Quilombos, Cortiços, Favelas: Moving from
Historical Oppression to Social Transformation
by
André Sales Batista, Marcos Burgos, and Ricarte Echevarría
Andre Sales
Batista, Marcos Burgos, Ricarte Echevarr
are three of the founders of the NGO Mundo Real. Andr and Marcos have
been conducting research on Rio de Janeiro
favelas for over 6 years, and Ricarte has been involved in community
development work for over 10 years in New York City. Mundo Real currently has
community development projects in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Rio de
Janeiro. Andr was born and currently
resides in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Marcos was born in Puerto Rico and
currently resides in New York City, and Ricarte was born and currently resides
in New York City.
Introduction
During
the early morning hours of Good Friday in 2004 a long-distance phone call was
made from Rio de Janeiro largest slum to
a small island in the Caribbean. The connection was weak, which made the
distressed caller even more difficult to understand. The call came from a young
man in Brazil struggling to cope with yet another intense gun-fight in his
community, Rocinha. He explained, in jittery yet coherent words, how utterly
exhausted he was from the violence that has plagued his community for so long.
The young man in the Caribbean could only listen and reassure his friend that
he was hoping and praying for him and his family safety. The two friends vowed to do
everything within their power to ensure that people in Rocinha, such as workers,
students, children, the disabled and elderly, in short the 95 percent of
Rocinha residents that are not involved
in criminal activity, would not have to live in such conditions. Their
commitment to that vow was what led to the creation of Mundo Real, a
nongovernmental organization that was formed by them in 2006, and aims to work
in similar communities throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
Mundo Real was formed to engage in community development projects and to
respond to the Challenge of the
Slums.1 The launching of Mundo Real’s first project is in
Rocinha, and is the focus of this article.2 It is a direct challenge
to current orthodoxies of sociological practices as well as to current trends
in NGO approaches, and calls for a direct engagement within communities with
the primacy of local leadership in the modern practice of community development
by ‘third sector’ organizations.
Methodology
This work began with a
specific event, the distraught phone call from a community under siege. From
there we develop our analysis, starting with a concise history of Rocinha and
of Rio’s favelas, then we deviate from standard sociological perspectives by
offering our own practical recommendations, some of which are currently being
implemented to address these growing problems. All of this is considered within
the context of asymmetrical globalization, inequality, human rights violations,
and socio-economic injustice. Indeed, responding to today’s social problems
through the creative and critical lens of a liberating social science is our
main goal.3
The majority of our
fieldwork in Rocinha is conducted by community residents. We favor this more
organic method of research because who can understand and express the plight of
the oppressed more appropriately than the oppressed themselves.4
Below we will provide a basic historical description of the beautiful community
of Rocinha along with our analyses of sociological and NGO trends, and conclude
by discussing the current work of Mundo Real.
Rio de Janeiro’s
Favelas
The history of Rio’s
favelas is a history of resistance to racism, and socio-economic and cultural
oppression. In a sense, favelas are symbolic of the arvelous City itself, particularly from the
1800s to the present. When favelas emerged during the later half of the 1800s
Rio de Janeiro was primarily concentrated in what is today the city center (o
Centro). There are various theories regarding the history of Rio favelas, however, in this work we rely
primarily on the ones that link the origin of favelas to the late 1800s, and
which identify the majority of favela inhabitants as descendents of African
slaves.5 The abolition of slavery did not occur until 1888 in
Brazil.6 By the late 19th century, millions of ex-slaves
had been released from ‘formal slavery’ into an unwelcoming, openly racist
society that provided black and brown Brazilians with very few opportunities,
particularly in the areas of employment, education, healthcare, and housing.
Housing was and still is a pivotal issue, and many went on to live in cortiços,
or over-crowded tenement houses, in and around the city center. Local
authorities for various discriminatory reasons demolished the majority of
cortiços, including the largest and most notorious, Cabeça de Porco.
Subsequently, the thousands of the cortiço dwellers who were left homeless took
advantage of the left over debris and constructed make-shift shacks on hills in
and around the city center. These displaced cortiço inhabitants, most of who
were ex-slaves, were among the first favela dwellers, or favelados.
