The Human Anthills

From the rear terraces of an expensive new apartment house in Rio, the residents can look down upon the bustling, bawdy life of nearby Kerosene Hill, one of Rio's 120-odd favelas (shanty towns). Kerosene Hill is a jungle of rickety shacks made of packing-case slats, flattened tin cans and odds & ends of junk. Like most other favelas, it has no piped water supply; favelados lug pump water up the hill by the bucketful. A hair-curling stench rises from the shallow ditches that serve the settlement as sewers. "We have a great time watching these human anthills," said an apartment dweller recently, "but they watch us too. Sometimes we wonder what they're thinking." In his voice was an undertone of fear.

During the past ten years an estimated 1,000,000 people have swarmed into Rio looking for a better life than they had in the provinces. Many of them ended up in shantytowns. Today the favelados number an estimated 500,000, about three-fourths of them Negroes. Rio's cops, tough as they are, avoid favelas even by daylight. "As a sanctuary for criminals," said the newspaper O Globo, "the favelas are as inviolate as the ancient temples. The law . . . stops at the base of the hill, as if it were the frontier of a foreign country." Cariocas fear favela-bred epidemics of disease and crime, but they fear explosions of discontent even more. Now & then, a rumor that favelados are about to descend from the hill in plundering hordes puts fear into carioca hearts. Such rumors floated about during last month's carnival celebrations, souring some of the city's gaiety with a vague dread.

Biggest of the favelas is Little Crocodile Hill, where some 45,000 people live jumbled together in squalor and misery. Last week something unusual happened there: strangers invaded the hill and set to work clearing ground for a clinic, a police station and water pipes. The city government was starting a campaign to clean up the favelas, and the program's boss, Dr. Guilherme Ribeiro Romano, 37, had chosen Little Crocodile as the first project.

Romano knows well enough that he cannot merely tear the favelas down. "There is nowhere for the favelados to go," he says. He is keeping his program limited in the hope that, unlike earlier and more grandiose schemes for abolishing the favelas, it can be carried out. His three-part plan: 1) stop the growth of favelas by preventing construction of new shacks; 2) destroy the few flatland favelas, the foulest of all because the sewage in the open ditches does not run off; 3) "civilize" the hillside favelas by providing them with police protection, free medical services, schools, electricity, sewers and running water.

Limited as his program is, Romano faces a hard struggle. He will have to fight an endless battle with municipal agencies for funds and cooperation, and he will have to combat the hostility and apathy of the favelados themselves. But he is determined to push ahead. "This may be Rio's last chance," he said. "If we don't control the favelas, they will keep on growing and turn this city into one vast slum."

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