The Social Effects of the Rains in Rio

By now, you may have heard of the devastation in Rio de Janeiro and Niteroi (across the bay from Rio de Janeiro). On Tuesday,the city received 288 millimeters (11.3 inches) of rain in a 24-hour period. Stop and think about that - nearly a foot of rain in 24 hours. The results were devastating. Well over 100 were dead before Wednesday, and that was before more mudslides in the mountainous areas buried hundreds more alive, leaving Niteroi to declare a state of emergency while Rio declared three days of mourning and dealt with destruction in the storm's wake as well. Overall, news sites and blogs alike have done a good job covering the story, and I have little to add to them in terms of the basic facts of the immediate story.

However, the deaths point directly to the social inequalities of Brazil and remind us once again how class, race, and environment are inherently tied together in this type of disaster. In Rio, the poor and marginalized were most directly impacted. This is because of the simple arrangement of urban space in Rio de Janeiro. And this isn't a recent project - state-led efforts to displace the poor from the best land in the city date back to the late-1800s. While the government has tried to improve infrastructure in the favelas (notably during Leonel Brizola's terms as governor from 1983-1987 and 1991-1994), that hasn't prevented the elites over the 20th century from buying up and developing the best land, flat and near the beach, within the city, forcing the poor to the outskirts of the city or to build the favelas along the side of the region's mountains. And when rains like this happen, what would have been a landslide that perhaps affected few suddenly turns into a catastrophe that leaves hundreds dead.

And it's really hard to blame the favelados for this. Certainly, where they build had and has very real environmental consequences, but to place the blame for this on their shoulders is to ignore the broader socio-economic realities and history of Rio for well over 100 years. Due to the enormous gap in wealth (which only increased in Brazil in the last 30 years of the 20th century), as well as increasing urbanization throughout the 20th century (the country went from 70% rural/30% urban in the early-20th century to 70% urban/30% rural by the 1980s, even as the population grew), Rio's poor have constantly found them forced to live and get by in the geographically and environmentally worst places available (the landslide in Niteroi that buried 200 was built on top of an old landfill, not exactly prime real-estate). Indeed, it's quite common to see luxurious apartment buildings in places like Sao Conrado, Tijuca, Ipanema, Botafogo, and elsewhere within direct eyeshot of a favela, making the tragedy only that much more painful for the poor. Those with the least in Rio were stripped of everything they had, within eyesight of apartment buildings housing Rio's middle- and upper-classes, resting safely on flat, solid ground.

Certainly, the rains in Rio and the loss of life are horrible and sad, no matter how you cut it. But this isn't an isolated incident, or a once-in-a-lifetime kind of disaster; it's a direct result of issues revolving around poverty and urban space. Virtually none of the dead from these rains are middle- or upper-class. They were safe in land and buildings that have been their province for generations, even while the poor were excluded, isolated, and forced to make do with the options available to them, which by and large happened to be mountainsides that could erode in heavy rainfall. Obviously, favelas do lead to environmental degradation that can result in loss of hundreds of lives; at same time, city has adopted policies since late-1800s that have forced poor to the "marginal" parts of Rio, either on outskirts and/or forcing poor to build fragile housing along moutains; thus, when there is plenty of rain, favelas suffer disproportionately while middle-class and upper-class housing is safe. And while certainly the nearly-foot of rain has led to a very high death count, these kinds of landslides are not infrequent on a smaller scale when Rio sees even moderate rainfall (which happens annually), affecting both people's lives and basic infrastructure in the city. And thanks to climate change, some climatologists predict Rio (and Brazil) can expect with much greater frequency the kind of rainfall they saw Tuesday, which will undoubtedly lead to the deaths of more of Rio's poor, all while the wealthy and well-off can look out their windows, click their tongues at the tragedy, and never think about the broader social processes that have led to such a loss of life.