Thus, we concur with Campos and other authorities who recognize a direct link
between Trans-Atlantic slavery, its 1888 abolition in Brazil, and the emergence
of favela communities.7
Rocinha’s history began
in the 1920s when the first clusters of shacks were noticed.8 The
worldwide economic depression of the late 1920s was partially responsible for
the massive rural to urban migration, with many destitute migrants moving to
Rio emerging favelas, such as Rocinha.
Rocinha fastest growth occurred during
the 1950s and 1960s; largely influenced by the destruction of several nearby
favelas, the continuation of the rural to urban exodus, and the real-estate
boom in the surrounding upper-class neighborhoods.9 By the 1960s,
Rocinha was considered Rio de Janeiro
largest favela, and many claimed it to be the largest slum in all of
Latin America. Today Rocinha is a sprawling, and towering, urban slum/city
consisting of roughly 21 neighborhoods, but only occupying an area of approximately
one-half of a square mile.10 Current population estimates range from
an official government figure of 56,000 to the inflated estimate of 1 million.11
While accurate data do not exist we estimate that there are approximately
140,000 to 225,000 inhabitants, and consider the government official population estimate to be an
under-representation of reality, a misrepresentation many locals, as well as
scholars, consider deliberate.12
Most academics covering
favela history tend to focus largely on urban planning and public service
issues such as public health, urban space, and/or lack of standard and
affordable housing. We agree with Campos that favela history should also, and
most importantly, be understood as a historical social process—an oppressive
one—that is largely the result of the Brazilian aristocracy’s treatment of
historically subjugated peoples. The criminalization and injustices favela
residents have endured for over a century existed before the favelas, and is
best comprehended by considering the way the power elites13 in
Brazil have long dealt with poor and non-white Brazilians, especially within
the runaway slave communities known as quilombos.14 The authorities
considered quilombos to be wretched settlements, overrun by squalor, poverty,
and crime; and they were essentially ignored by the state with the exception of
violent intrusions.15 As formal slavery ended, first the cortiços,
then the favelas, inherited the quilombos undesirable status. Thus, fear and
resentment have long been two of the generative themes linking the minority
power elites to the majority non-whites and the poor in Brazil. These tensions
are exacerbated because many favelas are located on valuable land that
speculators and developers covet in order to engage in profit-seeking and
capital reproduction.16 At the heart of the problem, however, is the
fact that the poor and non-whites in Brazil have long been excluded from formal
markets.17 For favela residents, long oppressed and marginalized,
the favela offers the unique and advantageous position of being outside of
standard institutions, allowing favela residents concrete possibilities within
each favela community.18 The communal nature within favelas has
helped generations of ex-slaves and migrants prepare for life in the city, as
the place where they were received and welcomed. It was exactly these
communities and networks of solidarity that the established state powers have
attempted to demolish, as they successfully did with the cortiços.
Today elites and middle
class residents of Rio de Janeiro fear the favelas, and the associated violence
and drug trafficking more than ever, but their fear is not new. As early as
November of 1900 favelas were gaining negative attention when the Jornal do
Brasil published an opinion letter addressed to Rio’s Chief of Police. The
letter (which we have translated) reads as follows:
A
group of vagabonds and thieves have invaded nearby Morro da ProvidLncia….they are bothering the neighbors, and the families
in the area are tired of hearing the profanities of these unproductive people
all day…these people are of the lowest class, living in squalor and seeming to
be fine with it, and in order to permanently remove them a minimum of 80
heavily armed soldiers will be necessary.
The negative publicity
continued throughout the 1900s as is eveident from a 1952 Time magazine
article, which included the following excerpts:
The
favelados number an estimated 500,000, about three-fourths of them Negroes.
Rio's cops, tough as they are, avoid favelas even by daylight. As a sanctuary
for criminals, said the newspaper O Globo, the favelas are as inviolate as the
ancient temples. The law . . . stops at the base of the hill, as if it were the
frontier of a foreign country. Cariocas fear favela-bred epidemics of disease
and crime, but they fear explosions of discontent even more. Now & then, a
rumor that favelados are about to descend from the hill in plundering hordes puts
fear into carioca hearts. Such rumors floated about during last month's
carnival celebrations, souring some of the city's gaiety with a vague dread.
The Time article concludes with Dr.
