Sao Paulo – More than 6.5 million Brazilians – 3.6 percent of the population – live under precarious conditions in “favelas,” the vast shantytowns in and around some of this country’s largest cities, a study published Sunday in a major daily reveals.
Almost half of the people living in favelas are concentrated in the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, two of the country’s richest and largest cities, according to the report published in the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo and based on official figures.
Sao Paulo state has 2.07 million people living in the slums, while Rio has 1.38 million, the report by Brazil’s IBGE geography and statistics institute says.
The study reveals that the number of people living in the favelas grew by 39 percent over the past 10 years in the country’s regional capitals, with the exception of the cities of Vitoria, the capital of Espiritu Santo state, Florianopolis (Santa Catarina) and Campo Grande (Mato Grosso do Sul), where the number of favela residents declined.
The increase in the favela population was particularly pronounced in Brasilia, the national capital, where in the past decade the number of favela dwellers rose 400 percent, and in Joao Pessoa in Paraiba state, where the favelas grew by 265 percent in terms of residents.
“In 10 years, the number of irregular occupations practically doubled,” Paulo Queiroz, the municipal housing secretary for Belem, the capital of Para state, told the daily. Thirty-five percent of Belem’s population lives in favelas.
According to experts consulted by the daily, low incomes is one of the factors that has caused the recent growth of the favelas, but it is not the only one, given the fact that there are cities that are poorer than Sao Paulo, Rio and Brasilia where the marginal neighborhoods have not grown so much.
“There are many happy people here. Although the governments has the resources to remove them (to planned neighborhoods), there is no space (there),” said Eduardo Marques, professor of urban studies at the Universidad de Sao Paulo.
Other experts point to the migration of poor rural citizens to the cities, where there is more demand for their labor, as the key factor fueling the growth of the favelas.
