Community and Inequality in Two Rio de Janeiro Neighborhoods

FAIN: FA-51529-05

Bryan Daniel McCann
Georgetown University (Washington, DC 20057-0001)

I propose comparative histories of two neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, the favela Cantagalo and the middle-class enclave Bairro Peixoto, tracking their growth over the second half of the 20th century with a focus on the relationships between community associations and government representatives, exploring implications for infrastructural growth and the regulation of public space. The result will bring focus to the problems accompanying rapid urbanization, the dominant demographic trend of 20th-century Latin America, but will also reveal ameliorating possibilities hidden in its missed opportunities, uncovering the tissues of a civil society that can and in some places does connect the divided halves of the "fractured city."

Associated Products

Throes of Democracy: Brazil Since 1989 (Book)
Title: Throes of Democracy: Brazil Since 1989
Author: Bryan McCann
Abstract: In the 1980s, Brazil emerged from two decades of military dictatorship and embarked on an experiment in full democracy for the first time in the nation's history. Since then, Brazilians have sought to live up to the ideals of this experiment while negotiating dramatic economic and cultural transformations. In The Throes of Democracy, Bryan McCann gives a panoramic view of this process, exploring the relationships between the rise of the political left, the escalation of urban violence, the agribusiness boom and the spread of pentecostal evangelization. Brazil remains a land marked by deep inequality, but in the last two decades the structure of that inequality has changed substantially.
Year: 2009
Publisher: Zed Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-

Troubled Oasis: Bairro Peixoto and Morro dos Cabritos (Book Section)
Title: Troubled Oasis: Bairro Peixoto and Morro dos Cabritos
Author: Bryan McCann
Editor: Brodwyn Fischer
Abstract: This chapter from the edited volume analyzes the linked histories of two adjacent neighborhoods, one a favela—the Morro dos Cabritos—and the other a middle-class residential neighborhood—Bairro Peixoto. This is the most harmonious case of formal/informal relations in Rio de Janeiro—all similar pairs of neighborhoods have suffered greater violence and animosity. But even this relatively harmonious case reveals the adversarial dynamics that have shaped the city over the past forty years. The individual book manuscript analyzes the larger city, concentrating in greater depth on redemocratization from 1977-1993. This draft chapter begins with a description of present-day Morro dos Cabritos and Bairro Peixoto, then analyzes the shared history that has brought them to this point.
Year: 2012
Publisher: Duke University Press
Book Title: Cities from Scratch

“The Construction of Community in 1970s-1980s Rio de Janeiro,” Columbia University, Urban Studies of Latin America Seminar, February, 2008. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “The Construction of Community in 1970s-1980s Rio de Janeiro,” Columbia University, Urban Studies of Latin America Seminar, February, 2008.
Author: Bryan McCann
Abstract: Analysis of the Pastoral das Favelas and the Neighborhood Association Movement in 1970s Rio de Janeiro
Date: 2/16/2008

“Informality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro,” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “Informality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro,”
Abstract: Analysis of the ambiguous importance of legal irregularity in housing construction in Rio de Janeiro
Author: Bryan McCann
Date: 03/10/2010
Location: University of Maryland, College Park

Liberation Theology and Urban Reform in 1970s-1980s Rio de Janeiro (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Liberation Theology and Urban Reform in 1970s-1980s Rio de Janeiro
Abstract: Analysis of the Pastoral das Favelas and the Neighborhood Association Movement in 1970s Rio de Janeiro
Author: Bryan McCann
Date: 05/23/2007
Location: Northwestern University

Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Book)
Title: Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro
Author: Bryan McCann
Abstract: Beginning in the late 1970s, activists from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro challenged the conditions—such as limited access to security, sanitation, public education, and formal employment—that separated favela residents from Rio's other citizens. The activists built a movement that helped to push the nation toward redemocratization. They joined with political allies in an effort to institute an ambitious slate of municipal reforms. Those measures ultimately fell short of aspirations, and soon the reformers were struggling to hold together a fraying coalition. Rio was bankrupted by natural disasters and hyperinflation and ravaged by drug wars. Well-armed drug traffickers had become the new lords of the favelas, protecting their turf through violence and patronage. By the early 1990s, the promise of the favela residents' mobilization of the late 1970s and early 1980s seemed out of reach. Yet the aspirations that fueled that mobilization have endured, and its legacy continues to shape favela politics in Rio de Janeiro.
Year: 2014
Publisher: Duke University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0822355380
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

---