Guilherme Ribeiro Romano’s somber warning that, “This may be Rio's last
chance, he said. If we don't control the favelas, they will keep on growing and
turn this city into one vast slum.” Though disturbing, these thoughts are
not out-dated. For example, Sandra Cavalcanti, the former Secretary of Social
Services for Rio de Janeiro, expressed similar sentiments in a November 1996
publication of the Jornal do Brasil newspaper:
The only solution that exists in order to take
back the territory that is in the enemy’s hands is to initiate a bellicose
operation. To try and implement in practice the tactics of war, with the
occupation, ostensive and forceful, of the entire territory to be conquered.
More recently, just after the three-day war of
April 2004 in Rocinha, Rio’s vice-governor proposed that a 20-foot high solid
wall be built around the entire community.19 The objective of the
proposed wall was to control violence and growth. After heated debate and
exchange of opinions, most people agreed that turning an already oppressed
community into an urban concentration camp was not the best plan, and so the
vice-governor’s proposal was never implemented.
Rocinha, and other comparable communities, are
in need of comprehensive, and non-prejudicial/classist, approaches to community
development that aim to ameliorate some of Rocinha’s most challenging problems
while incorporating some of its most important resources: the strength of local
bonds amongst residents and the desires that many residents have for improving
the conditions of daily life in Rocinha. Community development planning must be
inclusive of local residents and should begin from within Rocinha. The NGO
Mundo Real is presently taking an important step in this direction at a time
when Rocinha is in the midst of the continual danger of shifting gang control
and facing the imminent implementation of misguided state-sponsored
interventions.20
Alternatives
As we approach the end of the first decade of
the 21st century, we are confronted with the reality, as the case of
Rocinha well shows, that the cultural, social, economic, and political
domination of people are issues that are as prevalent in modern times as they
have ever been in human history. It is even possible that at no time have these
issues been as important considering the increasing populations of people that
live under social, economic, cultural, or political oppression.21
How are the residents of communities like Rocinha, and residents of ‘slums’
anywhere, responding or reacting to their crisis? How can social
scientists work with them to overcome these injustices?
It is Mundo Real’s belief that social
scientific work can remain true to the practice of the scientific study of
societies, while simultaneously producing a body of work that is tendentious in
one very important sense: it aims to directly contribute to efforts to create
necessary social transformation. While macro studies of the impacts of
globalization, neo-liberalism, and inequality are informative, they are not
directly useful to the people most in need of information, resources,
education, and assistance. For example, in a recent article the noted
urbanist Mike Davis examines the challenges posed by the global growth of urban
slums.22 As he describes in his article, slums are growing in number
and population worldwide, but any sense of community is lost at this macro
level of analysis. Through our experience in Rocinha, we have encountered
people with inspiring life stories who share a community that has an identity
and history. This history is shared in many ways with other favelas throughout Rio
de Janeiro, and Brazil, but less so with other ‘slum-like’ communities
throughout the world. An analysis based on global conditions like Davis’ is no
more than minimally helpful to ‘favelados’ whose struggles, as we have shown,
are historic, and local. Micro level social scientific studies, the classic
ethnography for example, do a great deal of injustice to oppressed people, as
well. The idea that communities of oppressed people can be studied in a
very intimate manner with access provided to social scientists by local
residents, and the end result of this relationship is a study that does
absolutely nothing to better the material conditions of residents’ lives is
selfishness carried to its greatest extreme.
There is copious research pertaining to Rio de
Janeiro’s favelas, making them some of the world’s most investigated low-income
communities.23 However, very few publications, particularly in the
English language, have been the product of work conducted by, and then credited
to, residents of the favelas. Favela discourse in the US and Europe is
dominated by members of racial groups and social classes who, despite possible
good intentions, could not be further removed from the local reality of
communities like Rocinha. Again, fieldwork may entail a short stay in a favela,
but the end result is typically a job in a first world university or mainstream
NGO for the researcher, and continued struggle for residents of the community
studied. We consider this asymmetrical exchange to be an infringement on the
cultural and intellectual property rights of favela residents. Amidst all of
this ‘study’ the social conditions of favela residents remain stagnant as
favela populations grow, and proposed public policy responses are still as
draconian as they have ever been.24 Social scientific study should
be more directly useful to residents of oppressed communities by assisting them
in a process of social transformation. We are convinced, by our research, that
many residents of Rocinha are in a position to utilize social scientific study
to achieve this aim. However, we are also convinced that in order to
create this change some framework for carrying out this complicated objective
is necessary, and in modern times no framework is more conducive to this
process than the NGO, and no NGO model is presently more effective than the
community development organization. Our philosophical approach differs from
practices that are currently predominating in the NGO world.25 We
argue that civil society organizations can increase their effectiveness, and
legitimacy, by locating within communities like Rocinha and incorporating local
residents into their leadership and staffing.
