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The Squatters Won’t Go Away
by Philippe Revelli
 From Morro do Osso -- Bone Hill -- in Itapecerica da Serra, on the southwest fringe of greater São Paulo, you can see rows of homes made of black plastic sheeting supported by wood or bamboo poles.
Here and there a column of white smoke rises from a fire on which the morning coffee brews.
Some 3,000 families from the city’s favelas have occupied an area of private land beneath the banner of the Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST).
[republished at PFP with Agence Global permission.]
Housing conditions for the poor of Brazil are so grim that the
Homeless Workers’ Movement (MTST) has mobilised thousands of families
to occupy and improvise housing on waste sites -- particularly those
that are empty because of land speculation. President Lula da Silva
and other political leaders continue to make promises to improve
housing problems in Brazil’s cities.
There are the sounds of hammering, sawing and digging: there are
always wells or latrines to be dug, roofs to repair, walls to reinforce. The
MTST is a 1997 offshoot of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). Gilmar
Mauro, an MST national coordinator, recalled:
“We set it up in response
to the fact that 85% of Brazil’s population lives in urban areas, with
the aim of linking the struggle for land with that of the urban
population.”
Its first major operation was in Campinas, a city
northwest of São Paulo, where 5,000 families occupied waste ground,
which they christened Oziel Park in honour of a victim of the Eldorado
do Carajas massacre. Ten years on, Oziel Park has a distinct identity,
reasonable infrastructure and a powerful sense of community.
The
MTST extended its activities to the suburbs of São Paulo, Brazil’s
northeastern states, and Rio de Janeiro, where occupations led to the
construction of 10,000 homes in Nueva Septiva. Rosildo Santos, in MTST
from the beginning, admitted: “We had no experience of the urban
context and relied upon the same strategies we had used in the land
struggle.” The favelas are a more problematic environment than a
farming community: The MTST had to deal with organised crime,
evangelical sects, and local politicians, all fearful of losing control
of their traditional clientele.
At a national level,
sections of the movement developed independently; some changed their
names and the MST and MTST became autonomous organisations. Around
2000, two successful occupations in the working class municipalities of
Guarulhos and Osasco helped revive the movement in greater São Paulo.
In July 2003, the MTST organised an occupation in another municipality,
São Bernardo do Campo.
The land belonged to the German car company
Volkswagen and the reaction of the authorities was immediate: Riot
police, backed by helicopters and marksmen posted on neighbouring
buildings, attacked the squatters, wounding many and arresting others.
The brutality of the assault provoked anger in Germany, where a
demonstration outside Volkswagen’s headquarters helped put Brazil’s
homeless movement on the international map.
Despite a
warning from the state governor, Geraldo Alckmin, that any further
attempted occupation would be prevented, in 2005 the MTST managed to
squat land in another part of greater São Paulo, Taboão da Serra. After
an eight-month struggle the members of the Chico Méndez community
secured a promise from the authorities to build 600 homes.
The capital of the homeless
On
the night of 16-17 March 2007, the MTST established the João Cândido
community. Silvana de Jesus Oliveira was among the first wave of
squatters: “We reached Itapecerica da Serra at one in the morning. For
security reasons, nobody on the bus knew where we were going, apart
from a few MTST leaders.” Planning had been going on for several
months. According to Guilherme Boutos of the MTST: “At a meeting with
people from a favela who were campaigning against the closure of their
school, someone told us about Fazendinha. It was an area of waste
ground where thieves stripped down stolen cars and gangs dumped the
bodies of their victims.”
The site lies between São Paulo
and Itapecerica da Serra, in a district that has a severe housing
shortage. The Banco do Nordeste do Brasil (BNB) bought it under obscure
circumstances in 1991, before passing it on to a private company,
Itapecerica Golf Urbanización Ltda. There was a longstanding plan,
never finalised, to build a golf course. In reality, Boutos said: “This
was just waste ground, the focus of land speculation. It was sold for
$1m in the early 1990s; its estimated value now is $22m.”
The
MTST had used its contacts in the favelas, talking to families involved
in the movement and drafting a list of potential squatters. On the
night, about 300 people with torches, machetes, pickaxes, hammers,
wire, bamboo poles and plastic sheeting, invaded Fazendinha. By morning
the first homes of João Cândido were up. As news of the occupation
spread through working class districts of São Paulo, hundreds of people
converged on the site. A local newspaper, the Jornal da Tarde,
described the small town that had grown up after a week as “the capital
of the homeless.”
Patricia Cardoso, a lawyer and a member of
the Pólis Institute, said: “The impact of occupations like this is an
indication of the severity of the housing crisis in the metropolitan
area.” According to the institute, 11% of São Paulo’s population lived
in shantytowns at the beginning of the 21st century, compared with only
7.4% in 1980. “Most of the favelas are the product of illegal
occupations. Many are in dangerous areas where violence is endemic and
basic infrastructure -- roads, street lighting, sewage, education,
public health -- is inadequate.”
