Favelas

Every Monday, we have a lecture from Professor Fred. Last Monday, (aka over a week ago... oops) he talked about a topic that really caught my interest – favelas. Favelas are living areas, and Professor Fred wrote his PhD dissertation on the topic, so he really knew a lot about them. The word favela comes from an African tree that grows in the desert, with branches that extend far past the trunk of the tree, providing shelter and protection to those underneath it. Today, favelas in Brazil are communities for those who may not be able to afford their own land and huge house, etc.

There is a rule in Brazil that if a person comes and squats on land for three years (and builds a house), that the land becomes theirs. In recent years, groups of 500 and more have traveled from the countryside into “open” land near Salvador to build communities. They travel in large groups so that they when they arrive at the land, they can quickly work together to build each other’s houses. Six or seven very very rich families in Salvador own the vast majority of land in the city, so most times, they didn’t catch these groups intruding upon their land (or I guess it could also be that the families just don’t care). If the intruders are caught, though, the landowner can call the police and have them removed. After three years, though, the land becomes theirs, and if the landowner then discovers them, they can either continue to let them live there or offer to build the people houses on different land (so that they can reclaim their original land). Now that I’m writing this, though, I’m wondering who is there to dispute number of years… who keeps the records and who is to say who is right and wrong? Ah I wish I had thought of that when Fred was here!

The families must not be good at catching these land intruders, because there are SO many favelas around the city. The interesting thing is since they [usually] only have a limited amount of land, when they want to expand, they continue growing vertically. So houses grow by floors, and houses are built on top of houses. It is so interesting to see! My volunteer work is inside one of the favelas here in Salvador, and by going to and from the other placements, as well as other places around the city, we’ve been able to see many, many favelas. Some are nicer than others, but in general, the concept is very interesting. And it is so much of a community. My volunteer placement is in a very poor favela (the Brazillian socioeconomic ladder essentially is like this: poorest of the poor, middle class poor, upper class poor, lower of the middle class, middle middle class, upper middle class, and then a few VERY rich families. My favela is middle class poor). It does not seem like much of a dangerous area, and when we asked Fred about crime in the favelas, he said there isn’t much. And another random fact is that the houses in the favella may be VERY nice, even though from the outside they don’t look like much. The people don’t care much to keep up their houses’s outwardly appearance, but then when you go inside the house, you will see that the family has a huge plasma tv, etc, because they are paying on a plan over a long amount of time. Whereas Fred, who is middle middle class, said that he would never be able to afford a plasma tv under the plans available to him. Or something to that effect. It was just interesting because when we learned about the townships in South Africa, it rang a similar bell – the outside of each township house may not be very nice at all (aka it looks like it is falling apart), but then when you enter the house, they will have tvs and stuff etc (it will look much nicer than you would expect). The reason this happens in the townships is because the people are living on government assigned land and in government houses, so they don’t care to invest much into the actual property, but instead, they wish to invest into their OWN property (aka tvs, etc.)

So, interesting little facts about Brazil. I’ll upload pics of diff favelas. And hopefully I’ll continue to learn more because I think the whole idea is very fascinating!