BRAZILIAN FAVELAS IN THE MEDIA

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 4 Oct 2009

Martim S Silveira

A History of Stereotyping

1. Introduction

“Favela” is the generic name by which slums and shantytowns are known in Brazil. They are a national social phenomenon, spread throughout all the biggest urban centers in the country, inhabited by some of the poorest Brazilian families, and receiving little or no attention from the State in what concerns infrastructure and basic services.

The term “favela” itself has a bad connotation. In Brazil, besides indicating the poor neighborhoods, it is used pejoratively to suggest a “run-down” place or an “unpleasant or disorganized situation” (Houaiss & Villar, 2001). As an extension, the favelas are an easy target for stereotyping, being linked to poverty, ignorance, sickness, insalubriousness and especially to crime. This distortion of meaning ends up creating a heavy stigma over its people, who face double social exclusion: they not only do not enjoy full citizenship, that is, are not granted access to State services; but also are deemed as marginal, standing apart from “regular” society.

It cannot be denied that favelas are areas plagued with daily examples of direct violence, as it is statistically shown or seen daily in the news. However, the common knowledge that associates favela residents to criminals fails to differentiate the vast majority of common citizens living there from those somehow connected to crime. It also fails to see the links between criminals coming from these areas and the many better-off bosses from “traditional families”, who command large, organized criminal groups, and recruit their “soldiers” from the lower economic layers of Brazilian society.

Finally and most importantly, this stereotypical view fails to acknowledge that direct violence in Brazil affects, more than anyone else, the same poor (and especially black and mulatto) working people who live in the favelas. As observed by a United Nations Development Programme report, those are the typical crime victims in Brazil (UNPD, 2005).

The distorted ideas used to describe the favelas and its people are not, nevertheless, a recent phenomenon. They result from a long process of marginalization by the State, by successive governments and by the wealthier social classes. And, throughout History, one of the main means for the generation, spread and maintenance of the ideas that associate the shantytowns to crime has been the country’s press.

By basing its coverage in the mechanisms of what Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (2005, 2007) classify as “War Journalism” – that is, a linear coverage that only narrates events without considering their context; that prioritize official sources, and diminishes common citizens; that credits violence to an alleged inborn barbarism of those who commit it; and that can only understand disputes in a dualistic manner, as a fight between “good” and “evil” –, the media in Brazil has been helping to perpetuate the stereotypes about the favelas.

This essay precisely intends to demonstrate this equation by analyzing the Brazilian press coverage on the favelas and their people through the Peace Journalism perspective, as defended by Lynch and McGoldrick (2005, 2007).

To this intent, we will first present the context of favelas in Brazil, showing their characteristics, describing their residents, and offering a brief historical overview. We will also take a quick look into the Brazilian media, approaching its historical relation with the slums. For a more thorough analysis of this relationship, we will take as an example the coverage of the February 2nd, 2009 violent confrontations in the Paraisópolis favela (the second biggest in the city of São Paulo).

First, we will seek to highlight the vocabulary used to mention and describe the inhabitants of this shantytown and to report the confrontations. We will also try to identify the framings and contradictions of the press coverage. Later on, we will point out the general lines that guide the present relationship between media and favelas in Brazil, showing how a biased and unbalanced depiction of the shantytowns contributes to the maintenance of their negative image, which constitutes a clear example of cultural violence as proposed by Galtung (1996:2-8).

As a clarification, it is also important to mention that we are responsible for the translation to English of all citations from Brazilian sources found in this essay.

2. Context

2.1. The Favelas

What formally defines a favela is that the houses in it are built without legal authorization, which means that its residents have no ownership neither of the building itself nor of the area it occupies. Informally, though, they are recognized as any set of humble houses built without planning, and having little or no access to basic public services such as electricity, tap water or sewing system.

Favelas vary greatly in size, being formed by some wooden shacks where a few dozen families live; or by countless blocks of brick houses surrounded by paved streets, housing up to hundreds of thousands of people. Many are found in an inaccessible outskirt of a major city, miles away from downtown. Others, in areas where normally no one else would build, such as hillsides, banks of polluted creeks, swamps or flood areas, spots around city dumps or the space under bridges.

