Brasilien: Die Armen waren auf sich allein gestellt | bpb.de

Der Umgang mit den Favelas, den illegalen Siedlungen, habe sich gewandelt, so Alfredo Sirkis, ehemaliger Regionalsekretär von Metropolis für Südamerika und Karibik. In Brasilien sei lange Zeit weder von staatlicher noch von privater Seite in den Wohnraum für arme Familien investiert worden. Die Politik lautete einfach: "Take care of yourself". Die Lösung sei nun die Integration und Legalisierung der Favelas.

Alfredo Sirkis ist ehemaliger Regionalsekretär von Metropolis zuständig für die Region Südamerika und Karibik. Metropolis ist eine weltweite Vereinigung von Metropolen und Hauptstädten. Das Hauptanliegen ist es, durch Erfahrungsaustausch, Kooperation und Wissenstransfer die Entwicklung der Metropolenregionen zu steuern und so die Lebensbedingungen der Menschen in den Städten zu verbessern.

Das Interview wurde in englischer Sprache geführt.

Englische Textfassung:

The phenomenon of urban migration is the same in most countries of the south. After theSecond World War,we had 80 percent of the population in the countryside and now 60 years afterwards, we have exactly thecontrary: we have 80 percent of the population or even more maybe 83, 84 percent of the population living incities. This migration to the cities in the last 60 years or so, it generated the expansion of informal construction because there was no state or policy to provide poor people with houses, and there is an economic situation that does not stimulate the private sector to invest in poor income housing,they only invest in middle class or higher class housing.So, basically, the message that society and the state have sent to the poor during all these years is just "take care of yourself", and so they did. And the favelas are basically the result of the poor taking care of themselves in a rather chaotic way,with a lot of environmental consequences, but we have to deal with this some way. During the last hundred years, there were three distinct policies to deal with the problem. During the two dictatorships we had in the 20th century, there was the policy of trying to transfer these people to places in the peripheral areas ofthe city. Then, duringthe 80ies, the policy was exactly the opposite. The government at that time thought that the favelas were not the problem but the solution, which is wrong also because they cause serious environmental problems: deforestation of the hillsides, erosion, landslides, and there are of course victims of this kind of process. The policy of the city-government has been since the 90s to try to integrate these neighbourhoods into the formal city: working on the infrastructure, building sewage, drainage, nurseries, sportsequipment.A nd then trying to implement projects that are at the same time helpful from the environmental point of view: reconstitute the degrade denvironment, like forestation,garbage collection, etc. etc. and also generate income and part-time jobs for the people that live in the favelas. So we get only a virtous circle. Things improve from the environmental point of view, from the social point of view.

An finally the third point of the strategy is to legalize the existence, give the last phase of the building permit, which is the residence permit, and to name all the alleys inside the favelas, to give a number to each dwelling, so that effectively everyone has an adress. And then develop some very simple rules for constructing legally in the favelas, which basically is the frontier with the green areas, we call it ecoborder, maximum heights, respect for puplic space, and the minimum conditions for sanitation and light and breathing space and so on, and so create a special buliding code for this very particular reality.

• Kamera: Jörg Pfeiffer

• Schnitt: Jörg Pfeiffer

• Redaktion: Sonja Ernst

• Übersetzung: Martina Heimermann

• Produktion: 05.2005

• Spieldauer: 5 Min.

• hrsg. von: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

• Verfügbar bis: 31.12.2035