Social Transformation in Rocinha: Local
Activism on Behalf of the Disabled
On a rainy day during the summer of 2006 in
Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro three founders of the NGO Mundo Real met with Cely a
resident activist and organizer for the rights of the disabled in Rocinha whose
14-year old son, Jefferson, has cerebral palsy.
For fourteen years she has struggled in Rocinha to raise a disabled
child while simultaneously coping with the realities of daily struggle in one
of Rio de Janeiro most heavily armed and
dictatorially controlled favelas; all while having very little supportive
services accessible to her in the form of assistance for disabled children or
their parents. While her son does attend a school for the disabled, it is Cely
who transports him to and from school daily on either local public or private
transportation, neither of which is equipped to transport disabled passengers.
It was such seemingly overwhelming challenges that moved Cely to offer
supportive services to other parents of children with disabilities within
Rocinha who face the same obstacles. Mundo Real
founders met with her that day to review a list of over 150 families
with disabled members that she had compiled over time during her organizing of
various recreational activities and of supportive services. She estimates that
there are nearly 1000 such families currently living within Rocinha without a
single community-based organization available to provide services to
this special needs population. Mundo Real
work involved conducting a series of local interviews, in collaboration
with Cely, with some of these families in order to lay the groundwork for the
development of a multi-issue community development center within Rocinha.
Many of the families we have interviewed have
very critical opinions about the only available services that they can obtain
for disabled individuals in Rocinha. These services are provided by FUNLAR, a
Rio de Janeiro-based NGO that is fully funded by the local municipal government
(Prefeitura) in Rio to provide services to the disabled.26 As
currently designed, FUNLAR programmatic
assistance consists of a team of five professionals: a social worker, physical
therapist, occupational therapist, psychologist, and a phonologist. They each
arrange home visits with disabled residents who sign up for services. However,
the disabled families have two major complaints concerning the provision of
these services. First, FUNLAR began providing these services to residents of
Rocinha just over five years ago, and due to their lack of information they had
to rely on Cely list of disabled
families within Rocinha in order to begin service provision. FUNLAR staff soon
realized that the population of disabled residents, approximately 1000, was
enormously larger than they had anticipated, however that realization has never
led to an increase in the number of individuals who have been assigned to work
with Rocinha disabled residents.
Secondly, the services that FUNLAR staff provides are not systematically
organized, therefore residents may sign-up for services then not ever receive
them, or if they do receive a home visit from any of the five professional
service providers, a period of months or even years may pass between follow-up
visits. Moreover, nearly all of the families that comprise Cely database of disabled residents share the
opinion that the FUNLAR program is a municipal government program whose
principal objectives are not to address the real needs of disabled residents of
Rocinha, but to provide for the municipal government need to claim that these services are
available and to provide employment for the individuals that FUNLAR employees.
As such, many of the families that sign-up for services with FUNLAR (most do
not) do so while remaining permanently convinced that the organization motivations do not lie where they should. It
is also important to note that FUNLAR does not include disabled individuals or
family members in any of its decision-making processes, regardless of these
families obvious capacity to inform program design, implementation, and
outreach.
Already, many of the families have expressed
the desire to create a community-based rehabilitation center in Rocinha for the
disabled. Some of their primary concerns include having insufficient resources
to purchase medication, diapers, and wheelchairs, or other important supplies
for the disabled. But the families do not simply want to be given supplies,
they are mainly interested in finding alternative methods for acquiring them
and ensuring that they are equitably distributed. For example, some of the
parents have proposed investing in a diaper making machine, so that diapers can
be made available to disabled families for free, and to other low-income
families at a discount. It is an idea that Mundo Real has already received a
commitment of financial support for from a private donor who has spent time in
Rocinha as a resident-tourist. Moreover, Cely has formally joined with Mundo
Real to implement a strategic plan to work towards the development of
community-based rehabilitation center. As part of this plan, a series of
community-wide meetings have been scheduled to discuss planning for the center,
the development of a set of policies that will govern the center, and the
identification of volunteer resources from both within and without Rocinha that
will be relied upon to ensure that the center will remain financially viable.
