The OTHER Wall

Talk about horrible, inhumane ideas. Construction has begun on a Gaza-style wall in Rio de Janeiro that is designed to cut off several favelas from expanding into nearby forest land, simultaneously causing further segregation between the slums and other neighborhoods in the city.

Wall construction, with condominiums in background. Photo from O Globo

"By year-end the Rio de Janeiro state government wants to build almost 7 miles (11 km) of walls to contain 19 communities. It will spend 40 million reais ($17.6 million) and have to relocate 550 houses, Lazzoli said." Read full story here.

That money could be used for upgrades that residents actually need in public services, health, education, and police reform. It's 2009, you would think officials would have enough basic economic sense to know that the massive unmet demand for low-income housing will not magically disappear if you build a wall.

This is another example of abuses that favelados continue to endure, even after the democratic transition turned them from a persecuted underclass without any substantive rights into ostensible "citizens" with votes.

Just another symbol of how democracy is often woefully insufficient to protect the basic interests of the marginalized urban poor.

Women, Land, and Agribusiness

(A past-due post in honor of International Women's Day, March 9th.)

Did you know that only 2% of the world's land is owned by women?

This statistic comes from an article in the Seattle Times, where Tim Handstad argues that increased land ownership among women increases their status in home and in society, lifts families out of poverty, and leads to secondary benefits like better nutrition for the household, increased food security, and better disease prevention.

I went digging for more stats on global land ownership because this strikes me as just the tip of the iceberg. How much land do men own? What about corporations, governments, and heads of state?

I couldn't find the answers to most of these questions. (If you know where this can be found, please let me know!) Though in an ironic twist, I did find a source that estimates the largest personal landowner in the world to be a woman - Queen Elizabeth II, who comes in at 6,600 million acres valuing perhaps 17.6 trillion pounds, or 1/6th of the world's dry surface.

My inclination is that a surprising percentage of land is actually owned by large and increasingly transnational corporations. This is definitely the case in Brazil, where the Landless Worker's Movement (MST) has shifted it's political focus over the last 25 years from targeting large private landowners to international agribusiness.

To commemorate International Women's Day, hundreds to thousands of Brazilian women of the MST and Via Campesina occupied the Ministry of Agriculture, a shipping port, and at least two large industrial farms. They argue that the government should focus on agrarian reform and small farms, many for women, instead of catering to industrial agribusiness.

They also argue that the mono-cropping eucalyptus for pulp, an activity occurring at the occupied sites, destroys natural habitat, creating topsoil loss and ultimately desertification. An anecdote here: a public defender in rural São Paulo state won an immediate suspension of eucalyptus plantation in his area. While visiting some of his contacts I was recruited to translate the suspension notice into English because the companies involved were foreign with English-speaking employees. I didn't get much background on the case, but local residents were up in arms about the spread of eucalyptus in their areas.

Operation Saturation in Paraisópolis: Policies of Overt State Violence

There has been a little flurry of media attention, and not just in Portuguese language sources, about the Military Police occupation of favela Paraisópolis in recent days. As has been done elsewhere, I’ll give an account of this event. But first I want to put it into a context that clearly identifies this act as an oft-utilized tool of government policy towards favelas, and not just an emergency response to extreme circumstances, as news reports or government accounts would lead you to believe.

In fact, a keyword search of “Operação Saturação” on a news or government portal show scanty coverage of these saturation operations deserving a serious and alarmed discussion. Only some instances of saturation have received significant coverage, which often lacks solid information of the events leading up to its implimentation or the negative ramifications for residents. This only further demonstrates the low priority that media outlets and their audiences place on slum dwellers’ quality of life.

Background

A “Saturation Operation,” or the descent of hundreds of police, vehicles, and arms to first lock down and then monitor an entire community for extended periods of time, has been used in the city of São Paulo a total of 12 times since 2005. It is a deliberate response to spikes of violence that are perceived to threaten neighboring areas or the governability of the favela by state authorities.

In a saturation, hundreds of troops will enter and essentially subdue all activity in the community (over 600 troops in one case) – including legitimate business and school functions, and most car and foot traffic. They embark on an intense investigation of all recent incidences of violence (though rarely their own) and perform detentions, searches (over 50,000 personal searches in one instance), questioning, and sweeps for illegal drugs and arms. Once the community is effectively subdued, they continue to occupy and monitor residents’ coming and going - for up to three months in recent cases. In fact the first use of the saturation tactic, at least under the title of “operation saturation,” was in Paraisópolis. So it seems things have come full circle.

