2
Inside Heliópolis
São Paulo’s metropolitan area, formed by 39 municipalities, concentrates 596,479 homes in different favelas, as surveyed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), based on the demographic census of 2010. That number represents 19% of the total number of residences in Brazilian favelas. There are 2,162,268 people living "at those subnormal agglomerates”, according to the distinct and no less derogatory terminology used by the general public to describe favelas. Only in the municipality of São Paulo there would be 1,020 favelas, where 1,280,400 people live in 355,756 homes.
This data, however, is not the same reflected by the Municipal Office of Housing of São Paulo, which considers the existence of 1,643 favelas occupying a total area of 24 square kilometers.
Heliópolis is embedded in that universe of inaccuracies, considered the second largest favela of São Paulo just behind Paraisópolis, both in the southern region of the city.
In an area of approximately one million square meters, property of the State Housing Company of São Paulo (Cohab), Heliópolis is located in the District of Sacomã, in the region of Ipiranga, traditionally linked to industry and commerce. The Ipiranga region is historically an important place of passage and transit of goods. Since the mid-17th century, people heading for the Baixada Santista (which connects to the Atlantic Ocean and the city of Santos) used the area as a travel route and it already showed its current unifying character of large inflows to the city's economy.
With the arrival of the railway to the locality, almost at the end of the 19th century, many industries in the region visualized a good opportunity to expand their production, settling in the neighborhood. Growth in the region of the so-called ABC, which includes the cities of São André, São Bernardo and São Caetano, area of the greater factory worker occupation of Brazil, also contributed to the strengthening of this industrial characteristic of the southern region of São Paulo, of which the Ipiranga is part.
With the economic crisis of the 1970's, many industries left the region in search of lower taxes and their lands were occupied by businesses, services, and more recently, by major real estate development projects.
Some important access routes are within the limits of the area: Avenida Juntas Provisorias and Avenida Almirante Delamare, near the boundary with the municipality of São Caetano do Sur and Avenida Anchieta, the most important connection with the Baixada Santista. Among the main roads are Rua Silva Castro and Rua Cônego Xavier, and the most famous of them, the Estrada das Lágrimas which divides the area. It is said that it was given the name Estrada das Lágrimas (Road of Tears) because families would gathered there to say goodbye to relatives and friends leaving for the port of Santos, crying under a large fig tree, known as the Árvore das Lágrimas (Tree of Tears). This historical tree is still there, lost and anonymous amid the concrete and the brick houses that have been crowding the Estrada.
For the residents of Heliópolis, these streets are fundamental for traveling to other neighborhoods in the city. With no public transportation in the narrow passages of the locality, people are forced to use only the bus stops located along those roads. Opened in 2007, the Sacomã Terminal, which also serves Heliópolis Hospital, became an alternative to transportation of the residents of Heliópolis. Buses with destination to the city center pass by there.
The extensive area corresponding to the locality of Heliópolis is divided into 14 parcels (glebas), named by letters from A to N. Gleba K, is the most populated with 35 thousand people; Gleba N has 7.5 thousand residents and Gleba A, 7 thousand, according to the municipality of São Paulo, but there is no certainty in this data. Originally, Gleba is the name given to the parcel before being subdivided into streets and lots. Neighbors, therefore, adopt the term Nucleus (Núcleo) which has nothing to do with the institutional administrative division, to designate the different areas of the locality. That terminology was created in 1982, by the Committee of Residents (which later would form the Union of Nuclei, Associations, and Societies of Residents of Heliópolis and São João Clímaco, UNAS) with the purpose of organizing the area. According to the local population, Heliópolis is divided into ten nuclei: Mina, Flamengo, Viracopos, Lagoa, São Francisco, Portuguesa, Imperador, Heliópolis, Sacomã and PAM. The names kept a close relation with the daily life of the residents. For example, the old soccer field named Portuguesa became later what is now called Núcleo Portuguesa/Portuguesinha.
A hypothesis for the emergence of the first nuclei in Heliópolis is directly related to the dynamics of occupation of idle land in the region, as well as the construction of houses. In the areas corresponding to the soccer fields were performed the first mutirões (collaborative working events, very similar to the "Mingas" which take place in the island of Chiloé, in the South of Chile) for the construction of houses, and the names were given by the residents.
According to the already mentioned Ariovaldo Malaquías{13}, the mutirão is a collective action which constitutes the identity of the residents of Heliópolis, the measure that breaks with the individualism typical of the relationships established in the metropolis. It is through that work, generator of solidarity and trust among residents, that the possibility of permanence in the place is created: building his own home, the resident is compelled to a symbolic corpus of collective living.
It is through the relationships that are formed from the mutirões that lead to a political understanding among the residents, strengthening neighborhood associations.
To Malaquías{14}, as well as to some residents of Heliópolis, the ties between neighborhoods are strengthened with these joint actions, easily generating social bonding, which does not happen with those who bought shacks or houses already built. According to this author, living in the favela requires increased perception of collective action, given that "in formally organized neighborhoods residents seem to keep some distance from each other, because in those localities property is admittedly private." {15}
In the case of the mutirões, it is relevant to note that just like the mingas chilotas, the personal benefit is associated with the collective benefit. Also, the ties between residents many times goes back to the memories of the land of origin, as there are common the cases of families who recently arrived from the North and Northeast of the country (Pernambuco, Piauí and Ceará, etc.), establishing close in proximity to each other according to relationships created in their native land.
