{"id":36453,"date":"2017-06-29T08:52:55","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T11:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=36453"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:03:33","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T17:03:33","slug":"history-of-urban-renewal-project-rio-part-1-mares-sirens-song-1979","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=36453","title":{"rendered":"History of Urban Renewal ‘Project Rio’ in Mar\u00e9 Part 1: A Siren’s Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

This is the first\u00a0article in a three-part series on the history of the Projeto Rio urban renewal program in Mar\u00e9, from 1979-1981<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the afternoon of June 10, 1981, Brazil President Jo\u00e3o Baptista Figueiredo visited Morro do Timbau<\/a>, one of the communities making up the\u00a0Mar\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0complex of favelas in Rio\u2019s North Zone<\/a>. Figueiredo, along with Rio de Janeiro Governor Ant\u00f4nio Chagas Freitas and Minister of the Interior M\u00e1rio Andreazza, was in Mar\u00e9 to confer property title on over three hundred residents of the area. The proceedings, billed as the \u201cfirst practical result\u201d of Project Rio<\/a>, a multilevel government urban infrastructure initiative, had a festive air, with an estimated crowd of five thousand people entertained by a band of naval fusiliers and Andreazza making a triumphal speech before the ceremony.<\/p>\n

Just two years earlier, no one could have predicted that Project Rio<\/a> would result in the celebration at Timbau. In June of 1979, the Ministry of the Interior announced a massive aterro<\/em>, or land reclamation project,\u00a0to be carried out by the federal Department of Sanitation Works (DNOS) that would create more than 2300 new hectares of land along the northwestern edge of Guanabara Bay. This new land, purportedly enough to house 1.2 million people\u2014a quarter of the city of Rio\u2019s population at the time\u2014would provide\u00a0space for increased transportation infrastructure, industry, and housing in the valuable and highly visible area sandwiched between downtown Rio, the international airport, and the federal university. The project, though, hinged on the eradication of Mar\u00e9.<\/p>\n

1979 was a year of change for the Brazilian government and its policy toward favelas, however. Figueiredo became the last president of the military dictatorship that year and began steering the country through a process of political opening or abertura<\/em>. His administration passed a controversial amnesty law applying to both enemies and agents of the regime and legalized the creation of new political parties. The longstanding policy of removing favela residents to distant housing projects that had characterized the dictatorship\u2019s approach<\/a> to the \u201cproblem\u201d of favelas also appeared to be changing in favor of on-site infrastructure upgrading<\/a>. Project Rio would serve as the flagship of this new policy. In June of 1979, the project became part of a national program called Promorar, which scheduled favelas in seven cities throughout Brazil to receive Project Rio-like upgrades.<\/p>\n

The purported benefits of Project Rio<\/a>, however, had a dark side<\/a>. Though not a full-scale eviction that would send Mar\u00e9\u2019s residents to housing projects in Rio\u2019s outskirts, the project\u2019s objective was to demolish the homes that Mar\u00e9\u2019s residents had built for themselves over decades and construct public housing projects, known as conjuntos habitacionais<\/em>, in their place. In the absence of property title to the land they lived on, though, favela residents\u2019 homes represented a lifetime of investment and were nothing like the squalid shacks government reports made them out to be. Government housing, even on-site, represented a significant step down for many of Mar\u00e9\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n

The proposed aterro<\/em> also ignored the work that thousands of the complex\u2019s residents had been carrying out over decades<\/a> to fill in the marshy land on the edge of Guanabara Bay themselves. Individual families would carry out a multi-step process to eventually build a brick house on a solid foundation, first constructing a stilt house known as a palafita <\/em>over the water and then building up the land below the structure.<\/p>\n

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

Although these palafitas<\/em> represented a major achievement of construction on the part of Mar\u00e9\u2019s residents, federal and city authorities saw them as a blight to be removed. The dictatorship had invested in several large-scale public works projects in Rio, among them the Rio-Niter\u00f3i bridge, the Aterro do Flamengo park just south of downtown, and the opening of Rio\u2019s metro system in 1979. Even in the waning years of the military regime, the government did not want a large favela occupying Mar\u00e9\u2019s prominent location linking so many different areas of the city. The irregularity of favela architecture and especially the palafitas<\/em> clashed with the modern image of Rio and Brazil that authorities wanted to project in 1979 and provided the motivation for the plan to replace Mar\u00e9 with orderly, government-built housing units.<\/p>\n

