Favelas e a pandemia de COVID-19, uma tragédia anunciada? / Slums and COVID-19, chronicle of a tragedy foretold

Ghettos, barrios, low neighbouboods, poverty-stricken communities...Talking about slums is a complex topic that sparks many discussions about urbanization policies, infrastructure and identity. The result of uncontrollable urban growth, exclusionary urbanization and highly exploitative industrialization, furrowed into the landscape, they are already part of the urban scenario in much communities of the world’s metropolises. Studies estimate that by 2030, one in four people will live in so-called informal settlements: areas where groups of housing units built on land that the occupants have no legal rights to or occupy illegally; unplanned settlements and areas where housing does not comply with current planning and construction regulations (unauthorized housing) (OECD, 2001). The history of housing in Brazil merges with the emergence of favelas, full of stereotypes and historically criminalized. In 2020, history repeats or reverses itself, stigmatized as a stronghold of epidemics and diseases, Carioca communities struggle so that COVID-19 does not “climb the hill”, because, ironically, the pandemic is on the asphalt.