However, in what constitutes one of Brazil’s major social paradoxes, favelas can also be found in the heart of traditional (sometimes top-class) neighborhoods – surrounded by roads with heavy traffic, shops and banks, which provide the area a façade of “near normality”. But this façade hides a network of winding alleys where humble wooden, tin or exposed brick houses are built, and grow vertically for lack of space.

Nowadays, some favelas have minimal basic infrastructure and legal status, receiving the same benefits of a regular neighborhood, such as street addresses and postal service, pavement and health care centers. Paradoxically, it is also possible to find “mansions” among the humble houses, mainly because of their owners’ financial progress and the legalization of their properties, a measure local governments sometimes try as a way of social inclusion.

The general picture, nevertheless, is desolating. With the growth of industry and service sectors in Brazil in the past two decades, there has been an increase in the migration flow from rural areas to the cities. This movement was not followed by policies to absorb this population into the labor market, which increased the illegal occupation of new areas lacking infrastructure, and consequently the appearance of new favelas (Costa Mattos, 2007).

2.2. People in the Favelas

In general, the poorest layers of Brazil’s population inhabit the shantytowns. Many people are migrants from the country’s worst-off areas in search of work in the major cities. They mostly had no access to proper education, and either have no formal jobs or work in jobs that require no training. Their average income is considerably inferior to those found in other areas.

In 2007 the Brazilian government was forced to review the official figure of the inhabitants of the shantytowns due to an error in the statistical model chosen to count them – elevating the figure from 6.4 to 12.3 million people, spread out in 3.2 million households (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009b). At the same time, the UN had published a study that set the population of Brazilian slums in 52.3 million people in 2005 (UN-Habitat, 2006).

2.3. The Origins of the Favela

Brazilian favelas are a complex phenomenon born as a consequence of many factors throughout history. In its origins, however, we can find two main reasons: the abolition of slavery in 1888 (what makes Brazil the last country in the world to have eradicated it); and the industrial growth of the country’s main cities at the end of the 19th century, especially Rio de Janeiro at the time capital of the country (Costa Mattos, 2007).

It is necessary to consider that the abolition of slavery was not as benevolent as it may sound, since the governmental act that ended it was not followed by measures aiming at social inclusion or at least offering a decent living to former slaves – in its majority blacks brought from Africa or born under ‘ownership’ of plantation owners. Thus, this huge population was thrown in the streets, leaving the former slaves on their own, without legal means to insert themselves into society, get a proper job, earn a dignified living or be able to buy or build their own dwellings.

This situation was combined with the attraction exerted by the fast-growing industry in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the end of the 19th century. Since these urban centers did not have the capacity to accommodate new inhabitants, the only alternative was for them to occupy the outskirts of these cities, what resulted in the disorderly growth of favelas, and began their history of abandon and repression by the authorities.

In the past decades, after the exponential growth of Brazil’s biggest cities, the favelas have been absorbed into the formal urban core paving the way to paradoxical pictures of skyscrapers sharing the landscape with shacks.

2.4. The Brazilian Media

On the other side of the equation that this essay wishes to analyze we find the Brazilian media. The biggest names in the country are large-sized, family-run companies that are not negotiated in the stock market.

The biggest nationwide communications group is the Globo Network, which runs the country’s richest and most popular TV channel (TV Globo), a nationally influential newspaper (O Globo), the Globo radio station, the weekly magazine Época, the popular web news portal Globo.com, and countless other broadcasting operations in Brazil and abroad.

The second biggest conglomerate is the Abril Group, owner of a variety of printed magazines including Veja, the most influential weekly publication. Apart from these there is also the São Paulo-based Folha Group – which owns the biggest daily paper in the country (Folha de S. Paulo) and its online version (Folha Online); the biggest financial newspaper (Valor Econômico); and the biggest web news portal in Brazil (UOL). Directly competing for the national market is also the Estado Group, which prints the influential newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo (Associação Nacional de Jornais, 2007).

The communications sector has been facing a severe financial crisis for years now, with huge debts and bankruptcies. In 2002, a change in the Brazilian Constitution allowed foreign investors to own up to 30% of media companies. That was forbidden before since it was considered a strategic sector. Later, arguing that only large amounts of money would save national media groups from the crisis, preventing them from being sold to foreign groups (Observatório da Imprensa, 2003), then newly-elected President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva prepared, in 2004, a R$ 5 billion (approximately US$ 2,5 billion) line of credit to the sector, without further discussion in parliament. This agreement created discomfort about the media’s dependence on the State (Jornal da Universidade, 2002).

