In Brazil, where racial mixing is welcome, social integration doesn’t equal economic equality
The Washington Post 2013-03-17: RIO DE JANEIRO — Many Brazilians cast their country as racial democracy where people of different groups long have intermarried, resulting in a large mixed-race population. But you need only turn on the TV, open the newspaper or stroll down the street to see clear evidence of segregation. In Brazil, whites are at the top of the social pyramid, dominating professions of wealth, prestige and power. Dark-skinned people are at the bottom of the heap, left to clean up after others and take care of their children and the elderly. read more ...
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RETIRED , ELDERLY , DARK-SKINNED PEOPLE , SOCIAL MINORITIES
REQUIRE FREEDOM , EQUALITY AND JUSTICE
In the Brazilian state of Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Alagoas, and many other states, some of the worst aspects of Brazil's land history are being repeated. Local governments are colluding in the privatization of beaches and other public lands. Housing subdivisions are transformed overnight into huge gated communities. These gated communities aren´t registered as such. They are what we call here false gated communities or false condominiums
Published 12/12/2012
Prejudice and Greed: The Roots of False Gated Communities and the Privatization of Public Spaces in Bahia-Brazil
A Bahia North Shore Community Mobilization Film Advocating for the Right of Free Access to Public Areas
The result of almost two years of work, the documentary Prejudice and Greed: The Roots of False Gated Communities and the Privatization of Public Spaces in Brazil exposes these illegalities from the perspective of the affected society.
A Bahia North Shore Community Mobilization Film Advocating for the Right of Free Access to Public Areas
The result of almost two years of work, the documentary Prejudice and Greed: The Roots of False Gated Communities and the Privatization of Public Spaces in Brazil exposes these illegalities from the perspective of the affected society.
The film was independently made, with the participation of key community leaders.
This story is told by activists and citizens, victims of these outrages committed by false gated communities. They have come together to challenge the violation of their rights and expose the illegal practice of appropriation of public land, racism, environmental violations and illicit profiteering. They demand their right to access public space. WATCH INTRO . Director: Roberval de Oliveira
This story is told by activists and citizens, victims of these outrages committed by false gated communities. They have come together to challenge the violation of their rights and expose the illegal practice of appropriation of public land, racism, environmental violations and illicit profiteering. They demand their right to access public space. WATCH INTRO . Director: Roberval de Oliveira
Brazilian citizens requires respect to their human rights and their liberty of go and come on public streets and beaches
As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host two of the world's biggest international events -- the World Cup in 2014 and Olympic Games in 2016 -- the city is working to "clean up" its image.
But nothing is done to provide security , freedom and justice to thousands of citizens , retired and elderly persons explored by "false condominiums" that usurped public streets and beaches to gain money against federal constitution and law .
Watch : LUIZ GEORG KUNZ fight for his freedom and to keep his house arrested by false condominium
Leiam o excelente artigo-denuncia da DEFESA POPULAR contra o "ativismo judicial" desprovido de fundamentação legal, que afronta a autoridade das Cortes Supremas do Brasil para condenar cidadãos a perderem suas moradias, casas proprias , unico bem de familia , intitulado "NÃO RESPEITAR A HIERAQUIA INSTITUCIONAL É PROMOVER O CAOS SOCIAL " postada em 19 de abril de 2013 em http://defesapopular.blogspot.com.br/
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Open Letter to BRAZILIAN SUPREME COURT against BRAZIL´s HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Your Worship
Key Words: Human Rights, Constitution, False Compounds, Double Taxation, Encronchment of Areas of Common Use.
Brazil lives a situation of intolerable legal insecurity in face of the alarming facts that attack in a explicit way the fundamental civil rights that are part of its democracy, both of natives and foreigners. Families losing their houses. Retired people losing their houses. Humble people having the right of not joining forcefully and that would never live in compounds legally built, now are treated as indebted compound residents. The furious greed for profits by residents associations combined to a law that faces basic regiments of the constitution.
It is coherent that in a plain civil rights state, the commitment of all the society sectors on a common case should be an organic evidence of its social and political health. Associations are also made so that citizens can speak their minds and entities objetively commited to dialogue and propose solutions along with the public power. These solutions aim to correct or diminish problems that affect the nation.
