Mass occupation underscores toll of economic crisis
SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil — Luciano Oliveira, a bricklayer, gazes at the floor of his tiny wood shack, which is one of thousands of makeshift settlements that comprise a massive squat in this suburb of Sao Paulo.
Oliveira was fired from his job at a restaurant a few months ago, shortly after arriving from the northeastern state of Bahia.
“I can’t read. I can’t write. And I have nowhere else to go,” said Oliveira, 23. “But here I met so many people like me. I feel I am part of a movement now. This has become my family.”
Oliveira resides in one of the more than 8,000 tents and improvised structures in Brazil’s biggest occupation, organized by the increasingly powerful Homeless Workers Movement. For the last 20 years, the group has taken over abandoned buildings and sometimes unoccupied land with the aim of negotiating with governments and companies for housing for the working poor.
Sprawling across a roadside area about the size of 10 soccer fields, the latest occupation underscores how tough life has been for the poorest Brazilians as the country struggles to recover from its most severe economic crisis in decades.
Almost 42 percent of occupiers are unemployed, nearly 30 percentage points above the national average, according to Dieese, a labor union research institute. Average income is about $350 a month, less than the average cost of rent in a two-bedroom home in Sao Paulo’s metropolitan area. And 17 percent of youths between 15 and 17 years old are not attending school.
The squat, which sits between the factory of Swedish truck and engine maker Scania and elegant apartment buildings, has almost no electricity. Some structures are no more than pieces of plastic on the bare ground, while others are built more sturdily with wood.
With Brazil suffering high unemployment and a sluggish economic recovery from a massive recession, the occupation has amplified polarization in the country ahead of presidential elections next year.