MARGINALITY from myth to reality in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro 1969 2002

Prévia do material em texto

1
Chapter entitled: “Marginality: From Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de 
Janeiro, 1969-2002", to be published in Urban Informality in an Era of Liberalization: A Transnational 
Perspective, Ananya Roy and Nezar AlSayyad (eds), Lexington Books, Forthcoming. 
 
 
 
 
MARGINALITY: 
From Myth to Reality in the Favelas in Rio de Janeiro 1969-2002 
 
Janice E. Perlman 
Professor of Comparative Urban Studies 
Trinity College 
 
 
 
August 6, 2002 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DRAFT CHAPTER FOR URBAN INFORMALITY BOOK 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I. THE STORY OF THE STUDY 
II. CONTEXT: FAVELA GROWTH IN RIO DE JANEIRO 
III. THREE LIVES: FOUR GENERATIONS 
IV. THE MEANING OF MARGINALITY 
V. THE FRAMING OF FEAR 
VI. MOBILITY AND INEQUALITY 
VII. THE DECEPTION OF DEMOCRACY 
VIII. AGENCY AND OPTIMISM 
IX. FURTHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND NEXT STEPS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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I. THE STORY OF THE STUDY 
 
In 1968-69 I lived in three low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro. I had become interested in 
cityward migration as an undergraduate anthropology student doing fieldwork in Brazil’s 
Northeast. Over the years, I followed the trajectories of families and individuals from fishing and 
agricultural villages to the squatter settlements and unserviced subdivision loteamentos in Rio de 
Janeiro. The three communities I selected represented the various parts of the city where poor 
people could live at that time. They were Catacumba, a favela (squatter settlement) in the 
wealthy South Zone (which has since been removed and the people relocated to more distant 
public housing); Nova Brasilia, a favela in the industrial North Zone (now a battleground between 
police and drug traffic); and eight low-income communities in Duque de Caxias, a peripheral 
municipality in the Fluminense Lowlands (Baixada Fluminense)1. In each place I interviewed 200 
men and women (16 to 65 years old) selected at random, and 50 community leaders, chosen by 
position and/or reputation. The locations of the three communities and the two housing project 
sites (conjuntos de Quitungo, Guapore, and Cidade de Deus – City of God) are shown on Map 1 
below. 
 
MAP 1: FAVELA LOCATIONS IN RIO DE JANEIRO CITY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fonte: Pró-URB (2001) 
 
The data on these 750 people and the contextual data on their communities provided the basis 
for my doctoral dissertation on “The Impact of Urban Experience,” and after follow-up research in 
1973, were incorporated into my book, The Myth of Marginality: 
 Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro (Univ. of California Press, 1976). The book argued that 
the prevailing “myths” about social, cultural, political and economic marginality were 
“empirically false, analytically misleading, and insidious in their policy implications.” I found that 
the favelados were “not economically or politically marginal but exploited and repressed; not 
socially and culturally marginal but stigmatized and excluded from a closed social system. In 
short, they were tightly integrated into society, but in an asymmetrical manner, giving their full 
input (from holding multiple jobs no one else wanted at sub-standard wages to being system 
supportive, to providing cultural richness) but received neither recognition nor reward in 
return,”(page 195). 
 
 
1 Of these five communities in Caxias, three are favelas (Vila Operaria; Favela do Mangue and 
Favela Central) and five neighborhoods of un-serviced lots called “loteamentos nao-
urbanizados” (Centenário, São Sebastiao, Sarapui, Olavo Bilac, and Leopoldina). 
 3
Ten years later I returned to Rio with hopes of following up on the lives of the individuals I had 
interviewed, and began the process of re-locating them. Several of us who had done research in 
Latin American cities in the late 1960’s intended to conduct parallel re-studies and compare 
what had happened to the urban poor in each city given the changes in the macro political, 
social and economic environments in the various countries. The idea was exciting and ambitious, 
but when the “product champion“ was called away from the World Bank to direct the National 
Bank of Peru, in his home country, the funding fell through and the project was dropped. 
 
I returned to this intriguing idea yet again in 1989, only to discover that the “funding climate” was 
not receptive to public policy issues or theoretical insights involving poverty, inequality, or social 
mobility. I began to wonder whether it made sense to keep the 50 boxes of materials stored in my 
mother’s basement. 
 
Then, in 1998, 30 years after the original study, several foundations and international aid agencies 
expressed interest in funding a re-study of the people I had worked with and the communities in 
which I had lived. Poverty—and the vast gap between rich and poor—was deemed important for 
sustainable communities, for peaceful societies and for public policy, so the question of how to 
break the inter-generational cycle of poverty and reverse increasing inequality had become 
relevant once again2. 
 
This chapter is based on the preliminary findings of this longitudinal panel study. As in the original 
study I have drawn upon both qualitative and quantitative methods. Phase I was a feasibility 
study intended to determine the possibility of finding the original participants after 30 years and 
conducting in-depth interviews with original study participants that we were able to locate3. 
Phase II included the creation of a survey instrument based on the original one, the pre-test of this 
and subsequent modification of the questionnaire, and its application to all of the original 
participants located as well as their spouses or eldest children (if the interviewee was no longer 
living.) We are now interviewing a random sample of their children; completing a series of 
contextual interviews on the communities themselves along with the collective reconstructions of 
the community histories; and analyzing the individual constructions of year-by-year Life Histories 
documenting all changes in residential, occupational, educational and family histories. The 
research is still underway, but these early results provide a provocative starting point for our 
further exploration4. 
A Word About Relocating Original Interviewees 
 
The first challenge was locating the original study participants after 30 years. This was especially 
difficult in light of the fact that in order to protect anonymity in 1968-69, at the height of the 
dictatorship, we did not record the last names of the interviewees. This is a decision we lived to 
regret, although “it seemed like a good idea at the time!” Even so our research team was able 
to find some information on 487 of the original 750; to locate 242 of them, and to interview 227, 
about one third. 
 
 
2 Among the funding institutes of this research are World Bank, Tinker Foundation, The Fullbright 
Commission, DFID/DPU, the Dutch Trust Fund, and Starwood Foundation, plus in-kind support from 
the Mega-Cities Project and Trinity College. 
3 I would like to acknowledge Professors Carlos Vaiuer and Pedro Abramo at IPPUR/UFRJ and their 
graduate students, Flavia Braga, Teresa Farinha, and Andrea Cunha for their help in Phase I. 
4 This chapter owes a debt of gratitude to the Phase II Research Team in Rio de Janeiro 
composed of Graziella Moraes, Sonia Kalil, Lia Rocha, and Josinaldo Aleixo with the help of 
Edmiere Exaltação, and methodological guidance of Professor Ignacio Cano. 
 4
CHART 1: PERCENTAGE OF OUR RE-INTERVIEWS BY COMMUNITY; BY RANDOM OR 
LEADERSHIP SAMPLE, AND BY STATUS OF ‘SURVIVORS’ 
 
Above shows the breakdown of our re-interviews according to place and sort of sample.Several 
factors made the high rate of re-location possible: 1) the close ties of kinship and friendship within 
these communities meant that even when people had moved away, there were friends and 
relatives who knew where or how to find them; 2) I had stayed in touch with the families I had 
lived with, visiting them over the years when other activities brought me to Rio de Janeiro, so they 
became the nodes of contact with others; 3) we trained and hired local community members to 
work on locating the original interviewees and conducting many of the interviews; 4) we 
dedicated two years to this process, carefully gaining access to the communities, even those 
controlled by drug dealers and gangs; and 5) I traveled to six states around the country in order 
to interview those who had moved out of Rio. 
 
As Chart 1 shows, we were successful in locating over half (60%) of the leaders (whose last names 
we did have) and over a quarter (27%) of the random sample. In cases where the original 
interviewee had passed away, (113 that we identified), we completed the Life History information 
with their closest living relative, filling in all the information possible on what had transpired in their 
lives from 1969 until the year of their death. The leadership sample, tended to be older than the 
random sample, so a larger proportion are now deceased. In fact, as seen in the chart, a 
majority of the random sample was still alive, whereas a majority of the leaders had passed away. 
 