The Pólis Institute also
notes unauthorised housing developments and buildings where several
families pay exorbitant rents to share a single apartment. According to
Cardoso, “In greater São Paulo there are more than two million people
living under difficult conditions, with a shortage of about 600,000
homes. The IGBE [Brazil’s National Institute of Geography and
Statistics] has listed 254,000 empty apartments in the city and 540,000
across greater São Paulo. So there are enough empty homes almost to
solve the housing problem.” But public policies for city centre
regeneration have encouraged speculation and sent prices soaring.
Successive governments have attacked the most disadvantaged and
curtailed employment rights.
The IGBE calculated that 54
million people, 53.5% of the economically active population, are
working off the books and that 70% of urban workers have no job
security. Telemarketing staff, supermarket cashiers, packers and
security guards had joined scrap dealers, peddlers and cleaning women
in the army of casual labour. Families with middle and low incomes were
excluded from the housing market and driven out to the edges. Over the
past decade, the population of São Paulo’s shantytowns has increased at
five times the rate of the city as a whole, aggravating an already
catastrophic and explosive situation.
“I
heard about the João Cândido squat from neighbours,” Rosimari dos
Angeles, 24, explained. She is unemployed, previously worked on a
switchboard, in shops and as a cleaner, and now lives in a favela in
São Paulo. “I hadn’t much to lose,” she said, so she left her furniture
with a friend and joined the MTST. “I’d never bothered with politics
and it was the first time I’d been involved in an occupation.”
As
soon as the encampment at Itapecerica da Serra was established, MTST
leaders began negotiations with the municipal, state and federal
authorities, and representatives of the owners. They argued that the
land was fulfilling no social purpose and called for its expropriation
and the construction of houses for the occupying families.
At
the end of March, 5,000 homeless people marched on the Palacio dos
Bandeirantes, the seat of government of the state of São Paulo. The
João Cândido community was flooded with supportive messages and visits
from radical leftwing MPs, trade unionists, activist clergy, the MST
and groups campaigning on housing issues. Press coverage was
unprecedented.
Three weeks into the occupation, the MTST was
still unhappy with the official response. But it had reached an
agreement with the landowners that provisionally removed the danger of
eviction, in return for which the squatters agreed that no more
families would settle on the site. A new phase of consolidation began.
The squatters organised themselves into 36 groups, each between 100 and
180 families. They appointed coordinators, as well as officials
responsible for discipline, infrastructure and health. Collective
kitchens used food aid donated by sympathetic organisations and
volunteers from among the homeless.
Artists staged plays and
concerts as a gesture of solidarity. Students organised theatre
workshops and cultural events. There were political education classes
every afternoon. At daily meetings the squatters listened to the latest
developments, discussed the community’s organisation and agreed actions
to spread the word and put pressure on the authorities. Rosimari dos
Angeles, who was elected coordinator of group 15, was one of the many
women who assumed responsibility.
“It’s no easy matter getting so many
people to work together, especially in conditions like these: no
running water, no electricity, no privacy. But there’s a general
enthusiasm. In the favela we all struggled to survive, every man for
himself. This is different -- solidarity is the number one priority.”
This was a constant theme. The inhabitants of João Cândido all felt
that their values had changed, that they had shaken off resignation and
acquired a new dignity and pride in being part of a shared project.
Helena
Silvestre, an MTST leader, described squats as a school for
participatory democracy and a training ground for future community
leaders: “We want to use a specific issue, housing, as the
starting-point to help lay the foundations of real popular power.” The
MTST protects its independence from political parties and refuses to
suggest how anyone should vote or to join any existing popular
movement, although, as Silvestre points out, “this doesn’t prevent us
from having good relations with them or with the left as a whole.”
In
April, the homeless participated in demonstrations organised by the
teaching unions and the landless movement; on 1 May, they marched with
the radical left. “We believe that it is possible to unite different
campaigns, currently conducted in isolation in separate communities,
around shared objectives. Through the process of struggle our movement
becomes stronger and attracts new recruits. Meanwhile, we don’t even
have our own office or the means to pay staff.”
For all its
energy and organisational abilities, the MTST remains an informal
movement. Its collective leadership is unelected, although its
legitimacy is uncontested. There is an activist hard core: dissidents
from the MST, community leaders, families who joined during previous
occupations, trade unionists, and students linked to radical Marxist
circles or to the resistance to liberal globalisation. “Our strength,”
Silvestre said, “lies in our ability to mobilise the favelas.” She
pointed to a cluster of shacks, over which flew a flag with the image
of a bone. “Bone Hill,” she said. “Our comrades from group eight chose
the name because the homeless are a bone that sticks in the
authorities’ throat.”
The João Cândido community was finally
evicted on 18 May, but the federal and state governments gave a written
undertaking to build houses for all the squatters. The municipal
authorities in Itapecerica da Serra offered a site where 350 families,
with no other chance of finding shelter, built a new encampment. Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, is no Hugo Chávez or Evo
Morales; but the people of Brazil are very like those of Venezuela and
Bolivia. -- translated by Donald Hounam
Philippe
Revelli is a journalist and photographer based in France, and reporting
on Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
Copyright © 2007 Le Monde diplomatique
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Released: 20 November 2007
Word Count: 1,843
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diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark
Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong,Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and
Immanuel Wallerstein. -------------------
Released: 20 November 2007
Word Count: 1,843
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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