The Gb Housing Progam

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Still, Lacerda’s inflammatory reactions against the opposition of people like Brizola in Rio de Janeiro was not the outcome of the political challenge that it represented. It was also the result of the agitated political times of the early 1960s which also had repercussions in the favelas. The political organization of favelas reached momentum when they representatives created the Federation of Favelas Associations of Guanabara (Federação das Associações de Favelas da Guanabara; FAFEG) in 1963 that had a very important role in resisting Lacerda’s favela eradication policy.

It was not only at the local and national level where the political conjuncture of Rio de Janeiro unfolded in this very particular conjuncture. In a context of growing inflation, social turmoil, and political radicalization, Lacerda emerged as one of the favorite political figures and a model of a desirable politician for the United States. The governor’s credentials as a politician hostile to the heterodoxy of populism and the orthodoxy of the left embodied in the figures of Vargas or Kubitscheck, yet still committed to certain aspects of social reform, placed him in good stead with the Kennedy Administration. In the context of the Cold War, the US saw Lacerda as a guarantor of order in comparison to what was seen as the radical politics of President Goulart -“childish and erratic,” Brizola, or Aluísio Alves. Commenting with Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas Mann, Ambassador Gordon described the governor of Guanabara, “Carlos Lacerda (48)—Gov. of Guanabara. (…) One anti-commie. One of ablest in country. Brilliant. Was newspaper publisher. Good administrator. Would make good President—under attack for being pro-American.” That th...

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... for Progress and the United States on them.

The construction of Vila Kennedy, Vila Aliança, Vila Esperança, the first glebe of Cidade de Deus, as well as the eradication of some favelas of Rio during the Lacerda administration need to be explain within this particular conjuncture of Rio de Janeiro that intersects three equally important level of analysis: the local, the national, and the trnansnational. A city economically in decline, politically deprived of its traditional status as capital, caught between the heated struggles of power of the governor and the president, and also one of the subtle cold war arenas, Rio de Janeiro underwent decisive urban renewal, slum removal, and public housing construction. The presence of American dollars and technicians walking around the favelas and the new developments of Rio de Janeiro were part of this threefold context.

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