The assault on Rio's favelas and the growth of state repression in Brazil

The Alemão complex sprawls across three square kilometers and is located in the hills of Rio de Janeiro’s northern zone, only a few kilometers from the glamorous tourist haven in what is considered South America’s “beach capital.” Side-by-side with the luxury maintained principally for national and international tourism live some 300,000 people crowded into these hillside slums, a third of them surviving on incomes worth less than US$200 a month.

In terms of education, per capita income, life expectancy and health care, the conditions confronting the people living in these favelas are inferior to the conditions of life of some countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Human Development Index (HDI), used by the United Nations Development Program to evaluate the quality of life for different populations, places the Alemão complex at 0.587. The HDI for Gabon stands at 0.637 and that of Cape Verde at 0.722. In some European countries, the index is almost double that of Rio’s favelas: Norway (0.927); Belgium (0.923) and Sweden (0.923). Brazil as a whole stands 69th in the ranking of the world’s 177 nations in terms of HDI, with an index of 0.792.