Due to the varying nature of the three communities, I expected our success rates to differ 
markedly, and they did. I thought that we would find the fewest people in Catacumba since the 
families were forcibly evicted in 1970 and scattered in Public Housing Projects at considerable 
distance from one another around the city.5 Surprisingly enough, it was there that we had the 
highest relocation rates. My hunch is that this is explained by the strong sense of solidarity created 
through the many years of struggle for collective urban services culminating in the long battle 
against eviction. The lowest success rate was in Duque de Caxias, not so much in the favelas, but 
in the privately owned lots. There has been much more turnover in the ‘loteamentos’ 
(subdivisions) than in the favelas, contrary to popular wisdom, and the social ties were much 
 
5 The majority was assigned to units in five-story walk-up housing blocks, known as conjuntos, 
principally the conjuntos of Guapore and Quitungo in the Vila de Penha. Others (not so many) 
were placed in Cidade de Deus or Nova Holanda, two “conjuntos” built at that same time. 
11%
33%
19%
50%
32%
16%
14%
19%
23%
30%
9%
14%
14%
6% 9%
10%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
R L R L R L R L
ALIVE
DEAD
R = Random
L = Leaders
CAXIAS
51 of 250
CATACUMBA 
123 of 250
TOTAL
227 of 750
N. BRASÍLIA
53 of 250
out 
of 
out 
of 50
out 
of 
out 
of 
out 
of 
out of 
200
out 
of 50
out 
of 50
 
weaker. Even though we had street addresses to go by, the names of the streets had changed, 
the numbering was different, and there was no collective memory as there was in the favelas. 
 
It is worthy of note that the re-encounter with the original interviewees and their families was a 
powerful emotional experience on both sides. It was joyful and poignant. We laughed and 
cried. People had gone through a lot in these 30 years and were eager to tell their stories. They 
wante bear witness, to give testimony, to be h . 
 
They were also excited to see me again, the young “hippie-looking”, “hard-working” American 
who had lived among them and shared their daily lives at a time when even bus and taxi drivers 
were afraid to stop too near to their communities. They were eager to learn my life story as well. 
Was I married? Did I have children? Where was I living? What was I doing? Had I been in New 
York on 9-11? 
 
Thus wh m reporting on is not only based on the tionnaires and life histories, but on in-
depth o
afterno
 
 
II. CON
 
Despite
and inte
number
in Rio a
Brazilian
Census.
municip
 
It is my i
Rio’s po
popula
were in
people
of Resid
Residen
favelas—
 
MAP 2:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 Source
1
at I a
pen-ended interviews involving the mutual re
ons and evenings. 
TEXT: FAVELA GROWTH IN RIO DE JAN
 three decades of public policy efforts—first to
grate them into their surrounding neighborho
 of people living in favelas has continued to g
t the time of my original study, and now there
 Institute of Geography and Statistics) shows 5
 The Instituto Perreira Passos (the City’s Plannin
ality for the same year. 
mpression (although official figures do not sho
pulation living in favelas has remained fairly c
tion. In 1968 there were approximately 3 millio
 favelas—or comparable forms of irregular ho
 in Rio’s Metropolitan Region and according t
ents’ Associations of Favelas in the State of Ri
ts’ Associations of Favelas in the City of Rio de
or comparable forms of irregular housing. 
 EVOLUTION OF FAVELAS OF GROWTH IN R
 
: Pro-URB (2001) 
1920 
960 19
ques
d to
 eard
5
-construction of life histories, lasting several 
EIRO 
 eradicate favelas —and then to upgrade 
ods, both the number of favelas and the 
row. There were approximately 300 favelas 
 are at least twice as many. IBGE, (The 
13 for the City of Rio alone in the 2000 
g Agency) sets the number at 704 in the 
w this) that, on average, the percent of 
onstant over time at about 1/3 of the overall 
n people living in Rio and about 1 million 
using. Now there are about 12 million 
o social organizations like FAFERJ (Federation 
o de Janeiro) and FAF-Rio (Federation of 
 Janeiro), an estimated 4 million live in 
IO DE JANEIRO (1920-1990)6 
1940
90
 6
 
 
 
 Source: Pro-URB (2001) 
 
As shown in the four maps above from 1920, ’40, ’60, and ’90, not only did the favelas increase in 
number and size as they spread across the metropolitan region, but they merged with each other 
into vast contiguous agglomerations to form “complexes” of several communities across 
adjacent hillsides. Each of these is the size of a large Brazilian city. The largest, Rocinha, 
Jacarezinho, the Complexo de Alemao, and the Complexo de Mare, have a combined 
population of over half a million residents. 
 
Between 1950 and 2000, the favela population grew much more rapidly than the city population. 
As seen in Table 1 below, the fastest growth rates of favelas were in the 1950's (during the post-
war period when cityward migration began), and the 1960's when my initial study was 
conducted. The growth rates of favelas greatly exceeded that of the general population of Rio 
de Janeiro for every decade except the 1970's where the policies of massive favela removal 
eradicated sixty-two favelas and dislocated approximately 17,000 families, or about 100,000 
individuals.7 
 
From 1980-90, the city's growth rate was down to 7.6% while favelas grew by 40.5%; and from 
1990-2000 the city’s growth had leveled off at just under 7% growth per year, while the favelas 
grew by 24%. These figures are certainly underestimates since they do not count the numerous 
illegal subdivisions that have arisen recently as the areas for possible invasion and squatting have 
become consolidated and marketized. The percentage of Rio de Janeiro's population living in 
the favelas, according to these official statistics, is now at an all-time high. 
 
TABLE 1: GROWTH RATES OF FAVELAS AND RIO DE JANEIRO CITY POPULATION BY DECADE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Source: IBGE, 2000 
 
Growth is not spread evenly overthe metropolitan region. As seen in Table 2 below, the period 
from 1980-1992, for example, the growth rate in the south and north zones was 21% and 14.7% 
respectively; whereas in the west zone, where the new urban elite are moving (Barra de Tijuca), 
the number of favelas grew by 127% and the favela population grew at 108% during the same 
 
7 Official Information from Secretaria de Planejamento e Coordenação Geral do Estado da 
Guanabara (1973). 
 
Year 
 
Favela Pop. 
(a) 
City Pop. 
Rio (b)
a/b (%) Grow. rate: 
Favelas
Growth rate: 
Rio Pop.
1950 169.305 2.337.451 7,24% - - 
1960 337.412 3.307.163 10,20% 99,3% 41,5% 
1970 563.970 4.251.918 13,26% 67,1% 28,6% 
1980 628.170 5.093.232 12,33% 11,4% 19,8% 
1990 882.483 5.480.778 16,10% 40,5% 7,6% 
2000 1.092.958 5.857.879 18,66% 23,9% 6,9% 
 7
period. It is precisely for this reason that in Phase III of this study we intend to include some of 
these newer favelas and loteamentos in our research8. 
 
TABLE 2: GROWTH RATE BY ZONE FROM 1980-1992 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SOURCE: IPLAN RIO, 1980-1992.
 
8 See current study of Pedro Abramo of IPPUR/UFRJ for Instituto Pereira Passos on detection of 
irregular settlements in 1990´s. Not published yet. 
ZONES 
 
Number of Favelas Favelas Population 
1980
 
1992
 
Rate of 
growth
1980 
 
1992 
 
Rate of 
growth 
South 25 26 4% 65,596 79,651 21%
North 22 25 14% 49,042 55,768 14%
WWWeeesssttt 86 195 111222777%%% 94,002 195,546 111000888%%%
Suburbs 194 270 39% 416,307 532,340 28%
Central 45 57 27% 92,119 99,488 8%
TOTAL 372 573 54% 717,066 962,793 34%
 8
THE OPEN QUESTION IS THEN, IF CITY GROWTH HAS BEEN LEVELING OFF SINCE 1950, AND FAVELA GROWTH HAS 
CONTINUED AT CONSIDERABLE LEVELS, WHERE ARE THE NEW FAVELADOS COMING FROM? WE WILL NEED TO EXPLORE TO 
WHAT EXTENT THE GROWTH IS DUE TO NATURAL REPRODUCTION (I.E. FAVELADOS HAVING MORE CHILDREN THAN RIO DE 
JANEIRO’S POPULATION); IN-MIGRATION FROM OUTSIDE THE CITY INTO THE FAVELAS WITH CORRESPONDING EXODUS OF 
NON FAVELADOS FROM THE CITY; OR IMPOVERISHMENT LEADING TO THE FAVELIZATION OF PARTS OF RIO DE JANEIRO’S 
POPULATION THAT COULD NO LONGER AFFORD TO STAY IN THE FORMAL HOUSING MARKET. 
 
