Favela centennial shows Brazil communities' endurance

One of Sao Paulo's biggest favelas is celebrating its centennial — a sign of the permanence and resilience of poor communities that were once thought of as temporary

SAO PAULO -- Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence.

“People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.”

The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades.

Once farmland isolated from the city, today Paraisopolis is nestled in the midst of urban sprawl. Its population began expanding after a 1942 law froze rent prices, effectively halting private construction. Absent action from authorities to provide housing, people sought affordable alternatives, according to Nabil Bonduki, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning.