Brasilândia

Time for another research update: I am growing tired of meeting new people and reading semi-random things. My thoughts on issues related to my topic- how democracy works in favelas and could work better- are starting to atrophy and I feel the overwhelming urge to just DO something. What I really lack is a sustained role that forges some sort of unity between thinking and action – a space for praxis.

This is now my top priority. Luckily a project I was half-heartedly helping out with looks like it has the potential to, at least in part, become this space.

For the last 3 weeks a group of University of São Paulo students in architecture and international relations has been in the process of creating children’s programming in favela Brasilândia- actually an agglomeration of several favelas to the north of the city. I was tagging along, not out of any great affinity for kids, but as a way to observe community meetings and get a feel for the area. Plus free coloring…



But after a planning meeting, the group has decided to re-think its involvement in the community. In a handful of weeks, Brasilândia will become another urbanization and regularization site in the city. The details are still being worked out, but the standards are surely in order: evicting people from areas of risk, possibly building public housing blocks to replace their demolished homes, paving a few roads, building sewage canals, and arranging land titles for the residents who are able to stay put.

Meaning it is a critical time for the neighborhood. It is about to undergo serious changes and needs to be organized and attentive to insist that, to every extent possible, residents be given control over the results.

Happily, the students decided this week on two important changes in approach to make their work more relevant to the community’s current position. First, they are going to start a series of dialogues with adults, including members of the community commission. Second, the themes for investigation will be generated by participants, rather than the university students. The overarching goal is to follow Paulo Freire’s model of a Liberating Pedagogy, creating an environment where participants achieve an ever more critical and expanded understanding of their reality, and begin to develop responses to the forces that confront and oppress them.

So at the moment we are recruiting more USP students, specifically ones with education backgrounds, to help us develop the project. I hope to get us some training with a unit at USP that has experience running literacy courses on the Freire model so we can learn “classroom” strategies. It is too early to tell if this will become my “praxis role” down here. I am still following up on a few leads in the search for groups that are doing good politicizing work in favelas. But it is something worth being optimistic about at least!