The favelas in Brazil are mainly built on the hillsides and they consist of small shacks where the city’s poor live. Many of the houses are single rooms and lack water, electricity, and plumbing of any kind. In the worst cases, the houses are single room buildings made out of cardboard, plastic and tin roofs held down by rocks. The more established favelas have houses of maybe 2 rooms and are made out of bricks rather than scavenged materials. Benedita da Silva, an Afro-Brazilian woman and politician who grew up in favelas showed that the favelas could overcome the horrible conditions that many of the slums could be improved through activism by the …show more content…
The tree tappers of the Amazon are applauded for their protection of the rainforest, the people in the favelas are admired for their struggles in improving human life, and the protesters in Bolivia are commended for their determination in the face of violence and corruption. One voice that would be particularly interesting to hear from would be Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He has spoken up many times about Latin America, especially since he is from Argentina. Based on his encyclical focused on climate change and economic inequalities in Latin America, the pontiff would undoubtedly be fully supportive of the movements surrounding the favelas and the tree tappers. He would see the tree tappers as the ideal people to be leading the movement towards ecological protection of the rainforest because of their mostly peaceful methods. The favela advocacy groups would be the prime example of people fighting the inequality that he mentioned in his letter, especially since the Catholic Church is active in charity missions to help people in impoverished areas. The Cochabamba protestors would be a more difficult group for him to side with, the death of one of the protestors and the injury of many people on both sides of the conflict would most likely make him ponder his stance on this group. There are laudable things that the group accomplished though, particularly in