Social Mobility in Brazil Gradually Improving

A new study out of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas is reporting that, since 2003, "more than 20 million of 198 million people in Brazil have risen above poverty, and 32 million have entered the middle class." Brazil's growth hasn't stopped there, either, as foreign investment in Brazil in 2008 was at $45 billion, triple what it was in 1998, and Brazil's economy is bigger than Russia's or India's.

Brazil's growth, especially in terms of the economy, hasn't been a big secret over the last five years or so, and anybody doubting the strength of that growth became very quiet as Brazil was one of the fastest countries to emerge from recession brought on by the global financial collapse of 2008 (exiting its recession just one quarter after entering it).

Oftentimes, when one sees economic growth, it doesn't necessarily have much to do with the leadership of the country at that moment. However, as I've pointed out before, Lula certainly has every right to take much of the credit for this (though he doesn't). His willingness to expand his trading partners beyond the U.S. and Europe has helped Brazil diversify its importation and exportation and strengthened the value of the Brazilian Real in the international market, which, as I pointed out, has helped the consuming power of the working classes, and this expanding access to consumption has in turn only further strengthened Brazil's economy. Additionally, programs like offering federally-funded "internships" that help college graduates to get established in the job market has also been another direct program of Lula's that has aided the workforce and students finishing school (a number that, while still relatively small compared to the U.S., is constantly growing in Brazil).

And these reports of growth, especially in terms of the social mobility of those 20 million exiting poverty, is much better news than the report from last June, which focused only on middle class growth and which, as Randy and I both pointed out, said nothing about the very real problems facing Brazil's poor. Certainly, this latest report still does nothing to address the poverty that many face, nor the police violence (and impunity) waged against the urban poor, nor the broader social and racial prejudices against Brazil's poor. Still, the fact that 20 million have exited poverty is just another testament to the success of government programs like Bolsa Familia and Fome Zero, and Lula's institution of these programs (in the face of strong conservative opposition) has been nothing short of vital in helping this broader social turnaround.

Brazil's Drug War Also Targeting Privileged

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the growing ecstasy drug trade among middle- and upper-class kids in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, I was relatively pleased to see the cops were moving beyond just targeting the poor in the favelas in their "drug war," though I had my doubts that such a war on middle- and upper-class drugs would continue in Brazil.

Apparently, my doubts were misplaced:

Drug trafficking in Brazil has become increasingly demonized in the eyes of the law — to the point where drug financiers can now receive stiffer prison sentences than murderers — and the country’s elite is not being spared.

Just last week, federal police officers arrested 55 people, many of them in Rio de Janeiro, in a nationwide investigation focused on upper-middle-class youths who the police said were smuggling Ecstasy, LSD and other synthetic drugs into Brazil from Europe.

This does strike me as good news overall in terms of realities in Brazil right now. For years, the police have launched extremely repressive measures to fight the drug trade in the favelas, using military occupations and indiscriminate killings (as well as entering militias to control the drug trade and gain profits for themselves), all while middle- and upper-class drug usage has been relatively untouched. Unfortunately, as with corruption among police in the drug wars in the favelas, the ecstasy cases are also rife for police corruption:

Ecstasy’s emergence as the drug of Brazil’s wealthy has opened the door even wider for corrupt police officers to seize upon users and their families. Now that Brazil has eliminated prison sentences for drug users, sending them to treatment or community service instead, the police are extracting sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for not charging those caught with Ecstasy as drug dealers, according to defense lawyers and three convicted drug dealers now out of prison.

This is both unfortunate and unsurprising. But again, within the realities of the drug trade and law in Brazil, at least the same attitudes and mechanisms are increasingly being applied relatively equally across the social spectrum.

