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The children take their land
It was ten o’clock at night in Vila Paulistana – a northern suburb of the
Brazilian city of Sao Paulo. A crowd was massing in the dark by the church at the foot of
the hill and hesitantly fromed itself into a procession. A few torches were lit and slowly
the file of 800 or so people started to move.
They called themselves ‘Filhos da Terra’ - the ‘Children of the
Land’. Desperate for a place to live they have resolved to invade some unused land at
the top of the hill.
Edna Sardoso was at the front of the procession with her parents. 16 years old, she was
nervous, like the rest of them. ‘But no, not afraid. Some people were scared but I
wasn’t.’
The land belongs to the ‘Santa Casa de Misericordia’ – the ‘Holy
House of Mercy’. But according to Edna this is a house which is ‘neither holy
nor merciful’. It owns huge tracts of land in Sao Paulo and though supposedly a
charitable institution it is not very sympathetic to the calls of the poor.
‘Invading their land might have been illegal,’ she says, ‘ but to me it
was exactly the right decision. They had too much land while there were people on the
streets with nothing.’
The invasion took place in February 1984. Now almost a year later Edna shows the New
Internationalist the community that the Children of the Land have created for themselves.
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Procession route
This is the way – all the families together with lots of children and young
people. Some singing hymns and with torches.
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Building materials
This bricks and wood for the houses have all been bought on credit – so we
can’t afford to lose them. We will fight rather that be thrown off the land.
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Church of Nossa Senhora do Carmo
The priests here always support the poor. They support the poor. They said Mass for us
on the hill after the invasion.
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Vila Paulistana Human Rights Centre
The office in the church basement is where we held our planning meeting. Lawyers are
helping us negotiate with the Santa Casa.
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Rented housing
We were living before in rented rooms – paying 100,000 cruzeiros a month when the
minimum wage here is 97,000. I have seen people in the street crying because they had
nowhere to live.
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Community centre
We put this up first so people had a place to shelter. Many people lost their jobs
through having to stay here all the time on guard.
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Our house
Each family has five metres by twenty. I helped my father with the building: digging
ditches, carrying bricks and water.
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Security guards
The Santa Casa have now put armed guards in a building just across the way to prevent
us taking any more land.
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Police station
There were lots of incidents in Sao Paulo on the night if the invasion – so the
police couldn’t come. Now they don’t want to come because they know do many
people support us.
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Local council offices
We rent many times here to the prefeitura to ask for help with housing. They
said they would help but it was all lies. If you want anything you have to struggle for
yourself.
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Sau Paulo: A third of the people in the city live in overcrowded housing that costs so
much that they don’t have money left to buy food.
Photo: Peter Stalker, Drawing: Tony Ansell
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