2.5. The Relationship Between the Media and the Favelas

The relationship between the press and slum residents is marked by a long history of stereotyping. As early as 1909, one of the major newspapers in Rio de Janeiro wrote about one of the first shantytowns in the city:

“It is the place where most of the thugs in our land dwell, and precisely for this reason – for being a hideout for people willing to kill for any or even no reason –, they do not have any respect for the Law and the Police”. (Costa Mattos, 2007)

According to Costa Mattos, the article depicted very well the predisposition of the media towards slum dwellers. “The social perception of urban violence in favelas comes from a long time ago, as well as the stigma imposed on its inhabitants” (2007). Chalhoub (1996:22) clearly defines the perceptions in Brazil at that time: “The poor carry the vices, vices produce evildoers, evildoers are dangerous to society; connecting both ends in this chain, we have the notion that the poor are, by definition, dangerous”.

Costa Mattos (2007) also observes that the negative representations of the favelas “originated in a campaign developed by Rio de Janeiro media outlets – at that time immersed in the ideals of progress and civilization –, with the intent to homogenize society”. According to the press’ own logic, the favelas “inspired views that went from disorder to savagery, [and] did not fit in the modern and ‘Europeanized’ city planned by the dominant classes”.

3. A Case Study

The same perception about the favelas is still valid in today’s press. To observe the persistence of this stereotypical view, we will analyze the media coverage of a February 2nd, 2009 event in São Paulo, where a group of people clashed with the police inside the Paraisópolis favela – the second largest in the city, with a population of 80,000 living in a 0.8 sq km area.

At dusk, protesters blocked an avenue and a few streets around the shantytown with burning tires, wood planks and rubbish. Police were called to unblock the roads what led to violent clashes. The confrontation lasted a few hours, and ended with the removal of the barricades and the announcement by the São Paulo State government (which controls the Police) that hundreds of policemen would be deployed in the area for an undetermined period, doing ostensive patrolling, in a rather unusual action in the daily life of the biggest Brazilian city.

The first written reports of the events began in the online versions of the main media outlets. Relying on sparse details about the situation, apart from those descriptions that the police itself would provide, they highlighted from the beginning: “residents (…) have burned cars, and blocked traffic in the area” (Estadao.com.br, 2009a). Mentions of “residents” allegedly involved in the protest and of “bad traffic conditions” could also be read in other websites, and were reproduced in the printed versions the next day.

Also on the next day reports started to give explanations of the demonstration. There were many versions: “[protesters] are unhappy with the death of a neighbor, who was said to be a decent person”, “two policemen [who claimed to ‘own’ the favela] (…) could be the main targets of the protest”, “the demonstration [could] be related to the change of the [local police] commander” (O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a), “[the demonstration was] the reaction of a few punks connected to crime, and ran out of control” (Jornal da Tarde, 2009a).

Despite the many versions, the most accepted reason for the February 2nd events has been the one the police provided: the protest would have been commanded by the local drug lord as a revenge for the death of another drug dealer and the arrest of his brother-in-law (O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a; Veja São Paulo, 2009; Folha de S. Paulo, 2009c). Thus, the police believed to have reasons to affirm that the protest had been “planned in advance”.

All reports on the following day in TV channels, newspapers and websites showed explicit videos and pictures of the confrontations, describing thoroughly the weapons used by both sides in the clashes. A news piece by Folha de S. Paulo described in detail the strategy used by the police and the number of policemen, horses and even dogs employed to march into the slum.

The reports would show an increasing number of people harmed until they seemed to agree on four policemen shot, but at odds insofar as the number of residents hurt by fire arms – some (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a) mentioned only one, while others (Veja São Paulo, 2009; O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009b) cited two.

The main focus, however, was the police’s response to the events. With the headline “After the riot police begin ‘choking’ in the favela’, Folha de S. Paulo, the biggest Brazilian newspaper, quoted the Public Security State secretary, who promised to repress new protests, and arrest the culprits. The operation triggered by the police was called “Saturation”, while the protest was referred to as an “urban war” (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009f). Besides, the press unanimously called the operation an “occupation” of Paraisópolis.

