The Favelas
Favela is a Portuguese word for shantytown. While the majority of favelas actually have access to electricity many of these are actually illegally tapped to the power grid. Favela’s are ramshackle villages built from whatever raw materials are available. Favela’s are cramped and closely packed. As a result, they are plagued by sanitation problems. In general, Brazilians refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Favelas as a legal entity.
The name itself originates from a plant that has thorny leaves that grows in the semi-arid regions of Brazil, specifically the North-East. The Favela’s increase in population as freed African Americans moved into the Favela’s contributing to the poverty there. People who live in a Favela actually prefer to live there because it is close to their place of work, yet it keeps them away from more prosperous places where they will not be welcomed.
The first Favela came into existence in November 1897 when some twenty-thousand soldiers were transported to Rio de Janeiro but were not given quarters. Some older Favelas were actually independent settlements of rouge African slaves in the hills areas surrounding Rio de Janeiro. These settlements grew in size as more slaves were liberated but found that they had no place to live. The original Favelas predated the dense occupation of the city. But during the 1940s there was explosive growth in the Favela districts when the Getulio Vargas industrialization drive drew people from the rural areas and into the city.
Favelas are not immune to the drug trade. Precisely because they are poor and desperate Favela dwellers will resort to the drug trade to survive In fact shootouts between drug traffickers and the police are common. There are a lot of instances of Traffickers fighting other criminal gangs. Traffickers will even fight among themselves for selling turf. Drug money makes Drug armies rich hence they can afford many guns. As a result, most battles that occur between the Drug armies are shootouts where both sides possess high-powered firearms. Because both sides are heavily armed the murder rate in Rio is a shocking 40 per 100,000 inhabitants. The rate is even higher in the Favelas.
The drug traffickers gain more power through their protection racket. An age-old practice, the protection racket involves guaranteeing the safety of the Favela dwellers by means of their political connections as well as their firearms. The drug armies are in fact better at keeping order in the Favelas and maintain a status quo of reciprocity and respect. As a result of this, despite the inherent violence of the drug trade, the average Favela dweller feels safe.
It shall be upon this backdrop of poverty, oppression, hopelessness, and drug abuse that Fanon’s seminal work “The Wretched of the Earth” Shall be applied. Specifically, it shall be applied upon the drug-addicted youth in the same context that Favela originally meant to mention the non-white ‘colonized’ peoples. In this case, the lumpenproletariat will be those who have lost hope in an honest life, they are people who have resorted to robbery and drug pushing in order to sustain their addiction. Their addictions in turn are a symptom of the fact that they think they have nowhere to go in life.
An important fact to take note of is the different audiences for which Fanon wrote his work. Fanon was essentially a doctor-philosopher who spent his life fighting against the abuses of European Colonialism/Imperialism. As a result, much of his work focuses on the way the European Colonizers abused and dehumanized the natives to transform them into docile populations. In the context of Brazil’s Favelas, it is simply to be transmuted into this context; the lumpenproletariat is the poor oppressed members of the Favela while the colonizers have been replaced by the wealthy of Rio De Janeiro who have used the poor again and again to uplift themselves.
An excellent way of viewing the Favela situation is the movie the City of God, which was a fictionalized version of the events in the Favelas. It is about the drug/slum violence dynamic that is prevalent whenever hopeless and desperate people come together. In that movie, the ruling class is hardly shown as there are no rich people or white men, in the “colonizer” sense, in the City of God. Instead, the lumpenproletariat is simply displayed for all to see in their glorious loss as disenchantment. In other words, there is the dominant group vs the subaltern group in Brazil, dominant being State and subaltern being slum Favela dwellers. With this in mind references to the City of God will be used to concretize the Favela’s and apply Fanon’s discourse.
Favela’s discrimination is not to be denied. George Yudice outlines just a few examples of violence against Favelas in his article on Afro Reggae. In his article, he points out that following the violence that occurs in the winter of 92-93 a sort of double standard occurs. The police under the auspices of law enforcement go quickly into the Favelas to arrest the suspects to the lootings. Naturally, there are abuses including the murder of some youths in a Favela church even where there is yet no proof of their guilt. This is contrary to the idea that there should be innocent until proven guilty. What makes such things repugnant is the double standard in which such violence occurred. The media applauded the arrests of the looting youths but nothing was done to address the murders. Little was done against social cleansing done against the Favelas either.
