"FAVELA"- FOUR DECADES OF LIVING ON THE EDGE IN RIO DE JANEIRO

“Paradise is here, hell is here, madness is here, passion is here.” So the lyrics of Francis Hime’s Sinfonía do Rio de Janeiro de São Sebastião, lyrics by Geraldo Carneiro and Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, describe the city of Rio de Janeiro. But Hime’s antipodes only begin a description of Rio’s squatter settlements—our favelas. In "Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro", Janice Perlman shares with us her experiences, insights, and the results of her research into the madness, passion, paradise, and hell experienced by Rio’s favela dwellers. This is a keenly insightful and eminently readable book that continues the research Perlman chronicled in her acclaimed book, The Myth of Marginality. In Favela, we have a study of four generations over forty years. The narrative traces the lives and fortunes of hundreds of the favela residents met in The Myth of Marginality, comparing them with the lives of their parents (mostly rural), their children, and their grandchildren.Perlman’s study is both rich in detail and rewarding in its analyses. She faithfully describes her subjects’ daily struggles and strategies to affirm their individual and collective rights and dignity from within an increasingly hostile and violent environment. She uses the survey data she collected in over 2000 interviews and her ethnographic insights to test facile generalizations about the wonders or horrors of favela life and to explore the improvements as well as the setbacks. Her analysis and observations on social mobility and inequality are particularly compelling as she looks at the issue from the individual and family level and the community and city level simultaneously. In doing this, Perlman has produced a portrait of a multifaceted society in turmoil—a society in which life force and ingenuity coexist with desperation and destruction.
Thirty years ago, the fear of those living in the favelas was a fear of displacement—to be uprooted and carted off from their homes to a distant, unwelcoming government housing project far from work and community. Today, they fear for their lives—never knowing when they may be caught in the crossfire of drug gang violence or shot indiscriminately during a police raid. Fatal violence in the favelas has reached an intolerable level as powerful drug gangs battle each other over territory, militias use weapons to enforce extortion, and the police enter with brutality. The youth and teens are the most vulnerable—both in terms of death rates and in terms of being drawn into the traffic themselves.
In 1976, at the time of the publication of Perlman’s seminal work about Rio’s poor communities, Brazil was living under the weight of authoritarian rule—a military dictatorship that continued from 1964 through 1985. It is now more than 20 years since the restoration of democracy to Brazil, but its promise has yet to be fulfilled. Corruption and impunity undermine the rule of law. These failings rest at the very heart of the distrust of the people toward government, politics, and politicians—in fact the entire political milieu.
A democracy is not only a government of rules and institutions; it is an honest assurance of the safeguard of human rights and equality of opportunity. Democracies provide the opportunity for everyone to participate in and influence the decisions that aff ect the present and the future of their community. Either a democracy is guided toward ensuring that its citizens’ lives may be lived in dignity, or apathy, cynicism, and disaffection toward the political system will prepare the way for a resurgence of an authoritarian populism that we thought had become a thing of the past. An informed and empowered citizenship is the most effective antidote to this danger.
This brings me to one of the real strengths of Perlman’s narrative. She views the poor and their communities as bearers of skills and capacities. The common view, fed by the media portrayal of the favelas and their residents, is based on a long list of shortcomings: violence, poverty, unemployment, drug addiction, corruption, early pregnancy, disrupted families, and inadequate public services. This view seems compelling and yet it is deeply flawed. Needs and deficiencies are real but are not the whole reality. The people in the favelas have problems but they are not “the problem.”
Perlman’s research is oriented by a different vision. She looks beyond apparent shortcomings to grasp the impalpable assets of individuals and communities. Each individual possesses skills and capacities. Every community has resources of trust, solidarity, and reciprocity. This change in perspective drastically recasts public policies. The focus on liabilities leads to assistance and enhances dependency. Investment in peoples’ assets sets into motion a sustainable process of individual and collective empowerment.
There is much more in Perlman’s book: insight into the formation and development of Brazilian civil society, and the danger to civil society inherent in violence and criminality. These are issues that go beyond Rio and Brazil and give the book its reach and its broad appeal. A vivid lesson in history, a collection of colorful human and social experience, Favela is essential reading for scholars, civic leaders, policymakers, and all those who are interested in grasping the pressing challenges of urban development and politics.

Foreword by Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Former President of Brazil) in the book "Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro" (Janice Perlman), Oxford University Press, New York, 2010. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.