{"id":35446,"date":"2017-04-03T10:22:44","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T13:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=35446"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:34","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:34","slug":"rio-community-founded-in-times-of-slavery-fights-to-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=35446","title":{"rendered":"Rio Community of Horto Founded in Times of Slavery Fights to Survive"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For the original article by Anne Vigna<\/a>\u00a0in Portuguese published in Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Labeled\u00a0‘invaders,’ 2000\u00a0people that live in Horto Florestal are threatened with eviction<\/a>\u00a0after the Botanical Gardens took control of the land<\/h3>\n

It is one of the most beautiful and preserved places in\u00a0Rio de Janeiro: a small green paradise, between\u00a0the Botanical Gardens<\/a>\u00a0and Tijuca National Park<\/a>, in one of the most prized\u00a0areas of the city, which includes the neighborhoods of Jardim Bot\u00e2nico and G\u00e1vea. The piece in question is called the Horto Florestal community<\/a>. It has 2000 residents, small houses\u2013some of them listed by the Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan)\u2013and many trees, giant bamboos, waterfalls, trails, wild animals. A neighborhood that makes us forget that we are in the middle of a large\u00a0metropolis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been a wonderful place here,\u201d says Mrs. Olivia da Silva Alves, who arrived here in 1945, when her father, an employee of the Itatiaia National Park, was brought by the Brazilian Forest Service to work in\u00a0the Botanical Gardens. The house is simple, single-story, where she lives with her\u00a0daughter and her\u00a0grandson. Next to it, another set of houses, old and white, forms the little street. \u201cIt used to be very good to live here, but it was also difficult because it was just a forest. It had neither a road nor electricity, but it was very quiet. And no one was going to mess with us,\u201d she adds. Thirty years ago the situation changed. Since the 1990s, the administration of\u00a0the Botanical Gardens\u2013the historic garden created by Portugal’s John\u00a0VI in the 19th century\u2013claimed community lands to expand its activities.<\/p>\n

Finally, on November 3, the Botanical Garden Research Institute received a grant from the Union\u2019s Patrimony Secretariat\u00a0(SPU) for \u201cfull control\u201d of the lands of both the Botanical Garden and Horto Florestal<\/a>, estimated at 142 hectares. The SPU thus obeys the most recent\u00a0judicial decision for the case, tried\u00a0by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) in 2012 at the request of the Association of Residents and Friends of the Botanical Gardens\u00a0(AMAJB).<\/p>\n

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Botanical Gardens directors defend eviction of Horto Florestal residents\u00a0(Photo: Marie-Charlotte Devise\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In their judgment, the TCU ministers did not consider the central argument of the community\u2013their long history on those lands\u2013to request\u00a0they stay. On the contrary: all the ministers considered the inhabitants as \u201cinvaders,\u201d without specifying the date of such invasion. \u201cToday, the Botanical Gardens’ land is occupied by more than 2000 people,\u201d said Minister Walton Alencar Rodrigues, who demanded to \u201cremove these people\u201d from there.<\/p>\n

The current director of the Botanical Gardens, S\u00e9rgio Besserman<\/a>, also follows this line: \u201cWe did not expand,\u201d he says about the TCU decision. \u201cThe community\u2019s\u00a0land\u00a0was already considered part of the Botanical Gardens even by the community itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historian Laura Olivieri disputes this view. \u201cYou cannot say that the locals are invaders of the park, because they aren\u2019t. This wasn\u2019t a park here,\u201d she says. Within Horto, she found the ruins of one of Rio\u2019s first sugar mills, founded in 1578, more than 200 years before the Botanical Gardens itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first wave of occupation was of slaves and Portuguese. Where there was a sugar mill, there was slave labor, probably indigenous as well, but very little is known. Then, in the 18th century, Horto was home to a coffee farm, also with slave labor. The foundation of the Botanical Gardens Park brought the third population wave to the region, made up of slave laborers from that large project,\u201d comments the historian.<\/p>\n

