Brazilian Favelas in the Media: A History of Stereotyping

Introduction

PAGE 2

Brazilian Favelas in the Media:

A History of Stereotyping

Martim S Silveira

March 2009

Summary

31. Introduction

62. Context

62.1. The Favelas

72.2. People in the Favelas

82.3. The Origins of the Favela

92.4. The Brazilian Media

102.5. The Relationship Between the Media and the Favelas

113. Case Study

164. Critical Analysis

235. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Favela is the generic name by which slums and shantytowns are known in Brazil. They are a national social phenomenon, spread throughout all the biggest urban centers in the country, inhabited by some of the poorest Brazilian families, and receiving little or no attention from the State in what concerns infrastructure and basic services.

The term favela itself has a bad connotation. In Brazil, besides indicating the poor neighborhoods, it is used pejoratively to suggest a run-down place or an unpleasant or disorganized situation, as the Houaiss Portuguese Language Dictionary defines it (Houaiss & Villar, 2001). As an extension, the favelas are an easy target for stereotyping, being linked to poverty, ignorance, sickness, insalubriousness and especially to crime. This distortion of meaning ends up creating a heavy stigma over its people, who face double social exclusion: they not only do not enjoy full citizenship, that is, are not granted access to State services; but also are deemed as marginal, standing apart from regular society.

It cannot be denied that favelas are areas plagued with daily examples of direct violence, as it is statistically shown or seen daily in the news. However, the common knowledge that associates favela residents to criminals fails to differentiate the vast majority of common citizens living there from those somehow connected to crime. It also fails to see the links between criminals coming from these areas and the many better-off bosses from traditional families, who command large, organized criminal groups, and recruit their soldiers from the lower economic layers of Brazilian society.Finally and most importantly, this stereotypical view fails to acknowledge that direct violence in Brazil affects, more than anyone else, the same poor (and especially black and mulatto) working people who live in the favelas. As observed by a United Nations Development Programme report, those are the typical crime victims in Brazil (UNPD, 2005).

The distorted ideas used to describe the favelas and its people are not, nevertheless, a recent phenomenon. They result from a long process of marginalization by the State, by successive governments and by the wealthier social classes. And, throughout History, one of the main means for the generation, spread and maintenance of the ideas that associate the shantytowns to crime has been the countrys press.

By basing its coverage in the mechanisms of what Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (2005, 2007) classify as War Journalism that is, a linear coverage that only narrates events without considering their context; that prioritize official sources, and diminishes common citizens; that credits violence to an alleged inborn barbarism of those who commit it; and that can only understand disputes in a dualistic manner, as a fight between good and evil , the Brazilian media has been helping to perpetuate the stereotypes about the favelas.

This essay precisely intends to demonstrate this equation by analyzing the Brazilian press coverage on the favelas and their people through the Peace Journalism perspective, as defended by Lynch and McGoldrick (2005, 2007).

To this intent, we will first present the context of favelas in Brazil, showing their characteristics, describing their residents, and offering a brief historical overview. We will also take a quick look into the Brazilian media, approaching its historical relation with the slums. For a more thorough analysis of this relationship, we will take as an example the coverage of the February 2nd, 2009 violent confrontations in the Paraispolis favela (the second biggest one in the city of So Paulo).

First, we will seek to highlight the vocabulary used to mention and describe the inhabitants of this shantytown and to report the confrontations. We will also try to identify the framings and contradictions of the press coverage. Later on, we will point out the general lines that guide the present relationship between media and favelas in Brazil, showing how a biased and unbalanced depiction of the shantytowns contributes to the maintenance of their negative image, which constitutes a clear example of cultural violence as proposed by Galtung (1996:2-8).

As a clarification, it is important to mention that we are responsible for the translation to English of all citations from Brazilian sources found in this essay.2. Context

2.1. The FavelasWhat formally defines a favela is that the houses in it are built without legal authorization, which means that its residents have no ownership neither of the building itself nor of the area it occupies. Informally, though, they are recognized as any set of humble houses built without planning, and having little or no access to basic public services such as electricity, tap water or sewing system.

The Favelas vary greatly in size, being formed by some wooden shacks where a few dozen families live; or by countless blocks of brick houses surrounded by paved streets, housing up to hundreds of thousands of people. Many are found in an inaccessible outskirt of a major city, miles away from downtown. Others, in areas where normally no one else would build, such as hillsides, banks of polluted creeks, swamps or flood areas, spots around city dumps or the space under bridges.