Of course, many of the middle- and upper-class youths who have been busted for dealing ecstasy feel they are being treated horribly unfairly and extremely. However, it's hard for me to feel too much sympathy for people like Lucas, a middle-class kid busted for bringing drugs into the country, when he complains “I was treated like a hardcore criminal and put in jail together with killers, kidnappers, you name it.” Two-and-a-half years may seem severe for what many might consider a "youthful mistake," but Lucas deserves no better treatment than the drug dealers caught in the favelas. Indeed, he might think he was dealt with brutally, but at least he was arrested at the airport when he tried to smuggle drugs into the country, rather than having the police come into his neighborhood with guns blazing, leaving a couple dozen dead in their wake. After all, the Brazilian "war on drugs" may be levelling the field somewhat by going after the non-poor sectors of dealers, too, but even then, the poor in the favelas still face more adverse conditions than Lucas did. And at least he lived to go to jail, rather than ending up another one of the dead traficantes on the streets of a favela.

That said, regardless of whether you are in favor or against increasing the efforts to combat drug use in any country, it's really encouraging to see Brazil going after drug production, dealing, and usage regardless of the drug or the socio-economic classes with which a particular drug is associated. And the fact that the story is based in São Paulo (and not Rio) indicates that the drug war is no longer something just for Rio's favelas, even if the gap in treatment of wealthier drug users and dealers and the poorer dealers and users still exists.

Explaining Brazil's Growth

Randy hits the nail on the head in regards to this Roger Cohen piece. Yes, Brazil has reached unprecedented levels of growth, and it looks like it will not be ephemeral (in the way the "economic miracle" of the late-1960s/early-1970s was). While I disagree with much of Cohen's overall worldview in how he phrases the question of Latin American growth, I do essentially agree that there's no time like the present for Brazil. And Randy is absolutely right that Latin America has benefitted enormously from the fact that George Bush did not stick to his pre-9/11 pledge to pay much more attention to Latin America. Everytime presidents have made such pledges, Latin America has suffered territorially, democratically, in terms of civil rights, and economically. From Colombia's loss of Panama so the U.S. could have a canal, to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, indigenous or "leftist," from Guatemala to Argentina, to the unbearable burden of debts imposed by IMF and World Bank neoliberal demands, Latin America has suffered when the U.S. pays lots of attention to it. To some degree, the growth the continent has witnessed (which certainly has not been totally even or smooth from place to place and from sector to sector) has happened more because 9/11 sidetracked Bush, not in spite of it. And certainly, there are many other complex factors that have also contributed to this growth.

In the case of Brazil, the one thing I would add to Randy's commentary is the effect Lula's administration itself has had on the growth. Over the past 5 years, Lula has made a huge effort to invest the government's money back into Brazil in the form of social programs, infrastructural improvement, and long-term investment, something his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, refused to do, instead agreeing to every neoliberal policies and demand that came his way, privatizing anything and everything he could (including free public universities, an effort which mercifully failed), and refusing to invest the government's money back into Brazil. Brazil's economy is doing better than it has in over 11 years. The dollar has fallen to 1.75 reais to the dollar, which is good for Brazil's consumption rates as it makes imports cheaper, which in turn is helping to level the purchasing power of Brazilians of most classes (for example, you see people of the working class and even the poor now walking around with MP3 players, having computers and DVD players in their homes, and having cell phones). Brazil's GDP grew 5% in 2007 alone, and by some indicators, Brazil's growth for 2007 was second only to China. To a large extent, I think a lot of this can be attributed to Lula's policies, which have been open to governmental investment and establishing trade relations with other members of the so-called "developing" world, such as China and African Nations, as well as Brazil's South American neighbors.

This is not to say Lula is a saint, or that there are no flaws in his policies. Certainly, the environmental front is one area where I have some genuine concern with the effects of Lula's administration. Police violence, particularly in the favelas, is only getting stronger (more at the initiation of state governors than Lula himself, but he is in stronger contact with them than the U.S. president is with governors there). And while the purchasing power of the "average" Brazilian has increased, the income-gap is still one of the largest in the world. However, there is no doubt that Brazil has done wonderfully in the last 7 years or so (as my wife said, "I know I'm a little partisan, but really, seeing how much better things are now than they were at the beginning of 2002...for the first time in my life, I feel really good about where Brazil is and where it's going"), and this can in no small part be attributed to Lula.