What is making this endeavor possible is a
combination of local disenchantment with government policies, Mundo Real intervention, and the presence of local
activists like Cely. Initially, Mundo Real
plans were limited to the development of a multi-issue community
development center, but with the considerable community support and anticipated
participation of local leaders and residents, we feel there is no reason why
these disabled families can not come together in an organized manner and work
towards establishing what they all feel they need most: a community-based
rehabilitation center. They fully recognize that municipal, state, and federal
policies intended to assist them have largely been ymbolic policies, and this reality can be
seen not just in the FUNLAR program but in some of the previously discussed
government responses to quilombos, corti s, and now favelas.27
In the U.N.’s 2003 publication on global slum
growth one of the most important analyses made was that resources should be
‘targeted and tailored’ to those residents of slums, like the disabled, who
suffer the most from the inhumane conditions that plague them. Community
leaders in Rocinha, and in other Favelas, reside within such a complex and
dangerous set of conditions that their ability to ‘network’ to the outside
world of social and economic justice and human rights actors (civil society)
will be a critical determinant in their ability to mount community-led efforts
for social transformation. What we advocate and practice through Mundo Real is
perhaps a provocative, but not a radical or new concept: residence within
communities in a process of teaching, learning, and acting alongside members of
oppressed communities to overcome injustice and create change.28 We
are not proposing that community development work of this sort is a panacea,
ultimately, Mundo Real’s position is that governments at all levels should be
more accountable and responsive to the needs of all citizens, particularly
those who face the greatest social, economic, or physical barriers. We do
believe, however, that if properly designed and motivated NGO’s can lead the
path to this social transformation.
Notes
1. In
2003 the UN released Challenge of the Slums the most comprehensive and alarming study to
date of the rapid growth of slums worldwide, which points to neoliberal
policies and IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) as the principal
causes of inequality and burgeoning slum growth across the globe. The report
warns that if critical changes do not take place soon approximately 2 billion
people worldwide will be living in slums. Pictures of Rocinha grace the cover
of the report, indicating the importance of our community to this pressing
issue.
2. See
Mundo Real’s website www.1mundoreal.org.
3. Joe
R. Feagan and Hernán Vera. 2001. Liberation Sociology. Westview Press
4. Freire,
Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder.
5. Descendents
of indigenous Americans and of Europeans are also represented in Rio’s favelas,
as are recent immigrants from Asia and Angola. As such, the favelas’
inhabitants are visibly racially mixed,
and intermixed, however, the majority of inhabitants are unquestionably
descendants of African slaves. See Lessa, Carlos. O Rio de todos os Brasis 2000
Editora Record.
6. Brazil
was the last country to abolish Trans-Atlantic slavery (Campos March 2002).
7. Campos
2002:22-31
8. Pandolfi, Dulce Chaves and Grynszpan, Mario.
2003. A Favela Fala: Depoimentos ao CPDOC. Fundaçno Getulio Vargas
9. Ibid.
10. José
Luiz de Souza Lima, local historian and head of an NGO located in Rocinha.
11. The
government data came from the 2006 IBGE census count and the other figure is
from Waldheim García Montoya in El Extra on 1/25/2005.
12. Leeds,
Elizabeth. 1996.
13. The
term ‘power elites’ is borrowed from C. Wright Mills’ classic study of the
organization of power in the United States, which called attention to three
firmly interlocked prongs of power: military, corporate, and political elite,
except that in the case of Brazil the prongs should be expanded to include the
considerable power of both organized religion (mainly Catholic) and organized
crime.
14. Campos.
2002.
15. Campos
2002:22-31
16. For
example, Rocinha, which has some the most beautiful mountain vistas in Rio,
including views of Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf Mountain, and Ipanema Beach,
is located between two of Brazil’s most expensive residential communities,
Gávea and Sno Conrado.
17. The
Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) indicates that black and
brown Brazilians earn only 51 percent of what white Brazilians earn.
18. Obviously
not all the alternative possibilities within favelas are positive or
progressive, as in the case of the favela-based drug-gangs, but nonetheless
they are alternative ways of surviving in an unjust society.
19. Folha
de Sno Paulo 04/12/2004.
20. During
the Christmas holiday season plans were agreed upon between State officials in
Rio de Janeiro and the Federal government to use armed forces to reinforce the city of Rio de Janeiro after
an intense wave of violence in late 2006.