Horto Florestal [which would translate as ‘forest orchard’] was officially given this name for the first time in 1875, as an organ linked to Brazil\u2019s Forests Society and subordinated to the Ministry of Planning. Throughout the 20th century, Horto was the essential site of Brazilian forestry, where forest species were produced and experiments were carried out with them. A map from 1929 presents its perimeter at\u00a083.3 hectares of land and a well-demarcated boundary with 54 hectares belonging to the Botanical Gardens. Inside, there were 25 hectares of crops that included 180 medicinal plants. \u201cThe state abandoned this sector in the 1980s, companies began to finance research and public investments stopped,\u201d explains Clayton Ferreira Lino, president of Unesco\u2019s\u00a0National Council of the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve<\/a>. He adds: \u201cRio\u2019s\u00a0Horto Florestal\u00a0was special, being in\u00a0the capital, with more resources, it had more native forest and medicinal plants. All Brazilian horticultural gardens had and have inhabitants and dwellings inside them. They still have nurseries and trained people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together with the Botanical Gardens and the Tijuca National Park, Horto was registered in 1991 as a Unesco Biosphere Reserve within the Man and Biosphere Program. \u201cWe imagined this reserve as a set of three entities, because each had particular characteristics and components. Horto Florestal has historicity, the development of forestry and a fundamental role in the training of researchers. The Botanical Garden has the Atlantic forest and exotic species, and Tijuca Park has native and replanted forest,\u201d explains Ferreira Lino.<\/p>\n

According to him, Unesco has never considered the community to be a problem. On the contrary: \u201cThe reserve already thinks of man within nature, and therefore is called \u2018Man and Biosphere.\u2019 The community at Horto has lived there for a long time<\/a>, one should consider the residents. Undoubtedly there are\u00a0remnants of slavery in Horto, there are dominant ties with descendants. They are not invaders, nor in bad faith,\u201d concludes the expert.<\/p>\n

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Family in front of its home, after reforming it (Foto: Museu do Horto)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Conflict for land in the middle of the Carioca forest<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Until 2006, the federal government also didn\u2019t consider the community to be an \u201cinvasion.\u201d In that year, the SPU commissioned the Housing Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of Rio’s Federal University (FAU \/ UFRJ) to carry out a land regularization project in the social interest, which should consider the community\u2019s needs, but also consider an old 1990s\u00a0lawsuit\u00a0from the Botanical Gardens to expand its land.<\/p>\n

In those years, the Botanical Gardens\u00a0became a research institute and took\u00a0possession of the Solar da Imperatriz, the master\u2019s\u00a0house of the old coffee farm, to found the National School of Botany. Little by little, it\u00a0deployed several nurseries around the site and also inside a club that had been built by the community in the 1950s, where locals played soccer.<\/p>\n

They were the first claims in this\u00a0land dispute that erupted in\u00a0middle of the forest.<\/p>\n

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Solar da Imperatriz with nurseries surrounding it\u00a0(Photo: Marie-Charlotte Devise\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Since then, the community’s lawyer Rafael da Mota Mendon\u00e7a explains that “the Botanical Gardens messes with\u00a0community life by placing\u00a0large dumpsters\u00a0in front of residents\u2019 homes, which prevents\u00a0them from repairing their homes or using cars.\u201d At the same time, the Institute started asking the federal government to expand its land for further research.<\/p>\n

The arguments were considered valid by the SPU in 2006. \u201cThe project that SPU entrusted us with was to regularize both the community and the Botanical Gardens, define the boundaries between one and the other, allow the expansion of the Gardens alongside a set of urban centers, some of them being relocated due to their location\u00a0in a risk zone<\/a>, such as the river\u2019s edge,\u201d explains urban planner and professor Ubiratan de Souza, who conceived the plan.<\/p>\n

The project proposed an expansion of the Botanical Gardens to 80% of the 142 hectares, and at the same time, the regularization of the community on 8% of the land. The Horto community area, which is 19.3 hectares today, would be reduced to 11.1 hectares, and the neighborhood would be denser. And the Botanical Gardens, which in 2006 was 54 hectares, would be\u00a0113 hectares.<\/p>\n

