Petrpolis, which is home to approximately 307,000 people in Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro received more rainfall in three hours on February 15, than the historic monthly average. 229 people died in the mudslides and 20 are still missing. The low-income community Morro da Oficina was the most affected, with many of the victims being buried by the mudslide that followed the historic rains. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) has classified Morro da Oficina as substandard. This is due to the inequal access to land and high housing costs relative to income per capita. A 2017 municipal government study found 15,240Homes in the area are at immediate risk
Brazil’s historic problems include landlessness and precarious housing.In direct response to 1850’s closure of the trans-Atlantic slavery trade, landowners and the imperial governments were forced to create other sources of credit and legal labor control means. After the abolishment of slavery in 1888, unjust access to land led the government to ban sharecropping and conscription of agricultural labor. Urban officials used control over housing in urban areas to discipline the unemployed population. They waged a continuous campaign of demolitions of neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal and public safety. These urbanization campaigns aimed to bring areas of Black labor under city control and independent residence. Many of these first photographs show only the violent disappearance of these communities. For example, the 1916 photographs of the Morro de Santo Antnio taken from the Teatro da Repblica’s roof are titled “before and after” Public Health. The second photo shows the last remnants of the now-defunct community of clapboard houses.
Brazil’s access to housing and land is still largely determined by class and race. In Rio de Janeiro, 31 per cent of residents of color live in substandard housing, compared to 14 per cent of whites. Land concentration was a tool for labor conscription and industrial growth during the 20th century’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). After 1985’s return to democracy, only minimal rights to land were recognized and safe housing was made available to all. 1988’s constitutional congress addressed long-standing social movements to land access and housing rights. It recognized both the social function of property as well as the rights of those without land to 250 square meters of land. This is an exclusive residence that can be maintained for five years. These legal protections were expanded under Federal Law (L 2001).10257) codifying the use of urban property for the public good, thereby paving the way for low-income communities to receive federal funding to improve homes and infrastructure and make underutilized land available for housing.
However, these federal programs have been drastically reduced since 2016. The federal program was replaced by President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration in 2020 Minha Casa Minha Vida (My House, My Life)The program supported low-income housing and directed funding to private construction firms for the development middle-income units. Bolsonaros Partido Liberal (Liberal Party), has diverted federal funds from environmental projects. agencies, which includes the National Agency for the Monitoring and Alert of Natural Disasters(Cemaden), which President Dilma Russoff created after the mudslides. 2011More than 900 people were killed by the storm in the Petrpolis area. Rio de Janeiros governor, who is also a member Bolsonaros Liberal Party was unable to heed the Cemaden’s evacuation alert amid February’s torrential rains. The newspaper Folha de So PauloIt was reported that the state agency responsible had only received a report. 47 percentThe 2021 allocation.
Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party is responsible for a wider pattern of governance that includes the systematic defunding public services.A Senate investigationIn an investigation into executive mismanagement of last year’s coronavirus epidemic, they found that misinformation and irregularly used public funds led to deaths and crimes against mankind. The governments’ failure to respond to the pandemic has been proven Two timesContinue reading LethalCommunities that are substandard contribute to the existing forms environmental violence these communities already suffer.
The 2012 legislationL12608The Cemaden (also known as the Cemaden) made the federal, state and local governments directly responsible to discourage the settlement in environmentally sensitive areas and promote the relocation of those residing there. In an interview, however, Revista PiauClaudia Renata Ramos from the Movimento do Aluguel Social e Moradia de Petrpolis (Petrpolis Social Rent and Housing Movement), spoke out about how political attention has failed to focus on the underlying question housing inequality in the wake the disaster. The podcast aired a clip last week. Foro de TeresinaRamos pointed out that despite all the political promises, even all the politicians who have come to Petrpolis, the President will not be arriving. Ask them if they’ve been to the BairrosOr, you can look for social movements that work with these communities.
Petrpolis is an obvious violation of rights to safe housing under L12608 as well as articles 182 and183 of Brazils Constitution. Because socially-induced environmental changes make marginalized communities like Morro da Oficina vulnerable to climatic hazards, they are also protected under Article 225 of the Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right for an ecologically balanced environment. This is a grey area in Brazil’s environmental law. In many cases, the use of environmental laws to justify the expulsions of landless and marginalized people has been justified without democratic processes of consultations, compensation, adaptation and/or relocate. There is no legal precedent to determine who is responsible for the larger structural conditions that have put certain communities at risk. Neither can there be accountability for the loss or destruction of life caused by an environment that has been altered by the privatization, commodification, and commercial extraction of fossil fuels. This is the immediate political question that the landslides at Petrpolis pose: What justice does Brazil’s Constitution offer for victims of such an unnatural catastrophe?
Chris N. LesserHe is a doctoral candidate for Geography and Earth and Ocean Sciences, at The University of California Berkeley and at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro).
