Leaves a Bittar taste in your mouth

I recently received an email from REME, a Google group in which subscribers disseminate information pertinent to megaevent-related fallout in Brazil. In this email, Municipal Housing Secretary Jorge Bittar was quoted as saying,

"O processo de negociação nem sempre agrada. Qualquer deslocamento que não seja voluntário é ruim. Vivemos situações desse tipo na época da Linha Amarela. É uma coisa delicada. As realocações na área formal da cidade são em número muito maior do que o informal"

"The process of negotiation does not always please everyone. Any displacement that is involuntary is bad. We have experienced situations like this during the construction of the Yellow Line (highway). It's a delicate issue. The relocations in the formal areas of the city greatly outnumber those in the informal city."

I yet to see any cold, hard, statistic that suggests that the population most at-risk for Cup and Olympic-related evictions is the "legal" Carioca. Nor have I heard any stories from "legal" residents who have been - or will be - removed from their homes.

Jorge Bittar speaks during the recent UPP Social forum in
Providencia. A visibly disgusted community leader, Rosiete,
appears in the background. Photo credit: UPP Social

Let's assume for a moment that Bittar is right, and that in fact, there are for more displaced residents of "legal" housing than "informal" housing. Why, would this have anything to do with the fact that the "legal" Carioca residence of choice is a medium to large condominium, which can house hundreds of families? The displacement of 300 "legal" residents could easily result from just one building's removal. Is this the same thing as bulldozing 100 private homes in a comunidade, thereby destroying an entire neighborhood as opposed to a single lot? I'm not sure that it is.

Of course, forced displacement is not ideal for anyone, as Bittar points out. But to reweave the argument to call attention to the fact that "legal" residents are also being displaced is to rip the microphone from the hands of the city's most disenfranchised evictees, and undermine the validity of their argument against removals. While "legal" residents enjoy better and more timely compensation**, adequate re-housing options, and a much stronger financial safety net, residents of affected comunidades see little to zero compensation, "assisted" resettlement in milicia-controlled apartments, and very shallow pockets after effectively financing their own relocation.

Please, Senhor Bittar. I'd like to see some numbers.

*I am not a proponent of the "informal"/"formal" urban dichotomy

**From an earlier interview with Dr. Christopher Gaffney, urbanist and adjunct professor at UFF