However, in what constitutes one of Brazils major social paradoxes, favelas can also be found in the heart of traditional (sometimes top-class) neighborhoods surrounded by roads with heavy traffic, shops and banks, which provide the area a faade of near normality. But this faade hides a network of winding alleys where humble wooden, tin or exposed brick houses are built, and grow vertically for lack of space.

Nowadays, some favelas have minimal basic infrastructure and legal status, receiving the same benefits of a regular neighborhood, such as street addresses and postal service, pavement and health care centers. Paradoxically, it is also possible to find mansions among the humble houses, mainly because of their owners financial progress and the legalization of their properties, a measure local governments sometimes try as a way of social inclusion.

The general picture, nevertheless, is desolating. With the growth of industry and service sectors in Brazil in the past two decades, there has been an increase in the migration flow from rural areas to the cities. This movement was not followed by policies to absorb this population into the labor market, which increased the illegal occupation of new areas lacking infrastructure, and consequently the appearance of new favelas (Costa Mattos, 2007).

2.2. People in the FavelasThe poorest layers of Brazils population inhabit the shantytowns. Many people are migrants from the countrys worst-off areas in search of work in the major cities. They mostly had no access to proper education, and either have no formal jobs or work in jobs that require no training. Their average income is considerably inferior to those found in other areas.

In 2007 the Brazilian government was forced to review the official figure of the inhabitants of the shantytowns due to an error in the statistical model chosen to count them elevating the figure from 6.4 to 12.3 million people, spread out in 3.2 million households (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009b). At the same time, the UN has published a study that sets the population of Brazilian slums in 52.3 million people in 2005 (UN-Habitat, 2006).

2.3. The Origins of the FavelaBrazilian favelas are a complex phenomenon born as a consequence of many factors throughout history. In its origins, however, we can find two main reasons: the abolition of slavery in 1888 (what makes Brazil the last country in the world to have eradicated it); and the industrial growth of the countrys main cities at the end of the 19th century, especially Rio de Janeiro at the time capital of the country (Costa Mattos, 2007).

It is necessary to consider that the abolition of slavery was not as benevolent as it may sound, since the governmental act that ended it was not followed by measures aiming at social inclusion or at least offering a decent living to former slaves in its majority blacks brought from Africa or born under the rule of a plantation farmer. Thus, this huge population was thrown in the streets, leaving the former slaves on their own, without legal means to insert themselves into society, get a proper job, earn a dignified living or be able to buy or build their own dwellings.

This situation was combined with the attraction exerted by the fast-growing industry in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and So Paulo in the end of the 19th century. Since these urban centers did not have the capacity to accommodate new inhabitants, the only alternative was for them to occupy the outskirts of these cities, what resulted in the disorderly growth of favelas, and began their history of abandon and repression by the authorities.

In the past decades, after the exponential growth of Brazils biggest cities, the favelas have been absorbed into the formal urban core paving the way to paradoxical pictures where skyscrapers share the landscape with shacks.

2.4. The Brazilian Media

On the other side of the equation that this essay wishes to analyze we find the Brazilian media. The biggest names in the country are large-sized, family-run companies that are not negotiated in the stock market.

The biggest nation-wide communications group is the Globo Network, which runs the countrys richest and most popular TV channel (TV Globo), a nationally influential newspaper (O Globo), the Globo radio station, the weekly magazine poca, the popular web news portal Globo.com, and countless other broadcasting operations in Brazil and abroad.

The second biggest conglomerate is the Abril Group, owner of a variety of printed magazines including Veja, the most influential weekly publication. Apart from these there is also the So Paulo-based Folha Group which owns the biggest daily paper in the country (Folha de S. Paulo) and its online version (Folha Online); the biggest financial newspaper (Valor Econmico); and the biggest web news portal in Brazil (UOL). Directly competing for the national market is also the Estado Group, which prints the influential newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo (Associao Nacional de Jornais, 2007).