Demonstrators were indiscriminately recognized as “residents”, whereas a few articles went further, calling them “criminals” (Veja São Paulo, 2009). The protest became “rioting”, “public order disrespect”, “disorder”, “acts of violence”, “moments of horror and fear” (Veja São Paulo, 2009; Estadao.com.br, 2009a). It was “scary”, according to a Veja São Paulo reporter.

But media outlets sought to enrich their coverage with articles that tried to explain and describe Paraisópolis and its people. They mentioned that the slum is located “in an unemployment-plagued area” in São Paulo, and provided data that indicated the low rate of education and low average income in the favela (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009d). Others pointed out that there were “low-class bars, many of them” in the shantytown (Veja São Paulo, 2009).

At the same time some reports focused on the favela’s wealthier neighbors. “To remove it [the favela] from there is impossible. I would like to, but that is not realistic”, said one of them, who classified the protests as “traumatizing”. Another said to favor blocking the streets in rich areas in order to prevent access to those who did not live there. Articles also mentioned that real estate advertisements would digitally erase the image of the shantytown from photos of the landscape of future residential properties to be built in the area (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009g).

Throughout the coverage sources of information were primarily members of the police or of the Public Security State Secretary. Most of the articles failed to present statements from Paraisópolis residents. When it happened they would quote either the president of the favela neighborhood association or anonymous persons who, according to them, chose not to reveal their names (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009d, 2009h; Estadao.com.br, 2009a).

On the third and fourth days following the clashes some journalists mentioned that the police did not progress in their investigation of the reasons of the occurrence despite the apparent certainty of the initial explanations. “The police admit to be back to zero”, highlighted Jornal da Tarde, claiming that the failure was due to the “Code of Silence” shared by the residents. They would refuse to denounce the culprits (Jornal da Tarde, 2009b).

At the same time reports stated that the four policemen who were involved in the shooting of a resident the day before the demonstrations would be removed. Articles quoted the lawyer of a few Paraisópolis dwellers stating that those agents were “a bunch of killers” (Jornal da Tarde, 2009b). They also quoted anonymous sources saying that the locals complained about the violence of those policemen (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009i; Folhaonline.com.br, 2009). Reports barely touched on the “gossip” about a resident who went missing – “an honest working man” – who supposedly had witnessed the shooting of a neighbor the day before, the crime that would have triggered the protests (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a).

On Saturday, February 7th the coverage abruptly ended with the two biggest newspapers in São Paulo (Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo) failing to present a single report on the matter. There was no mention at all of the continuing police presence in Paraisópolis, its residents’ everyday life under the operation, or the fact that police corruption or abuse of power might have caused the February 2nd events.

4. Critical Analysis

A closer look at the Paraisópolis events show us a few general lines in the journalistic coverage that are not restricted only to the February 2nd protest. On the contrary, these are issues based on the same framing pattern of the favelas and its people; a pattern that, as Costa Mattos (2006) points out, has transmitted, reinforced and perpetuated the stereotypes about shantytown residents for over a century. Comparing the favelas to an “alien territory” inside the Brazilian territorial unity and relegating their peoples to a condition of second-class citizenship is a clear example of cultural violence.

Among the patterns observed in the coverage here analyzed and in the general attitude of the press towards the favelas are the following:

Immediate link between residents, protesters and drug trafficking:

From the beginning, media outlets do not hesitate to headline that “residents” are responsible for the protest – which, important to mention, is also qualified by countless adjectives that immediately identify it as a contravention. Even if there has not been a single arrest or person claiming responsibility for the acts, the origin of the demonstrators is in the shantytown, according to the logic of the articles.

Even more serious is the confusing quest for an explanation, which points everywhere but ends up converging to an official version from the police: the protest was planned in advance and ordered by the PCC (acronym for First Command of the Capital, a powerful, organized criminal group that acts in São Paulo State).

By immediately validating police sources – who afterwards ended up contradicting themselves, admitting to be lost, and investigating even their own members’ possible corruption as a cause of the protest –, the media created a nefarious demonstrators-residents-drug dealers connection, and followed it unquestioningly until the end.

It is the same logic behind Brazilians’ average perception of the shantytowns, not only in the Paraisópolis case but also as a general rule repeated in the press since the 19th century (Costa Mattos, 2006).

It is also important to note that explanations linking the protest to a response by “organized crime-led thugs” to the shooting of a resident invalidated beforehand its legitimacy, because the referred person was “but a thief” (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a; O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a; Veja São Paulo, 2009).