Like the rest of Rio\u2019s favelas, Mar\u00e9 had been subject to periods of hostility punctuating the government\u2019s usual neglect throughout its history<\/a>. Just a few years after its first settlements were made, a military regiment moved into the Morro do Timbau\u00a0in 1947, creating repressive conditions for residents and demanding \u201coccupation taxes\u201d from residents in order to avoid eviction from their homes. In the community of Baixa do Sapateiro<\/a>, another part of the complex, the 1950s saw the police demolishing residences and forcing occupants to restrict construction on their houses to the night hours for fear of attracting attention. These abuses led to the foundation of some of Rio\u2019s first favela residents\u2019 associations in Mar\u00e9 in the 1950s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Project Rio threatened the complex with eradication, Mar\u00e9 drew on this history of organizing<\/a> to mobilize quickly against the government\u2019s plans. Many of the members of the newly formed Committee for the Defense of the Favela of Mar\u00e9 (Codefam) were already leaders of the various residents\u2019 associations in the favela. Codefam held a series of meetings with city, state, and municipal authorities, arguing that, instead of eradicating the favela, the government should give residents title to their land and encourage them to build\u00a0their own houses, rather than hypocritically swooping in to demolish and rebuild the entire favela after ignoring it for decades. The press took advantage of the easing of censorship under abertura <\/em>to help publicize opposition to Project Rio<\/a>. In June 1979, for example, the\u00a0O Globo <\/em>newspaper hosted a high-profile roundtable meeting between Codefam and representatives from DNOS and several state agencies. Favela residents took advantage of the face-to-face meeting with government representatives to sharply criticize Project Rio, calling it a \u201csiren\u2019s song\u201d that wanted nothing more than to destroy the favela and clear the area for new building projects.<\/p>\n

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

As the weeks wore on, residents showed no sign of letting up the pressure on the authorities. Their hope was not completely out of the question, as favela residents who had lived at the whim of authority for decades knew how shifting political tides or significant difficulties could halt complicated and expensive removal plans in their tracks.\u00a0Their strong response also reflects the fact that, in many respects, Project Rio was not an entirely new kind of threat to the favela. The community had had to solve its own infrastructure problems while deflecting government interference throughout its history. Just that year, in fact, in March 1979, residents organized to protest police brutality that was exacerbating poor health and sanitation conditions in the complex. In opposing Project Rio, Mar\u00e9 residents drew on the mobilization skills they had developed throughout a history of resistance and employed them in the more open political atmosphere of 1979<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not all residents were equally committed to resistance, however. At the roundtable, one of the representatives of Codefam mentioned that some residents of Mar\u00e9 would choose to move from palafitas into conjuntos<\/em>. These were families unable to afford the undertaking of converting those homes into more stable structures. At the roundtable, representatives from Codefam recognized\u00a0that palafitas<\/em> did not constitute ideal permanent housing conditions, which no doubt\u00a0contributed to the government\u2019s success in eradicating those portions of Mar\u00e9. Still, on the main issue of preventing wholesale eradication, and\u00a0securing basic respect and attention from the government, every member of Codefam stood firm.<\/p>\n

The next month, in July, Codefam invited architect Oscar Niemeyer to Mar\u00e9 to appraise the urban quality of the complex. Niemeyer, Brazil’s most famous architect and the\u00a0highly influential designer of Bras\u00edlia, had only recently returned to the country thanks to Figueiredo\u2019s amnesty law; his leftist beliefs\u00a0had forced him to spend the dictatorship in exile in France. After being shown around different areas of the complex by community leaders, Niemeyer stated that he was highly impressed with the construction of the favela, though he declined to venture onto the unstable palafitas. The architect also called his visit to Mar\u00e9 part of a \u201cmovement of solidarity with the favelados\u201d.<\/p>\n

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

Niemeyer\u2019s support for Mar\u00e9 residents pressed at the weakest point of the government\u2019s justification for eradicating the complex. During the dictatorship, the regime had justified favela removal by citing environmental and architectural concerns<\/a>. In advancing these narratives of removal, the government relied on paternalistic stereotypes<\/a> of favelados<\/em> as ignorant, uneducated people unfit to make any real claim to the land they lived on. Niemeyer\u2019s expert praise of Mar\u00e9 undid this image and strengthened the favelados\u2019 claims that the government\u2019s so-called help was in fact just interference. Niemeyer was also not the only professional expressing doubts. Back in June, the Brazilian Institute of Architects (IAB)<\/a>\u00a0criticized the government\u2019s plan in the press, terming it an \u201cidea-Rio\u201d instead of a project and pointing out that many of its objectives were badly defined. In October, the Institute released a report fully evaluating the project, which laid out in greater detail its criticism of the proposed aterro<\/em> and accused the government of planning to speculate on the land.<\/p>\n

The architects\u2019 support, however, though valuable in its firmness and motivated by both politics and professional judgment<\/a>, appears not to have been the main factor in preventing the eradication of the favela. Just a few days after Niemeyer\u2019s visit to Mar\u00e9 and well before the IAB published its full criticism of the project, newspapers announced that, contrary to what was initially planned, Project Rio would not replace the entire complex with government housing. Instead, the article laid out what would become the new plan for the aterro<\/em>: the palafitas<\/em> would be converted into public housing, while the residents who had built their own houses would receive title to the land those houses stood on.<\/p>\n