The communications sector has been facing a severe financial crisis for years now, with huge debts and bankruptcies. In 2002, a change in the Brazilian Constitution allowed foreign investors to own up to 30% of media companies. That was forbidden before since it was considered a strategic sector. Later, arguing that only large amounts of money would save national media groups from the crisis, preventing them from being sold to foreign groups (Observatrio da Imprensa, 2003), then newly-elected President Lus Incio Lula da Silva prepared, in 2004, a R$ 5 billion (approximately US$ 2,5 billion) line of credit to the sector, without further discussion in parliament. This agreement created discomfort regarding the medias dependence on the State (Jornal da Universidade, 2002).

2.5. The Relationship Between the Media and the FavelasThe relationship between the press and slum residents is marked by a long history of stereotyping. As early as 1909, one of the major newspapers in Rio de Janeiro wrote about an earlier shantytown in the city:

It is the place where most of the thugs in our land dwell, and precisely for this reason for being a hideout for people willing to kill for any or even no reason , they do not have any respect for the Law and the Police. (Costa Mattos, 2007)According to Costa Mattos, the article depicted very well the predisposition of the media towards slum dwellers. The social perception of urban violence in favelas comes from a long time ago, as well as the stigma imposed on its inhabitants (2007). Chalhoub (1996:22) clearly defines the perceptions in Brazil at that time: The poor carry the vices, vices produce evildoers, evildoers are dangerous to society; connecting both ends in this chain, we have the notion that the poor are, by definition, dangerous.

Costa Mattos (2007) also observes that the negative representations of the favelas originated in a campaign developed by Rio de Janeiro media outlets at that time immersed in the ideals of progress and civilization , with the intent to homogenize society. According to the press own logic, the favelas inspired views that went from disorder to savagery[, and] did not fit in the modern and Europeanized city planned by the dominant classes.

3. Case StudyThe same perception about the favelas is still valid in todays press. To observe the persistence of this stereotypical view, we will analyze the media coverage of a February 2nd, 2009 event in So Paulo where a group of people clashed with the Police inside the Paraispolis favela the second largest in the city, with a population of 80,000 living in a 0.8 sq km area.

At dusk, protesters blocked an avenue and a few streets around the shantytown with burning tires, wood planks and rubbish. Police was called to unblock the roads what led to violent clashes. The confrontation lasted a few hours, and ended with the removal of the barricades and the announcement by the So Paulo State government (which controls the Police) that hundreds of policemen would be deployed in the area for an undetermined period, doing ostensive patrolling, in a rather unusual action in the daily life of the biggest Brazilian city.

The first written reports of the events began in the online versions of the main media outlets. Relying on sparse details about the situation, apart from those descriptions that the Police itself would provide, they highlighted from the beginning: residents () have burned cars, and blocked traffic in the area (Estadao.com.br, 2009a). Mentions of residents allegedly involved in the riots and of bad traffic conditions could also be read in other websites, and were reproduced in the printed versions the next day.

Also on the next day reports started to present explanations to the demonstration. There were many versions: [protesters] are unhappy with the death of a neighbor, who was said to be a decent person, two policemen [who claimed to own the favela] () could be the main targets of the protests, the demonstration [could] be related to the change of the [local Police] commander (O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a), [the demonstration was] the reaction of a few punks connected to crime, and ran out of control (Jornal da Tarde, 2009a). Despite the many versions, the most accepted reason for the February 2nd events has been the one provided by the Police: the protests would have been commanded by the local drug lord as a revenge for the death of another drug dealer and the arrest of his brother-in-law (O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a; Veja So Paulo, 2009; Folha de S. Paulo, 2009c). Thus, the Police believed to have reasons to affirm that the protest had been planned in advance.

In all the reports on the following day, TV channels, newspapers and websites showed explicit videos and pictures of the confrontations, describing thoroughly the armament used by both sides in the clashes. A news piece by Folha de S. Paulo described in detail the strategy used by the Police and the number of policemen, horses and even dogs employed to march into the slum. The reports would show an increasing number of people hurt until the number stabilized on four policemen shot, but diverged about the number of residents harmed some (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a) mentioned only one, while others (Veja So Paulo, 2009; O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009b) cited two.

The main focus, however, was directed to the Polices response to the events. With the headline After the riot Police begins choking in the favela, Folha de S. Paulo, the biggest Brazilian newspaper, quoted the Public Security State secretary, who promised to repress new protests, and arrest the culprits. The operation triggered by the Police was called Saturation, while the protests where frequently referred to as an urban war (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009f). Besides, it was a unanimous choice to call the operation an occupation of Paraispolis.

