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...struggles. They interacted mostly with inhabitants of one of the poorest, most violent, stigmatised and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Rio, the Jacarezinho favela, where more than 150,000 people live under the despotism of drug dealers and state-sanctioned brutality exercised by the police.
Meanwhile, in Jacarezinho, as in many of the larger and more politicised favelas in Rio, groups of courageous women and men were beginning to challenge the control that corrupt police officers and drug dealers had over the favela's everyday life and politics. Whereas the repressive presence of the police in the favelas is as enduring as the favelas themselves, the dominance of drug dealers is relatively recent phenomenon. Since the mid-1980s, drug dealers have exerted life and death powers over the favela dwellers and their neighbourhood associations (Associacao de Moradores). CAPA and CSGT members met some of those who were beginning to organise in Jacarezinho in accordance with new premises of full citizenship, autonomy and racial pride. The African Americans not only became interested in the reforms and programmes Jacarezinho organisers were discussing in the community, but offered their support in the form of strategies and limited but much valued financial resources. Brazilians and US blacks shared experiences of police brutality, poverty, unemployment and the effects of the drug trade and, while the ensuing alliances between these two groups recognised the specificities of each context, they nevertheless emphasised the possibility of common strategies and the necessity of addressing local problems through a global prism.
The collaboration between black Americans and Afro-Brazilians that started in 1993 persists, focusing on community organising, place making and community reclamation, as well as tactics to challenge the various sources of social injustice. Denouncing police brutality and proposing police reform feature prominently. Since that first meeting, Brazilian community organisers have stayed in Los Angeles and other US cities for periods ranging from a week to several months, and members of CAPA and CSGT have reciprocated. During these interchanges, Brazilians and African Americans participate in workshops and seminars on the theory and praxis of community organising. They also visit different cities, thus becoming further familiarised with each other's realities and political programmes. The internet has provided an additional channel through which information is communicated instantaneously and frequently.
Challenging the church, the state and the drug dealers
According to the 2000 census, there are more than 6 million people in the city of Rio de Janeiro; there are over 600 favelas, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the city's dwellers. (1) What is a favela? Though the term has historical, social, political and racial meanings that vary according to who is using it, it is safe to say that a favela is a residential area inhabited by poor and working-class people, the majority of whom are black. (2) While in some favelas most houses are made of brick, the streets are paved, there is running water, electricity and public transport, others are characterised by wooden houses and lack of an urban infrastructure. Larger favelas such as Jacarezinho have areas that are relatively urbanised and others that are not. What is important, however, is that in spite of their heterogeneity, all favelas have in common the fact that most of their residents have historically been excluded from the formal labour market, quality education and participation in the public and political spheres. State violence against the Afro-Brazilian people of the favela has been largely responsible for the durability of this exclusion. (3)
Unlike the great majority of the favelas in Sao Paulo--Brazil's largest city--Rio's most densely inhabited and oldest favelas are centrally located. Thus, even though the people of the favelas have been historically marginalised and their humanity and citizenship negated, they have hardly been invisible. Favelas in Rio are usually located on prime real estate, close to main roads and freeways, bus, train and metro lines, shopping malls and soccer stadiums, and often overlook the elite's houses and condominiums, as well as the Atlantic Ocean.
Favelas are vital communities whose visual arts, poetry, music and politics are integral to the city's history and contemporary dynamics. To contextualise the political encounter between African Americans and Afro-Brazilians, I will briefly describe a few turning points in public policy in the last half century, the responses made by the people of the favelas and the resulting contemporary political agendas put forward by organised groups in Rio's poor communities. The first turning point was the emergence of the autonomous coalition of favelas in the late 1950s; the second, the negative impact of the military dictatorship (1964-85) on favela organising; and, third, the effects of the 1980s drug trade on the favelas' sociability networks and neighbourhood associations. Only through an understanding of the events linked to these three axes can we begin to recognise the significance not only of the recent efforts by the people of the favela to revive forms of autonomous organising, but also of the alliances that some of the new favela leadership are cultivating with African Americans.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the relationship between favelas and the church and public administrations (both local and state) has been marked by successive attempts by religious entities and the state to assert control over favela organisations. Such attempts have ranged from plans to eradicate the favelas and co-opt the local leadership, to transforming the favelas into neighbourhoods by providing basic infrastructure and public services. A significant breakthrough was achieved when, in 1957, favela workers organised the Favela Workers' Coalition of the Federal District (Coligacao dos Trabalhadores Favelados do Distrito Federal). As well as providing a forum in which organisations from various favelas could debate political programmes that went beyond the demands of local neighbourhood associations (the state and the church encouraged a focus on local concerns only), the Coalition also gave new, positive meaning to the terms favela and favelada/os. Whereas favelas were seen in the political arena, among public and health officials and in the press and non-favela communities as synonymous with violence, immorality and disease--all clearly connected to various negative notions of blackness--the Coalition transformed the word favela into an index for collective identity that was both positive and distinct from that of trabalhadores or workers. Because most favela inhabitants were, as today, part of the informal labour market, their struggles and demands were distinct from those of the working classes living on the asphalt. Favelada/os not only lived in distinct social and geographical areas, but also their connection to labour was of a distinct, more flexible type. (4)
Another important landmark in the people of the favelas' struggle to affirm their humanity and citizenship was the foundation, in 1963, of the Federation of the Favela Associations of Guanabara State (Federacao da Associacao de Favelas do Estado da Guanabara--Fafeg). Fafeg became an important political interlocutor, successfully obtaining for the favelas 3 per cent of the state of Guanabara's total revenues. Although the favela budget was passed into law by the state assembly in 1963, it was never put into practice and was finally overturned in 1968 at the height of the military dictatorship's repression. Indeed, 1968 marks the year in which, by military decree, the functions of the favelas' neighbourhood associations were radically redefined. Under the new rules, the military bureaucracy supervised neighbourhood associations' statutes, membership, elections and programmes. Almost instantly, the dictatorship had accomplished what the church and city and state administrations had been trying to do for the previous sixty years: effectively repress the favelas. With troops in the favelas and the intimidation, torture and assassination of the most outspoken favela leaders, the associations became, more than ever, state agencies.
Between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, several removal programmes were put into effect. Although such programmes had been a consistent part of church and state plans to `clean up' the city, they had, until the mid-1960s, always met with organised resistance and so were never implemented. This time, with the military, it was different. Although the slogan `no to removal, yes to urbanisation' was adopted by Fafeg, following city-wide meetings in 1967 and 1968 attended by more than half of the city's favela representatives, the ensuing assassinations of leaders and the violence visited on the communities guaranteed that, between 1968 and 1975, about 100,000 people were removed from the favelas and put into housing projects. More than sixty favelas were destroyed, some of them simply burned down by the military who, in order to ensure the elimination of those communities, barred tire fighters from responding to calls. (5)
The military had a profound impact on the favelas. While many...
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