Gilson Rodrigues does not mince words: "What we have developed here is a war structure! ", insists the president of the Union of Residents and Shops of the Paraisopolis favela, one of the largest in Sao Paulo. By telephone, the latter lists the numerous initiatives taken by slum associations to deal with the coronavirus. " This is a 10-point plan, which goes from social to health through the economic aspect ", boasts the young man, 35 years old.
In this favela with more than 100,000 inhabitants, mobilization is general. Two schools have been transformed into reception centers, with beds and bathrooms, to house up to 510 people who test positive for the virus. Three ambulances and 7 health professionals, reachable 24 hours a day, were contacted by neighborhood associations, who also set up first aid training and opened a telemedicine office, exclusively for residents of the favela.
Hygiene kits
All economic life is involved: restaurants, cooking 10,000 every day marmitas (packed lunch) for the most needy; seamstresses, making hundreds of cloth masks. The Paraisopolis Residents Union distributes hygiene kits and financial aid to families, worth a few dozen euros. But the most media-driven initiative is undoubtedly the election of 420 "street presidents", each responsible for watching over 50 houses in the favela, in order to inform, distribute emergency aid and call the medical services when needed.
"In Paraisopolis, we have a very old culture of solidarity and social mobilization", says Rodrigues, whose association was created in 1983. We are used to being neglected and rejected by the state. With the coronavirus, we immediately understood that nobody was going to help us and that we had to mobilize as quickly as possible to take care of ourselves ", he insists. No specific emergency plan, either local or national, has been planned to come to the aid of the favelas, where more than 13 million Brazilians live.
“It’s a rare burst of solidarity. Philanthropy is not something very common in normal times in Brazil "Sonia Fleury, coordinator of the WikiFavelas project, which lists all the solidarity initiatives
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