Based on such events it would appear that it was ok to derogate the human rights of the Favela dwellers if only because they were poor. However, the wealthy ‘proper-city’ dwellers should be protected to the maximum extent of the law from these unwashed masses. Only in recent times are social networks forming to humanize the Favela dweller and give him back his rights one example of which is the Viva Rio movement Yudice talks about.
In the movie City of God, this is depicted when Lil’ Ze and Carrot’s gangs battle it out for supremacy in the City of God. They are allowed to murder with abandon and the police do not lift a finger to intervene. As a matter of fact, their weapons are being supplied by the police. The police don’t care for as long as the slum dwellers are just killing each other.
The scenario changes when Rocket takes pictures of the drug lord Lil’ Ze and sells this to the newspapers. Suddenly the public becomes aware of the situation in the Favelas and the police are forced to move. Regretfully instead of actually trying to quell the violence the police just wait while the slum dwellers massacre each other and they arrest Lil’ ze not to bring him to justice but rather to extort money from him.
Fanon said that “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon…” in the context of the Favelas the removal of the instruments of the government, the dominant or the “white people” so to speak” is devastating to the social order in the Favelas. Without the strong hand of government to impose order the restless and often jobless Favela dwellers will resort to forming youth gangs in order to protect themselves. What would initially be a peaceful intent of mutual protection become violent coercion when the gangs start to battle each other for turf. This results in turf wars because the gangs are unwilling to coexist with each other and will drag even those who do not wish to be involved because of their allegiances to their gangs.
Fanon considers the decolonization phenomenon violent because it necessarily involves the transfer of power to the colonized peoples because of the vacuum left by the colonizers leaving. However, a deeper aspect of this comes from the fact that the colonized never having experienced independence, at least not within their lifetimes, no longer have a clear idea of what it means to chart one’s own destiny. The history of Africa is replete with failed decolonization attempts on African states which later regress into primitive tribal wars as the ‘countries’ were forcibly united by the European colonizers ignorant of the ancient tribal feuds of those people. One example of this is the Hutu and Tutsi who committed unspeakable horrors on each other after the Belgians left Rwanda.
The same can be said of the gangs who turn against each other in the absence of the heavy foot of government. They resort to violence against each other because they take the law into their own hands. These youth gangs have no conception of peaceful coexistence with one another.
Another aspect of that violence is that the colonized must return either return to their past identity or maintain the identity that was imposed upon them by the colonizer. A return to a half-remembered past may work if the culture still had its identity intact. One example is the example of India where the Indians successfully incorporated British Traditions and their own unique culture into the cosmopolitan culture they enjoy today. India was successfully decolonized. Another Asian country, the Philippines was not so fortunate. Despite efforts by their American colonizers to decolonize them, the Filipinos, as their people are called, remain deeply Americanized aping American ways even when these are inapplicable to their own culture. Filipinos continue to long for America and all its trappings with fond memories.
In the Favelas, the gangs and the people as a whole remain human. They are not decolonized. Rather they cast a moist eye towards the possessions of the rich. Cars, Money, good houses. Like any human, they are left bitter and envious of the prosperity that they see. As a result, they resort to illegal means to try and gain wealth. Illegal means such as drug dealing are often the only way that the unfortunate Favela dwellers are able to advance in life. Yet knowing the risk of arrest and death many Favela dwellers chose to try and ‘ape’ the life of the rich by resorting to crime. Others having been left hopeless by poverty regress into drug-addicted states but to sustain the addictions they too have to resort to crime to get what they want.
“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder…(Fannon on Violence)” As mentioned earlier, for a nation to even begin the decolonization processes it must be turned upside down. A colony has spent decades perhaps centuries under the dominance of the White man. Even their sense of aesthetics would have been heavily influencing. Post-colonial states are often still ruled as if they were colonies except that the white man has been replaced by an elite within the country. For example, when Mexico gained independence from Spain the Spanish Throne was overthrown but the ruling class remained those who were more or less of pure Spanish blood. Also, even after Africa was officially decolonized Africans still consider the white man their superior out of generational habit.
