Maiá Menezes, journalist with O Dia, Rio de Janeiro
By using this original brick-making process, the costs of building a small house can be halved.
Former slum-dwellers, Francisco Casanova’s pupils have built 18 houses of this type for themselves and their families. A dozen more are under construction.
|
One day, when the weather
is bad, Poem
sent to the UNESCO Courier by Matthew Pras, |
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Magic bricks By using a mixture of earth, cement and water,
strong and environment-friendly bricks can be produced five times cheaper than the
market price. They are shaped to slot into each other horizontally so that no mortar
is needed; this alone brings the price down by at least half. The bricks are machine-manufactured,
take five or six days to dry and do not absorb water. They also protect the natural
environment. For every thousand bricks made, 12 fewer average-size trees need to
be felled. |
“I want to see people becoming more confident. The idea is to teach people to fish and then give them a fishing rod. It’s not much good just giving them the fish.”
A Brazilian
professor teaches slum-dwellers low-cost brick-making techniques
Brazilian chemist and civil engineer Francisco Casanova makes houses for
the poor. He has developed a technique that has allowed families to move out of their
shacks and into proper houses with solid walls. Working alone, he teaches 700 low-income
people—80 per cent of them slum-dwellers—to make special bricks which halve the cost
of building a house. Then they learn how to build their own houses and can earn some
money by working in one of the five co-operatives set up by Casanova to make and
sell the bricks.
Casanova, 45, who teaches civil engineering to postgraduates at Rio de Janeiro Federal
University, is a solitary campaigner who does not rely on help from the government
or any big company. “Politicians don’t want people to organize among themselves,”
he says. “They’re afraid of losing control of them.”
His personal battle involves teaching more than just the basics of civil engineering.
What his pupils also learn in his classes are the principles of citizenship. “I’m
not doing this for religious, political or financial reasons,” he says. “I want to
see people becoming more confident. The idea is to teach people to fish and then
give them a fishing rod. It’s not much good just giving them the fish.”
In the three years his project has been going, a lot of fish have been caught. His
impoverished pupils have built 18 houses for themselves to live in and another 10
are planned over the next year.
The
country’s first self-governing condominium
Another triumph for
Dr Casanova is the Duque de Caixas slum, in the Baixada do Rio de Janeiro—one of
the poorest places in Rio province. In the year 2000, it will have the country’s
first self-governing condominium. About 15,000 bricks are ready for Casanova’s pupils,
who will build 10 houses with them. The land still has to be bought, and this will
be done with funding from the Research Assistance Foundation of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ),
the only public body interested in helping the project.
Casanova will sign agreements with other departments at his university to provide
the condominium with solar power, its own water purification system and a plan for
organic gardening and farming. The residents will be pupils of Casanova who currently
live in the Rato Molhado (“Wet Mouse”) slum, among filthy puddles, foul smells and
violent drug-dealers.
It has not been easy for Casanova. Sometimes drug-dealers have ordered work in a
slum to stop, apparently because they are suspicious of social projects and help
from outside which they fear might undermine their authority in the slums. The big
housing developers do not like this kind of project either. When Casanova teaches
people to make cheaper cement, it means less business for them. “The developers try
to block anything that cuts costs,” he complains. But he is not deterred by such
threats.
What drives Casanova in his lone crusade is gratitude, especially towards his university,
which is public and free. He regards his university studies as a kind of gift from
society. “Society has allowed me to study,” he says, “and if there’s anything I can
do in return, then I must do it.”
But this does not stop him criticizing scientific research geared to developing discoveries
made in rich countries. “Ninety-nine per cent of what the university does serves
the interests of those who can afford to pay,” he notes.
It is true that Brazil’s university system is heavily involved in projects sponsored
by big firms such as the oil company Petrobras and the Rio de Janeiro subway system.
University departments are researching into fields like high speed calculation and
high-resistance cement manufacture. “On top of that,” he says, “the university is
the home of elites.” In defiance of this elitism, three years ago he brought 15 of
his building technology students to the university. When they went into the canteen,
the university students were shocked and the most prejudiced even laughed at them.
“I brought these people from the slums without telling the university because I knew
that if I had they wouldn’t’ve been allowed in,” says Casanova, who eventually managed
to get them registered at the university. After the project achieved international
recognition, there were no more problems. “Today, no one dares to criticize me,”
he says happily.
Dulcinéia da Rocha is 60 years old and the keenest of Dr Casanova’s students.
After studying, she decided to teach, became his unofficial assistant and recently
went to Paris with him to present the project at UNESCO Headquarters together with
other grassroots anti-poverty initiatives within the framework of the UN Decade for
the Elimination of Poverty. The trip was a dream come true for Dulcinéia,
who lives in the Rato Molhado slum and is one of the lucky future owners of a new
house in Duque de Caixas.
A non-profit
technique without a patent
Casanova spent 400
reals (about $200) on da Rocha’s visit to Paris and also bought her a set of false
teeth because she did not want to go without first visiting the dentist. But she
paid Casanova back with interest by becoming an excellent example of women’s determination
to build. “Some men don’t seem to have a will to live,” he says, “but women will
do anything to change their lives.”
The seeds of Casanova’s revolutionary enterprise were sown in 1973, when he was an
engineering student and began studying road-building technologies. “One day I said
to myself: ‘Why don’t people use this technique to make bricks? If we can make cheaper
roads, why not cheaper houses too?’ ” Years later, one of Casanova’s students received
a letter from someone who had bought a machine for making bricks and didn’t know
how to use it. Casanova helped him and, after the story appeared in a popular magazine,
started hearing from people wanting to learn how to build their own houses.
Offers of funding followed, although not many actually materialized. The Comunidade
Solidaria programme run by Ruth Cardoso, Brazil’s First Lady, donated 33,000 reals
($16,500). But financial aid turned out to be no more than charity, because the pupils
were paid 50 reals ($25) a day to attend the classes and when the money supply dried
up, they vanished. “The project is working today because people are working to build
their own homes,” says Casanova.
Some businessmen are also turning to Casanova, but he says “the product isn’t really
accepted by the market” because it is not designed to make a profit and is not patented.
Under Brazilian trade and industry ministry rules, Casanova’s technique cannot easily
be registered because the bricks are made neither of new materials nor in a new way.
The only innovation is in the proportion of the ingredients used. “It would be like
patenting the recipe for chocolate cake,” he says with a smile.