Lack of active voice to favela dwellers:

One characteristic of the favela-related articles is the almost complete absence of statements by favela residents or lack of legitimacy when they are present. When quoted, they appear as anonymous sources or individuals who give only their first names out of fear of being punished, and provide confusing, irrelevant or empty affirmations relegated to a secondary plan in the reports. Worse still, sometimes the same loose statements are manipulated in the story to corroborate the official explanation of the facts, as seen in Folha de S. Paulo (2009a).

Every rank in the police and in the government has distinguished space in the articles, offering statements that make the headlines. The problem is that it leaves out the people who experience the conflict and the violence in their own skin (Lynch & McGoldrick, 2007:255). And, as Lederach notes, (1997:84) “(…) [these] people are overlooked and disempowered either because they do not represent ‘official’ power (…), or because they are written off as biased and too personally affected by the conflict”.

Dehumanization of the favelas and their people:

News stories presented by the São Paulo media address very few topics: the violence in the February 2nd confrontations and their connection to crime; the inconvenience of the clashes to “public order” and to the richer neighbors; and the authorities’ response to the events. Nevertheless, the perception of how the happenings in Paraisópolis affected the lives of the local people has been conspicuously absent – that is, the human side of the story.

While weaponry, violence, police strategies and traffic problems in the area were described in detail, there were only a couple of lines about the difficulties faced by favela residents during the protest. On that day one of them was shot while waiting and looking for his son at the roof of his house. Public transportation companies discontinued bus service fearing that their vehicles would be destroyed in the confrontations, forcing thousands to walk back home. When these people finally got to the shantytown the police blocked their passage as their families, under fire, waited inside for the clashes to finish.

On the following days there were reports of arbitrary beatings of residents allegedly stopped and searched up to six times on the same day by the police that looked in vain for the culprits. These are some of the stories of people who lived the violence during those days – and possibly in many other times.

They all were left unheard because there is a tacit agreement about the supposition that violence is normal in the life of a favela, which in turn is a nuisance to the “normal” life of the city. Conversely, whole articles were dedicated to the traumas of the rich neighbors who watched the confrontations comfortably on their living room TV.

Besides, by not considering at all the possibility of presenting a context for the events in Paraisópolis, the idea the press instills is that only “barbaric” –and therefore inhumane—people could cause such savagery. However, Lynch and McGoldrick remind us that those “are essentialist explanations for violence. They come with a built-in suggestion that the perpetrators are just ‘like that’, acting out attitudes and hatreds that come welling up from within” (2005:64, italics in the original).

Focus on gratuitous violence and its justification:

As usual, the reports did a great job in describing in detail the weapons, the barricades, the fighting, the way people were hurt in the protest, and the ensuing reaction by the State, many times using police jargon – that is, all the different aspects of the violence. They insisted in raising the number of persons harmed, and after the counting stabilized they persisted in constantly repeating the information. But one could note that references to people hurt in the shantytown disappeared from the reports, the number of injured policemen making the headlines. Example: “Locals fight the police in favela, three officers shot” (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a).

Besides, there was not even an agreement on the number of injured people (Folha talked about four, while O Estado and Veja named six). Apart from that, they became merely a figure mentioned on the last sentence. There was no concern in following up the cases or the personal histories behind each victim, what would have humanized the statistics.

As Lynch and McGoldrick (2005, 2007) note, the attitude of only listening to official sources legitimates the militaristic, operational solutions that use force as the only possible and acceptable way to deal with the situation, when it is known that it is a fallacy. Nonviolent methods are not only possible; they have been applied successfully in many similar situations, as the work of 54 NGOs in the same Paraisópolis shows.

Dualism:

The journalistic coverage of the events in Paraisópolis was based on the simplistic, dualistic division of the world: “Good vs. Evil”. The “regular city” vs. the favela; rich vs. poor; police vs. bad guys; order vs. riot. It is as if the February 2nd events could be summarized as a confrontation between the “Army of Order” against the “Army of Crime”, the latter being the favela dwellers.

However, the parties involved in this analysis (as the same reports inadvertently concede) go far beyond “demonstrators vs. authorities”. They involve favela residents, small-time criminals, organized criminal organizations (or those who claim to belong to them), workers, the residents’ association, city government (responsible for the infrastructure), State government (responsible for the police), NGOs, the adjacent higher and middle classes that hire people from Paraisópolis, the same higher and middle classes whose members consume drugs bought at the shantytown, the police that repress, the police involved in drug trafficking, and so on. When it comes to such multiple social relations, the picture is that complex.

