The Citizens of Porto Alegre

[Blue_Tires]

Marco is a self-employed handyman in his mid-30s who moved to the city of Porto Alegre from the Brazilian countryside eight years ago. A primary-school-educated son of a farmer, he’d had few opportunities in his small town and had heard about the city’s generous social services. He borrowed money for bus fare and landed in Porto Alegre, where he found construction work. But when his wages wouldn’t cover rent he headed for one of the squatter settlements on the outskirts of the city. He soon moved in with a companheira who sewed clothes and ironed from home. In time his life became more settled, with incremental improvements to the house, small but growing savings, and brisk business owing to his good reputation in the community. Marco’s story of migration, squatting, and survival was unremarkable—until he attended a local meeting on how the city government should invest its money in the region.

It is not surprising that Brazilians are, by and large, uninvolved in civic life. Their cities are among the most violent, economically unequal, and problem-ridden in the world. While the elite live in fortified enclaves, one fourth of Brazilian city dwellers live in makeshift slum housing, often without access to any social services and dependent on patrons for survival. These settlements, which make up as much as a third of some cities’ populations, share the mistrust and social disintegration that the political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues have documented in areas of “low social capital” in southern Italy; in recent surveys Brazilians have registered some of the world’s lowest levels of trust in their democratic institutions.

People like Marco are the most excluded from normal avenues of government decision-making and also the least likely to become involved in formal associations. So Marco—brought to the meeting by one of his neighbors—was understandably skeptical about what it might accomplish. He was told that a nearby squatter settlement had been able to collectively purchase its land title through similar meetings; but he was sure at first that someone had used a connection to a powerful politician. Yet the meeting, crowded and held at a school gym, appeared genuine. The mayor spoke about the budget, and a dozen of the 2,000 participants got in line for the microphone to question officials about previous projects. Later, the whole group elected delegates for the rest of the year. Though he did not understand most of the technical details at that meeting, Marco became a delegate and started to participate week after week, learning the rules of the process known as participatory budgeting from the parade of city officials who attended. At the end of that first year, he and his fellow delegates elected to invest in paving the streets and adding sewers to the district.

Over the years Marco became increasingly involved, bringing many new faces to meetings, helping to start a neighborhood association, and realizing his dream of legalizing the land title to his settlement. Today he and his neighbors are part of a cooperative that collectively owns the titles to the land. And Marco, who had never before participated in a social movement or association, spends hours in meetings every week and can often be found explaining technical details or the exact role of a certain government agency to newcomers.

http://bostonreview.net/BR31.2/baiocchi.html

[Blue_Tires]

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