Cleaning up Rio’s slums

What's happening?

Rio de Janeiro's famous favelas, the hillside slums that have been home to its poorest residents since the 19th century, are changing. The Brazilian state had given them up to the rule of brutal drugs gangs such as the Red Command and Amigos dos Amigos and their vigilante alter egos, the militias' of ex-policemen who extort protection money. But in 2009 it began to reclaim them in a huge show of strength.

In one of the democratic world's boldest experiments, the city and state authorities have pacified' the biggest and most violent favelas first (Complexo de Alemo and Rocinha), using a massive police force backed by the army and navy. For the first time ever it has cleared the armed narcotraffickers and established a large civilian police presence in the favelas.

How did the favelas get so bad?

Rio's shanty towns sprang up in the late 19th century, when a big landowner split up his land into tiny plots to house demobbed soldiers. Vulnerable to deadly mud slides, the hillside slums have always been home to migrants from Brazil's rural northeast. But life in the favelas took a dramatic turn for the worse in the late 1980s and 1990s, in part due to Europeans' appetite for cocaine.

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As Colombian production spiralled during the ascendancy of Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, two Brazilian ports, Belm in the Amazon delta to the north, and Rio in the south, became the main transit ports for cocaine from South America to the US and Europe (the latter via west Africa).

The criminal gangs became more ruthless, more heavily armed, and more inclined to fight turf wars over profits. As the narcotraffickers' power grew, the corrupt police, along with local judges and politicians, took a cut of the profits, in return for keeping out of the way. The state retreated from the favelas leaving behind a toxic stew of extreme poverty and violence.

Is pacification working?

It's ongoing, motivated partly by the political will to make the city safe for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. To date, around 140 favelas have been pacified, but Rio has another 1,000 in the grip of the drug barons. On some measures, the Unidade de Policia Pacificadora programme has been a great success.

The homicide rate in pacified favelas has plunged by 80%, and the policies are popular, both in the favelas and in rich Rio. On the downside, with the overlords gone there has been a dramatic jump in other crimes, notably robbery, domestic violence and rape. Some favelas are seeing improvements to schools and other facilities, but many remain without electricity or a sewage system.

Hasn't all this been tried before?

Not on the same scale. In the 1970s, the military dictatorship attempted to eradicate the favelas, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to move away into gleaming new public housing projects, such as Cidade de Deus (City of God), the area whose history and gang culture became the subject of the famous film of the same name in 2002.

But poor public planning, insufficient investment and drug gang violence meant that Cidade de Deus and projects like it became modern favelas. The process is known as favelizao, or favelisation a recognition that for up to 12 million Brazilians, living in overcrowded slum housing has become the norm.

How many favelas are there?

Many of the current favelas have their origins in the 1970s, as a construction boom in Rio drew in a fresh wave of poor immigrants. In 1969, there were approximately 300 favelas. Today, on some counts, there are more than 1,000. Since demarcations between favelas are arbitrary and shifting, a more meaningful statistic is the proportion of Rio's population that live in the slums. In 1950, it was 7%; today it is one in five 1.4 million people.

Are they all very poor?

Not anymore. There's been a surge in the numbers of people living in favelas but also a dramatic increase in those categorised as middle-class. According to Sao Paulo-based research group Instituto Data Popular, 56% of residents are Classe C', or middle-class workers. That's a big rise from 29% in 2001. According to the study, Rio's favelas have an economy worth 13bn reais ($6.1bn). And that spending power is changing the face of the favelas.

In November, one of Brazil's best-known retail chains, Casas Bahia, opened its first store in Rocinha, a community of 69,000, which sprawls above the city's wealthiest beachside neighbourhoods and was pacified in 2011. The firm was drawn by improved security, rising incomes and a more secure credit market. It may be one of the first; it certainly won't be the last.

Mobilising the favelas

The most visible outward symbol of the pacification programme is the new cable-car system (telerifico) that now snakes for over two miles up the hillside over the vast Complexo de Alemo favela. The 152-gondola system was designed to give favela residents access to all parts of the complex, and the city, zipping them from one end to the other in 16 minutes. But cynics say it has also become a symbol of how pacification is inevitably leading to gentrification, as the rich buy up the best "reclaimed" land and house prices boom, especially in the best-positioned favelas, such as Vidigal and Rocinha. The cable-car affords stupendous vistas of the city and coast below, and has rapidly become the city's second-most popular tourist attraction after the giant Cristo Redentor statue.