Past saturation operations in São Paulo and their duration include:

Paraisópolis (julho/agosto 2005) – 42 days
Elba/Tamarutaca (agosto/outubro 2005) – 48 days
Pantanal (outubro/dezembro 2005) – 53 days
Guarujá (janeiro 2006) – 25 days
Parque Novo Mundo (fevereiro/abril 2006) – 44 days
Jardim Colombo II/Buraco Quente (maio/julho 2006) – 61 days
Morro do Samba (julho/agosto 2006) – 51 days
Taipas (setembro/novembro 2006) – 72 days
Elisa Maria (março/junho 2007) – 81 days
Alba (setembro/dezembro 2007) – 93 days
Rio Claro (junho/setembro 2008) – 99 days

Starting in 2007 with the occupation of Jardim Elisa Maria, the saturation effort has been followed by a project known as a Virada Social. This omnibus package of social service programs by both state and city agencies often includes dental clinics, construction of a new school or nursery, job skills classes, sporting events, tree planting, community center construction, new public lighting, a family planning course, and the list goes on.

I suspect it simply became politically unfeasible, as these operations became larger, for the government to undertake such drastic repressive measures without some kind of positive social outreach afterward. Or perhaps there is a sense that authorities must clean up after themselves, as in the case of Elisa Maria, where the slaughter of 6 local teens, given at the time as just one instance justifying the initial saturation, later proved to be committed by police.

Operation Saturation in Paraisópolis

We’re now entering the fourth week of the most recent Paraisópolis occupation, a community I visited regularly during my time in São Paulo. It is one of the more economically developed favelas in the city, and boasts some of the best infrastructure I saw in a squatter settlement throughout my time there. It is also the second largest, with around 88,000 residents.

The immediate events leading up to the occupation began on February 1st, when police shot and killed a resident and arrested another. Accounts of this story vary – that the dead man was unarmed, that he was armed and fired on officers, that the surviving man was a relative of a famous imprisoned drug lord, and that he is unrelated. Media reports have neglected any serious investigation into the truth of this first encounter.

In response to this shooting death groups of residents clashed with police on Feb. 2nd– residents barricaded roads, damaged businesses, and burned a handful of cars. Once again, the motives here are unclear. The police allege that the famous drug lord ordered the riot from prison, but again, this has not been confirmed. In the confrontation 4 police and at least two residents were wounded.

In response to this encounter authorities began the Saturation Operation on Feb. 4th that has effectively put the entire community under occupation. 300 Shock Troops and 100 local police patrol the streets and houses, 33 checkpoints operate throughout the community to filter foot traffic and stop suspicious looking persons. There are several reports of officers mistreating and firing upon innocents, detaining and questioning residents an excessive number of times, speaking threateningly to local leaders, and entering houses without residents’ permission. Regardless of whether the rioting was ordered by the imprisoned drug lord or was simply a spontaneous response to police brutality, it is hard to argue that a full-scale occupation of the community for an “unforeseeable amount of time” is justifiable or humane.

Accounts of some resident's complaints have surfaced in major media reports, but the complaints highlighted are either paltry, or when serious, presented as an isolated instance. In fact, serious and widespread complaints exist and were recorded by a group of rights activists in the city whose e-mails I receive. Most residents will not speak to outside reporters. This photo comes from such an e-mail and depicts a man's foot, injured by a police explosive thrown at him while looking for his wife. She is employed at the popular chain homegoods store Casas Bahia, which recently opened in the community, and was working when the police operation began.

Photo taken by Joelma Couto

Details of the Paraisópolis Virada Social are just coming out, but the list is extensive. I would be impressed if all the activities mentioned actually take place, though the large majority of them are short-term, quickie interventions that I cannot see having a lasting impact on the community. Thus far, the saturation and promised social programs have not cooled all tensions, as two journalists who recently entered the favela to record day to day life in the community where temporarily held captive and then driven outside favela borders. Their captors took their recording equipment and instructed the reporters not to come back.


Paraisópolis quick stats

unemployment: 20-25%
illiteracy: 15,000 residents
children who cannot attend school due to lack of spaces in facilities: 5,000
median income: R$367-$614, or 1/4 to 1/2 of the city average

The U.S. squatting movement grows

Squatting in vacant buildings, subsequently known as cortiços in Brazil, is a both a common solution for needy families and a political strategy to press for larger policy changes on housing rights. In recent history, this was largely unheard of in the U.S., which traditionally has stronger laws against such activity and a smaller low income housing deficit than exist in Brazilian cities. But the housing crisis is pushing the needy and their activists into a similar strategy state-side. First in Miami, now Minneapolis, and soon in up to 24 more cities.

