In fear of abandonment : slum life, community leaders and politics in Recife, Brazil

Abstract

This book sets out to contribute to the pursuit of ‘making nonpersons full human beings’ (Boff & Boff:1987:8). It provides insights in the lives of residents of the slum of “Chão de Estrelas” in Recife, Brazil. I argue that slum dwellers should not be mystified and misrecognised as “the other”, as different from “normal” citizens, because of their marginalised position. I show that the slum is, in fact, an eminently knowable world. This book presents how slum dwellers, directed by local lideres comunitarios, community leaders, strive for material and intangible resources and engage in utopian projects. I argue that the needs and aspirations of these people, who are at constant risk of being ignored, disconnected, and abandoned, emerge from their yearnings for recognition and connectivity, and a fear of abandonment. To understand this life in the slum, I focus on the ways slum dwellers attempt to realise their needs and aspirations, modes of operating which I call “slum politics”. Chapter 1 defines slum politics as grounded in the needs and aspirations of those who live in the margins. Drawing on the work of Oscar Lewis (1959, 1965), it analyses how life in the slum, through stigmatisation and a long history of marginalisation, is reproduced in ways that are fundamentally different from middle- and upper-class people. This difference, expressed in particular needs and aspirations, is not generated because slum dwellers are a different kind of people, but because have they been structurally segregated in the dominant political and economic order. This chapter documents how these particular needs and aspirations, although not solely held by slum dwellers, are more emphatically and urgently present in their lives in the margins of the political and economic order, and have material, intangible and utopian dimensions. Material needs exist, for instance, for money, food, and employment. Intangible, or social, needs can be viewed in attempts to establish connections to all kinds of people and to gain prestige. Utopian aspirations find their expression in slum dwellers’ cravings for solidarity, a better environment, and a desire to be connected to the world instead of being ignored by it. This chapter coins the concept of slum politics as the ongoing and never finished endeavour of slum dwellers of creating connections and possibilities which break off all the time. Slum politics, driven by attempts to be connected to the political and economic order, centres on the notion of connectivity, the intricate face-to-face relations between persons which need to be constantly maintained, and a fear abandonment, which means being forsaken and excluded by everybody. It includes practices in the realms of family life, making a living, and dreaming about the future. Chapter 2 provides a portrait of community leadership. It shows how community leaders are the main facilitators of slum politics, as they articulate and consolidate needs and aspirations of their fellow slum dwellers, which they, being slum dwellers 340 themselves, know well. Community leaders distinguish themselves from other slum dwellers by their talent to establish and maintain myriad connections, both to other slum dwellers and people outside the slum. Through these connections they attempt to create access to resources, to gain prestige, and arrive at recognition of their needs and those of their fellow slum dwellers. Community leaders also need their connections in order to make a living. They engage in the realm of electoral politics, looking for resources and prestige. Yet, their practices inevitably implicate them in particular tensions between opposing dimensions. They are confronted with the diverging expectations of fellow slum dwellers. This results in tensions of love for the community versus self-interest, and between the expectation that community leaders derive prestige and resources through electoral politics and the accusation that they are contaminated by electoral political interests. Slum dwellers are attracted by electoral politics’ image of opulence and possibilities beyond compare. Meanwhile, they distrust involvement in it, as it seemingly marginalises community issues in favour of assuming and maintaining public positions and making money. Chapter 3 introduces the community leaders Ovídio, Creuza, and Zezinho, their personalities, their projects, their operational styles, and their competition. It pays attention to how they articulate and consolidate needs and aspirations of their fellow slum dwellers, and operate between the tensions introduced in chapter 2. Each leader’s trajectory towards becoming a leader is presented, including their historical record of achievements and their thematic interests, comprising issues in which they specialise, which allow them to establish connections with people around specific topics. Three case studies are presented, one on each community leader, closely examining how they give shape to slum politics in their projects. Chapter 4 discusses how ordinary life in the slum is lived, through narrating histories of how four families in the slum organise their lives. These stories shed light on the way the economy is lived in a site where unemployment is high, self-employment often the only way to make a living, and allowances form a great part of the money coming in. I show a particular economic dynamic, where much of the money remains circulating within the slum, with a specific gendered labour division, an emphasis on connections, gift-giving, and a social use of money. In Chapter 5, I analyse how slum politics is intertwined with, but different from, electoral and themselves, know well. Community leaders distinguish themselves from other slum dwellers by their talent to establish and maintain myriad connections, both to other slum dwellers and people outside the slum. Through these connections they attempt to create access to resources, to gain prestige, and arrive at recognition of their needs and those of their fellow slum dwellers. Community leaders also need their connections in order to make a living. They engage in the realm of electoral politics, looking for resources and prestige. Yet, their practices inevitably implicate them in particular tensions between opposing dimensions. They are confronted with the diverging expectations of fellow slum dwellers. This results in tensions of love for the community versus self-interest, and between the expectation that community leaders derive prestige and resources through electoral politics and the accusation that they are contaminated by electoral political interests. Slum dwellers are attracted by electoral politics’ image of opulence and possibilities beyond compare. Meanwhile, they distrust involvement in it, as it seemingly marginalises community issues in favour of assuming and maintaining public positions and making money. Chapter 3 introduces the community leaders Ovídio, Creuza, and Zezinho, their personalities, their projects, their operational styles, and their competition. It pays attention to how they articulate and consolidate needs and aspirations of their fellow slum dwellers, and operate between the tensions introduced in chapter 2. Each leader’s trajectory towards becoming a leader is presented, including their historical record of achievements and their thematic interests, comprising issues in which they specialise, which allow them to establish connections with people around specific topics. Three case studies are presented, one on each community leader, closely examining how they give shape to slum politics in their projects. Chapter 4 discusses how ordinary life in the slum is lived, through narrating histories of how four families in the slum organise their lives. These stories shed light on the way the economy is lived in a site where unemployment is high, self-employment often the only way to make a living, and allowances form a great part of the money coming in. I show a particular economic dynamic, where much of the money remains circulating within the slum, with a specific gendered labour division, an emphasis on connections, gift-giving, and a social use of money. In Chapter 5, I analyse how slum politics is intertwined with, but different from, electoral and governmental politics. I follow Partha Chatterjee’s theorising on popular politics, conceptualised as those ‘contrary mobilisations’ that may have ‘transformative effects … among the supposedly unenlightened sections of the population’ (2004:49). Chatterjee distinguishes the politics of marginalised people from the politics of the state apparatus and the government, and argues that the former should not be understood as “pre-political” and backward, but as a politics with its own parameters and logics, ‘different from that of the elite’ (idem:39). My reservation to Chatterjee’s theorisations is that he presents popular politics as a residual category, derived from governmental politics. I argue instead that slum politics is not primarily reactive to or derived from governmental politics, but co-exists with it as it is constituted in the needs and aspirations of slum dwellers. Chapter 6, zeroing in on the 2004 municipal elections, shows the overlap between slum politics and electoral politics. It documents how electoral politics penetrates into the slum and contaminates slum politics. Community leaders employ the moment of the elections to negotiate with candidates to garner resources for the community and themselves. However, electoral politics entails the possible risk of steering away from community interests into issues of self-interested yearnings for power and money. Two case studies show attempts of community leaders, as political canvassers, to manoeuvre in the realm of electoral politics in such ways as to also make money, cater to needs and aspi

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