III. THREE LIVES: FOUR GENERATIONS 
 
“Twice Displaced”: The Story of Margarida 
 
When I first met Margarida (Marga) she was a 25-year old single mother living with her two 
young children in a small wooden shack in the favela of Catacumba. To get to her house you 
had to climb up an almost vertical path that wound its way around and beneath dozens of other 
shacks. It took about twenty minutes to climb up from the street level in front of the Lagoa Freitas 
Lagoon, much more if it were raining and the entire path had turned into a slippery mud slide 
mixing with the open sewage. 
 
Marga was born and raised in Catacumba. Her Mother was from Niteroi and worked as a 
maid all of her life. Her father was from Saquarema, and was an unskilled manual laborer, both 
were illiterate. Margarida was the second of four children, all of whom are still alive and living 
not far from one another. She ‘came along’ with a small apartment I had temporarily sublet in 
Apoador,(an upscale neighborhood at the beginning of Ipanema) where she was working as a 
maid. She had completed four years of primary school, and had been working as a domestic 
ever since. Her daughter Beti was eight and her son Gilberto was seven. Their father had gone to 
the pharmacy one evening to get some aspirin and never returned. 
 
The family lived in the favela on weekends, and in the small maid’s quarters of the apartment 
during the week. The children went to a good school, (due to the ability to register using the 
boss’s residential address) and they had good health care nearby and lots of family and friends 
within the favela. Beti completed High School there and Gilberto dropped out of elementary 
school to do odd-jobs (biscates) Their lives were full of activities: picnics to Paqueta Island on the 
weekends, soccer games at the Youth Athletic Club, dances, and lots of sharing of good times 
and bad. 
 
 Two years later that lifestyle was eradicated forever. Marga and her family, (along with 2,074 
other families in Catacumba) were forcibly removed by helmeted police, put in garbage trucks 
with whatever possessions they could salvage, and taken to a distant public housing project 
called the “Conjunto de Quitungo”. This was at the height of the dictatorship and 100,000 
favelados were evicted from their homes within a period of 2-3 years. They were devastated. 
Based on reported family income, friends and relatives were relocated to other projects, some as 
far as four hours away, and most of the community leaders disappeared. 
 
Marga’s lucky break was that she had just met Geraldo, a bright young man, seven years her 
junior, who had a relatively stable job as a check-out clerk in a nearby supermarket (and is now a 
gerente, manager). She had four more children with him (three girls and a boy) and was able to 
stop working outside the house. Over time they made new friends and established new ways of 
coping with life in the housing project. I stayed in touch with them over the years and visited 
every time I was in Rio de Janeiro for conferences, meetings or other work. By the time I returned 
in 1999 to resume my research, she had been in the same apartment for almost 30 years and Beti 
and Gilberto had purchased their own apartments in the Conjunto de Quitungo and were raising 
their own children there. 
 
Then one day, a group from one of the “commandos”, (the drug-related gangs) came to her 
apartment looking for her son, Wagner. Apparently he had made friends with some youth 
 9
involved in the rival gang. They said if she didn’t turn him over, they would kill her and the 
entire family. Luckily, he wasn’t home at the time. Over the weekend, her daughters 
mobilized to scan the newspapers for low-income rentals in every neighborhood within a one-
hour bus ride, and by Monday they had moved to a two-bedroom apartment in Irajá. 
 
She now feels safer and can sleep better at night because she doesn’t hear the crossfire, but she cries 
every day from loneliness and isolation, and admits they will soon have to move again, even further 
away, as this apartment is too expensive for them to maintain. 
 
Beti, now 40 is a seamstress. She was unemployed for a long-time and finally found temporary work as 
a baby-sitter (baba), but at the extreme other end of the city—the Barra de Tijuca—where the new 
upper class has moved. She will be home only once every two weeks. Meanwhile, she heard of a job, 
every other day, assisting an elderly woman in Ipanema and intends to interview for it. She admits that 
her dark skin color may reduce her chances. Her only son is 18-years-old, unemployed and dropped 
out of school. 
 
Gilberto, is a specialist in air conditioner and refrigerator repairs. He has worked in many types of jobs 
on and off, and can do most anything, but have been unable to find work for several years, since the 
factory where he worked closed. He has looked everywhere for a job, but has no prospects. He had 
to sell his apartment and now alternates staying at Beti’s or at Regina’s, his mother’s former neighbor. 
He does odd jobs when he can find them, including “servente de pedreiro” (the lowest level position 
in construction), but this is rare. His wife supposedly “went crazy” and walked out on him and their 15-
year old son, Elbert, who is still in school and now lives with Margarida. 
 
 All four of Margarida and Geraldo´s children, Eliana (31), Elisangela (28), Viviane (24), and Wagner(21), still live at home. Eliana, completed high school, and has just been promoted from sales clerk to 
manager in a stationary store. Viviane, who never finished high school, used to work as a computer 
assistant, but was fired and now works as the cashier in the same stationary store as her elder sister. 
 
Wagner dropped out after the 4th year of primary school and has worked intermittently as a 
marceneiro, making wood furniture. His mother claims he does not sell or use drugs, but just got in with 
the wrong crowd of friends. 
 
Elisângela, the most beautiful of the daughters, brings in a steady income from her job as a 
cleaning girl for TV Globo. Despite never completing high school, she is intelligent, well 
spoken and well connected. When the TV program requires a maid to appear, they often 
shoot her in the role. She is the only one in the household who has the ‘look’ and 
sophistication of someone from the “South Zone”. She is investigating buying land in Praia 
Seca, along the coast towards the North of the city, and thinks the family should combine 
resources to construct a house there where they would all be safe. She says the prices for 
small plots are good and she has friends who could help in the transaction 
 
“Left Behind”: The Story of Zé Cabo 
 
Sr. Jose Manuel da Silva, (known as Zé Cabo), was one of the most respected and established 
leaders in Nova Brasilia when I first met him in 1968. He was 40 years old then and President of the 
Residents’ Association. He had moved to Rio de Janeiro from a small city in the interior of Rio Grande 
do Norte when he was 16 years old. Neither of his parents had attended school. He was the fifth of 
nineteen children. At the age of 29, after working as a marine, he moved to Nova Brasília. He finished 
elementary school, but also learned mostly by traveling throughout Brazil, by being exposed to many 
ideas and people. This is why he was much more politically savvy than most others in the community. 
It was he who led the collective struggles throughout the 60’s and 70’s for water, electricity, drainage, 
sewer connections and street paving. It was he who fought for a land title and who negotiated with 
 10
the candidates as well as government officials on behalf of the community. He played a critical role 
in acquiring the land for constructing the Residents’ Association. 
 
At the time of the original study, he and his wife, Adelina, had three boys and a girl. He was 
working for the Military Police, which is where he acquired the nickname, Zé Cabo (cabo meaning 
low rank inside the military police). The family lived on the main street, Avenida Nova Brasilia, on the 
right, just a few doors down from the Resident’s Association on the corner of Avenida Itaoca and two 
doors before the Assembly of God Church. They had upgraded their house to a three-story brick 
(alvenaria) home with a facade of brown patterned tiles. Their house was furnished with large dark 
wooden pieces, with white embroidered doilies on top and plastic flowers—the prestige style for that 
time and place. There was always something good cooking on the stove, and it was a place others 
came for help and advice. The community, being in the North Zone amidst factories and working 
class neighborhoods, was not threatened with removal, but on the other hand, was totally ignored by 
politicians after each election. 
 
I stayed in touch with Sr. Jose and his family over all these years. In the early 90’s his wife 
died of a heart attack and he incurred huge medical bills. Between his debt and the 
increasing danger of drug-related violence on the main street where he lived, he decided to 
sell his home. It is now a commercial establishment selling poultry and eggs on the main floor 
and operating a restaurant on the top floor. With the proceeds from the sale, Sr José bought 
a tiny piece of land in a newer remote area of the favela, built a new house (with a little 
office for himself on the main floor behind the garage), and financed the construction of 
houses elsewhere for his daughter and one of his grandsons. 
Today José Cabo is a trim and fit 73-year old; he re-married to another women who he 
already had two other daughters with—age 23 and 24. The nearby Residents’ Association is 
now controlled by the drug dealers. He is discouraged because after all the mobilization and 
struggle, the community still does not have full urban services, was overlooked by the 
widespread Favela-Bairro Program and is totally permeated by drug dealers. It is now part of 
the Complexo de Alemão, one of the most dangerous favelas in the city. 
 