In this context all the social spheres should be included, as all contribute and receive from the Treasury. It could be by using the basic services as health, security and education. In case there is a disagreement between tax service and what you receive in return, a relaxing state is set between the citizen and the public power. This disagreement is shown by this way: the taxpayer that has got less rely only on the return of its contribution power, such as health, education, security, planning. In turn, the taxpayer who has got more can’t usufruct of what it has the right, preferring the private categories of services such as medical care, private schools, private security. However, they can’t abdicate the taxes they have to pay to the government. Thus it happens the abnormal situation of the citizen who has less, compelled by the associations to pay “double taxation”, one official and the other parallel. This disagreement saps the credibility of a democratic state and install the private heritage power, dismissing the obligation between citizen and public power (civitas) and increasing the distance between theory and practice of public areas and common goods of civil society.
The evil side of this math is not the public services and the official taxes, not rarely imbalanced that the contributor has to pay, but the gradual absorption from a real right state to a relative pseudo-right state, betrayer, demagogic that reduces.the soverengty of the constitution in favour of the corporatism of an influential wealthy part of the population. The right of the residents to take part on the public business (polis) according to the collectivity loses its meaning when the final intention is to segregate, distance, brand and despoil. The term for this values crisis is usurpation, which erodes silently the democratic state of the country. It is also the term that the victims have to deal with. Victims whom are public humiliated, mistreated, beaten, reduced to the condition of financial insolvency and labelled as illicit.
The absurd situation here installed by the public power under the sights of the good justice need to be underlined so that cunning interpretations can be put apart: the districts denominated as an exception scheme such as “cells” or “bolsões residenciais” submit all their residents an administrative and financial coup that generates ilegal profits and damages the taxpayer that needs the basic services. The city halls keep on charging asphalt maintenance but they discharge themselves from their own duties whereas street conservation and public security are automatically outsourced. The contributor that should have access to all these rights is three times damaged. First because it pays to the Government a mandatory tax and can’t be discharged of that. Second because it doesn’t receive the basic services that are the reason for these taxes. Third because the parallel taxation installed by the associations is coercive and it is based on a taylorist justice as a way of intimidating the ones who are against it.
The evil side continues in the scary sights of elderly people that watch in a short period of time dramatic changes in their villages: walls, gates, private security, charges and legal notifications. In addition the news about kidnapping, violence and robbery. They should within the limit of their strenght still deal with the seizure of their property and all the resources they have been saving for all their lives and to add insult to injury with the nod of the justice that should be aware of the soverengty of the Magna Carta.
It is known that there are some cases of retired people, without any help from neighbours who clap their hands when justice officials arrive for criminal investigations of their goods. The income they earn from their retirement is really tricky. Should they spend part of their salary in medicine or accept the parallel taxation that will definitely not bring any benefits for the nation? The benefits of the ones who intend to be compounds are questionable when they operate on the surface of the most obvious patina that the appearance can offer.
The uncertainty operated in this fragile mental process of the ones that uses the private security, charging to divide the taxes from the one who is not associated is wide open exposed in the pharaonic entrance halls of compounds and also in the abusive costs of maintenance of signs of financial prosperity instead of effective security. It is uncertain because it uses as an allibi a common concern that affects all offering a solution that amplifies their social position. It is uncertain because the argument of the literate part that defend the mandatory compound setting of the country based on the “Social Fact” reduce to venality and comercial promotion when observed by a human optic. What else are we talking about if not the separation of rich and poor? Only that the law that before ensured the isonomy rights, the dignity and the protection of the citizen (societas) in view of the arbitrariness of the State and the free game of markets is if automatically shaken. Let’s quote part of the articleCidade, Cidadania e Segregação Urbana, by Luiz Cesar de Queiroz Ribeiro, Coordinator of Observatório de Políticas Urbanas e Gestão Municipal – IPPUR/FASE/UFRJ.
Nowadays there are changes or “disruptions in the historical process” that impact in a specific way [...] the polis (the resident right to take part in the public business) increases while the civitas (relations based on rights and duties mutually respected) remains hypertrophied and societas (rights to protect the resident agains arbiriitrarieness of the state, protection of social values in the face of the free game of market) virtually inexist.
Thus the trust in the city and state justice, which accepted outlandish arguments such as “illegal enrichment”, was also shocked, saying that the villages associations who encourage their inhabitants to think and act as speculators of their own property were right.
It is important to be said that a democratic state is only accepted if the legal decisions were predictable and these were based on an objetive and clear constitution and not the opposite as some judges prefer to lead it. It is just like being taken back to the the aristocratic period. It is worth regaining Monstequieu’s concept about the collective power of democracy face the power of the minority who controls the state in favour of their own interest. Montesquieu said that while republic the people being only one body has all the rights and this is a democracy. If it is on the hands of only one part of the population, it is called aristocracy. And when it is an aristocracy the power is going to be only on the hands of a few people. They create the law and they make them work. One of the remarks of aristocracy is the unequal rights, uneven punishment of crimes and the patrimonialism that takes off the right of the next one. The only aim is to expand and privatize the collective goods.