The rest of the area is occupied by other facilities from public and private companies, such as the State Water and Sewage Company (CEDAE<\/a>), the Federal Data Processing Service (Serpro) and the electric utility\u00a0Light<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, this project didn\u2019t please the Association of Residents and Friends of the Botanical Gardens, who decided to take the case to the TCU. This court, in turn, determined \u201cthe immediate suspension of the land regularization program\u201d\u00a0in 2012.<\/p>\n

Opposing\u00a0View<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In this dispute, the two sides have an opposing view on the right that should prevail. The community is entitled to the right to housing, contemplated by the 1988 Constitution and the 2011 Statute of Cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll legislation passed in the 1990s took into account the need to bring informal settlements into formality. In the Constitution, there\u2019s a chapter on urban policies, an instrument called a special use concession for the purpose of housing, for private occupants of public areas,\u201d said Rafael Mendon\u00e7a, the community’s lawyer.<\/p>\n

The other side, on the other hand, affirms that there\u2019s no right to housing on government\u00a0soil. There are, however, a number of environmental rights that must prevail.<\/p>\n

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Horto residents hang protest signs at Serpro’s headquarters (Photo: Marie-Charlotte Devise\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The director of the Botanical Gardens, S\u00e9rgio Besserman says that environmental work is a priority, and Horto needs to expand it. \u201cWe are responsible, for example, for species threatened with extinction. We need trees, seedlings, seeds, otherwise the world\u2019s largest forest restoration will be done without biodiversity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was also the interpretation of the TCU. According to the ministers, the Botanical Gardens is a World Heritage Site<\/a>. \u201cInvasions occur every day in the country as if it were something normal. It is not possible for Brazil to continue to pass on to the world this impression that there is no law here, that laws are not obeyed, and that anyone can just settle anywhere and government will provide as a gift\u00a0a house with all the facilities necessary for their proper\u00a0survival,\u201d argued Minister Aroldo Cedraz.<\/p>\n

For S\u00e9rgio Besserman it is also unimaginable that the community remains there: \u201cDo the Botanical Gardens of Paris have people living inside them? Does Kings Garden in London have people living in it? It is not compatible with the operation of a research institution and a visitor center.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to him, the expansion cannot happen by keeping the community there, as proposed by the UFRJ study: \u201cIn this community, as in all communities<\/a> in Rio, there is organized crime, drug trafficking,\u201d he says. The same argument was used by Besserman\u2019s predecessor, Samyra Crespo, in an interview with P\u00fablica<\/em>: \u201cThere is drug trafficking and militia,\u201d she said, explaining that the presence of the residents would bring insecurity.<\/p>\n

However, the accusation was not verified by our\u00a0investigation. Serpro and Light officials say they have never seen any illegality and feel safe there. \u201cI\u2019ve been working for Serpro for 20 years and I\u2019ve never heard of violence, I\u2019ve never seen anyone with a gun here. And I know what I\u2019m saying because I live\u00a0in Rocinha<\/a>,\u201d says a lady. Then she takes us to talk to the guards in the company parking lot. \u201cPeople here leave their cars open. You can walk quietly, there are no drug traffickers or police here,\u201d the guards said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis talk of drug trafficking in the community ties really well into the common perception<\/a>\u00a0that everyone buys into. They say, \u2018I\u2019ll remove them because there are criminals<\/a>.\u2019 It\u2019s a common practice of public administrators to criminalize social movements<\/a>,\u201d says lawyer Rafael Mendon\u00e7a.<\/p>\n

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Residents of\u00a0Horto Florestal\u00a0fight to remain in the area (Photo: Marie-Charlotte Devise\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The two directors are also concerned about a possible expansion of the community. S\u00e9rgio Besserman says the residents \u201chave real estate interests\u201d and intend to sell their houses. \u201cWhat guarantee would there be that the community will not grow?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