The Complexo de Alemão, has 56,903 inhabitants, and Nova Brasilia with 15,416, is the 
largest of the eleven favelas that comprise the complex.9 It was in this area that on June 3rd, 
the journalist Tim Lopes was tortured and murdered while working on a story about drugs and 
youth sex at the funk dances. Police are afraid to go there except in organized raids, and 
even then are out-armed by the locals. When I tried to take photos of the same streets and 
open spaces showed in my book, I was suddenly surrounded by a group of young men who 
took my camera, ripped out the film and only returned the camera because I was able to 
convince them to accompany me to the Residents’ Association where the president had 
agreed to hold a meeting of old-timers to re-construct the community’s history for our study. 
 
None of José’s children from his first marriage live in the favela anymore. He is there with 
his second wife, one of their daughters and two of her children plus an ever-changing 
number of relatives whom he supports. His brother moved to Natal, the capital city of the 
state of Rio Grande do Norte, where they were born. He and his wife have a nice house 
there on the outskirts of the city, where I went to interview them. They want him to join them, 
but he will only visit. Why does he stay? He says: “This is my community and I wouldn’t know 
what to do with myself anywhere else”. But he confided to a mutual friend when she 
mentioned all of the bullet holes in the facade of his house that he is afraid of the area, but 
cannot sell his house for a reasonable price due to the depressed real estate market caused 
by the violence. 
 
He says, “My greatest achievement in life is that none of my kids are on drugs, in jail, or 
murdered.” This gave me the depressing idea that they were barely making it in life, which 
 
9 Data from O Globo, July 14, 2002, page 20, “Estado vai disputar jovens com o tráfico”. 
 11
turned out to be totally wrong. Out of his four children from the first marriage, only one didn’t 
complete junior high school and his two oldest children went to private schools. They are all 
doing quite well. Wanderley, the eldest, (now 52 years old) did not finish high school but he is 
a public functionary for the Caixa Economica Federa. He lives in Japeri (a municipality 
outside the Metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, two hours away from downtown). All of his 
three children, one son and two daughters, are working in the computer field. 
 
Waney, José’s second oldest child, is 48 years old, he completed junior high school, and 
has three children. He lives on his pension from years of work in the Civil Police. He would be 
getting a higher retirement if he had stayed for his full term, but he left before full retirement 
age because he had been offered a good job as a deliveryman for a South Zone company. 
The company was owned by a woman who liked his work and offered him a full-time job. 
She took on two male associates and incorporated her company when the business started 
to take off. As Waney explained it to me, “She was assassinated by one of them and they 
took all her money and closedthe business.” Waney has been out of work ever since. He is 
divorced and in the process of selling his apartment in Guadalupe—north zone of Rio de 
Janeiro. He was the one who drove his father and me all over the metropolitan area on one 
of the hottest days in the summer of 2001 to visit all of their relatives. 
Waney´s eldest child, Wagner lives in the interior of Niteri in a nice gated community with 
some of the money from Sr. Jose’s house sale. Waney and Wagner designed and built a 
simple attractive wood-frame house. Wagner earns a decent livelihood as a mechanic 
specialized in fixing car air-conditioners and his wife works in a boutique in an upscale 
shopping mall nearby. Patricia, his younger sister (21) is known as the ‘smart one’ in the 
family. She attended law-school for one year at the Estacio de Sá, but did not complete her 
degree. She dropped out to go to Candido Mendes University in Niteroi to study fashion 
design. When she had finished she started a clothing-line using her own money. She says she 
had been designing and sewing clothing and dolls since she was 15 years old. She would 
take her clothing and doll designs around to various stores, and take orders. She would buy 
the materials, cut the pieces, and contract out the sewing. She did so well that she was able 
to open her own store in this upscale shopping mall. Her Mother and grandmother help out in 
the store and her stepfather takes care of the accounts and investments. It looks as though 
the business is thriving. There were several women in the store when I went to visit, picking out 
party dresses for various special occasions. Waney´s youngest daughter, Cynthia, is fifteen 
years old and is still attending school. 
 
José’s daughter, Wandelina, was known as a ‘live wire’ when she was younger. I 
remember she used to get into all kinds of trouble. She dropped out of school after five years, 
despite her mothers struggle to get her to finish High School. As a pre-teen it was her dream 
to become a hairdresser. She is forty-eight, and lives in Santa Cruz in a nice sub-division, 
which she refers to as isolated, but safe. It is over two hours by car from the center of Rio, and 
much longer by bus. She is now retired from working in the elementary school cafeteria and 
has a job in the small library of a newly renovated Cultural Center. It used to be the summer 
palace of the Brazilian Emperor, D. Pedro I, and is in walking distance from her home. She has 
been doing this for the past three years, and loves it. She is separated and has a fifteen year 
old son, and is struggling to keep him out of trouble, how she use to be. She told me that for a 
long time she had no idea that he was missing classes because the school never 
communicated with her. Now she does homework with him every night and makes sure he 
attending classes. He is a soccer star and she is thrilled because he can only stay on the 
team if he stays in school. He has a scholarship from Zico´s soccer school (a well known 
soccer player) and already traveled to Switzerland with his team to participate in 
international competitions. She proudly displayed his photo with various famous people 
including President Carter. 
 
Sr. José’s youngest son, Wandeney is now 45 years old, he attended a university for a few 
years but never finished it. He lives in Santa Cruz and works for the State Motor Vehicle 
Bureau. He is very much involved in local politics. He does not have any children, but has 
 12
been with the same girlfriend for two years so his father and older brother are hopeful that he 
will get married. 
 
Both of Ze Cabo’s daughters from the second marriage are having difficulties. The oldest, 
Sandra, (24) managed to finish high school but she is unemployed and still lives with him. She 
is a single mother and her two daughters Caroline, (6) and Catarina, (3 months) who live with 
her and their grandfather. The other daughter, Solange, 23, did not finish junior high school. 
She lives with a man and is a housewife in Nova Brasília. 
 
It is Ze Cabo’s dream to move out of the favela but not to Niteroi or Santa Cruz. He wants 
to live in an apartment in Gloria, a wonderful neighborhood close to the center of downtown 
Rio. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
“No More Fruit on the Table”: The Story of Djanira 
 
When I first met Djanira in 1968 she was a vibrant activist in Vila Operaria, a planned 
invasion in the municipality of Caxias. She was beautiful, energetic and articulate. She had 
been among those who had planned the invasion of the local area and helped organize the 
community. There were parcels of land designated for building homes and open spaces 
allocated for schools, churches, sports and other recreation activities. No one with a police 
record was allowed to squat there and all had to sign the local statute, which among other 
provisions stipulated that if a husband and wife fought, the husbands who had to leave and 
the wife and children would stay in the house. 
 
Djanira was born in 1936 in Recife, (the capital of Pernambuco), one of 25 children. 
Twenty-one of them survived and four are alive today. Her brother is a clerk living in Campo 
Grande: her sister is a widow living in Olaria supporting four children (their father was a 
policeman killed by a ‘marginal’), and the other sister lives in Caxias. Growing up they were 
extremely poor and often went hungry. (Djanira explained to me that it seems as though the 
poorer and weaker you are the more children you have.) 
 
 Her parents were both illiterate and neither had attended school. Her mother, who took 
in laundry to supplement her husband’s earnings as a traveling salesman, died of tuberculosis 
when Djanira was seven. She went to a Catholic school for two years, but by the time she 
was 9, her father died from brain hemorrhage and she had to leave school. Together with 
her older brothers and sisters, she made her way to Irajá, a neighborhood in the north zone 
of Rio de Janeiro, where she continued for two more years of school. She then worked as a 
baby-sitter and maid, living in the homes where she worked. She recalls being badly treated, 
even beaten. She cried when recounting the struggle of those early days. 
 
