Favela

For other uses, see Favela (disambiguation).

Rocinha is the largest hill favela in Rio de Janeiro (as well as in Brazil and the second largest slum and shanty town in Latin America). Although Favelas are found in urban areas throughout Brazil, many of the more famous ones exist in Rio.
Rio's Santa Teresa neighborhood features favelas (right) contrasted with more affluent houses (left). The statue Christ the Redeemer, shrouded in clouds, is in the left background.

Favela (Portuguese: [fɐˈvɛlɐ]) is an umbrella name for several types of impoverished neighborhoods in Brazil. The term, which means slum or ghetto, was first used in the Slum of Providência in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was built by soldiers who had lived under the favela trees in Bahia and had nowhere to live following the Canudos War. Some of the last settlements were called bairros africanos (African neighborhoods). Over the years, many former enslaved Africans moved in. Even before the first favela came into being, poor citizens were pushed away from the city and forced to live in the far suburbs.

Most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to cities. Unable to find places to live, many people found themselves in favelas.[1] Census data released in December 2011 by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed that in 2010, about 6 percent of the Brazilian population lived in favelas and other slums. Favelas are located in 323 of the 5,565 Brazilian municipalities.[2]

  1. ^ Ribeiro, Darcy (1995). O Povo Brasileiro [The Brazilian People] (in Brazilian Portuguese). Companhia das Letras. p. 4. ISBN 978-8571644519.
  2. ^ "Censo 2010: 11,4 milhões de brasileiros (6,0%) vivem em aglomerados subnormais" [2010 Census: 11.4 million Brazilians (6.0%) live in subnormal agglomerations] (in Brazilian Portuguese). IBGE. 21 December 2011. Archived from the original on 30 June 2020.