Participatory democracy builds trust, brings services to poor suburb in northern Brazil

Latin America and the Caribbean is the most urbanised of the world’s developing regions: nearly 75% of the population currently lives in cities. More than 50 municipalities have more than one million inhabitants, and seven metropolitan areas have more than five million inhabitants (two are among the world’s largest cities: Mexico and Sao Paulo). The region clearly shows the "urbanization of poverty" that began during the 1980s. In the late 1990s, six of every 10 poor people in the region lived in urban areas.

Decentralization and greater local autonomy are gaining ground in the region. In Brazil, there have been extensive legislative reforms, including development of the now-famous "City Statute", which emphasise local government empowerment and the rights of the urban poor to participate. Latin American cities such as Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, and nearly 400 others, have pioneered Participatory Budgeting, which aims to open the municipal budgeting process to a broad range of stakeholders and thus makes spending more transparent and involves citizens in decision-making over public resources.

The case of Tapana in Brazil is one of the lesser known examples of participatory democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Tapana is a poor suburb in the metropolitan region of Belem, the capital of the state of Para, in the north of Brazil. Fifteen years ago, this area was illegally occupied and some 60,000 new inhabitants arrived, even though there was no water supply, no basic sanitation services, no garbage disposal, no paved streets and no electrical power.

The Mayor of Belem received community leaders for the first time five years after the occupation, when they went to see him with the intention of demanding land regularization. To their surprise, the community leaders discovered that the region of Tapana was not even on the map - it did not exist!

Over the next few years, two community-based movements, led mainly by women, worked together with NGOs and municipal authorities towards obtaining basic services for the local population and regularizing the plots of land, so as to become part of the legal city. Overcoming the lack of trust between the main stakeholders – the community and local authorities - was the key challenge.

Today, Tapana has ten primary schools, a health centre, four pharmacies, a kindergarten, general power lines, small shops, four lines of public transport for its 120,000 inhabitants, and potable water for more than 75% of the population. Founders of the community movements believe, however, that the most important achievement is the continuous open channel of communication between the community and the municipality.

This story is adapted from an article entitled “Participatory democracy at the local level in Latin America and the Caribbean: some experiences, many challenges” in the August 2005 edition of Urban Governance, the newsletter of the Global Campaign on Urban Governance. Contact: UN-HABITAT, PO Box 30030, Nairobi 00100, Kenya. Email.

 


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