When she was 21 she married and moved to Niteroi, where her husband’s family had a 
plot of land. At the age of 27 she moved to Vila Operária – where she could finally have a 
house of her own. She still lives in the same house the family built, just past the central plaza 
on Badger da Silveira Street, next to the school. It is on the flat part of the road, just before 
the hill gets steep. Now the street is paved with cobblestones and her house is no longer 
visible from the street; it is hidden behind iron gates, but inside it is the same. She has a small 
courtyard filled with flowering plants and songbirds in cages. The front door is always open 
 13
and leads directly into her living room and then into the large kitchen (behind which is the 
bathroom). Her bedroom is off to the right of the living room, and her daughter’s room is 
behind it. From the courtyard you can ascend the concrete stairs to get to the second floor 
where the rest of the family lives, varying in size depending on the fortunes of the extended 
clan. 
 
I remember her fighting for land tenure, urban services, and the school. The Residents’ 
Association set up an amusement park to generate income so they could pay for more 
qualified teachers for their school. She had been rounded up after one of the 
demonstrations for property titles and was with the others at the police station when she went 
into labor and almost delivered her daughter right there. She named the little girl Janice in 
my honor. She had ten children by two husbands, and raised them working as the“merindeira” (i.e. preparing the lunches) for the school next door. For 29 years she was a 
social worker in the Municipal Hospital Duque de Caxias. She qualified for this job by going 
back and finishing High School after 1969, when she was 33 years old. 
 
Still slender and beautiful 30 years later, she is nearly destitute and suffering from several 
health problems. She is living on a small pension of 200 reais (about US$70 per month) from 
her years as a social worker. All that covers is her electricity and phone bills. The food she 
eats is paid for by her daughter, Celia, who lives with her (and her son) and works at the 
same Hospital where she used to work. 
 
 Djanira is consumed with a frustrating fight for her right to the pension of her common-
law husband of 40 years. They were together until his death three years ago, but he never 
registered any of their four children so all of his assets have gone to his two children from his 
first wife. They led a relatively comfortable life together. He had many assets: two homes, a 
‘sitio’ in the country, and stocks (including Petrobras, Banco do Brasil, Light, and Correios). All 
she is legally entitled to is his pension, but she has not been able to get it, and cannot afford 
a lawyer. Her standard of living has declined considerably. When she greeted me, we sat 
down at her kitchen table, as usual, and she apologized, 
 
“When you were here before, I always had a bowl full of fruit on my table. Now it is 
empty. I can barely afford rice and beans.” 
 
One morning when our team came to a meeting of old-timers at her house, we could 
hardly get past the police cars. A dead body had been dumped nearby that dawn and the 
police were just taking it away as we arrived. The fear is pervasive. She is afraid to go to 
public areas she fought to create; the Resident’s Association has been overtaken by the drug 
dealers; the once-united community is now distrustful and fragmented; and the area has 
become so stigmatized that ‘to get a job, you have to give another address’. 
 
 “Back then I participated in everything...Now I can’t participate in anything...I see things 
going wrong and cannot do anything about it. It’s too dangerous. The violence is so 
bad here that no one will deliver anything to my house. They are afraid of being robbed. 
If you interview for a job and they see your address they say the job has been filled. In 
our time, we at least had respect and each other’s solidarity; now everyone keeps to 
themselves.” 
 
 
The life stories of her children vary considerably. The eldest, Marco Antonio (45), never 
finished High School and works as an administrative assistant in the Community Health Office. 
He is married, has three children and lives in Vila São Luiz, a neighborhood of Caxias. His 
eldest son, Marcio (22) is married and his young wife is expecting a baby but they have no 
money to rent or buy a house of their own so they are living with his parents. Marcio is 
finishing High School, because he cannot find a job. Sandro (19) was accepted in a 
 14
prestigious preparatory course for university (pré-vestibular) with a full scholarship. He wants 
to be a doctor. Bruna (15) is attending her first year of high school. 
Two of Djanira´s ten children have university degrees. Marta Janete, (40), has a degree in 
Pedagogy and has worked in the Housing Department of the Caxias City Government for 23 
years. She lives in Vila Operária but is searching for a house in Santa Cruz. Her two children 
and one granddaughter live with Djanira. Paulo (18) is finishing junior high school, he wants to 
work but cannot find a job. Kelly (22) wanted to be a model and even took a modeling 
course, but last year she got pregnant. Today she is attending the second year of high school 
and has a one-year-old daughter Milena. 
Jorge Luis, (39), studied Law and Accounting and is a practicing lawyer with an office 
near the Caxias city center. He lost his first wife to cancer, at a very young age. Their 
daughter Joicy is 7 years old and is attending elementary school. He is relieved at the 
moment because his girlfriend has just agreed to move in and will help him raise his little girl. 
Roberto (27) never completed high school but has a decent job as a sanitary worker at 
SUCAN (The Federal Public Health Agency fighting epidemics such as dengue) He lives half 
time with Djanira and half time with Djanira´s nice who lives in Jacarepaguá (west zone) and 
who helped to raise him when he was a small kid. 
Janice, my namesake (32) is having a very hard time. She only has five years of 
schooling. She worked with SUCAN, a pest control company. She went around with tanks of 
DDT on her back spraying against dengue and malaria and inhaled a good deal of toxics. 
Now she has chronic bronchitis. Over the entire decade, she was never formally hired and 
therefore not entitled to any of the workers rights such as health benefits or vacation pay. 
She was laid off after ten years and now is unemployed. She does volunteer work in her rural 
community in Caxias – Santa Lucia, where she lives with an adopted daughter Jacqueline (8) 
who is attending elementary school. In the last few months, Janice has been “volunteering” 
at the municipal pest control office, hoping that when SUCAN pays its debts back and they 
have hire the exterminators, she will be first in line. Jane Marcia, her 41-year old sister, only 
completed three years of schooling and is a housewife living in the same community, equally 
poor. 
Raldo, (33), finished junior high school, and works as transportation inspector. He lives in 
Santa Cruz with his wife and three kids: Luciano (16), Juliete (12) e Felipe (6) all attending 
school. Raquel (24), completed junior high school, and is a housewife with a seven-years-old 
daughter Stefani, who is attending elementary school. 
 
 Two of Djanira´s children still live with her. Almir, ( 35), only studied for three years, he 
worked as a “trocador de onibus”,(collecting fares in the back of the bus) and was assaulted 
in an armed robbery. He now has a defective arm and sells sweets across the street from her 
house. He pays as much in taxes as he earns. He lives a small apartment they built on the 
top of Djanira´s house with his wife (who supports the family selling “quentinhas” cooked 
lunch for the school and workers) and daughter, Diana (11). And, Celia Regina, age 38, who 
did not complete high school and is a clerk in the same hospital her mother worked. Her son 
Rafael (15) lives with her and Djanira, and is attending junior high school, and she is raising 
Mathew, a one-year old. 
 
Djanira stressed that all her grandchildren older than 15 years old wanted to work (except 
for Sandro who wants to go to University) but cannot find a job. That is why they define 
themselves as ‘students’. 
 
Like real life, the stories are messy and contradictory. They reveal a mixture of despair 
and hope. Together they illustrate the five major changes that I have noticed since the first 
study, and that the analysis of the re-study findings shows as well: new meanings of 
marginality; a sphere of fear; mobility with inequality; a disillusion with democracy; and 
considerable optimism for the future. Later in the chapter, I will return to these five themes. 
 
Suffice it to say here that despite the differences in the three stories above, each 
illustrates a sense of exclusion and isolation in comparison to earlier times, and the pervasive 
 15
fear that affects all aspects of life. The violence between the drug dealers and the police 
and among various factions of gangs, which is part of everyday life now, was barely present 
when I first lived in these communities. There has been a clear upgrading of the infrastructure 
of the communities, and overallan increase in household goods and appliances since my 
first visit, but the increasing gap between rich and poor is vividly reflected in the sense that 
these individuals feel more distant from world of “asfalto” (the formal life of pavement) than 
they did 30 years ago. They do not feel like full-fledged citizens of their city and, ironically, 
they are less empowered within their own communities then they were during the military 
dictatorship. Yet their children and grandchildren----to varying degrees----have more 
education and better jobs (if they are working) than they did, and many have moved out of 
the original “irregular” communities into low-income housing neighborhoods (some quite 
peripheral) in the legitimate world of rental or ownership. 
 
 
IV. THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MARGINALITY 
 
“Look, here is the deal, we had a Residents’ Association that was destroyed by the marginality, 
because the marginality terrified the association directors until they gave up”. 
 
