Being a Child in a Brazilian Slum

What does it mean to a child to be born and raised in a slum (favela) in Rio de Janeiro? How are these children regarded and how do they see themselves? Why do so many of them join the armed drug trafficking groups (comandos)? Police in Rio claim that 80 to 90 percent of the workforce of local drug traffickers is comprised of youth and children sometimes as young as seven years old, who are perhaps 5000 strong and almost exclu-

Page 16

sively male. Drug dealers actively employ and recruit young men and boys from the local communities to act as messengers, lookouts, and gunmen. When drug trafficking is less active, they also resort to robbery and kidnapping.

Our research investigates the role of “territoriality” in the sociology and psychology of low-income slum youths, especially those working with the drug traffickers. People reflect upon life, work, social bonds, and identify with humanity within the context of space. As Winnicott stressed, an average expectable environment is necessary to promote a healthy development, reducing the likelihood of developing a false self or other grave psychic disturbances.

The favela is a group of informally planned, precarious homes and alleys built by squatters on the land of others. Some of the houses are made of cardboard and many do not have basic sanitation, water, or electricity. In addition to poverty, most of the children of the slums face ongoing violence at the hands of the police and armed drug trafficking groups. To survive in this violence, most residents obey what is known as the “law of silence,” which means they communicate as little as possible with both the police and the comandos.

Slum children not uncommonly experience a sense of “disruption” as their sense of self is overwhelmed by an increasingly threatening onslaught of anxiety and terror. Frequently, such anxieties elude treatment in our clinic as they are transformed, in desperation, into a set of fearful fantasies that seek concrete expression to avoid the experience of anxiety. Thus, the fears are acted out rather than experienced. Such “acting out” may vary from overt anti-social behavior to total withdrawal from community life.

The expansion of comandos starting in the 1980s brought with it a rise in the levels of youth violence. Currently, Rio has one of the highest rates of youth homicide in the world. Recent statistics suggest that the probability of a 15-to-19-year-old being murdered in Rio de Janeiro is 10 times higher than a North American teen. (G. Barker, Peace Boys in a War Zone: Identity and Coping among Adolescent Men in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Doctoral Dissertation, the Erikson Institute of Chicago, 2001)

Participating in a comando is largely a male phenomenon that generally implies projecting a version of masculinity characterized by the use of armed violence to achieve one’s goals, including a willingness to kill if necessary; callous attitudes toward women, including violence against women; and an exaggerated sense of male honor with a propensity to use violence in minor altercations and insults.

Why do some young men join the comandos? Faced with a shortage of stable and viable employment, drug trafficking has become a vocational alternative for many adolescent males as well as for children as young as seven years old who often face family and social pressure to drop out of school at an early age to work. However, research suggests that just as gang involvement in the U.S. cannot be adequately explained by unemployment and poverty alone, participation in comandos by young men is similarly complex. A major reason is the lack of a strong father figure in the slums. Comandos provide “social recognition” and “respect” in a community where parental figures are seen as devalued.

The comandos have a direct and an indirect impact on the daily lives of slum residents. Comandos control and dominate many aspects of the social life of the slums. Indeed, they are a threat to the well-being and survival of the neighborhood’s children and youth. The mobility of children and youth in the community is restricted because, as one mother remarked, “The situation is not good for them to be running around outside.” The children simply withdraw in fear. This constriction of social life, occasioned by confinement, frequently impairs the ability of a child to progress from a dependent to an autonomous stage of development. Such confinement denies creative play to children, weakens their emotional development, and lessens the growth of social skills. The very experience of childhood is lessened. Children brought to the University clinic for therapy frequently show learning disabilities, sleep disturbances, withdrawal and/or anti-social behavior.

As psychologists, we are concerned with the issue of the children’s psychological internalization of society’s view of them. In the Brazilian popular imagination, favela elicits the thought of deprivation, a place where there is no water, sewage, decent housing, or education. The slum territory is defined by what it lacks. In conservative social imagery and in the media, its inhabitants are described as poorly educated, lazy, alcoholic, and mostly dangerous. They are poor “because they do not put in enough effort to find jobs” and their children die because they choose “the easy way out” of

Page 17

a career in crime. To us, this seems very much like blaming the victims for their suffering. As one boy said to us, “No matter what … we are guilty.” In the words of a famous rap singer, “We don’t make no difference … one nigger more, one nigger less, we are only statistics.”

The identification of criminality with poverty is longstanding in Brazil. It is not uncommon to see projects to improve life in the slums only as token efforts to “rescue the children from their involvement with the drug traffic.” The societal expectation is of failure. Low-income communities are viewed as places of risk and, furthermore, children and youth are seen as being at-risk rather than as at-potential. A deep sense of futility replaces creativity and life becomes meaningless. It is important to remember that every subject needs a “history” that goes beyond pure genetics—a relational history that will inscribe him in a representational psychic field. It is precisely this historic anteriority that will enable the “infant” to become an individual, to think and to provide a meaningful sense to his life experiences, to achieve a true self.

We cannot ignore how poverty can shape one’s sense of self when and if it is allowed to define one’s identity. If it is true that the first sense of identity arises out of the encounter of mother and child, it is also true that such encounter is greatly influenced by the group one is raised within. A positive identity depends on the support one receives from the collective sense of identity characterizing the social groups significant to the individual: his class, his country, his culture. There should not be a large gap between the ego and its ideals.

In Brazil, social relations between different social segments are always mediated by fear and distrust. Low-income groups, blacks, and the socially excluded are almost always viewed as criminals and dangerous. Slums are normally viewed as the locus of danger, crimes, and drugs. That’s why we stress the importance of territory in the construction of one’s identity. When applying for a job, it is not rare to lie about your own address in order not be identified as someone who lives in a favela. As one young boy told me, “When they know you live in a favela you’re dead—no way they will give you a job! So, I just make up an address.”

In conclusion, one of the most prominent aspects of Brazilian urbanization is ostracism of the urban poor, especially the children. The favelas and their inhabitants are not viewed as a part of the city but rather like the barbarians of ancient Rome. Not surprisingly, the poor respond with feelings of low self-esteem, anger, and revolt. In a previous work, we postulated that in groups based on violence, the mechanisms of identification have three supporting matrices: the search for visibility and public endorsement, group cohesion, and, finally, a lack of symbolic and cultural referents which would provide them with a feeling of belonging. Those groups can be described geographically and psychologically as being at the outskirts of citizenship. Without this dimension of affiliation, it is very difficult to assert one’s identity, and a destiny of suffering and madness awaits. In such situations we might think of violence as a mark left which allows the subject to emerge from a place not chosen by him, in search of affiliation and recognition—a place in a polis that has rejected him. Of course those acts are doomed to fail, since the search in question is for a symbolic protest, rather than a step to a better life outside of the slums, which appears impossible to most youth.

Page 18