchangeable with any impoverished areas. Favelas are built around the edge of the main city so in a way they are actually expanding the city. The Brazilian Census of 2000 provided information about the cities with most favelas in Brazil.The explosive growth of favelas triggered government removal campaigns. Police have little or no control in many favelas. A program in the 1940s called Parque Proletário destroyed the original homes of those dwelling in favelas in Rio and relocated them to temporary housing as they waited for the building of public housing.
The Brazilian government has made several attempts in the 20th century to improve the nation’s problem of urban poverty. One way was by the eradication of the favelas and favela dwellers that occurred during the 1970s while Brazil was under military governance. These favela eradication programs forcibly removed over 100,000 residents and placed them in public housing projects or back to the rural areas that many emigrated from. Another attempt to deal with urban poverty came by way of gentrification. The government sought to upgrade the favelas and integrate them into the inner city with the newly urbanized upper-middle class. As these “upgraded favelas” became more stable, they began to attract members of the lower-middle class pushing the former favela dwellers onto the streets or outside of the urban center and into the suburbs further away from opportunity and economic advancement. For example: in Rio de Janeiro, the vast majority of the homeless population is black, and part of that can be attributed to favela gentrification and displacement of those in extreme poverty.
In fact, the population of the favelas is growing faster than the population of Brazil as a whole. In 1950, only 7 percent of Rio de Janeiro’s population lived in favelas, in the 21st century it has grown to 19 percent or about one in five people living in a favela. According to national census data, from 1980–1990, the overall growth rate of Rio de Janeiro dropped by 8 percent, but the favela population increased by 41 percent. After 1990, the city’s growth rate leveled at 7 percent, but the favela population increased by 24 percent. By the year 2000, this created an all-time high of people living in concentrated poverty.
Current increases in the population of favelas cannot be credited to the original reasons of rural to urban migration or foreign immigration.[citation needed] These increases can more accurately be linked to the increased downward economic and social mobility of the people. The middle classes are getting poorer[citation needed] and unable to find affordable housing close to work, and the lowest classes are being voluntarily or involuntarily pushed out of the formal favelas of the inner city and into irregular favelas of the periphery because of gentrification. It is difficult to increase one’s social and economic status in Brazil’s major cities because of the decrease in job opportunities for uneducated and unskilled workers and the decrease in manufacturing jobs for blue-collar workers.
There are currently higher educational requirements for job entry in today’s society, but it is extremely difficult for the urban poor to have access to higher education. The public education system is not a reliable source for college preparation, and as a general rule, most moradores da favela do not even finish basic schooling.