I researched and wrote The Myth of Marginality, (Perlman, 1967) during a specific historical 
moment in the context of fundamental disagreements over the nature and consequences of 
rapid urbanization and dependent development. My work was part of a profound critique of the 
prevailing paradigm of the time, regarding the urban poor and the irregular settlements they 
lived in. As one observer recently wrote (Auyero, 1997): 
 
Almost three decades ago, in what would later become one of Latin America’s most 
original and controversial contributions to the social sciences, a group of sociologists 
tackled…the escalation of urban marginality. Working within a structural-historic neo-
Marxist perspective, they recovered the notion of ‘marginality’ from the realm of 
modernization theories (represented by Gino German, (1967, 1970, 1972); and the DESAL 
school, 1969, 1970), which focused on the lack of integration of certain social groups into 
society due to their (deviant) values, perceptions and behavioural patterns. Marginal 
groups, according to this approach, lack the psychological and psychosocial attributes 
that were deemed necessary to participate in ‘modern society’. Emerging in the transition 
to modern industrial society marginality was thought to be the product of the coexistence 
of beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviours of a previous, more ‘traditional’ stage. 
 
 
In the modernization literature (Inkeles, 1966; Lerner, 1964; Hagen, 1962; Pye, 1966; McClelland, 
1953; Millikan and Blackmer, 1961) migrants from the countryside to the city were seen as 
maladapted to modern city life, and thereby responsible for their own poverty and their failure to 
be absorbed into formal job and housing markets. Squatter settlements were seen as “cancerous 
sores on the beautiful body of the city”, dens of crime, violence, prostitution, and social 
breakdown. It was widely assumed that the dwellers in the precarious shacks were precarious 
themselves and that comparing their condition with the surrounding opulence would turn them 
into angry revolutionaries. Such was the nightmare/ fear of the Right and the daydream/hope of 
the Left 10. The sense that the squatters were “other” and not part of the “normal” city was 
pervasive. It was the common sense view of the population at large, legitimized by social 
scientists and used to justify public policies of extermination. Thus marginality was a material force 
as well as an ideological concept and a description of social reality. 
 
Starting in the mid 60’s several seminal writers challenged this conventional/academic ‘wisdom’. 
These included Alejandro Portes (1972); Jose Nun (1969, 1972); Anibal Quijano (1966,1967,1973); 
 
10 Even Franz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, speaks of the uprooted peasants circling 
aimlessly around the city as a natural source of revolutionary activity. 
 16
Manuel Castells (1974); Florestan Fernandes (1968); and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1971). 
Empirical studies in Latin American cities including Rio de Janeiro (Leeds and Leeds, 1967, 1972); 
Salvador and São Paulo (Berlinck, n.d.); Santiago (Castells, 1974; CIDU, 1972; Kuznetzoff, 1974); 
Buenos Aires (Marculis, 1968); Lima (Turner, 1967); Bogata (Cardona, 1973); Mexico City (Munoz, 
Oliveira, 1971 and Eckstein, 1977); and Monterrey (Balan, Browning and Jelin, 1969); served to 
discredit the propositions of marginality, and the erroneous stereotypes surrounding the urban 
poor. Mangin and Morse wrote excellent review articles on the subject, which appeared in the 
mid 60’s and early 70’s. 
 
These works, along with my own, showed how the concept of “marginality” was used to “blame 
the victim” in academic and public policy discourse (Ryan, 1971). We demonstrated that there 
was a logic and rationality to the attitudes and behaviors in slums, and that there were strengths 
and assets in the squatter settlements of Latin America that belied the stereotypes of deficits, 
deficiencies, disorganization and pathologies of all types. ). What I did in The Myth of Marginality 
was to create an “ideal type” composed of all of the collected beliefs about squatters and slum 
dwellers. 
 17
 TABLE 3: MARGINALITY – THE IDEAL TYPE 
Dimensions Propositions Concepts 
 
Social 
 
Internal disorganization 
The favela lacks internal social 
organization or cohesion; its 
residents are lonely and isolated. 
 
External isolation 
The favelado is not integrated into 
the city; he does not make wide 
use of the urban context and he 
never feels fully at home in it. 
 
Voluntary associations 
Friendship and kinship Trust 
and mutual help Crime and 
violence 
 
 
Urban adaptation Familiarity 
with city Heterogeneity of 
contacts 
Use of the city 
Use of urban agencies 
Mass media exposure 
 
Cultural 
 
Culture of traditionality 
The favela is an enclave of rural 
parochialism in the city. 
 
 
 
 
Culture of poverty 
The favelado as a reaction and 
adaptation to his deprivation 
develops and perpetuates a 
culture of poverty. 
 
Religious orientation 
Openness to innovation 
Family orientation 
Empathy 
Fatalism 
Deference to authority 
 
 
Suspicion of others 
Crime and violence 
Family breakdown 
Pessimism 
Aspirations 
 
Economic 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Economic parasitism 
Favelados are a drain on the 
urban economy, taking out more 
that they give. 
 
Economic parochialism 
Both the culture of traditionality 
and the culture of poverty 
contribute to an economic 
parochialism in the favelado. 
 
Employment and income 
Consumption 
Contribution to infrastructure 
 
 
Work ethic 
Education and job training 
Entrepreneurial values 
 
 
 
 
 
Political 
 
Political apathy 
The favelado is not integrated into 
city and national political life. 
 
 
Political radicalism 
Because of their frustration, social 
disorganization, and anomie, 
favelados are prone to leftist 
radicalism. 
 
Internal political structures 
Political interest, saliency, and 
information 
Electoral participation 
Direct political action 
Use of administrative channels 
 
Alienation 
Demand for structural 
changes 
Class consciousness 
Nationalism 
 Source from Perlman, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de Janeiro, U. C. Press, 1976, p131. 
 
As seen in Table 3 above, I synthesized the collected body of literature (regarding the social, 
cultural, economic and political dimensions of marginality) into a series of eight propositions and 
their component concepts that could be empirically tested in specific contexts. For Rio de 
 18
Janeiro, I found despite their wide acceptance at all levels of society, these “myths” were 
“empirically false, analytically misleading, and insidious in their policyimplications.” I state that: 
 
The evidence strongly indicates that the favelados are not marginal, but in fact 
integrated into the society, albeit in a manner detrimental to their own interests. They are 
not separate from, or on the margins of the system, but are tightly bound into it in a 
severely asymmetrical form. They contribute their hard work, their high hopes, and their 
loyalties, but do not benefit from the goods and services of the system. It is my contention 
that the favela residents are not economically and politically marginal, but are excluded 
and repressed; that they are not socially and culturally marginal, but stigmatized and 
excluded from a closed class system. (p. 195) 
 
I go on to show how the power of the ideology of marginality was so strong in Brazil in the 1970’s 
that it created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The favela removal policy justified by the ideology, 
perversely creating the marginalized population it was designed to eliminate. The favela was an 
extremely functional solution to many of the problems faced by its residents, providing access to 
jobs and services; a tightly knit community in which reciprocal favors mitigated hardship; and 
above all, free housing. This was not the case in the housing projects (conjuntos) to which they 
were consigned, where they were separated from kinship and friendship networks, far from their 
jobs, schools and clinics; and charged monthly payments beyond their means.11 This policy 
exacerbated unemployment, ending many of the small services and add jobs that family 
members could do while caring for their children, or after school. 
 
Auyero (1997, page 1) states: 
 
In contrast with the behaviorist and value-centered approach, the structural-historical 
perspective on marginality focused on the process of import substitution industrialization 
and its intrinsic inability to absorb the growing mass of the labor force. …the functioning of 
the ‘dependent labor market’ was generating an excessive amount of unemployment. 
This ‘surplus population’ transcended the logic of the Marxist concept of ‘industrial reserve 
army’ and led authors to coin the term ‘marginal mass’. The ’marginal mass’ was neither 
superfluous nor useless; it was ‘marginal’ because it was rejected by the same system that 
had created it. Thus the ‘marginal mass’ was a ‘permanent structural feature’ never to be 
absorbed by the ‘hegemonic capitalist sector’ of the economy, not even during its 
expansionist cyclical phases. 
 
