“Olympics for all, with no evictions!”

It’s not the first time this community needs to mobilize and avoid attempts of involuntary removal. The first one occurred on past 1992, when the municipal power of Rio de Janeiro claimed “aesthetic and environmental damage” on a legal action, filed with Rio de Janeiro’s Courthouse, demanding for full removal of that community. Barra da Tijuca, then, was rising as a brand new center of housing, commercial and sportive investments, demanding, as well exposed by the municipal lawyers at that time, a new “aesthetics”, where poor people were not included.

That community, on the other hand, organized itself and presented a reaction to that municipal offensive: in only two years, the inhabitants created a land regulation program where the state public power, land’s owner, recognized that space as being used, for decades, strictly for housing purposes. On the same way, Vila Autódromo articulated its juridical defense and hindered the removal of their houses, showing how fragile were the municipal arguments, on a litigation running until today in our court.

From Vila Autódromo, a sight about brazilian urban development

The situation lived by Vila Autódromo residents is not different from many other communities, favelas and poor neighborhoods existing on our metropolis. Originally a fishermen’s village, Vila Autódromo turned into a housing opportunity for hundreds of migrant and informal workers who arrived
at the 1970’s, looking for jobs on construction sites such as Jacarepaguá’s speedway (which baptizes the community), subways and housing enterprises, intensified at that time. Other families were resettled there because were removed from their previous community, named Cardoso Fontes.

Fishermen, unemployed, informal workers, removed families and migrants formed a social network which would urbanize and grant fair living conditions to that people. Their method is mutual help, and the inhabitants build not only their own houses but the houses of other families, as well. This building effort includes streets, sidewalks, water distribution, sanitary system, day-care centers, schools and commune areas, as the soccer field, the church and the Residents’ Association Center.

Besides being a space constructed by continuum efforts of the residents, Vila Autódromo raises also as a diversified network related to the city, mechanicals, doormen, informal builders, small traders, street vendors among others, provide a dynamic service facility, so vital on an urban life. The work of building a city blends here with all those activities serving the city itself. That entire environment defined, most of the times, as a subterranean field of informality (the illegal city), is in fact the life and hard dayby-day work, multiple and rich, from the residents of those communities and favelas, so misunderstood on getting those rights respected.

To recognize the real dimension of economical, social and cultural rights of poor communities

As stated by the jurist Joaquin Herrera Flores (The reinvention of human rights, 2009), human rights are not mere formal or abstract declarations, but true processes linked to life, freedom and work. Speak of economical, social and cultural rights is exactly reckon the material (and real!) dimension of life and work exerted for them at the city and for the city.

The processes of involuntary removal rarely consider some concrete articulation between the access to rights and urban space. From relations with territory rise different kinds of work, services given by the independent and informal workers, links of social solidarity, neighborhood contact, friendships for the kids, school life, health professional contacts, etc. What may be a simple “resettlement” for public instances, to those families is a huge change on their ways of life and access and to their rights.

Often, some politicians, even those who call themselves leftist, ask the reasons why a community refuses to be resettled to new houses, built by the govern. Well, the homogeneity of constructions, the planned space with no creativity and the rupture of social relationships to the territory are within the origins of resistance from the residents, including Vila Autódromo’s residents.

The community want to keep their houses and receive investments from the govern!

On the contrary of proposing expensive and unwanted removals, public power should recognize and amplify some initiatives created by those residents, investing on urbanization with popular participation and decision, land legalization (Cf. Project on ITERJ for Vila Autódromo), free technical
assistance, politics of income transfer, stimulus to social and cultural networks already in course, protection for informal workers and micro traders, access to urban mobility, to all public services and further rights of the city.

The removal of Vila Autódromo goes against the fundamental rights of town

The removal of Vila Autódromo offends brazilian legislation and the majority of the principles and international commitments adopted by this country about the legitimacy of the rights of the city. From Federal Constitution to the Statute of the City, from Habitat Agenda to the general observations of
UN about the International Covenant on Economical, Social and Cultural Rights, passing through the World Charter of the Rights to the City, developed by social movements, we find many reasons for a total repudiation concerning the case of reallocating Vila Autódromo.
Summarily and not taking back any other arguments, we could point the following reasons:
a) Breach of the participative democratic clause. This community was not consulted at any moment about it’s inclusion on the Olympic Project presented by the COI and was advertised by the “media” that they could be removed;
b) Priority of land legalization, right of housing and security of tenure. This community had been legalized fifteen years ago and today is object of another social program, in attempt to refresh and amplify it’s given titles. The security of tenure as element of the right of housing can be opposed to the municipal power. It’s worth to remember that dozens of families have passed a previous resettling issue and now they have the right to usufruct security of tenure.
c) Principium of retrocession prohibition. Being object of public policy to achieve the social right of housing, the municipal power cannot go back and weaken the assured protection of a social right.
d) Resettling as ultima ratio. The international directions affirm that involuntary resettle is extreme and must occur only when all other alternatives are broken, not the case at Vila Autódromo.
e) Due process garantees. The removal under the Olympic Games argument is a way of getting a goal that is previously vetoed by Legislation, if conducted on the margins of due process.
f) Right to Equality. Considering all the area around, including innumerous housing enterprises, that community would be the only one reached by this olympic project. Why only Vila Autodromo?

For these and all other reasons shown, the removal of Vila Autódromo is illegal and unacceptable from politic and legal point of view. Against it, all the citizens, poor communities and social urban movements have the right to resist and demand from public power the respect to the rights to the city. To take part on this struggle is a task to those who, despite all the threats, want “olympics to all, with no evictions!”

VILA AUTÓDROMO’S RESIDENT’S ASSOCIANTION
OFFICE OF HOUSING RIGHTS – PUBLIC DEFENDER’S OFFICE OF RIO DE JANEIRO

Translation from Portuguese: Vanessa Moore