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Brasília turns 60, finds new vocations, but maintains inequality

Quality of life, low violence and high income are still attractive

The brightness of Brasilia closed the retina of the green eyes of the boy Will, aged 14 years old. It was January 13, 1959, he was making his first plane trip, coming from São Paulo to live in the new federal capital. The flight was from São Paulo's Viação Aérea (Vasp), one of the six companies that maintained regular routes to Brasília, such as Loide Aéreo Nacional, Real Aerovias, Paraense, Sadia, Cruzeiro do Sul, all extinct.

From inside the plane he had the first mirage of the breadth of the cerrado, in which Juscelino Kubistchek decided to create the city. The same place where, 60 years later, Wilson Pereira Rodrigues, now 74, still lives with his family and works. He has three children (one man and two women) and two granddaughters. All Brasilienses.



Will or Wilson has Brasilia's memories of air, land and water. As a boy, I used to bathe in Córrego Guará and Riacho Fundo. He rode a bicycle, ate fruit from the savanna on his feet and hunted birds in an area of ​​forest that went from the old Cidade Livre (today Núcleo Bandeirante) to the old airport (now the Air Base).

“It felt like being on vacation in the middle of the woods. It was the opposite of living in São Paulo ”, where grandparents, uncles and cousins ​​stayed. Wilson had fun, but studied - at the Gymnasium Brasília (GB) of the La Salle chain (founded in 1957) - and worked at the Hotel e Churrascaria Presidente, in the same Free City, owned by his father - a small businessman who later had others businesses such as a gas distributor (in Asa Norte), a bakery and a lumber company (in Sobradinho).

Wilson helped his father in business and later served in the Army in 1964, in the Presidency of the Republic battalion. Later, he completed studies at the Elefante Branco school, the first scientific education center and for normalists in the city. There he studied his future wife, Walkiria Dunguel Pereira, for whom he was enchanted at a party at the club of Sociedade Desportiva Sobradinhense (Sodeso). He worked at the Favela Eradication Company (CEI), and took a Geology course at the University of Brasília (UnB).

“Everything here was easier. I wouldn't have taken the course I took if I had stayed in São Paulo. It was also easier to raise my children ”, he evaluates after reviewing life. He worked for almost 20 years at the state-owned Siderúrgica (Siderbrás), where he became one of the country's leading coal experts. Today, amnestied among public employees dismissed in the Collor government, he works for the Ministry of Mines and Energy.

Other vocations
Wilson's trajectory, in Brasilia that was opening, was quite different from the directions that his sons took when Brasília matured, lost its original vegetation and created a more city-like feel. The oldest son, Alexandre Dunguel Pereira (49 years old), for example, has a degree in Advertising. He even worked in a public office, but for 20 years he has been an entrepreneur, despite the recommendations of his mother - who always informs him of public tenders that are open for registration.

Along with two other partners in the same age group, also created in Brasilia, Dunguel opened a firm for solutions in communication and technology. Over time, they specialized in media monitoring. Today the company maintains its headquarters in Brasília, has branches in Rio and São Paulo, has about 100 customers - mostly private companies and 80% outside the federal capital - and employs 90 people in the three squares. "It turned out that this journey through private initiative was opening up and became a good path", says the businessman.

The differences between father and son days illustrate how Brasília, despite being the seat of the federal public administration, eventually found other economic vocations. According to a study by the Federal District Planning Company (Codeplan) , in the Federal District, the service sector predominates, and less than a third (27%) of the jobs are in the departments of public administration, in defense or social security.

The service sector serves companies and families with high purchasing power. According to the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad), of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the real average income in the 4th quarter of 2019 in Brasília was the highest in the country: R $ 3,980, 43% above the national average ( R $ 2,261) and 28% above São Paulo (R $ 2,866), which concentrates 31% of the mass of income in Brazil.

Taking roots

Brasília 60 Years - Tesourinhas - Marcello Casal JrAgência Brasil
Dunguel, like his father, finds Brasília “great to live”. And despite having a job that can be done remotely from anywhere, she still lives, works and raises her daughter in the city. “We are taking root. I am a son of Brasília. ” According to him, Lúcio Costa's Pilot Plan was preserved “in some aspects” as the urban planner thought. "There is a lot of green and open space here." In these places, it is common to see wild animals .

Despite the enthusiasm, Alexandre Dunguel, has his criticisms. He thinks that his daughter, Gabriela (12 years old), does not enjoy the same autonomy and independence that he had at the same age. “Current generations do not have the same initiative that we had to take a bus. We feel a little kidnapped by this freedom, due to urban violence, but this is not just Brasília. ”

Professor of Sociology at UnB Arthur Trindade, specialized in policies to combat crime and former Secretary of Public Security in the Federal District, estimates that, despite the concern of local society, Brasília has a situation of lethal crimes “similar to large cities in the North American women. ”

In the comparison between the Federation units, the Federal District is among the five units with the lowest homicide rate per 100 thousand inhabitants: 20.1 - almost half of Rio de Janeiro (38.4) and less than a third of Rio Grande do Norte (62.8), the worst situation in the country as pointed out by the Atlas of Violence 2019 , published by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security and the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea).