Demonstrators were indiscriminately recognized as residents, whereas a few articles went further, calling them criminals (Veja So Paulo, 2009). The protests became rioting, public order disrespect, disorder, acts of violence, moments of horror and fear (Veja So Paulo, 2009; Estadao.com.br, 2009a). It was scary, according to a Veja So Paulo reporter.

But media outlets sought to enrich their coverage with articles that tried to explain and describe Paraispolis and its people. They mentioned that the slum is located in an unemployment-plagued area in So Paulo, and provided data that indicated the low rate of education and low average income in the favela (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009d). Others preferred to point out that there are run-down pubs, many of them in the shantytown (Veja So Paulo, 2009).

At the same time, some reports focused on its wealthier neighbors. To remove it [Paraispolis] from there is impossible. I would like to, but that is not realistic, said one of them, who classified the protest as traumatizing. Another one said to be favorable to blocking streets in the rich areas in order to prevent the presence of those who did not live there. Articles also mentioned that real estate advertisements would digitally erase the shantytown from the landscape of future residential properties to be built in the area (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009g).Throughout the coverage sources of information were primarily members of the Police or of the Public Security State Secretary. Most of the articles failed to present statements from Paraispolis dwellers. When they did it, they would quote either the president of the favela residents association or anonymous people who, they said, preferred not to reveal their names (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009d, 2009h; Estadao.com.br, 2009a).

On the third and fourth days following the clashes, some journalists started mentioning that the Police could not show progress in their investigation of the reasons for the occurrence despite the apparent certainty of the initial explanations. Police admits to be back to zero, highlighted Jornal da Tarde, claiming that the failure was due to the Rule of Silence shared by the residents. They would refuse to denounce the culprits (Jornal da Tarde, 2009b).At the same time reports mentioned that four policemen who were involved in the shooting of a resident the day before the riots would be moved to other squads. Articles quoted the lawyer of a few Paraispolis dwellers stating that those agents were a bunch of killers (Jornal da Tarde, 2009b). They also quoted anonymous sources saying that the locals complained about the violence of those policemen (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009i; Folhaonline.com.br, 2009). Reports barely cited the hoax about a missing resident an honest working man who supposedly had witnessed his neighbors shooting, crime that would have caused the protests (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a).On Saturday, February 7th, the coverage abruptly ended, with the two biggest newspapers in So Paulo (Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo) failing to present one single report on the topic. There was no mention at all of the continuing presence of the Police in Paraispolis, about its residents everyday life under the operation, or about the fact that Police corruption or abuse of power might be behind the February 2nd events.

4. Critical Analysis

By observing in detail the case of the protests in Paraispolis, we are able to point out a few general lines in this journalistic coverage that are not restricted only to the February 2nd protests. On the contrary: these are issues based on the same framing pattern on the favelas and its people; a pattern that, as pointed out by Costa Mattos (2006), has been transmitting, reinforcing and perpetuating stereotypes about the shantytowns residents for over a century. It is a case of cultural violence that ends up comparing the favelas to an alien territory inside the Brazilian territorial unity, relegating their people to a second-class citizenship condition.

Among the patterns one can observe in the coverage analyzed here and in the general attitude of the press towards the favelas are the following topics:

Immediate link between residents, protesters and drug trafficking

Since the beginning, media outlets do not hesitate to headline that residents are responsible for the protest which, important to mention, is also qualified by countless adjectives that immediately identify it as a contravention. Even if there has not been a single arrest or person claiming responsibility for the acts, the origin of the demonstrators is in the shantytown, according to the logic of the articles.

Even more serious is the confusing quest for an explanation to the occurrence, which points everywhere, but ends up converging to an official version from the Police: one that says the protests were planned in advance and ordered by a powerful organized criminal group. By immediately validating Police sources who afterwards ended up contradicting themselves, admitting to be lost, and investigating even their own members possible corruption as a cause of the protest , the media created a nefarious demonstrators-residents-drug dealers connection, and followed it unquestioningly until the end. It is the same logic behind Brazilians average perception of the shantytowns, not only in the Paraispolis case, but as a general rule repeated in the press since the 19th century (Costa Mattos, 2006).

