There is a bit of debate around the use of the word slum in relation to Brazil’s favelas.
Definition of slum by LUMANTI Nepal:
Slum communities are defined by poverty, low income, inadequate living conditions and sub-standard facilities. These communities are usually inhabited by socially disadvantaged people (people regarded as lower caste). Unlike squatter settlements, the residents of these slum areas generally own their land and houses, which are very small in size and have formal title papers (Lalpurja) to prove their ownership. These communities are also officially recognized by authorities.
On the other hand, a slum area, where the residents do not have Lalpurjas is defined as a squatter settlement. Thus, all squatter settlements are slums but a slum may not be a squatter settlement.
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Definition of slum by UN Habitat:
A slum is an area that combines to various extents the following characteristics-
• Inadequate access to safe water
• Inadequate access to sanitation and other infrastructure
• Poor structural quality of housing
• Overcrowding
• Insecure residential status
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Slum Wikipedia
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Cities Alliance
| Common names for slums:* | |
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| *The word “slum” is a loaded one, and its use is controversial. The Cities Alliance has chosen to use “slum” in order to bring a common vocabulary internationally to the issue and highlight the need to address the problem of slums. | |
Etymology
The origin of the word slum is thought to be the Irish phrase ‘S lom é (pron. s’lum ae) meaning “it is a bleak or destitute place.”[11] An 1812 English dictionary defined slum to mean “a room”. By the 1920s it had become a common slang expression in England, meaning either various taverns and eating houses, “loose talk” or gypsy language, or a room with “low going-ons”. In Life in London Pierce Egan used the word in the context of the “back slums” of Holy Lane or St Giles. A footnote defined slum to mean “low, unfrequent parts of the town”. Charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing “I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight”. Slum began to be used to describe bad housing soon after and was used as alternative expression for rookeries.[12]
Thomas Beame’s The Rookeries of London (1850) also described one:
- “The Rookery… was like an honeycomb, perforated by a number of courts and blind alleys, cul de sac, without any outlet other than the entrance. Here were the lowest lodging houses in London, inhabited by the various classes of thieves common to large cities… were banded together… Because all are taken in who can pay their footing, the thief and the prostitute are harboured among those whose only crime is poverty, and there is thus always a comparatively secure retreat for him who has outraged his country’s laws. Sums here are paid, a tithe of which, if well laid out, would provide at once a decent and an ample lodging for the deserving poor; and that surplus,which might add to the comfort and better the condition of the industrious, finds its way into the pocket of the middleman…”
Is the Favela a slum
If we are to argue about whether a favela is a slum, using a currently understood traditional academic definition then the answer is a simple ‘no’ only because this definition relates to once prestigious or affluent communities which have since deteriorated to a point in which they achieve the other conditions required to meet the definition, poor sanitation, crowding etc. This is, as opposed to uninhabited land settled by poor or working class.
The popular contemporary understanding however is more general as illustrated the definitions cited above.
Definition of slum by favela resident:
“Are you joking?….just look at it.”
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There is a lot of trial and error, sometimes we make a mistake and discover a hidden oil reserve…but this is Brazil, we will look the other way and point the finger at BP instead.
some vague memory about surviving a kerosene attack. An Auntie from the community exclaimed when she she saw it in a pot, faulted and confirmed with Aunt Vanda…yes our suspicions were correct, I had potted the indestructible rubber plant. Well let’s see if it can survive a week on the mean streets of Princess Isabel.
RIO De JANEIRO. This weekend we took a trip far out west, to visit some of the people evicted over a year ago from their community Vila Harmonia, to discover what had become of their lives. see 
Suely lived in Vila Harmonia, she was among the nucleus of the community, the original roots. Suely’s husband died of stress during the aggressive removal process.
They were not brute, ignorant niggers scratching away in the dust denying white folks their hard won and dutifully paid for quarter acre, sorry, Brazil doesn’t have racism does it, just coloured classism. They were native pioneers excercising natural and constitutional rights. Suely has graduate degrees in nursing and physiotherapy, her husband had a post doctoral education also in physiotherapy. They ran a clinic in their village, the business model was simple, pay what you can afford.
Yes there was government payouts, ‘compensation,’ but really, what kind of house can you buy with R$11,000 (US$5,500) in Rio2012? The Rio Times has been producing a lovely little series “
The quintal is the garden yard, it recalls pastoral and quilombo days. Chickens and a pig in the back, guard dogs in the front, an informal orchard in the middle, Boldo for indigestion, Acerola for vitamin C, wild rasberries, corn, passionfruit, a herb garden, a slab for bbq’s, a corner for the saints and space to build an extension for the growing family.
If the construction industry mafia (and I do not use that word in jest) can be overcome, there exists enormous opportunity for Rio to lead not just in forums of debate but real, commercially viable implementation of architect led, low cost, mid rise, medium density villages with considered passive solar design strategies, localised water control such as roof top water tanks, integrated micro agriculture, integrated micro business and integrated essential services such as health clinics, local vocational training and community run leisure activities…. Sounds a little like a favela doesn’t it?
The people of the 3rd age are who we need to tend the gardens, community shops and crèches, to watch over and teach the 1st age while the majority of the 2nd age is working. They still possesses the knowledge and lore of the earth, they still remember the days before elevators, before UPP, before electricity and domestic water supply, they remember the hard times and the value of resources hauled by hand. They have memory of the quintal.
Two years on from the first announcements that their houses would be cleared to make way for World Cup 2014 developments, residents of Favela do Metrô are still living through the brutal, drawn out destruction of their community.
Speaking in the forecourt entrance to the community, in front of a wall marked ‘[Mayor] Eduardo Pães and [Housing Secretary] Bittar [are] enemies of the people,’ Francecleide Costa, president of the Favela do Metrô Resident’s Association explains the demoralizing process the community has undergone: “In July 2010 City officials entered the community spraypainting numbers on the houses, making notes and taking photos. We realized we were going to have to leave. We didn’t know what to do.”
Official announcements and pressure to leave followed, with replacement housing offered under the 
