Andrew

Brazil has repeatedly tried to clear out favelas and replace them with everything from middle-class neighborhoods to taxpayer-subsidized social housing. What happens every single time is that the affordable housing projects morph back into favelas within a few years, and when the government moves people out entirely and relocates them to new neighborhoods, the relocation sites themselves eventually turn into favelas. This has been going on since the late 1960s, yet every decade or so, government officials have this idea that favelas are just a product of poverty, when in reality they're a product of the people who live within them. It's like that meme video we've all seen of a beaver still trying to build a dam in someone's hallway using stuffed animals and cardboard boxes. You can take a man out of the favelas, but you can't take the favela out of the man.