{"id":22731,"date":"2015-06-21T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T12:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=22731"},"modified":"2015-08-15T15:22:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T18:22:03","slug":"new-demolitions-in-metro-mangueira-leave-residents-desperate-for-housing-rights-slideshow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=22731","title":{"rendered":"New Demolitions in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira Leave Residents Desperate for Housing Rights [SLIDESHOW]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas\"PT\"<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On May 28, L\u00e9lio Fernandes ran home\u00a0from his supermarket job to watch City workers demolish half of his house. He opened a door on the second-floor–where a bedroom and a toilet used to stand–to reveal a sheer drop into a pile of rubble. The workers\u00a0stopped demolishing Fernandes’ house after half of it was gone because it was the end of the work day.<\/p>\n

His neighbor, Pedro Paulo, wasn\u2019t so fortunate: his entire\u00a0house was destroyed. \u201cWhen I got home everything was on the ground already\u2026 The business I had, my clothes, lots of things that I buy to resell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pedro<\/a><\/p>\n

Another of Fernandes’\u00a0neighbors, a single mother, barely had time to get her children out of her house before it was demolished. Fernandes told the story: \u201cShe ran down the stairs in tears, carrying her two children\u2013a four-year-old and a five-month-old. Some residents helped her take a few things with her. Then the house was demolished with everything inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are stories of the evictees from\u00a0Favela do Metr\u00f4, also known as Metr\u00f4-Mangueira<\/a>, a two-kilometer stretch of land alongside a busy road near the Maracan\u00e3 soccer stadium<\/a> in Rio\u2019s North Zone<\/a>\u00a0that has become internationally known<\/a> as a symbol of evictions in Rio. Following the forced\u00a0removal\u00a0of long-time residents that took several years to unfold<\/a> from 2010-2013, the community has more recently been victim to several waves of eviction of new squatters<\/a> made homeless in Rio’s unregulated and overheated<\/a> real estate market.\u00a0Metr\u00f4-Mangueira has come to symbolize\u00a0how the City of Rio de Janeiro responds to\u00a0the housing needs of its most vulnerable residents.<\/p>\n

Workers first moved to the area forty years ago to build the Maracan\u00e3 Metro station, building their homes\u00a0and eventually establishing businesses, most of which focus on car parts and repair.<\/p>\n

\"Recent<\/a><\/p>\n

However, most of the current residents are relatively recent arrivals. They moved in after a series of evictions\u00a0several years ago. From 2010 onwards\u00a0the City government demolished houses and moved\u00a0700 established families\u00a0to public housing through the federal\u00a0housing\u00a0program\u00a0Minha Casa Minha Vida<\/a> (MCMV). The first 100 families were rehoused in Cosmos<\/a>, two hours\u00a0away in Rio\u2019s extreme\u00a0West Zone<\/a>. The bulk of the 600 families who resisted the first evictions\u00a0were later given homes in the adjacent housing developments, Mangueira I and Mangueira II.<\/p>\n

It was after these evictions\u00a0that residents such as L\u00e9lio moved in. \u201c[The City] demolished some houses, but not all of them. And these houses that were left abandoned–well, people who didn\u2019t have a place to live, such as myself,\u2026 occupied them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some longer-term residents remain in the area. Luciano Teixeira, who has a freight business in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira, has lived in the community\u00a0for 19 years. He explained that he would have accepted the nearby MCMV public housing that was\u00a0delivered at Mangueira I and II, but that he is still waiting for his business to be registered and formalized, otherwise he risks losing his livelihood with the relocation.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0said: \u201cThey\u2019ve forced me to stay until\u00a0the end. If they\u2019d come and registered my business I would have taken one of the [public housing] apartments. They came here and demolished half of my depository last week, without telling me if they would compensate me… They want to demolish with all of us inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Luciano<\/a><\/p>\n

Other businesses, many of them legal, are under threat in this wave of evictions<\/a>. This includes the car repair business owned by Fernandes’\u00a0uncle, Edjalves. He fears\u00a0his livelihood will be destroyed: \u201cI\u2019m a citizen, I pay my taxes [but] this place will become a garbage dump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residents still living in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira who were not evicted at the end of May<\/a>\u00a0want to leave, but not before being offered<\/a> housing alternatives. They are supported by Rio\u2019s Public Defenders\u2019 Office<\/a>, which managed to secure a 45-day pause in demolitions<\/a>. Residents want their homes registered with the City in order to guarantee their housing rights.<\/p>\n

Fernandes\u00a0explained that current residents are only there out of extreme necessity. Unlike Metr\u00f4-Mangueira residents prior to evictions beginning in 2010, today \u201cthe majority want to leave. You can go from house to house to see the conditions they\u2019re living in: they are very modest houses, broken houses, with problems. There\u2019s no basic sanitation<\/a> here, no sewerage network, no legalized energy or water. There\u2019s nothing here for a citizen to live respectably.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Graffiti<\/a><\/p>\n

Maria das Neves, who has been living in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira for four years and whose house still stands, agrees with Fernandes. Regarding the latest\u00a0wave of post-eviction occupants<\/a>, she says: \u201cEverybody came here only because they didn\u2019t have a place to live. We are not here because we want to be. If we could, we would be living in a nice house, in a place that\u00a0was worthy of receiving a visitor.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not clear what the City intends to do with the stretch of land once all the shops and houses are demolished. Evictions without clear justification\u00a0have become\u00a0a common occurrence in Rio de Janeiro in these pre-World Cup<\/a> and Olympic<\/a>\u00a0years.<\/p>\n

Jo\u00e3o Helv\u00e9cio, from the Housing and Land Office (NUTH) of the\u00a0Rio\u00a0Public Defenders\u2019 Office, voiced his concern in a public meeting on evictions<\/a>. \u201c\u2018Cleaning\u2019 the city\u2019s favelas, spaces that have been occupied for decades–this is a recurring policy\u2026 You can\u2019t just evict\u00a0people out of the blue, without plans for resettlement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Shops,<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite Helv\u00e9cio’s words of warning,\u00a0this seems to be exactly what is happening in Metr\u00f4-Mangueira.\u00a0Residents of the community spoke of a visit made by\u00a0Mayor Eduardo Paes<\/a> to the community in 2013. The Mayor came to a church that has now been demolished, where he promised that existing residents would be signed up for housing assistance and declared his intention to turn the area into an “automotive hub<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Residents fear their homes will be destroyed while they await housing assistance.<\/p>\n

Fernandes said:\u00a0\u201cThe government just needs to send a representative and go from house to house to see that there are people living here. But they\u00a0haven\u2019t offered us anything, so we\u2019re still here, afraid that they\u2019ll come back to demolish again.\u201d<\/p>\n

To view full album see below, or click here<\/a> to see on Flickr with captions:<\/h3>\n