Major favelas

Cidade de Deus

A West Zone neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro that began in the 1960s as a state-built relocation housing project and that became internationally familiar through Paulo Lins's novel Cidade de Deus (1997) and Fernando Meirelles's 2002 film of the same name.

Geography and setting

Cidade de Deus lies in Jacarepaguá, in Rio's West Zone, between the Curicica and Taquara neighborhoods. The terrain is flat — unusually so for a Rio favela — and the original 1960s street layout is the rectilinear grid characteristic of state public-housing projects of the period. Informal construction has filled in the lots and expanded outward in subsequent decades.

History

The neighborhood was built between 1962 and 1966 by the state of Guanabara (the entity that preceded the merger of the city of Rio and the state of Rio de Janeiro) under governor Carlos Lacerda. It was a planned relocation project: residents of South Zone favelas slated for removal, particularly those displaced by the destruction of Praia do Pinto and Catacumba, were relocated here. The original units included houses, apartment blocks, and prefabricated emergency housing intended as temporary but in many cases never replaced.

Through the 1970s and 1980s the neighborhood grew through informal construction adjacent to and within the original project. By the 1980s it was effectively a favela in the IBGE sense, even though its origin was as state-built housing. Paulo Lins, who grew up in the community, used this combination of state-planned origin and informal growth as the structuring fact of his 1997 novel.

Population and demographics

The IBGE Census 2010 recorded around 36,000 residents. The population includes substantial second- and third-generation residents whose families arrived in the original 1960s relocation, alongside more recent migrants.

Economy and infrastructure

The neighborhood has commercial activity concentrated along arterial streets, schools and clinics built as part of the original project and subsequently expanded, and full or near-full water and electricity service. Sewerage and waste-collection quality vary. The Cidade de Deus station on the BRT TransOlímpica corridor, opened in 2016, connects the neighborhood to Barra da Tijuca and Deodoro.

Public security

Cidade de Deus has long been associated in public discussion with the early development of one of Rio's major drug-trafficking organizations, the Comando Vermelho, which had a base in the neighborhood from the 1980s. A UPP was installed in 2009 — among the earliest in the program — and operated through the mid-2010s before being substantially weakened along with the rest of the program. Lethal incidents have continued to be reported in the years since by the state's Instituto de Segurança Pública.

Culture and notable residents

The community's place in Brazilian literature and cinema is unusually prominent. Paulo Lins's Cidade de Deus, written over a decade of close ethnographic work in the community, became a national bestseller. Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's 2002 film adaptation reached an international audience and was nominated for four Academy Awards. The rapper MV Bill grew up in the community and has made it the recurring subject of his music and his documentary Falcão: Meninos do Tráfico (2006).

Further reading

See Favelas in cinema, Favela literature, and the entry on MV Bill.