 
In my concluding discussion of Marginality and Urban Poverty (Chapter 8, pp242-262) I explore 
this in greater depth, contesting the validity of the assumptions underpinning behaviorist 
approach, and showing the structural, functional, and political utility of the myths and in the 
relation of the objective conditions of poverty and to dependent development. As for the 
validity of the concept, I concluded that favela residents: 
 
… do not have the attitudes or behaviors supposedly associated with marginal groups. 
Socially, they are well organized and cohesive and make wide use of the urban milieu 
and its institutions. Culturally, they contribute (their music, slang, soccer and samba) to 
the ‘mainstream’ are highly optimistic and aspire to better education for their children 
and improved homes and living conditions. Economically, they do the worst jobs for the 
lowest pay, under the most arduous conditions, with the least security. Politically, they are 
neither apathetic nor radical. They are aware of and keenly involved in those aspects of 
 
11 People were charged monthly payments of 25% of their former family incomes. However the 
cost of bus transportation to and from the conjuntos was so high that in general only one person 
in each family (the highest earner) could afford the trip, leading to precipitous drop in household 
earnings. Families who feel badly behind in their payments were rewarded to “triage housing” 
even further from the city in a place ironically called ‘Paciencia’ (patience.) 
 19
politics that affect their lives, both within and outside the favela.... they are politically 
intimidated and manipulated in order to maintain the status quo. (p. 243). 
 
I conclude that, “ they have the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, the perseverance of pioneers, 
and the values of patriots…what they do not have is the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations. The 
closed nature of the class structure makes it extremely difficult to achieve the hoped-for social 
mobility. (p. 243) 
 
In analyzing the erroneous assumptions behind the analytical framework of marginality, I note the 
assumption of co-variation (rather than independence) of dimensions; the idea that poverty is a 
consequence of characteristics of the poor rather than a condition of society itself; and the use 
of a consensus rather than conflict model of society. The persistence of the myths, despite their 
lack of correspondence with reality, is explained not only by the ethnocentric snobbery and 
prudish moralizing of class bias, but by “ the ideological-political function of preserving the social 
order which generated them.” (p. 246). To wit: 
 
 
The marginality myths justify the existence of extreme inequality and the inability of the system to 
provide even minimal standards of living for vast portions of its population. By blaming these conditions 
on the lack of certain attributes of the squatter population, the myths preserve the legitimacy and 
credibility of the structural rules of the game.” (p. 248). 
 
 
As Jose Artur Rio confirmed: 
 
The favela is a necessity of the Brazilian social structure. It demands relations of economic 
dependence, which result in temporary or permanent misery of the dependent element 
for the benefits of society. (p. 245, footnote 4) 
 
 The dependency school critique saw the traits defined as characterizing marginality as only the 
external symptoms of a form of society rooted in the historical process of industrialization and 
economic growth in Latin America. The symptoms of marginality were seen as a consequence of 
a new model of development (or underdevelopment)12 defined by the exclusion of vast sectors 
of the population from its main productive apparatus. (p. 251) 
 
They may have been excluded from the benefits of the new dominant sector, but they were 
included in the process of capital accumulation both through a chain of exploitation linking their 
labor to productive processes in that sector, and through lowering the reproduction cost of labor. 
(p. 258). From this perspective, marginality could be seen as “the inevitable reverse side of new 
capital accumulation, insofar as new multinational monopoly investment was increasingly 
separating the places where the surplus value is produced and the markets where people have 
sufficient income to consume the products.” (p. 257) 
 
The myths of marginality also persisted because they played useful psychosocial functions. They 
provided a scapegoat for a wide array of societal problems, thus legitimating the dominant 
norms. They were considered the source of all forms of deviance, perversity and criminality, thus 
“purifying” the self-image of the rest of society (what I call a ‘specular relationship’) (p259). They 
also shaped the self image of those labeled as marginal in a way that was useful for society, with 
favelados, often internalizing the negative definition ascribed to them and blaming their own 
ignorance, laziness, or worthlessness for their lack of “success”. (P. 250) 
 
There were powerful political implications as well, supporting the populist politicians and then the 
military dictatorship of the period. According to Castells, (1974) “marginality became a political 
 
12 Andre GunderFrank, 1967. 
 20
issue not because some people are ‘outside the system’, but because the ruling classes were 
trying to use the absence of organization and consciousness of a particular sector in order to 
obtain political support for its own objectives, offering in exchange a clientelistic or patronage 
relationship” (p. 258, footnote 24). The underlying dynamic of populist politicians consisted of 
playing off the masses desire for mobility against the oligarchy’s fear of revolution. To the 
oligarchy they could promise to keep the masses in check; to the masses they could claim the 
ability to win concessions from the elite13. (p. 260) 
 
Brazil has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. A gradual political abertura (opening, 
starting in the late 70’s led, through a series of incremental steps to the end of the dictatorship in 
1984 and the re-democratization of the country. The ‘economic miracle’ of the 1970’s gave way 
to triple digit inflation during the 80´s, then stagnation and a series of devaluations of the 
currency, culminating in 1993 with the Real Plan (Plano Real) curbing inflation did not solve the 
problem of economic growth, which remained low during the 90´s. These factors, along with 
continued financial instability contributed to the growing unemployment and inequality in Brazil 
during the past decade. The discourse on poverty may have changed but the reality remains: 
the top 10% of Brazilian earn 50% of the national income and about 34% of the population lives 
below the poverty line. (IPEA, 1999) 
 
The term marginality was not widely used in academic or activist circles after the 1970’s. The 
1970’s were characterized by deconstructing the ‘theories of marginality’ from the phenomenon 
of marginality (Silveira 2000). With the democratic opening in the 1980’s, voices of opposition 
emerged together and the discourse turned towards the concepts of social exclusion/inclusion, 
inequality, injustice and spatial segregation. This was linked to transparency, participatory 
democracy, and citizenship. The concept of exclusion went beyond economic dualism and 
under-employment, but to a question of rights and opportunities of full citizenship. In policy terms, 
the most recent response has been the massive Favela-Bairro Project, focused on upgrading the 
physical urban infrastructure in the favelas as a means of integrating the favelas into their 
surrounding neighborhoods. However, it does not address the issues of insertion in the market or 
the state, or in general an inclusive model of development. 
 
Ironically, however, the word ‘marginal’ in the press, in popular music and in common parlance is 
more common now than at any time since the publication of my book in the mid 70’s, and has 
been invested with new connotations. It is now used to refer to the drug and arms dealers, and 
‘outlaws’ (bandidos). Daily headlines in the newspapers scream out about the violence between 
the ‘bandidos’ and/or ‘marginais’ against the police. Rap songs and funk music talk about being 
‘marginal’ as a kind of bad/good/tough thing – almost a Black pride spin-off, a call to rise up in 
revolt. The middle class talks once again of their fear of proximity to the favelas and the sound of 
gunfire at night as police and well-armed gangs confront each other. They are afraid of getting 
caught in the crossfire. The current discussion in the press concerning asking the Federal 
Government to declare a state of emergency and send in the Federal Police or the Army14. 
It is fair to say that the middle and upper class Cariocans have never been to a favela in their 
lives. One positive transformation in the use of the term marginal is that the favelados are no 
longer considered marginal, but the favelas are a territory controlled by the drug dealers who are 
now referred to as ‘marginal’ or “the marginality” or “the movement”. 
 
Plus ce change, plus ce le meme chose (the more things change, the more they remain the 
same). The favelados whose space has been occupied by drug traffic (because it was an 
unprotected space and easier to hide in) are now associated with the dealers themselves. Inside 
the favela they make the distinction, we are the workers, “trabalhadores”, they are “the 
 
13 I point out that the favelados also provided symbolic constituencies for other political actors 
from conservatives who needed them to blame for social ills, to radicals who claimed to speak 
on their behalf and needed them to justify their actions. (p 260) 
14 In 1992 during a World meeting on environment RIO92, the army actually occupied the favelas 
during one week – “to guarantee the security in town”. 
 21
movement”; but outside, the sense is that once again it is the favelados and favelas that are 
creating the problem, rather than they are the ones suffering the most from the problem. The 
rates of violent deaths inside favelas are much greater than in the rest of the city. Considering 
that half of the death causes in the young population of Rio de Janeiro is homicide, it is clear that 
many young men in favelas are murdered everyday not only by the dealers but also by the 
police15. 
 
As Waquant (1997) puts it, “the strong trope of disorganization reinforces the logic of making a 
few ‘worst cases’ stand for the whole.” In Rio de Janeiro, favelados are seen alternatively as 
hostages and victims of the ‘bandidos’ and their accomplices as the media consistently 
reinforces them. Both of these stereotypes are in the daily news coverage of murders in the 
favelas being killed by the police, expelled from their homes by the dealers (with police 
coverage) and burning public buses in protest against the police killings of favelados supposedly 
linking to the dealers. 
 