It is also to be noted that explanations linking the protest to a response by organized-crime-led thugs to the shooting of a resident invalidated beforehand the protests legitimacy, because this person was nothing but a thief (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a; O Estado de S. Paulo, 2009a; Veja So Paulo, 2009).

Lack of active voice to favelas dwellersOne of the characteristics of favela-related articles is the complete absence or lack of legitimacy of their residents statements. When quoted, they appear as anonymous sources or people that give only their first names out of fear of being punished, and provide confusing, irrelevant or empty affirmations that come in a secondary position in the reports. What is worse, sometimes the same loose statements are manipulated in the story to corroborate the official explanation about the facts, as seen in Folha de S. Paulo (2009a).

Every rank in the Police and in the government has distinguished space in the articles, offering statements that make the headlines. The problem in this case, however, is that it leaves out the people that live the conflict in their skins (Lynch & McGoldrick, 2007:255). And, as Lederach notes, (1997:84) () [these] people are overlooked and disempowered either because they do not represent official power (), or because they are written off as biased and too personally affected by the conflict.

Dehumanization of the favelas and their peopleStories presented by the So Paulo press address very few topics: the violence in the February 2nd confrontations and its connections to crime; the inconvenience of the clashes to public order and to the richer neighbors; and the authorities response to the events. Nevertheless, what is rarely observed is the perception of how what happened in Paraispolis has affected locals lives that is, the human side of the story.

While weaponry, violence, Police strategies and road traffic problems in the area are described in detail, there are only a couple of lines about the difficulties faced by the residents during the protests. On that day, however, one of them was shot while waiting for his son on the roof of his house. Thousands of people had to walk back home because bus service was disrupted by the companies that run public transportation, who feared their vehicles would be destroyed in the confrontations. When these people finally got to the shantytown, Police blocked their passage, while their families, under fire, waited inside for the clashes to finish. On the following days, there have been reports of arbitrary beatings of residents, who allegedly were being stopped, and searched up to six times on the same day, while the Police looked in vain for the culprits. All of these are stories of people who lived the conflicts in their skin those days and possibly in many other times.

All of them were left unheard because there is a tacit supposition that violence is something normal in the life of a favela that in turn is a nuisance to the normal life of the city. Conversely, whole articles were dedicated to the traumas of the rich neighbors who watched the confrontations on TV.

Besides, by not considering at all the possibility of presenting a context for the events occurred in Paraispolis, the idea the press passes on is that acts of such savagery could only be caused by barbaric (and thus, inhumane) people. However, Lynch and McGoldrick remind us that those are essentialist explanations for violence. They come with a built-in suggestion that the perpetrators are just like that, acting out attitudes and hatreds that come welling up from within (2005:64, italics in the original).

Focus on gratuitous violence and its justification

As usual, also, the reports did a great job in describing in detail the armament, the barricades, the fighting, the way people were hurt in the protests, and the ensuing reaction by the State, many times using Police jargon that is, all the different aspects of violence. They insisted in bringing up the number of persons harmed, and after the counting stabilizes, they persisted in constantly repeating the information. However, it is possible to note that mentions of the people hurt in the shantytown disappeared from the reports, while the number of injured policemen made the headlines, such as in Locals fight the Police in favela, three officers are shot (Folha de S. Paulo, 2009a).

Besides, there was not even an agreement on the number of injured people (Folha talked about four, while O Estado and Veja named six). Apart from that, they became merely a figure mentioned on the last sentence. There was no concern to follow up the cases and the personal histories behind each victim, what would humanize the statistics.

As Lynch and McGoldrick (2005, 2007) note, the attitude of only listening to official sources legitimates the militaristic, operational solutions that use force as the only possible and acceptable way to deal with the situation, when it is known that it is a fallacy. Nonviolent methods are not only possible, they have been applied successfully in many similar situations, as the work of 54 NGOs in the same Paraispolis shows.

Dualism

The journalistic coverage of the events in Paraispolis is based on a simple division of the world: the favela versus the regular city; rich versus poor; Police versus bad guys; order versus riot. It sounds as if the February 2nd events could be summarized as a confrontation between the Army of Order against the Army of Crime.