21. United
Nations Human Settlments Programme: ‘The Challenge of the Slums’: The Global Report on Human Settlements 2003
22. Davis,
Mike ‘Planet of the Slums’ in New Left Review Volume 26 March/April
2004.
23. McCann,
Bryan ‘The Political Evolution of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas’ Latin
American Research Review 2006 Vol. 41 (3).
24. As
recently as December 2006, local government representatives in Rio de Janeiro
were planning for the use of the military in the policing of urban areas and
for allowing for the continued use of private urban militias to combat the hold
of organized, narco-gangs in some of Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas.
25. NGO
formation and growth worldwide has begun to mirror social, economic, and even
regional inequalities extant in the private and government sectors. For a good
critical analysis of NGO (Nonprofit) growth in the United States see Hall’s, Inventing
the Nonprofit Sector, and for a cogent critique of NGO growth, practices,
and inherent inequalities in Latin America see Sorj’s, ‘Civil Societies
North-South Relations: NGOs and Dependency’ Working Paper 1, November 2005.
26. See
FUNLAR Rio website at www2.rio.rj.gov.br/funlar/default.asp.
27. A
‘symbolic public policy’ is a political science term for a government policy
(or program) that has no real material impact on people, as opposed to
‘material policy’. See Anderson, James E. ‘Public Policymaking’Houghton
Mifflin Publishers 2000.
28. Jane
Adams, Myles Horton, Paulo Freire, Saul Alinsky, as well as the practitioners
of both liberation theology and liberation sociology have all taken this
‘plunge.’ In the early part of the 20th century, Chicago’s slums
were the face of American poverty, inequality, and injustice. It was in the heart of these slums, that Jane
Adams founded Hull House, the first settlement house in American history, and
where Saul Alinsky introduced his ‘community organizing’ methods that would
become so successful that thousands of organizations have utilized them to
create lasting social and economic change! Myles Horton founded the Highlander
School in the mountains of Tennessee, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa
Parks, among many other notable social actors, participated in many workshops
at Highlander. Strategy, organizing, and other topics were the meat and
potatoes students digested at Highlander, and the Civil Rights Movement was the
product of their collective learning efforts. There is simply not enough space
to detail the many successes of Paulo Freire, arguably the greatest social
change thinker and practitioner in Latin American history, or of the many
liberation theologians whose ‘works’ defined them, most notable among them
being Arch Bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and Arch Bishop Don Helder Camara
in Brazil; that any liberation sociologists can be counted among these great
examples may be the saving grace of the discipline of sociology, if not of the
entire social sciences.
Works Cited
Anderson, James E. ‘Public Policymaking’ 2000
Houghton Mifflin Co.
Arias, Enrique Desmond ‘Faith in Our
Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas’ Latin
American Politics and Society Spring 2004, Vol. 48 Issue 1.
Davis, Mike ‘Planet of the Slums’ New
Left Review Volume 26 March/April 2004.
Campos, Andrelino de Oliveira ‘Origens,
Expansno e (des) Construçno do Espaço Favelado no Rio de Janeiro: A
Cidadania Ausente’ in 1 Rio Urbano: Revista da Regino Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro Publisher by
Fundacno Centro de Informaçtes e Dados do Rio de Janeiro Março 2002.
Feagin, Joe R. and Vera, Hernán ‘Liberation
Sociology’ Westview Press 2001 Cambridge, MA.
Freire, Paulo. 1972. The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. New York, Continuum, c2000.
Hall, Peter Dobkin ‘Inventing the Nonprofit
Sector’ John Hopkins University Press 1992 Baltimore, MD.
Leeds, Elizabeth ‘Cocaine and Parallel
Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local-Level
Democratization’ Latin American Research Review, Vol. 31, No. 3. (1996),
pp. 47-83.
Mills, C. Wright. ‘The Power Elite’
1956 Oxford University Press.
McCann, Bryan ‘The Evolution of Rio de
Janeiro’s Favelas’ Political Latin American Research Review 2006 Vol. 41
(3).
Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro ‘Um
Retrato das ONG’s no País’ Published in Rio Estudos n<138, setembro de 2004. 23p.
Sorj, Bernardo ‘Civil Societies North-South
Relations: NGOs and Dependency’ Working Paper 1, November 2005 available on
the web at www.edelsteincenter.org.
United Nations Human Settlements Programme. 2003. The Challenge of Slums. Global Report on Human Settlements.