ABSTRACT
The favelas of Rio are seen as disorderly agglomerations of unemployed loafers, abandoned women and children, thieves, drunks, and prostitutes. Considerations of health, economic efficiency, esthetics, and political stability all point in the same direction: Eradicate the favela. Favela removal is perversely creating the marginalized population that it was designed to eliminate. Although the favelados were regarded as living outside the middle-class mainstream, they identified very strongly with it. The possibility of being expelled from their homes and communities fills most favela residents with dread. Favela policy is a mirror of all these institutionalizations, operations, controllings, and repressions; in the Rio area, Coordenacao de Habitacao de Interesse Social da Area Metropolitana do Grande Riois the agent of the national hierarchy as the National Housing Bank is for the country at large. The sociocultural effects of removal can best be understood in relation to the advantages of the favela as a functional community.