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

This change of plans represented an enormous victory for the thousands of favela residents who would be allowed to remain in their homes. The newspaper announcement did not specifically credit any group with influencing the government\u2019s decision, though it did mention that Niemeyer would formulate a plan for the upgrading\u00a0of the palafitas<\/em>. This development suggests that their visit to Mar\u00e9 had not gone unnoticed and probably weighed heavily in the decision to halt eradication. DNOS may have found the courage, moreover, to insist on going through with converting the palafitas<\/em> partly because a visibly nervous Niemeyer avoided them. Still, it seems unlikely that the government would dramatically alter its plans for a massive infrastructure project in the short period between Niemeyer\u2019s visit and the announcement of the abandonment of eradication. The residents\u2019 mobilization drove opposition to the plan<\/a>, creating complications and weakening the authorities\u2019 resolve until Niemeyer\u2019s public comments delivered the coup de gr\u00e2ce to Project Rio in late July.<\/p>\n

This is the first\u00a0article in a three-part series on the history of the Projeto Rio urban renewal program in Mar\u00e9, from 1979 to 1981<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Research for this piece was done through the archives housed in the Museu da Mar\u00e9. Newspaper sources used were:\u00a0Assessoria de Comunica\u00e7\u00e3o Social <\/em>(1980),\u00a0O Dia <\/em>(1979-1981),\u00a0O Fluminense <\/em>(1979),\u00a0O Globo <\/em>(1979-1980),\u00a0Isto \u00c9 <\/em>(1979),\u00a0Jornal do Brasil <\/em>(1979-1981),\u00a0Jornal do Com\u00e9rcio <\/em>(1981),\u00a0Luta <\/em>(1979-1981),\u00a0Tribuna da Imprensa <\/em>(1979),\u00a0Ultima Hora <\/em>(1979-1981).<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/h4>\n
    \n
  1. Barbassa, Juliana. Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink<\/em>. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015.<\/li>\n
  2. Freitas, J\u00e2nio de. \u201cImprensa e democracia.\u201d Folha de S. Paulo (June 3, 2012).<\/li>\n
  3. Guillermoprieto, Alma. Samba<\/em>. New York: Vintage, 1990.<\/li>\n
  4. Jacques, Paola Berenstein. \u201cCartografias da Mar\u00e9.\u201d In Mar\u00e9: Vida Na Favela<\/em>. Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra, 2002.<\/li>\n
  5. McCann, Bryan. Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro<\/em>. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014.<\/li>\n
  6. Perlman, Janice E. Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.<\/li>\n
  7. Silva, Cl\u00e1udia Rose Ribeiro da.\u00a0Mar\u00e9: A Inven\u00e7\u00e3o de um Bairro<\/em>. Master\u2019s thesis.\u00a0Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Get\u00falio Vargas: Centro de Pesquisa e Documenta\u00e7\u00e3o de Hist\u00f3ria Contempor\u00e2nea do Brasil, 2006.<\/li>\n
  8. Williams, Daryl; Chazkel, Amy; Knauss, Paulo, editors. The Rio de Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics<\/em>. Duke University Press, 2016.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    Full Series:\u00a0History of Urban Renewal ‘Project Rio’ in Mar\u00e9<\/a><\/em><\/h3>\n

    Part 1:\u00a0A Siren’s Song<\/a>
    \nPart 2:\u00a0    Allies Join the Fight<\/a>
    \nPart 3:\u00a0    Government Breakdown<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas This is the first\u00a0article in a three-part series on the history of the Projeto Rio urban renewal program in Mar\u00e9, from 1979-1981. On the afternoon of June 10, 1981, Brazil President […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":36454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1854,1288,1290,2242,1268,1271,335,1282,328,1329],"tags":[29,1144,829,2109,756,280,342,698,11,188,282,1105,1143,1160,618,37,537,2446,2262,152,2447,18,210,301,956,2634,2448,453,206],"writer":[2385],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-housingwatch","8":"category-highlight","9":"category-civilsociety","10":"category-democracy","11":"category-favelaculture","12":"category-favelaqualities","13":"category-policies","14":"category-research-analysis","15":"category-understanding-rio","16":"category-by-international-observers","17":"tag-architecture","18":"tag-baixa-do-sapateiro","19":"tag-brazilian-institute-of-architects-iab","20":"tag-community-museum","21":"tag-community-organizing","22":"tag-complexo-da-mare","23":"tag-favela-architecture","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-forced-evictions","26":"tag-history","27":"tag-housing","28":"tag-military-dictatorship","29":"tag-morro-do-timbau","30":"tag-museu-da-mare","31":"tag-neighborhood-association","32":"tag-north-zone","33":"tag-organic-architecture","34":"tag-oscar-niemeyer","35":"tag-palafitas","36":"tag-participation","37":"tag-projeto-rio","38":"tag-protest","39":"tag-public-housing","40":"tag-public-policy","41":"tag-self-help-planning","42":"tag-series","43":"tag-series-project-rio","44":"tag-stigma","45":"tag-upgrading","46":"writer-claire-jones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36453"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=36453"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=36453"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=36453"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=36453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}