The first I heard of this was from a Miami, Florida group called Take Back the Land. They link the housing crisis with the historic struggle of African Americans to access land and property rights:

People of African descent have been systematically denied control of land in their communities- from slavery to sharecropping to segregation to the current gentrification and displacement of our communities…. We assert our right to the land in our community and to use public space for the public good- specifically, to house, feed and provide community space for the poor, particularly in low income black communities. As such, we are Taking Back the Land and empowering the black community, not the politicians, to determine how to use land for the benefit of the community.

- from the TBTL mission statement

Though their philosophy is unique, they share a strategy with the rest of the groups in this post: moving poor families into government- and bank-owned properties. Here is founder Max Rameau on CNN. He makes some excellent points, noting that letting houses sit vacant is not only bad for their now homeless former occupants, but harms the bank's investment (via looting, use as a refuge by drug addicts, and weather damage) as well as the quality of life for surrounding residents:



Just yesterday poverty activists Cheri Honkala and formerly homeless Dwayne Cunningham appeared on Democracy Now! Detailing similar efforts in Minneapolis. There, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign recently helped move homeless individuals and families into 13 foreclosed and vacant homes. They are calling for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions, and short sales in the city. Watch the full story here.

We’re about the business of bringing the neighbors back into the neighborhood, as opposed to throwing them out onto the streets…. We teach people how to reclaim housing as a human right. We’ll teach you how to move into an abandoned government-owned property, to house families. We’ll teach you how to hold a sit-in, to hold a house that’s in the process of foreclosure.

– Cheri Honkala, PPEHRC

In raw numbers, the actions of these two groups only amount to less than 30 occupied homes. But it serves as a significant model that could expand as the crisis deepens, as well as a strong political statement that could ferment action on the part of policymakers to take stronger steps and protect homeowners and homeless families.

Finally, ACORN is now advocating homesteading for foreclosed families – simply refusing to leave your house. They are also recruiting volunteers to join their Home Defenders network. Home Defenders will be trained and then called upon on short notice to help peacefully defend ACORN homesteaders in their city. You can sign up to be on a Home Defender team - cities organizing include Cincinnati and Cleveland, OH. Do it!

A squatter's movement in Ohio?

Toledo Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur is telling residents to squat in their own homes and get legal representation if they are being foreclosed upon. The strategy:

(1) Stay in your home. Possession is 9/10ths of the law. And if you live in Wayne County Detroit or Cook County Chicago, the police department will refuse to enforce the foreclosure sale.
(2) Get quality legal representation - Legal Aid and many non-profits offer this at free or reduced charges.
(3) Tell your bank to "Produce the Note." With the rush of sub-prime lending loans and the following rash of bank bailouts and mergers, it's very possible that the party claiming to own your mortgage has no idea where the paperwork is. If they can't prove they hold the deed and show the paper trail, they can't back such a claim in a court of law. At the very least, requiring them to produce the paperwork will slow foreclosure proceedings.

Obama-Biden Urban Policy Agenda

This just showed up on Change.gov, the online office of the president elect. (Since when do you get an online office before being inaugurated? Eh, anyhow, the info is extensive). It's the Obama-Biden urban policy agenda.

I am wrapping up my time here in São Paulo and getting ready to continue work on housing and urban social justice in the States. This means learning as much about urban politics and housing policy back home as I did down here. I'll be studying this with interest in the days to come.

Everything I ever needed to know about capitalism and democracy, I learned from pirates

Great (but too short) interview with the author of a new paper on pirates, where he shares some parallels between 17th century pirate organization and modern democracy-capitalism. Says a bit about the current financial crisis too.

Dangerous inequality in U.S. Cities

A new United Nations Report "State of the World's Cities 2008/2009" finds economic inequality in American cities to to be above an internationally recognized "alert level" used to warn governments of possible negative social, political, and economic consequences. Race was seen as a central factor in the economic divide.

Unfortunately the report itself is not up for free download, but media stories on it give the general idea.

This comes on the heels of the last State of the World's Cities report from 2006-2007 which found evidence that slum dwellers in urban areas are worse off than poor rural populations.

World Social Forum 2009 in Belém Brasil

Check it!! Jan. 27- Feb. 1

http://www.fsm2009amazonia.org.br/

Guess whose visa expires at the end of February...

Recent translation work

A friend of mine did some architecture work with the MST (Rural Landless Workers Movement) and asked me to translate their latest action manifesto. This group is known for being the shit - if they were an urban movement I would be working for them.

MANIFESTO REPUDIATING THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE MST PROMOTED BY THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL.

AGAINST THE REVOCATION OF CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS, IN DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY AND IN DEFENSE OF THE MST.

We, Brazilian citizens, members of social and political organizations, want to demonstrate to Brazilian society and the international community our indignation and most vehement repudiation of the measures taken by the Public Ministry and the Military Brigade of Rio Grande do Sul against the MST (Landless Workers Movement).