In relation to this efforts to wean the Favela dwellers from their old habits would necessarily force them to commit to massive changes in their habits. The root causes must be addressed. For example, gang violence and drug dealing are problems that have to be dealt with simultaneously in order for a solution to last. Drug addicts are more prone to gang violence, gang violence is used to protect drug-dealing turf and drug dealers need addicts to stay in business. All three must be addressed.
Decolonization is the meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature, which in fact owe their originality to that sort of substantiation which results from and is nourished by the situation in the colonies. (Fannon on Violence) In the strict sense, Fanon is referring to the conflict between the desire of the colonized to return to the life they enjoyed before the white man came as opposed to the life they wish to continue enjoying thanks to what the white man brought. In other words, there is a conflict between the desire to return to the pre-colonial or remain westernized.
For Fabela, this can be interpreted in two ways. First, there is the multitude of Gang allegiances with the different Drug Armies. Obviously, in the selfish world of Drug dealing, the soldiers prefer to look around for their own welfare at all times. The second interpretation is the ‘decolonization’ from the Drug Army quagmire entirely. However, this will be very difficult considering two things. The first is that the drug army has presented him with many benefits as compensation for his allegiance.
The second is because if he leaves it the average Favela dweller does not have any equally profitable prospects in other fields if he leaves.
In the colonies, it is the policeman and the soldier who is the official instituted go-betweens..(Fannon on Violence). In the strict sense, the police are the coercive force that enforces the colonial rule. The same is true with the army. As a result, the soldiers are viewed with an eye to their aspect as a spirit of oppression. The common folk fears the soldiers for they are the Colonizer’ will made manifest.
Drug Army soldiers are also the enforcers of their lord’s will. In the movie City of God, the so-called enforcers start out as adults. But due to the high mortality rate of the Drug Armies by the climax both drug lords are reduced to hiring out little children. Regrettably the same is true for real-life drug armies. In order to maintain their numbers, they must resort to hiring younger and younger people into their ranks. With their mind added by illegal narcotics, a child remains a child but can be used as an effective enforcer by the Drug lords.
The European’s reign continues (Fannon on Violence). Europeans, their descendants, or at least their culture remain the dominant force in post-colonial countries. Due to the fact that the colonized have already forgotten their systems of government or perhaps because their previous political structures have ceased to exist most post-colonial governments are still modeled after the governments of their conquerors.
In the case of the Favelas even after a Drug lord is eliminated, the culture of drug-related gang violence is so deeply ingrained in the people that in the event of the death of a previous crime lord one of his lackeys or a completely new arrival will reestablish the empire. An example of this can be seen in The city of God when all the gangs are wiped out. Lil’ Ze tries to convince the kids to join him but they instead shoot him. It may seem funny and whimsical to some but toward the end, the newly formed ‘kids gang’ is already planning the next murders that it will perpetuate. Clearly, even after Carrot and Lil’ Ze, the principal drug lords in the story, are killed the seeds of violence they planted will continue to bear fruit.
For violence, like Achilles’ lance, can heal the wounds that it has inflicted (Fannon on Violence). Fanon believes that the violence that is necessitated by decolonization will eventually heal the wound it inflicted. This is given truth by the fact that there are countries that resorted to violent revolutions to overthrow their European oppressor and they found themselves in good shape afterward or at least found themselves independent.
Fanon makes much of the idea that many so-called “decolonized” states are just the same state but that regional elite has replaced the European ruling class. Thus, Mexico of 1822 under Santa Anna was no different from Mexico of 1812 under the Spanish Viceroy’s. Only the faces and names changed but the ruling class was still there. The systems of governance were practically the same. The same can be said of most African countries. Their government and society are still the same Westernized archetypes that they inherited from their fathers who suffered under the Europeans. Yet ostensibly African countries were peacefully decolonized and given independence. They may have the trappings of independence but the psyche of the African colonized remains deeply scarred and bound to their European Colonizers.