However, in this particular analysis, the parties involved (as the same reports inadvertently concede) go far beyond demonstrators versus authorities. They involve favela residents, small-time criminals, organized crime organizations (or those who claim to belong to them), workers, the residents association, city government (responsible for the infrastructure), State government (responsible for the Police), NGOs, the neighboring top and middle classes who hire people from Paraispolis, the same top and middle classes who consume drugs that they buy at the shantytown, the Police that represses, the Police involved in drug trafficking, etc. When it comes to such multiple social relations, the picture is that complex.

The problem with this simplistic and essentialist view of violence is that conflicts are conceptualized as dual, a zero-sum game of two parties. () Defeat, being unthinkable, each has a ready-made incentive to try harder to win to escalate the conflict (Lynch & McGoldrick, 2007:258). In this case, no one can expect something other than violence to happen.

Voice to division

Despite invalidating and ignoring locals statements, the press dedicates whole articles to the impressions of Paraispolis wealthy neighbors. They are affected by what they call nuisances, and are scared of the mess.

Articles give voice to those who overtly speak about making Paraispolis invisible or about removing it. Truth is, however, that the favelas are indirectly inside the traditional neighborhoods, in all the condos and top class areas, represented by its people, who work in supermarkets, bars and shops, clean houses, attend to clients, park their cars, watch others properties, drive the buses, and so on.

In this sense, the favelas are not the neighborhoods of the dangerous classes but an integral part of the daily lives of those who read the Brazilian press. It is personified by the workers who move the countrys economy, and do those essential jobs that do not require training. Better-off classes have no one to resort to besides the favelas, or they would have to do the work themselves.

In the case referred in this essay, press coverage simply died out even though no one had the slightest clue of what had happened, but insisted in quoting some hypothesis that not even the Police could confirm. It gave the impression that it did not really matter.

The conclusion is probably summarized in this excerpt: Most importantly now, however, for [the shantytown] residents and [their] neighbors, is that peace comes back to Paraispolis, says the report (Veja So Paulo, 2009). That means that everything is back to normal: people in the favela should take back their jobs as waiters, babysitters, doormen and house maids, as highlighted in the same article, suffering the miseries of life as second-class citizens, while their rich neighbors go back to their role as bosses hoping for no more annoyances. That would be normal life in the favelas. Violence is just taken for granted. The end.5. Conclusion

The February 2nd, 2009 violent clashes in Paraispolis constitute an example of the daily life in Brazilian slums. Similarly, the So Paulo medias coverage of the events represents the relationship between the press, the favelas, and their inhabitants a relationship one hundred years old.

One may notice, through the analyses of the framings and the contradictions in the press coverage presented here, that there is a biased view of the facts, tending to a gross generalization that qualifies people from the favelas as criminals in any given situation where order breaks down.

The distorted image of the favelas is explicit in insinuations about its unavoidable connection to crime; in a lack of proper investigation of the facts, given explanations and versions of the story; in a lack of attention to the residents views and stories; in the simplistic, dualistic language that sees only senseless violence in the events, not caring to investigate contextual causes; in an excessive attention to statements from authorities; and so on.

It seems that in the medias logic favelas are a thing, a hermetic entity. Thus, we should not make any distinctions between their thousands of inhabitants, be them workers or not, young or old, women or men. According to this framing, the favela as an entity always reacts in the same way when interacting with the external world: with violence, brutality, and barbarism. Finally, this reasoning appears to sustain that the favelas would have a treacherous character, since they get assistance from the State and the NGOs, and have the opportunity to make a living working for their wealthier neighbors, but pay back with violence and crime.

The whole logic in the medias discourse about the favelas configures a perverse institutionalized mechanism of cultural violence that helps build an image of an inferior caste of citizens, hostages to the fallacy that crime and poverty are indivisible. In this way it stigmatizes the people of the favelas as pariahs who, besides structural privations of education, health care, work and welfare, are culturally transformed into criminals by the mass media.

Brazil, a country pursuing to strengthen its economy and reach a leading role in the world, still needs to address this huge social debt, deepened among other reasons by the stereotyping done by the mass media. Changes in this generalized urban conflict augmented by structural violence certainly pass through the radical transformation of the favelas negative image, generated and maintained by the Brazilian press, as this essay attempted to convey.

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___________________ (2009g). Rodeada por bairros ricos, Paraispolis mantm relao dbia com vizinhos, http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/cotidian/ff0402200912.htm, visited on 18-2-2009.

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http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/cotidian/ff0502200910.htm, visited on 18-2-2009.

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