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Sources on the History of Favelas in Rio de Janeiro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Julio César Pino
Julio César Pino*
Affiliation:
Kent State University
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The favelas of Rio de Janeiro, with their teeming masses trapped in misery, constitute the perfect site for investigating how social inequality is reproduced in Brazil. The latest survey of the shantytowns, conducted by the Instituto de Planejamento in Rio de Janeiro (IPLAN-Rio) reported that as of 1991, the city contained 661 favelas housing 962,793 persons in 239,678 shacks. The squatter settlements recreate in miniature but distorted form the entire history of modern Rio de Janeiro. The first squatter settlement was built in 1898 in Rio by Bahian veterans of the military campaign against mystic rebel Antonio Conselheiro. Yet only when the housing crisis of the 1940s forced the urban poor to erect hundreds of shantytowns in the suburbs did favelas replace tenements as the main type of residence for destitute Cariocas (residents of Rio). The explosive era of favela growth dates from 1940, when Getúlio 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. Even today, the favelas remain an officially unrecognized and illegal part of city. For this reason, many researchers assume that the shantytowns have no written history and that historians must rely on anecdotal evidence from residents for information on squatter life.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , 1997 , pp. 111 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

My investigation was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Dissertation Research Abroad. Heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Hélio Aguimaga and Doracy; Ricardo, and Laisinha of the Instituto Brasileiro de Administração Municipal; Gilda Blank and Olga Bronstein; Vera Campello and Dona Flora of the Fundação Leão XIII; José Artur Rios for providing access to his newspaper collection; Vitor Valla for use of his exhaustive bibliography on favelas; and Maria Coeli de Moura. This research note is dedicated to the late E. Bradford Burns, amigo e maestro.

References

Notes

1. “Crece población de favelas de Rio de Janeiro,” Diario Las Américas, 22 May 1994, p. 2 (published in Miami).

2. During the Brazilian Empire (1822-1889), the city of Rio de Janeiro was detached from the state of Rio de Janeiro and converted into a “neutral municipality” to serve as the national capital. Following the proclamation of the first republic in 1889, this municipality was renamed the Federal District and was administered separately from the other states. Rio retained the function of national capital until 1960, when President Juscelino Kubitschek inaugurated the new capital in Brasília. The city of Rio de Janeiro then became the state of Guanabara, maintaining that status until 1975, when it was once again fused with the state of Rio de Janeiro.

3. Bibliographies of the published sources on favelas include Comité Brasileiro de Conferência Internacional de Serviço Social, “Levantamento Bibliográfico-Favela,” mimeo, Rio de Janeiro, 1979; Lucien Parisse, “Bibliografia cronológica sôbre a favela do Rio de Janeiro a partir de 1940,” América Latina 12, no. 3 (July-Sept. 1969):221–32 (published in Rio de Janeiro); Licia do Prado Valladares, “Estudos recentes sobre a habitação no Brasil: Resenha da literatura,” in Repensando a habitação no Brasil, edited by Licia do Prado Valladares (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1982), 25–77.

4. See Robert Gay, Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 1994); Janice Perlman, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973); Victor Valla, Educação e favela: Politicas para as favelas do Rio de Janeiro (Petrôpolis: Vozes, 1986).

5. Studies of shantytown life outside Rio de Janeiro before 1970 are few. See Daniel Cavalcanti Bezerra, Alagados, mocambos e mocambeiros (Recife: Imprensa Universitária, 1965); Levantamento da população favelada de Belo Horizonte (Belo Horizonte: Secretaria de Estado do Trabalho e Cultura Popular, Minas Gerais, 1966); and Celine Sachs, “Croissance urbaine et favelisation des metropoles: São Paulo et Rio de Janeiro,” Economie et Humanisme, no. 260 (July–Aug. 1981).

6. See two publications of the Fundação Leão XIII, Morros e favelas: Como trabalha a Fundação Leão XIII; Notas e relatórios de 1947 a 1954 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Naval, 1955); and Favelas: Um compromisso que vamos resgatar (Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Leão XIII, 1962).

7. “Acervo de arquiteto fica com o IBAM,” Jornal do Brasil, 28 June 1990, p. 6.

8. See “Uma cruzada e um paladino,” Visão, 27 Dec. 1957, pp. 20–23.

9. The history of Rocinha, currently the largest shantytown in Latin America, has yet to be written. The residents themselves have composed a volume of reminiscences collected by the União Pro-Melhoramentos dos Moradores da Rocinha, Varal de lembranças: Histórias da Rocinha (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo e Presença, 1983). A copy was made available to me by the residents' association of Rocinha.

10. See two special supplements to O Estado de São Paulo, Parte Geral, 13 Apr. 1960, suplemento especial, pp. 1–40; and Parte Específica, 15 Apr. 1960, suplemento especial, pp. 1–48.

11. Carlos Medina e Lícia do Prado Valladares, “Favela e religião,” in-house document, CNBB, CERIS, Rio de Janeiro, 1968.