A ética do silêncio racial no contexto urbano: políticas públicas e desigualdade social no Recife, 1900-1940

Mais de meio século após o preconceito racial ter se tornado o principal alvo dos movimentos urbanos pelos direitos civis nos Estados Unidos e na África do Sul, e décadas depois do surgimento dos movimentos negros contemporâneos no Brasil, o conjunto de ferramentas legislativas criado no Brasil para promover o direito à cidade ainda adere à longa tradição brasileira de silêncio acerca da questão racial. Este artigo propõe iniciar uma exploração das raízes históricas desse fenômeno, remontando ao surgimento do silêncio sobre a questão racial na política urbana do Recife, Brasil, durante a primeira metade do século XX. O Recife foi eé um exemplo paradigmático do processo pelo qual uma cidade amplamente marcada por traços negros e africanos chegou a ser definida política e legalmente como um espaço pobre, subdesenvolvido e racialmente neutro, onde as desigualdades sociais originaram na exclusão capitalista, e não na escravidão e nas ideologias do racismo científico. Neste sentido, Recife lança luzes sobre a política urbana que se gerou sob a sombra do silêncio racial.More than half a century after racial prejudice became central to urban civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa, and decades after the emergence of Brazil’s contemporary Black movements, Brazil's internationally recognized body of rights-to-the-city legislation still adheres to the country's long historical tradition of racial silence. This article explores the historical roots of this phenomenon by focusing on the emergence of racial silence in Recife, Brazil during the first half of the 20th Century. Recife was and remains a paradigmatic example of the process through which a city marked by its Black and African roots came to be legally and politically defined as a poor, underdeveloped and racially neutral space, where social inequalities derived from capitalist exclusion rather than from slavery and scientific racism. As such, Recife'sexperience sheds light on the urban policies that were generated in the shadow of racial silence

Ethos and Pathos in Millennial Brazil

This essay reviews the following works: The Invention of the Brazilian Northeast. By Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. Translated by Jerry Dennis Metz. Foreword by James N. Green. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 277. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357858. Brazil and the Dialectic of Colonization. By Alfredo Bosi. Translated by Robert Patrick Newcomb. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 373.$35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780252080845. Revolt of the Saints: Memory and Redemption in the Twilight of Brazilian Racial Democracy. By John F. Collins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 463. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822353201. The Economic and Social History of Brazil since 1889. By Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. vi + 439.$27.03 paperback. ISBN: 9781107616585. The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil. By Barbara Weinstein. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 458. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822357773. The Rio De Janeiro Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Edited by Daryle Williams, Amy Chazkel, and Paulo Knauss. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. xi + 390.$20.73 paperback. ISBN: 9780822360063

From the Mocambo to the Favela: Statistics and Social Policy in Brazil’s Informal Cities

This article explores the history of censusing in the informal neighborhoods that have always been foundational to the Brazilian cityscape. Focusing on Rio de Janeiro and Recife, it argues that the censusing of favelas and mocambos was at once a technology of governance and a performance of North Atlantic modernity. The eventual emergence of the “statistical favela”, which defined urban informality as a problem of collective social dysfunction, had important implications for twentieth century urban and social policy.Cet article explore l’histoire des recensements des quartiers informels, qui ont toujours été un élément fondateur du paysage urbain brésilien. En se centrant sur Rio de Janeiro et Recife, il fait valoir que le recensement des favelas et des mocambos était à la fois une technique de gouvernement et une illustration de la modernité nord-atlantique de ces villes. L’émergence ultérieure de la « favela statistique », qui définissait l’informalité urbaine comme un problème de dysfonctionnement social collectif, eut des implications importantes pour les politiques urbaines et sociales du xxe siècle

Democracy, Thuggery and the Grassroots: Antoine Magarinos Torres and the União dos Trabalhadores Favelados in the Age of Carioca Populism

Shantytowns have long been critical to urban popular politics. In Brazil, both phenomena gained strength from 20th century mass urbanization, and the two have been locked in a relationship of mutual dependency ever since. Yet – given high political stakes – it is notoriously difficult to glimpse the internal dynamics of these informal dependencies: to understand how politicians used shantytowns to achieve their own political goals, to comprehend frustrated attempts at mass radicalization, to gain insight into residents' political strategies and the ways in which political connections could grow on the basis of local thuggery. This paper will analyze these issues by tracing the story of Antoine Magarinos Torres, a communist lawyer who was a central figure in Brazil’s shantytown politics in the 1950s. Admired for his role in founding Brazil’s first citywide shantytown federation, Torres later faced charges of land grabbing, violence, and political manipulation – precisely the abuses he’d built a career combating. While the accusations were politically motivated, the case revealed a wide variety of internal shantytown conflicts, ranging from ethnic and turf disputes to disagreements about the just bases for land claims or local rule‐making. Torres’ political demise did not spell the end of shantytown politics in Rio. But his story highlights the difficulty of "community organizing" in places with deep internal divisions and a long history of political exploitation, and also demonstrates the ways in which politicians eager to limit the impact of local governance adeptly exploited such fragilities

Favelas, bidonvilles, baracche, etc. : recensements et fichiers

Favelas, bidonvilles, baracche, des catégories urbaines sont forgées dans la première moitié du XXe siècle pour désigner des zones d’habitat à la fois illégal et matériellement précaire. Un travail de documentation accompagne alors la construction de ce nouveau problème, que l’on entend endiguer et traiter. Ce numéro d’Histoire & Mesure explore les tentatives de mesure du phénomène. Compter les baraques et les bidonvilles, recenser leurs habitants pose la question de la définition de ces catégories, des modalités et des objectifs de telles opérations, ainsi que de l’identité des acteurs qui les mettent en œuvre. La comparaison des différents cas étudiés, au Brésil, en Italie, en Espagne, en Algérie à l’époque coloniale, en France métropolitaine et en Inde, permet de dégager des invariants et de mettre en évidence les effets des contextes nationaux et locaux. Urban categories such as favela, bidonville or baracche were forged in the first half of the twentieth century to designate areas of illegal and precarious housing. To address this newly constructed problem, settlements were documented with the aim of containing their spread. This issue of Histoire & Mesure examines these attempts to measure the phenomenon. The administrative accounting of shacks, shantytowns and their inhabitants raises complex questions about how such categories were defined, which methods and objectives guided the censusing process, and who was responsible for their implementation. Comparison of cases in Brazil, Italy, Spain, colonial Algeria, metropolitan France and India reveals a number of commonalities while highlighting the effects of local and national contexts

Estudios afrolatinoamericanos : una introducción

Este libro tiene el objetivo de introducir al lector en un campo dinámico y en expansión como es el de los estudios afrolatinoamericanos. Definimos este campo, en primer lugar, como un estudio de la población de ascendencia africana en América Latina y, en segundo lugar, como el estudio de las sociedades en las que vive dicha población. En relación con la primera definición, los investigadores estudian las historias, culturas, estrategias y luchas de los negros en la región. en cuanto a la segunda, estudian el tema de la raza negra, en general como una categoría de la diferencia, como un motor de estratificación y desigualdad, y como una variable clave en los procesos de formación nacional