Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro by Bryan McCann (review)

“What is a favela?”: thus Bryan McCann begins his narration of some of the events that marked the “history of favelas” of Rio de Janeiro from the late 1970s to the early 2000s (21). Since their birth (in the early 1900s), favelas have differed from other forms of unlawful occupation of urban land by the existence of an informal market regulating the allocation of plots of land. In many cases, the residents of favelas have received a “title of possession,” a document that gives them greater guarantees in regard to the land occupied. However, this title does not allow them to exchange their properties outside the informal housing market, so that a property’s value can be realized only within a very narrow geographic and social domain (it is therefore a form of “dead capital,” to use Hernando de Soto’s expression) (The Mystery of Capital [2000]).

Apart from this common characteristic, however, it is not possible to outline a model of the typical favela, although some other recurrent features emerge in the book: they are mostly inhabited by poor people who engage in various economic activities, often informal, in order to support themselves and their families; favelas consist of buildings in constant construction; some of them occupy the hills that make up the central urban area of Rio de Janeiro, creating a sharp visual contrast between the modern buildings, skyscrapers, and luxury homes, on one hand, and bare brick houses, seemingly always about to grow in height and width, on the other. Grafted onto this morphology-based contrast (lowlands versus hillsides; orderly versus disorderly urban fabric) are other oppositions (economic and social) that induce consideration of the favelas as a separate, albeit physically adjacent, part of the city. But McCann’s narrative highlights especially the idea that each favela is distinct from the others mainly because of its history. “Cada favela éum mundo” (Each slum is a world), runs a line from one of the Brazilian folk songs that McCann ably uses to introduce each chapter.

McCann recounts the stories of the best-known favelas, focusing on some of the events that have marked their histories and that of the city. It is thus an important contribution to the historical research on the favelas that allows us to understand some of the crucial factors that built one big problem that is still unresolved: the stigmatization of favelas’ residents. McCann exactly focuses his attention on people who live in the favelas, describing their efforts to improve their living and working conditions, their mobilization actions, and their difficulties in dealing with some changes in the economic system as well as with some top-down policies.

The events McCann describes can be grouped into two periods divided by Brazil’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy (1984 was the watershed of this transition, with the large-scale protests that took place in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and 1989, when the first free election for president of the Brazilian Federal Republic was held). In regard to the period of the military dictatorship (1964–84), this history of the favelas focuses on the years from 1979 to 1985. Those were years in which, in some favelas, residents created associations to address emergencies (for example, attempts at eviction by the municipal administration). In many cases, these associations demonstrated a capacity for mobilization beyond the specific emergency situation for which they were established, becoming social actors able to play an important role in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. This part of the book appears to relate directly to A. O. Hirschman’s teachings on economic and social development. It was in fact the German intellectual, through empirical research conducted in Latin America, who began detailed analysis on the role played in democratization processes by grassroots organizations (frequently promoted by churchmen who...