The first 'official' mutirão for popular housing was authorized in 1987 by the public authority, after years of negotiation between the residents and official agencies. It was financed by the Special Office of Community Affairs (SEAC), with money audited and administered by the Pro-Favelas Community Housing Society, a private entity founded in 1987 contracted by the Cohab".{16}
In 1984, when negotiations with the Cohab began, the principal claims were the possibility for families to build their own homes; the release of water and electricity for the homes and especially the ownership of the land by means of a deed. Negotiations did not go well, leading the Cohab to build a barbed wire fence around the area of Heliópolis in order to prevent the settling of new families and occupations. Later, the fence was removed by the Sabesp (The company responsible for the water supply, collection and treatment of wastewater in the State of São Paulo) and by the residents.
The housing policy implemented by the municipality of São Paulo in 1986 continued to be associated with the constructions of the Cohab done by contractors, not leaving room for the popular mutirões largely practiced in Heliópolis unofficially. However, in 1987 after all the pressure, the mutirão project was approved. The goal was the construction of two hundred houses in the areas of the Portuguesa and Flamengo amateur soccer fields, as well as in the areas of Lagoa and Dom Pedro. According to accounts from residents the mutirão was an initiative that came "from above to below", in other words, from the Government to the population, which residents accepted because they did not have many options for the construction of their homes. Residents demanded to be granted lots in areas outside of risk so they could build their own homes, and in response the Federal Government and the Municipality imposed the mutirão as a form of political propaganda." {17}
Residents who participated in those mutirões had a series of issues with the public authorities responsible for the aid to constructions (Cohab, SEAC and Pro-Favelas) losing much needed materials and technical assistance. During the administration of Luiza Erundina, between 1989 and 1993, there was a variation in how the mutirão was used, as it occurred, for example, in the area of Lagoa, where it was used not only in the construction of houses, but also in the implementation of the sewer system network and the paving of streets. In that mutirão, twenty seven - four bedroom apartments were built. At the same time, in a mutirão at the Núcleo Heliópolis, the first to be occupied by temporary residents, twenty-seven houses were built. The mutirão of Mina, in 1992, counted with the participation of sixty residents for the implementation of a sewer system and the pavement of the street.
Despite the achievements and the possibility of participating directly in the construction of their homes, the lack of regulation in the ownership of the land always represented a high threat to the residents. The regularization of the land in Heliópolis still remained in process in 2014. Along the ethnographic study we did starting in 2010, we found an intensification in the use of the space available for the construction of houses in the favela. Stories of residents still point out that at that time period Heliópolis did not have any more vacant land available for the construction of homes. The remaining land, such as the old soccer fields that were occupied by residents long time ago, and given the necessity to build new homes, many of them built rooms above the existing houses originating to what is commonly known as "puxadinho".{18}
Real estate speculation is a reality in the area: "homes, land and shacks are sold at the price dictated by the external market. (...) Today, it will be very difficult for a newcomer to have the financial resources to acquire a place in Heliópolis"{19}. Malaquías affirms that already in 1992, the buyers of land and houses in Heliópolis were residents of other neighborhoods in São Paulo, who had some savings and did not consider that there was risk of eviction for families - even though the area was not yet regularized.
"Real estate companies sold houses and commercial buildings; the value is measured by the proximity of the location to paved roads and the infrastructure presented." {20}
Some older residents imagined that with the real estate market speculation it could be possible to sell their house and return to their homeland with money.
When the lack of available land, the explosion of Heliópolis, in other words, its defining expansion occurred as a result of an "implosion" within the favela, more precisely, by vertical growth; homes with more than one-story were built by the families themselves, rising as buildings mounted on top of each other in a precarious balance, which do not collapse only because they are located on tectonic plates of very low seismic risk.
These vertical constructions tend to be occupied by members of a typical modern nuclear family (parents and children) but particularly combined with features of an extended family (other relatives living together) that rents or buys from other residents in the favela. Different spaces are used for the construction of new apartments above houses that can reach three stories, creating agglutinated areas with buildings so close to each other, that leave only a small passage of transit that can meander up to 150 meters into the heart of the favela, creating large areas of continuous facades where the sunlight stopped touching years ago.
In Heliópolis, street names originate as an important basis for socio-economic inclusion, which incubates inside to give expression to the need of the residents of having a fixed and formal address, which will help them get employment, a bank account, or legal documents. It also helped that the Government, which considered the place irregular, never took the initiative, but the merit of this data by itself lies in its urban micro-economic basis.
On the process of designation of the street names, Malaquías (1994) recounts: "(...) meetings were held where residents voted for the name of streets and passages. Thus were born the streets: Alegría, Pernambuco, Ceará, da Mina, Praça Dom Pedro, João Miranda, Miguel Borges Leal, Lili, etc. (...). After the deliberation of the name, someone would paint a plaque and placed in the public space; the street was baptized." {21}
According to Cruz Soares, the names of the streets in the locality can be traced to facts, moments or individuals rescued by the memory of the residents. "Rua da Mina, Rua Paraíba, due to the origins of the first settlers in that area, or Rua Heliópolis, which is in proximity to the Heliópolis Hospital. These are streets displaying meanings and feelings constructed and deconstructed collectively over the years. Rua União, the place where the first settlers held meetings. Other names indicate the wishes of the community, such as the Rua da Paz e Rua da Alegría. Also, there are names that honor leadership, such as Rua João Miranda, leader and former President of the UNAS (...)”{22}.
A few years ago, the public authority confirmed many of those street names, and gave them official plates.