Urbanist Ubiratan de Souza responds: \u201cWe did the regularization project precluding all expansion. In the very few houses that have unoccupied areas within their lots, we put three families instead of one. The rest of the community is\u00a0comprised of continuous urban nuclei, there’s no\u00a0free space. So I can guarantee that with the project\u00a0the community will not grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Threat of\u00a0eviction<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are at least 215 repossession\u00a0actions<\/a> in\u00a0the Horto community that have already been tried in court and can be carried out at any time. In one of them, on November 7, Marcelo de Souza\u2019s family lost their home<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Employees\u00a0of the Botanical Gardens, Marcelo\u2019s grandparents went to live in Horto in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Although the family has lived there for 70 years, Marcelo was suddenly delivered with\u00a0the repossession notice in February 2016 while he was painting\u00a0his son\u2019s bedroom. Six months later, on November 7, police from four battalions arrived to take their home; the community reacted by setting up barricades. \u201cI had my heart in my hand,\u201d he says. Someone also sent a moving truck. So far\u2013four months later\u2013this was the only help the family received.<\/p>\n

Marcelo, his wife and children\u00a0locked themselves in the house. Supporters and lawyers arrived. \u201cThe police were going to throw tear gas inside. I stopped everything, accepted and left. The same day, my house was destroyed.\u201d The remains were left. With his wife, he stayed for two months with relatives in the Rio Comprido neighborhood, five miles away. His\u00a0son stayed with friends to finish the school year.<\/p>\n

Since January 15, the family has rented a small apartment for R$1,700\u2013Rio de Janeiro has the most expensive square meter in Brazil<\/a>. \u201cIn Rio Comprido, there was a lot of gunfire, we\u2019re not used to it,\u201d he says. Asked if there was any drug trafficking in\u00a0Horto, he laughs. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like that. Go there now to find a joint, see if someone will sell it to you,\u201d he challenges.<\/p>\n

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Homes of residents in\u00a0Horto Florestal, threatened with eviction after judicial decision\u00a0(Photo: Marie-Charlotte Devise\/Ag\u00eancia P\u00fablica).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Marcelo is a microentrepreneur<\/a>\u2013he has a buffet company with his wife\u2013and an Uber driver. Now he expects at least some compensation for the house that was built by his grandparents more than half a century ago.<\/p>\n

Since the last repossession, the community has set up a\u00a0\u201cguardhouse\u201d itself: residents are vigilant to avoid the police coming in<\/a>. There are some tires lined up and tree trunks crossing the street.<\/p>\n

The sight is a strange one in the middle of a forest. Emerson de Souza, president of the Horto Residents\u2019 Association, says the measures are \u201cnecessary because we have to resist, even if we are open to dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dialogue is what is missing today, explains Clayton Lino from Unesco: \u201cWe have offered our mediation services in this conflict, because we have a lot of experience dealing with communities within national parks,\u201d he explains. \u201cIn the case of Horto in Rio, we had a good dialogue until the TCU decision. Our last meeting with then-director Samyra Crespo and former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira was very rigid. The stance was \u2018we\u2019re going to remove\u00a0everyone, period.\u2019 To have dialogue, you have to change this attitude and recognize the true history of the residents,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In addition to the lack of dialogue with the federal government, the community criticizes the Botanical Gardens’ current administration. \u201cMost of the workers in the park are outsourced, while in Horto people know a lot about botany and ecology,\u201d says Emerson.<\/p>\n

They also complain about what they call commercial practices within the Gardens, such as creating musical spaces, restaurants, parking lots. Emilia Souza, Emerson\u2019s aunt, criticizes the \u201cpresence of companies that have nothing to do with research and conservation:\u201d \u201cTen years ago, two former employee homes were taken\u00a0by the Botanical Gardens. One became the headquarters of the Association of Residents and Friends of the Botanical Gardens and the other became the changing room\u00a0for the Espa\u00e7o Tom Jobim,\u201d says Em\u00edlia\u2013referring to the park\u2019s concert space. \u201cNothing to do with conservation and planting. So we doubt the real projects of the Botanical Gardens, which has never presented any plan\u00a0saying what they\u2019re going to do with\u00a0the community’s lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0Di\u00e1rio Oficial<\/em>, the amount of land that will be administered by the Institute was estimated at R$10.5 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n