According to Arthur Trindade, the biggest security problem in Brasília is in crimes against property, such as theft and car theft. The expert warns, however, that the situation varies within the DF. The Plano Piloto, where Alexandre and Wilson live, has a better security situation than other places, such as formerly called satellite cities or new district urban settlements. “These are very different things. Each administrative region has a different situation. ”

The problem of violence grows close to the Federal District, in the metropolitan region of influence called Entorno, formed by municipalities in Goiás. These locations function as sleeping cities in Brasília, people live there and work in the center of the capital. The professor points out that “the impact of violence in the surroundings is much less than the imaginary supposes. [In the case of homicide statistics,] people kill and die in their neighborhoods. ”

Inequality
The differences pointed out by the sociologist regarding violence between the administrative regions of the Federal District and between the DF and the Surroundings can also be measured with respect to inequality.

Codeplan data account that in Lago Sul, where 1% of the population of DF lives, the per capita income is R $ 8,317.19. In Ceilândia, where 15% of the local population live, the per capita income is R $ 1,120.02 - 7.42 times lower than that of Lago Sul.

In the Complementary Industry and Supply Sector (SCIA), the per capita income is R $ 569.97 - 14.59 times lower than that of Lago Sul. In the area, 1.2% of the population of DF lives, including residents who lived close to the Lixão da Estrutural, the largest landfill in Latin America in operation until two years ago.

Administrative region Population estimate (quantity%) Per capita income
South Lake 29,754 (1%) R $ 8,317.19
Southwest / Octogonal 53,770 (1.9%) R $ 7,093.21
Pilot plane 221,326 (7.7%) R $ 6,770.21
North Lake 33,103 (1.1%) R $ 6,394.04
Park Way 20,511 (0.7%) R $ 5,959.65
Botanical Garden 26,449 (0.9%) R $ 5,872.08
Clear water 161,184 (5.6%) R $ 4,409.06
SIA 1,549 (0.1%) R $ 3,809.40
cruise 31,079 (1.1%) R $ 3,754.74
Guará 134,002 (4.6%) R $ 3,642.72
Vicente Pires 66,491 (2.3%) R $ 2,698.48
Core Bandeirante 23,619 (0.8%) R $ 2,380.94
Sobradinho II 85,574 (3.0%) R $ 2,358.03
Taguatinga 205,670 (7.1%) R $ 2,208.21
Sobradinho 60,077 (2.1%) R $ 2,127.06
gamma 132,466 (4.6%) R $ 1,597.05
Candangolandia 16,489 (0.6%) R $ 1,415.65
San Sebastian 115,256 (4.0%) R $ 1,359.60
deep River 41,410 (1.4%) R $ 1,310.51
Planaltina 177,492 (6.2%) R $ 1,139.82
Brazlandia 53,534 (1.9%) R $ 1,120.02
Ceilandia 432,927 (15%) R $ 1,120.02
Fern 232,893 (8.1%) R $ 992.41
Santa Maria 128,882 (4.5%) R $ 979.18
Itapoã 62,208 (2.2%) R $ 930.66
Recanto das Emas 130,043 (4.5%) R $ 857.74
Varjão 8,802 (0.3%) R $ 834.23
Paranoá 65,533 (2.3%) R $ 826.39
Fercal 8,583 (0.3%) R $ 815.93
Riacho Fundo II 85,658 (3.0%) R $ 795.03
SCIA 35,520 (1.2%) R $ 569.97
Federal District 2,881,854 (100%) R $ 2,461.47


In the comparison of the DF with twelve municipalities in the surroundings, the discrepancy remains. According to a Codeplan survey, the average household income for the set of cities around Brasília is R $ 2,441.67, two and a half times lower than the average household income in DF.

Given these disparities, urban planner José Carlos Coutinho, professor emeritus at UnB, fears that in the future Brasília will end up “being a historic center surrounded by poverty on all sides” .

Professor and specialist in urban geography Telmo Amand Ribeiro, who maintains a YouTube channel about Brasília , disagrees with this assessment.

He points out that "the old satellite cities are already becoming new strongholds for the middle class". The youtuber, however, is concerned with the exclusion of the poorest people in the DF and their withdrawal to the Surroundings. “The entire Federal District is gentrifying and expelling people to the Surrounding region”.

Brasilia's socioeconomic situation makes its critics call it “fantasy island.” For Telmo Amand, the term may fit for Plano Piloto, the city's central and wealthiest area, which “is physically separated from other administrative regions in the city. Distrito Federal ”.

The same assessment is made by the director of the Political Science Institute of UnB, Lucio Rennó, who, in an interview with Agência Brasil , highlighted that “the whole of the Federal District and the surrounding areas have nothing of an island of fantasy”.

In national and even international terms, Brasília's inequality does not differentiate it from other parts of the world. Sociologist and economist Marcelo Medeiros, a former resident of the city, considers that “inequality is high in several countries and what we see in Brasilia is repeated in Argentina, South Africa, the United States and China. Inequality is a global problem and is evident in metropolises. ”

The discrepancies in the federal capital do not correspond to the dreams of the first Brazilian who wanted to bring the seat of power to the interior of Brazil: Tiradentes , whose day is also remembered on April 21. Two hundred and thirty years after the inconfidentes, the country is not yet the imagined homeland.

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