Five thousand people, who make up 1300 families forced to leave their houses in a neighbourhood with more than five decades of existence. That is the result of a work advertised as of vital economic importance to the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The works to widen the runway of Salgado Filho airport in Porto Alegre, led by the German company Fraport, have completely changed the lives of those thousands of people, not only for the harsh process of eviction and removal, but also for the conditions of the places where the families have been removed to: much below what the community wished, and even below what had been promised by the city hall.
Precariousness in the infrastructure of the dwellings, lack of basic services of health and education, absence of adequate work spaces and security are among the new problems that the removed families have been facing. Meanwhile, the 70 or so families which decided to stay in Vila Nazaré until they obtained minimally dignified conditions to leave have been suffering the consequences of the development of projects which place profit above life: in the middle of a destroyed community, emptied of neighbours, the families which resist face problems of access to electric power and water, besides the pressure of the German company to accelerate and impose conditions to the removal process.
All of that in the middle of the worst sanitary crisis in recent history, in which Porto Alegre was considered the heart of the collapse in the health system during the explosion of coronavirus, undoubtedly due to the city hall once again prioritizing profit above life. The mayor Sebastião Melo (MDB) himself made the city’s administration’s priorities explicit in a Freudian slip some days before the city reached its worst moment in the pandemic: “Contribute with your family, your city, your life for us to save the economy of the city of Porto Alegre” said Melo during a live broadcast through the internet on February 26. Two weeks later, the city reached the peak in the pandemic.
About the families which remain in Vila Nazaré, Fraport decided to sue for repossession, a type of measure which was prohibited to be executed by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in some states like Rio de Janeiro and Paraíba while the pandemic lasts. During all the pandemic, according to a request made by PSOL to STF to prohibit evictions and removals until the end of 2021, 9,156 families were evicted, and other 64,546 are under threat. On May 19, the bill 827/20, which prohibits evictions during the pandemic, was passed. The bill is still to be approved by the senate.
The Federal Public Ministry (MPF) has recently also been denouncing the company’s strategy to pulverize the negotiation, and has even filed a civil public suit demanding it is done with “mediation and conciliation at the collective level, with uniform and isonomic criteria for dwelling alternatives to the families”.
The MPF has also manifested itself against the containers that Fraport made available for the hearings: “The place made available to the defendant consists of a place kept by the plaintiff of the repossession suit, which revealed itself to be a completely inadequate place to guarantee the defendant’s tranquility and conditions for contacting and speaking with their lawyer”.
Considering that, and in response to the denunciation made by Friends of the Earth Brazil, the National Council of Human Rights recommended “the provisory suspension of the conciliatory hearings in the support center until the end of the sanitary crisis of COVID-19”, in a document sent to judge Thais Helena Gonçalves Della Giustina, from the third federal region of Porto Alegre.
In the last weeks, the judge suspended the hearings and began to issue injunctions of repossession for immediate demolition of the houses. To the families whose refusal the judge understands as justifiable, she once again presents the option of accepting the apartment or determines that Fraport will deposit the sum of R$78,889.65, a value which is equivalent to the dwelling bonus in Porto Alegre. That value is received after the family’s house is demolished. There is the option of appealing, but the lawsuit for repossession will not be stopped. That means people will have their houses demolished and the trial will come afterwards!
“A city has been removed from the map”, says a dweller who preferred not to identify herself. “People who only have a business (no house) are being forced to leave with no rights to anything, and the ones who do have a house receive around 78 thousand reals, and they are forced to leave, no matter how big the house is, nor how long the family has been living here, nothing. It’s all shoved down our throats”, says the dweller about the present situation.
“This money they are ‘giving’ is not enough to buy a house around here. I think one cannot buy a house anywhere”, she regrets. The dwellers are also complaining that they cannot be attended by the Federal Public Defender’s Office. They are completely abandoned.
Get to know this case better in the publication From the field to the city: histories of fight for the peoples’ right to land and life. Access here.
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