In academic parlance, evolutions, transformation, and re-inventions have also occurred with the 
use of the term. In the last several years the concept of marginality has been revisited in light of 
the persistent poverty in first world cities. Such terms as “the underclass,” the “new poverty,” “the 
new marginality” or “advanced marginality” have been used to analyze excluded populations in 
advanced capitalist countries, particularly the black ghettos of the United States and the 
stigmatized slums of Europe. Waquant (1996), points to the contiguous configuration of color, 
class, and place in the Chicago ghetto, the French banlieue, or the British and Dutch ‘inner 
cities’, and posits a “distinctive regime of urban marginality”. 
 
The point here is that in addition to the effects of ‘industrial marginality’ in which massive 
unemployment led to low incomes, deteriorated working conditions, and weakened labor 
guarantees (for those lucky enough to have jobs), a ‘post-industrial’ marginality has arisen with 
distinct properties all its own. Thus, 30 years later, we are witnessing a resurgence of the term 
related to new constraints, stigmas, territorial separation, dependency (on the welfare state); and 
institutions within the ‘territories of urban relegation’ serving functions parallel to those of the state. 
(Waquant, 1996,1997,1999) 
 
(Waquant, (1997) posits four structural dynamics (‘logics’) jointly reshaping the features of urban 
poverty in rich societies: 
 
1) A social dynamic: the resurgence of social inequality in the context of overall economic 
prosperity and in light of the de-skilling and elimination of jobs for unskilled workers, along with 
multiplication of jobs for university-trained professionals; 
 
2) An economic dynamic: the mutation of wage labor, implying a degradation and 
dispersion of the conditions of employment with a high percentage of ‘redundant’ workers, 
an ‘absolute surplus population’ that will never work again, along side with poverty for those 
who have jobs, due to low pay and exploitation of temporaryworkers. (He talks here of the 
disconnect between macro economics and the slums and the failure of ‘trickle down’); 
 
3) A political dynamic: the retrenchment of the welfare state, characterized by social dis-
investment, with programs targeted to the poor being cut and turned into instruments of 
surveillance and control; and 
 
15 Many papers were wrote about this, for example Cano, Ignacio “O Uso de armas de fogo pela 
polícia” ISER, Rio, Abril 1998 where he states that the number of violent deaths by the police of Rio 
de Janeiro is the same number of deaths by the police of the entire US. See also, Soares, Luis 
Antonio “Violência e Criminalidade no Estado do Rio de Janeiro” RJ: Editora Hama, 1998. 
 
 
 
 22
 
4) A spatial dynamic: spatial concentration and stigmatization, expressed in hard-core areas 
of outcasts, territorial stigma and prejudice, and a diminishing sense of community life. 
 
The first two of these apply to Rio’s favelas. They were part and parcel of the ‘old marginality’ 
although they have intensified over the decades. The second two do not fit as well to the 
realities encountered among Rio’s poor, partly because Brazil never reached or fully developed 
welfare state and partly because poverty is spatially dispersed in Rio. (1997) 
 
 In testing these formulations against the situation in the slums of Buenos Aires, Auyero focuses on 
those characteristics that make sense: structural joblessness; massification of unemployment and 
increasingly insecure wage-labor relations within the labor force; the functional disconnect from 
macro-economic changes; and ‘a particular combination of malign and benign state 
neglect/abandonment. Using these selected criteria, he finds a good fit with the slum he studied 
in Buenos Aires. 
 
Mercedes de la Rocha (1999) working in Guadalajara, Mexico, discusses the change in 
perspective from the “resources of poverty” in the 60´s and 70´s (which showed the ingenuous 
coping mechanisms and survival strategies of the poor) to the “poverty of resources” in the 90´s 
(in which the limits of coping are surpassed and the capacity of survival is threatened). She shows 
how the “deep restructuring and resulting persistent economic and social hardship that have 
characterized much of the Americas for the past two decades” (80´s and 90´s) have eroded the 
poor´s capacity for action, social mobility and even reproduction. 
 
“ without income coming from salaries the urban poor´s ability to turn to self-provisions 
activities (e.g. independent work, petty commodity production for petty sale, household 
production for consumption) are also eroded (...) [as well as] the poor´s capacity to maintain 
networks of social exchange, (...) [leading to] a social and cultural context of radical exclusion” 
p. 2 
 
The questions this poses for the re-study of the favela communities that I studied 30 years ago are: 
1) To what extent do these propositions of ‘advanced marginality’ hold for the case of Rio de 
Janeiro? 2) Is there a marked difference in the life trajectories of the original participants 
compared with their children and, 3) How do the fluctuations in people’s lives vary (or not) with 
fluctuations in the macro political economy of the city and the country? 
 
The definition of ghetto as a segregated space organized in response to certain constraints 
(Waquant, 1997) is only partially applies to the favelas. Yes, they arose and persist due to 1) 
economic necessity and material deprivation, 2) physical and social insecurity, 3) racial and class 
prejudice and 4) territorial stigma. There is also massive and increasing inequality, 
deindustrialization, erosion of worker protections and growth in the informal sector. 
 
But bureaucratic apathy and administrative ineptness do not precisely capture the reality of 
state-favela relationships today, (and never did the earlier discussion of populist politics shows). 
Yes bureaucratics can be apathetic and administrators inept, but there are larger issues of 
political corruption and links between bicheiros (yogo do bicho gambling rings), drug and arm 
dealers, police, electoral favors, and patronage politics. Nor upon closer inspection do the 
propositions of “parallel institutions that serve as functional substitutes for and a protective buffer 
against the dominant institutions of the encompassive society, duplicating the latter only at an 
incomplete and inferior level” fit that well (Waquant, 1997, p.1). Nor do the various aspects of 
“retrenchment of the welfare state” exactly hold true for the Brazilian case. 
To start with Brazil, the welfare state is still under construction. Certain state guarantees were put 
into place by Getulio Vargas as part of the Estado Novo (1937-45). These included retirement 
pensions, worker identification (carteira de trabalho), minimum wage (salario mínimo), labor 
unions and limited social right such as health care, low income housing, programs, etc. The major 
form of insertion of the original interviewees from our study into the state apparatus is through the 
 23
retirement payments (‘aposentadoria’) upon which most of the elderly favela residents now 
depend on for their livelihood. Fifty-five percent of our original random sample and 84 percent of 
the leadership sample defined their retirement payments as their main source of income, given 
the tight job market, in many cases in this measure retirement pension is supporting most of 
children and grandchildren as well. Between the Estado Novo and the 1964 military coup, and 
during the 20 years of military dictatorship the welfare state did not expand to any large extent. 
There was little concern with a social safety net and more reliance on “social darwinism” to take 
care of the less fortunate. That may explain why, when asked “Who is the politician who has 
done the most to help you and people like you”, the answer is often (to our surprise) not any 
recent mayor or governor but Getulio Vargas. 
The constant talk of “parallel power” or “parallel state” to indicate the internal authority and 
benefit structure of the favelas is sensationalistic and simplistic. It is true that in many favelas the 
drug traffic is better armed and more present than the police, but this is done with the complicity 
of the police themselves. Police often confiscate arms and drugs in one community and sell 
them in another. Payoffs to turn a blind eye to drug sales supplement their own mager wages, 
and they will not risk answering calls for help at night. 
The concept of parallel power would lead us to believe that the traffic runs their own schools, day 
care centers, health clinics, job training centers, soup kitchens, etc within the favelas, as well as 
holds control over the community organizations, sport groups and religions associations. It may 
seem like that from afar but the state although inadequate to the need, is very much in 
evidence. The state runs the day care centers (insuficient and inferior as they may be), the 
schools (although drug lords have the power to close them down during periods of high conflict 
and violence); the clinics and hospitals (understaffed and underequipped as they are), as well as 
popular restaurants and skills training programs. Yes, certain favors are conferred by the drug 
lords – they will arrange to drive people to the doctors, or get school fellowships but this is more 
like the old “boss” patronage politics than ‘new marginality’. They are now working for 
candidates as well. This does not mean they are powerless. On the contrary they have just 
forced a major scientific research center Osuceldo Cruz, to build a huge wall to insure police 
raids could not be made on a certain favela from the research facility; and prohibited people 
from certain favelas (on threat of death) from attending