In September 2007 the Subcomandant General Cel. Paulo Roberto Mendes Rodrigues sent the Public Ministry a report elaborated by the Military Brigade that characterizes the MST and the Via Campesina as movements that have ceased to realize “typical acts for social demands” and have passed to orchestrating “acts typical of criminal organizations” and “paramilitaries.”

Such measures by the Military Brigade cross into the jurisdiction of the Federal and Civil Police, violating the 1988 Constitution. State deputies, governors, members of INCRA and supposed foreigners were secretly investigated.

On December 2, 2007, the Superior Council of the Public Ministry approved a report elaborated by prosecutor Gilberto Thums that designates “[…] a staff of Justice Department prosecutors to pursue public civil action with the aim dissolving the MST and declaring it illegal […]”. As such, the Public Ministry decided “[…] to intervene in the MST’s schools, with the intention of taking all measures necessary to reinstate legality, both in the pedagogical aspect and in the MST’s external structure of influence.”

On March 11, 2008, contradicting the inquiry of the Federal Police that investigated the MST in 2007, the Federal Public Ministry denounced 8 supposed members of the MST for “integrating groups whose objective was to move the State of Law, the present order in Brazil, that would practice crimes of political non-conformity,” crimes captured in the National Security Law of the now defunct dictatorship.

The denunciation refers to the encampments of the MST as a “parallel State” and points to the existence of support from FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia), among foreigners responsible for military training.

In addition to such measures is the intensifying process of police repression of the MST’s political actions. Peaceful marches, protests, and occupations are attacked with extreme violence on the part of the Military Brigade. The images reveal shocking brutality: bombs thrown in the middle of families with children, rubber bullets shot at face level and beatings.

It is against these measures if such authoritarian and dictatorial character that we come to publicly demonstrate our support of the MST.

Democracy cannot be an empty word. To dissolve the MST, make it illegal, prosecute and criminalize its actions and its political militants to “break its spine” signifies- in no uncertain terms- to annul the democratic rights of landless rural workers.

Such criminalization of poverty and social movements represents an attack on democratic liberties and cannot be tolerated in a country that intends to be free. Since re-democratization and the end of the military dictatorship this is the bluntest threat to civil and political rights, with intent to succeed, including against other popular organizations and our people’s fighters.

One of the report’s proposals goes to the extreme: it suggests canceling the voting registration of those landless encamped or settled in a region to avoid their political influence. Suffrage without the right to organize politically is a farce. To annul suffrage is patent dictatorship.

Not one citizen aware of Brazil’s recent history can be silent before so great, evident, and concrete a threat to democracy and Human Rights. This is a shameful offense to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1988 Constitution that reserve the right to association for lawful ends.

The MST is a social movement of popular character that fights for agrarian reform for social justice and popular sovereignty. The Brazilian elites need to learn that social questions should be resolved with POLITICS AND NOT WITH POLICE!

The only way to put an end to the MST is to put an end to the latifúndio (grand agricultural estate), to agro-business, and to millions of landless families by giving them opportunity for work and income in food production. This is the political proposal of agrarian reform guaranteed in the Federal Constitution, whose promise the MST claims thought its occupations and fights throughout Brazil for the last 25 years.

For this we call on all those that fight to stand at with us at the Public Act in Repudiation of the Criminalization of the MST Promoted by the Public Ministry of Rio Grande do Sul in the theater of the Catholic University of São Paulo (TUCA), Rua: Monte Alegre, 1024-Perdizez, at 7:00PM on July 16th, 2008.

DOWN WITH THE AUTHORITARIANISM OF THE MILITARY BRIGADE AND THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL!

ALL SUPPORT TO THE WORKERS/LANDLESS, TO THE MST AND TO THE VIA CAMPESINA!

FOR AGRARIAN REFORM! FOR DEMOCRACY! AND FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!

Lula in Der Spiegel

Lula comments on the motives for the slum upgrading in Sunday's Der Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: A drug war is raging in your major cities. Armed gangs control most of the slums in Rio de Janeiro. Has the government lost control over the favelas?

Lula: Police power alone isn't enough to solve the problem. The government itself must make its presence felt and provide opportunities, and then the violence will subside. This is why we are cleaning up the biggest slums throughout the country. We are providing them with drinking water, energy and sewage systems, schools, hospitals and libraries. With economic growth running at between 4 and 6 percent over a number of years, all this becomes possible. We have allocated $270 billion (€175 billion) to spend on improving slums as well as modernizing our infrastructure such as ports, highways, railroads and airports -- all without any new borrowing.