The house is a cozy place, it has got a lot of meanings, and it gives people identity and family belonging and it gives people a common history. A safe place to be, a reference that will always be in the social relationships of a human being during different parts of its life. The father’s house, the mother’s house, the grandparents’ house, your own house, the humble but honest and safe house. This is not the house deliberated by the brazilian justice, but an object of trade effort as active risk. They speculate about the tranquil streets that attracted huge mansions, they speculate about walls that would surround the same streets, they speculate about private security, they speculate about the appreciation of their house even though they have never celebrated contract with any real state agency or future market. So it is necessary to know that the family built its home paying all the taxes so that it could be sure to give condition to educate their kids, to take care of their elderly and for the dignity of the breadwinner, definitely not speculating about possible profits or loss in the property value.
The decision to build an extra property for future demand depends on financial maturity and also knowledge that is acquired along the time and practice and it is also a risk that can only be measured by the agreement of all the people who share the same shelter. The first house, the only house, is the guarantee that a family can grow bigger, it is the place that separates the natural person and the legal person’s world, due to the people’s respect, fraternity, love, solidarity and tolerance. The investment on this sacred place is humane.
But the law assumes a new genre of family affected by these villages associations and property administrators: useless, materialist, apparent, affective bonds based from the consumption and the possession of objects. The values that came before the economic liberalism obviously remain in brands and products that show traditional images intentionally connected to family security, they are places’ names and things revived in advertisement campaigns that we used to hear only from our grandparents. It is surely the image of a margerine brand family that immediately shows as a concept when we try quickly to order our minds. We have Portal dos Manacás family, Residencial Florada da Serra family, Condomínio Jurupês family, bolsão dos Marqueses family. But also the Citroen family, the Honda family and the Audi family.
The Editorial Market on the other hand specializes itself in campaigns targeting the inner-walls consumers, launching great visual appeal magazines, making its participants being part of a reality based on sophism. Luxury as a way to show social position and the hedonist consumption is what presents a resident of a false compound, who tries to gain more and maintain its material heritage with no concern to the limits it has as a citizen. The sites with short walls threaten its properties, as outside looks could check its house. The old residents must therefore adjust their places to the new pattern ruled by the fast village expansion or what has been more common: give up having their own house before they are sued for illegal enrichment.
The image steem seems to interfere more and more in the essencial human values and this should never be worked by the legal framework. It is asked which argument take villages associations to conclude that the style of mansions recently built contribute to the appreciation of your neighbour property, so that this one has to pay for the maintenance done by others. From this point on it is not said about improvements on private security that acts outside the state and inside the walls of this territory.
In face of this disonestly distorted interpretation, it urges that the justice acts together in all its spheres, and that it stops this circle of uncertainties that annoys victims of this psychological pressure that causes them harm to their health and reduce their lives expectations. If villages associations win the case, gaining huge portions of urban area and their mandatory taxes e fundamentally anti-constitutional goes agains human rights and installs a dangerous gap in the rights of basic living. It is the same as if the state gives the rules of soil sharing to a wild market that will dislodge the families that do not accept the rules of the game.
Accepting the speech of outsource sector employees shamelessly in the evil game of associations and administrations pretend to be lambs, justice won’t do more than destroy families and convict citizens that have contributed to the state thrir whole life to a painful and unsolvable situation, which they have no guilt. This legal abandon is made by violence agains the human rights, as it strenghts the social tensions when they install a democracy of few instead of having a real democracy.
Most respectfully yours
Oliver Mann
Brazil Embassy, in Hansaallee 32A - German and to:
Ilmo. Presidente do Supremo Tribunal Federal - STF
Ministro Joaquim Barbosa
Praça dos Três Poderes
70175-900 Brasília DF Brazil
Ilmo. Presidente do Superior Tribunal de Justiça - STJ
Ari Pangendler
SAFS – Quadra 06 - Lote 01 – Trecho III
70095-900 Brasília DF Brazil
Ilmo.Ministro do Supremo Tribunal Tribunal Federal - STF
Luiz Fux
Praça dos Três Poderes
70175-900 Brasília DF Brazil
Ministério Público do Estado de São Paulo
Rua Boa Morte 661 – Centro
13480-181 Limeira SP Brazil