Fanon did not live to see the example of Vietnam as it is today. Vietnam resorted to a violent decades-long rebellion against France and later the United States in order to wrest independence from the Europeans. Their desire to reassert their pre-colonial selves was so great that they were prepared to risk losing all the gains that colonialism gave them. After rejecting the norm and standards imposed by the West and winning a long bloody war. The Vietnamese, at times by force, imposed their culture upon the rest of their people. Surprisingly, the result, as seen today is good. In the face of Globalization, the Vietnamese are in touch with their identity as Vietnamese and not loosely aping western ways as other colonized peoples are wont to do.
In the context of the Favela, such has two-fold context. In the positive context, violence is necessary in order to remove the Drug armies. There is no compromise to be allowed. Violence should be used to exterminate the Drug armies while eliminating the root causes of why they exist, to begin with. In the course of this violence, the Favela can be healed of their influence. Like a dirty weed, the Drug army and Gang problem must be eliminated. At the same time, there must be ample opportunity for the individuals to realize the error of their ways and return to the law-abiding fold. In other words, the Drug Army must be stamped out but social reform should be instituted so that indeed like the Achilles’ lance the would be healed.
The negative connotation refers to the fact that the violence that is used against gangs and Drug armies even that which they use on themselves will not go anywhere if not coupled with social reform. For example, in the Movie the City of God, almost as soon as the old order of gangs is killed off a new order, this time of very young kids is preparing to fill the void.
To summarize, Fannon’s work was greatly influenced by his own upbringing and his experiences as a black growing up in a still colonized world. As a result, the vast majority of his work is about the dynamics between the colonized and the colonizer. In a way on violence seems to justify that in order for the colonized to be truly free from the Colonizer he must resort to violence for decolonization to occur properly.
He belied that violence would be necessary because the colonized has had his mentality deeply inculcated with the culture of his former overlord. If decolonization was done in a peaceful manner such as a handover of power the result is just a replacement of the ruling Europeans with ruling locals who have learned how to manipulate the Western-style political system. There will be no meaningful change and only a change of the masters at the top of the social strata.
In relation to this, Favela is the result of the elite’s mismanagement. Decades of economic policies and change have done little to uplift the plight of the Favela dwellers. Like the colonized peoples mentioned in Fanon’s books, the Favela dwellers are seen by the rich as nothing more than a means of production. The fortunate among them have low-paying but honest jobs. The less fortunate must eke out an existence by finding a place among the gangs that inhabit the Favelas. The least fortunate are utterly hopeless and resort to drugs to mitigate their pain.
Due to the nature of the Favela people as a means of production and the way they are so oppressed, or at minimum left to rot on their own, by the government an analogy can be made between the Favela people and the Colonized as well as the Government and the Colonizer. In this context, much of what Fanon imparts begin to make more sense in the Brazilian context.
Annotated Bibliography
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (Book)
This book was published in 1961 and is the most renowned work of Frantz Fanon. It was written during and about the Algerian struggle for independence from colonial rule. Because Fanon was a psychiatrist, Fanon’s book plumbs the depths of the psychological effects of colonization upon the collective soul of a nation along with the possible, broader implications for building momentum for decolonization.
The wretched of the earth is a harsh critique of the ideals of nationalism and imperialism. It also covers areas such as mental health as well as the role of the intellectuals in the context of a revolution. He goes to great lengths in explaining that revolutionary groups must also look for the “lumpenproletariat” for the strength that would be needed to expel the colonizers. According to the author, the “lumpenproletariat” are the lowest most severely degraded stratum of the proletariat. He postulates that only these people, and not the industrial proletariat, have enough independence from the colonizers to launch a successful revolution against them.
Meirelles, Fernando The City of God
The City of God or Cidade de Deus is a story of Favela from the lower class quarters of Rio de Janeiro. The film is told from the perspective of a young wretched boy who dreams of becoming something in life. The film is about the violence and violence that can be found in such destitute regions.
Three hoodlums known as “The Tender Trio” are robbing local businesses and in order to remain protected, they distribute a share of their profits to the locals. However, their violence catches up to them and two of “The Tender Trio” are killed while one escapes joining the Church. A character named Li’l Ze rises to power together with his childhood friend Benny he builds a drug empire by killing all the other dealers. When he attempts to take over Carrot’s business Benny is killed in the crossfire leaving the City of God without the only thing keeping the peace.