The problem with this simplistic and essentialist view of conflict is that “conflicts are conceptualized as dual, a zero-sum game of two parties. (…) Defeat, being unthinkable, each has a ready-made incentive to try harder to win – to escalate the conflict” (Lynch & McGoldrick, 2007:258). In this case, no one can expect something other than violence to happen.

Voice of division:

While invalidating and ignoring statements made by the local people, the press dedicated whole articles to views of the wealthy neighbors of Paraisópolis. They were affected by what they called “nuisances”, and were scared of the “mess”.

Some articles gave voice to those who overtly spoke of making Paraisópolis invisible or removing it from the landscape. The truth is that the favelas are indirectly inside the traditional neighborhoods, in the condos and top class areas, represented by their residents who clean houses, watch over properties, drive buses, work in supermarkets, bars and shops, as clerks, parking attendants, and so on.

In this sense the favelas are not the “neighborhoods of the dangerous classes” but an integral part of the daily lives of those who read the Brazilian press. The workers who move the country’s economy and perform those essential jobs that do not require training personify it. Better-off classes have to rely on residents of the favelas, or they would have to do the work themselves.

In regards to the events analyzed here, press coverage simply died out before anybody had the slightest clue of what had happened, insisting in quoting some hypothesis – that the local drug lord would have commanded the riots as a revenge for a dealer’s death – that not even the police could confirm. It gave us the impression that it did not matter what motivations led to the occurrence.

The reason for it is probably summarized in this excerpt: “Most importantly now, however, for [the shantytown] residents and [their] neighbors, is that peace comes back to Paraisópolis”, says the report (Veja São Paulo, 2009). That means that everything is back to normal: people in the favela should take back their jobs as “waiters, babysitters, doormen and house maids”, as highlighted in the same article, suffering the miseries of life as second-class citizens, while their rich neighbors go back to their role as bosses hoping for no more “annoyances”. That would be “normal life” in the favelas. Violence is just taken for granted. The end.

5. Conclusion

The February 2nd, 2009 violent clashes in Paraisópolis constitute an example of the daily life in Brazilian slums. Similarly, the São Paulo media’s coverage of the events depicts the relationship between the press, the favelas, and their inhabitants – a relationship more than a hundred years old.

One may notice through the analyses of the framings and the contradictions in the press coverage presented here that there is a biased view of the facts, tending to a gross generalization that qualifies people from the favelas as criminals in any given situation where order breaks down.

The distorted image of the favelas is explicit in insinuations about its “unavoidable” connection to crime; in the lack of proper investigation of facts, explanations and versions of the story; in the lack of attention to the residents’ views and stories; in the simplistic, dualistic language that sees only senseless violence in the events, not caring to investigate contextual causes; in an excessive attention to statements from authorities; and so on.

It seems that in the logic of the media favelas are a thing, a hermetic entity. Thus they make no distinctions between their thousands of inhabitants, whether workers or not, young or old, women or men. According to this framing the favela as an “entity” always reacts in the same way when interacting with the “external world”: with violence, brutality and barbarism. This reasoning appears to maintain that the favelas have a treacherous character, for they receive assistance from the State and from NGOs, having an opportunity to make a living working for the wealthier classes, but pay back with violence and crime.

The whole logic of the media’s discourse about the favelas configures a perverse, institutionalized mechanism of cultural violence that helps build an image of an inferior caste of citizens, hostages to the fallacy that crime and poverty are indivisible. In this way it stigmatizes the people of the favelas as pariahs who, besides structural privations in education, health care, work and welfare, are culturally transformed into criminals by the mass media.

Brazil, a country pursuing to strengthen its economy and reach a leading role in the world, still needs to address this huge social debt, deepened among other reasons by the stereotyping done by the mass media. Changes in this generalized urban conflict, amplified by structural violence, certainly pass through a radical transformation of the Brazilian mass media as a major generator and maintainer of a negative and distorted image of the favelas, as this essay attempted to convey.

 
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Martim S Silveira is a Brazilian journalist. He is currently taking the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy for Peace Masters Program on International Studies in Peace, Conflict and Development in Spain.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 4 Oct 2009.

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