This is a close-up view of a favela:
PHOTO
Here is a view of the city of Belo Horizonte:
PHOTO You can see a favela on the
hill below the downtown buildings in the left corner of the photo, and another to the right
of the large green area.
Favela houses are often first built of
wattle-and-daub, and as time goes by, families improve their houses with brick and cinder blocks.
This
PHOTO is of a house in "our" favela, Jardim America. The house is owned
by Deacon Antonio and used to be mostly wattle-and-daub. Water damage
left it in danger of collapse; it has recently been re-built with bricks.
Jobs within the favela are scare. Most people fortunate enough to find employment outside the
favela ride a bicycle to work or are dependent upon the city buses for transportation.
Few favela residents earn enough to afford an automobile.
Though life in the favelas is always hard, living conditions vary from favela to favela.
In some areas, residents have access to a water system, electricity, or telephone lines; others do not.
Streets range from wide enough for cars and parking, to narrow alleys wide enough for two people
to walk side by side.
PHOTO (This photo is not crooked; it shows how steep the hillsides can be.)
The streets and alleys might be surfaced with cobblestones, bricks, asphalt, cement, or dirt. There is no
urban planning in favelas; construction of buildings and houses depends on what one is building next to
or connecting to. Streets and alleys follow no predictable pattern, and the deeper one goes into a
favela, the narrower and more winding they become.
|
The first favela began on a hill in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1800s, built by
African-Brazilian veterans who had nowhere else to go. They named their settlement "favela" after a
tree that grew on the hillsides above Rio. The word became associated with all such
settlements. In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a large movement of agricultural workers from the country
to the cities, especially to Rio de Janeiro, drawn by the hope of jobs in the industries.
Few of these recent arrivals to the city were able to afford housing in even the lowest-rent
tenements, and so they moved to the steep hillsides, land less desirable for other use,
and built their own houses.
From the beginnings of that first settlement, the number of people in Rio living in a favela has
grown each year. Today, 1/5 of the city's population lives in more than 500 favelas. The
biggest favela in Brazil is in Rio. Called Rochinha, estimates of its population range from 125,000
to 200,000.
In the city of Belo Horizonte, it is estimated that 1/4 of the 3,500,000 people are residents of favelas.
|
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}