The City of God spirals into violence which the narrator’s character is able to record using his camera. Ultimately all the main characters, are either killed or captured by the police in the final climactic fight. The movie clearly demonstrates the violence in the slums.
Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961)
The author of, among others, Violence and The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon was a psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary from Martinique. He is a well-known figure in the field of postcolonial studies and on the issue of decolonization and psychopathology of colonization (Poulos, Jennifer. “Frantz Fanon”. Emory University).
Fanon became a soldier during World War II and even then experienced discrimination. He entered politics after the war to support the campaign of his friend and mentor Aime Cesar. For Fanon, being colonized by a language had larger implications for one’s political consciousness: “To speak… means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization” (Fannon, BSWM 17-18). Speaking French means that one accepts, or is coerced into accepting, the collective consciousness of the French.
Fanon was later diagnosed with Leukemia and he went to the Soviet Union for treatment where his disease responded to treatment. His illness went into remission and he returned to Tunis to dictate his final testament which would be called The Wretched of the Earth. On moments that he was sufficiently healthy not to be bedridden, he continued to lecture to the ALN, an armed group that aimed to liberate Algeria. Despite efforts to treat him in he eventually died in the U.S.
Ahmad, AIJAZ. Jameson’s Rhetoric Of Otherness and the “National Allegory”
Aijaz Ahmad wrote this criticism of Jameson after realizing seeing questionable ideas promulgated in Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness. Ahmad was a Pakistani Citizen and he has a unique perspective on the theories of first-world or third-world dynamics.
One of the points that Ahmad makes is that Jameson is aware of the difficulties in conceptualizing the global dispersion of powers. He believes that the basic theory of the first, second, and third world is in conflict with the Maoist theory of “convergence”.
Ahmad also attacks the dynamic of the Third-world as it is defined as those nations which are suffered under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism. He postulated then that the primary ideological formation available to a leftwing intellectual shall be that of nationalism. Therefore according to Jameson, all third-world texts are necessarily national allegories. Ahmad rejects this idea because he believes that third-world writers can also make reasonable discourses about other things such as Marxist ideology without necessarily engaging in national allegories.
Ahmad’s work also makes much of deconstructing the myth of a world divided into several “worlds”. Instead, he proposes a theory that there should really be just one world where all the experiences of the three “worlds” mesh into one.
Judice, George. Afro Reggae: Parlaying Culture Into Social Justice,Social Text 69, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2001
George Yudice writes about The Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae which came into being in 1993. It was a citizen’s initiative aimed at counteracting the violence that was widespread in Rio De Janeiro during the 1990s.
Judice protest the fact that the arrestees or looting rampage was carried out by youths coming from the Favelas in the winter of 92-93 which was then opportunistically manipulated by the media to portray Favela youths as criminally violent. These images were used to justify the formation of social cleansing death squad which went into the Favelas with murderous intent.
The Via Rio movement itself Viva Rio emerged not only to demand effective action from the authorities but also to communicate a new sense of citizenship, of belonging and participation, that included all classes, especially the poor, and that largely sought to use culture to bring the two parts of the divided city together. This communication also had to target the media, which reproduced and sometimes even staged the violence that Viva Rio activists sought to allay.
Jameson, Fredric. ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’”
Jameson’s main argument is that “all the third-world texts are necessarily… allegorical and in a very specific way tend to be read as national allegories”. He postulates that there are no radical splits between the public and private means of production. He also believes that the West’s political commitment has been re-psychologized and accounted for in terms of the subjective dynamics of ressentiment or authoritarian personality.
“The allegorical spirit is profoundly discontinuous, a matter of breaks and heterogeneities, of the multiple polysemia of the dream rather than the homogenous representation of the symbol (550 Literary Criticism)”. The author thinks that all third-world authors will ultimately express views that attempt to come to grips with the fact that the colonized have been so heavily changed for the benefit of the colonizers.
Jameson also discusses that the nations need not take a stand in favor or against globalization.
References
Ahmad, AIJAZ. Jameson’s Rhetoric Of Otherness and the “National Allegory”.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Meirelles, Fernando The City of God.
Yudice, George. Afro Reggae: Parlaying Culture Into Social Justice, Social Text 69, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 2001.
Literary Criticism. Web.
Espinoza Rodolfo Slum Dunk. Web.