By Ilka Oliva Corado on June 30, 2021|
flavela in Rio de Janeiro. photo: Bill Hackwell
Historically, for the classist and racist society, in the slum all the evils of the world are conjugated, therefore, whoever is from the slums automatically has to be a thief, abuser, extortionist, rapist, murderer and everything that the human mind can think of. Removing this label is a titanic task because the stigma is like some kind of DNA. Just being from the slums becomes an impediment to get a job, to study, to establish interpersonal relationships outside the slums. People see a person from the slums as a delinquent they have to watch out for. They are excluded from the outset.
Dignifying the slum
That is why being from the slums is to fight against the current permanently, against the system that has violated the peripheries, that has impoverished them and has excluded them from all rights and benefits afforded society. It has accused them of being the greatest danger to the country. The famous red zones that abound in Latin America. That Latin America undermined, stripped, humiliated and sullied by the great oligarchic mafias that are the real danger for the population. Literally the famous favelas that give a romanticism to the reverie.
But what is it like to live without drinking water, without electricity, without paved streets and sewage services, without buses, without work, without a home. How is it to live in overcrowded conditions, without basic food, medicine and health services? How does society expect a human being surviving in these conditions to be able to finish basic education, high school and university? How are parents supposed to feed their children if they are denied opportunities for development? How are they supposed to have an integral life if they are violated daily by the security forces? If they live the social cleansing that seeks to eliminate them? If young people are locked up in prisons that are torture centers because of their origin and appearance? If institutionalized violence forces them to commit crimes?
Because it has violated them all their lives that those who reach the age of adolescence, without self-esteem, without dreams, in a state of deep depression, fighting for life, feeling like trash, are used by the oligarchic mafias to distribute the drugs they produce, to deliver the packages, to collect the debts of the children of daddies and mommies who by their class privilege are the untouchables. And their life goes in it, because what is a teenager from the slums worth, they disappear and nothing happens, to refuse to commit a crime or to do the dirty work of the oligarchic mafias means to die. What is a girl from the slums worth? They are the ones who are part of the statistics of the disappeared; their lives end up in bars in the country and abroad because they are the best business, the most profitable with their bodies for sex trafficking. What do they expect a child to do when he grows up being bombarded on television with soap operas and series of drug traffickers? If on the radio he is annihilated with songs about drugs and cartels all day long? If the government’s message is that the more you cheat, the more successful you are. And what do they expect parents to do if they have to work 16, 18 hours a day to give them at least one meal a day?
To be from the slums is to have everything against you that is why swimming against the current is the resistance of the periphery. Only the slum itself can dignify itself. From the outside only exclusion, slander, rejection, abuse, contempt and injustice will come. That is why those who are from the slums have the titanic mission of being the face and voice of their community, representing the periphery wherever they go. For this reason, they must be careful with their words and their actions. He has to be an entity of change, between childhood and adolescence, he has to influence so that these children and adolescents, instead of seeing themselves as trash, see themselves as human beings who can break down the barrier of hatred and injustice and achieve their dreams. Because for that they have cultivated all their lives the ability to resist and swim against the current.
Whoever is from the slums has to take care of the way they walk, the way they stand, the way they speak, their gestures because there are people watching him, people who will always look down on them and people who will see him as an example to follow. To be from the slums is to try three, ten times harder than anyone else. It is to give 110% in everything you do. It is getting up early and going to bed late; studying, reviewing, exercising your mind and spirit. Being an active part of the community. Being a functional person inside and outside the home, thus breaking the patriarchal structure of gender roles. A boy from the slum can wash clothes as well as a girl and do the cleaning and make the beds and wash the bathroom. Washing the dishes. It is using technology to their advantage, watching documentaries on culture, art, sports, inhospitable villages, everything that economic circumstances and mobility do not allow them to do, they can find in technology. They get together as a group and go to the house of someone who has internet and a device where they can visit digital platforms. It can be done, of course it can be done, because it is one of the responsibilities of the resistance. The resource that is not there is searched until it is found.
It is the slum itself that has to fight against the television bombardment that only seeks to denigrate it. How? By carrying out cultural, environmental, political and sports programs within the community. And for that we need the help of everyone, teachers, market vendors, bus drivers, parents, adults. Only the slum can dignify itself. It is a slow work, which will not be seen to change in the short term and will be generational, but it must be done. The same as planting trees in the surrounding ravines, that will prevent landslides. It can be done and for that we have nothing more than to inform ourselves of the feats performed by others in other times in worse circumstances. The human being has the capacity to achieve the unthinkable.
The suburbs have the obligation to be a seedbed of analytical minds that question the system and have the guts to change it, for that we must nourish ourselves daily of the historical memory and have willpower.
Source: Telesur, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English