In A So Paulo Favela, A Former Landfill Is Becoming A Public Park - Meet The 27-Year-Old Resident B
In A São Paulo Favela, A Former Landfill Is Becoming A Public Park – Meet The 27-Year-Old Resident Behind It
BY SIOBHAN REID
24 April 2022
It’s a Saturday afternoon in Jardim Colombo, a favela southwest of São Paulo, and residents have gathered in Fazendinhando Park for a community clean-up event. Volunteers in bright pink T-shirts swirl around the hillside, sweeping pathways, applying rainbow-coloured paint to park surfaces, and handing out free household supplies while children skip and kick a football on the playground.
At the centre of the action is 27-year-old resident Ester Carro. As a professional architect and the visionary behind Fazendinhando Park, Carro could easily be giving orders. Instead, she’s shoulder to shoulder with other volunteers, picking up loose scraps of rubbish and pouring paint into roller trays. The only time she puts down her paintbrush is when her seven-year-old son, Ilias, comes up to give her a hug.
In 2017, Carro stood before the 2,000 sq ft lot, wondering how she would transform the abandoned site into the community’s first leisure space. When Carro was a little girl, the area was a small farm (or fazendinha), where cows and horses grazed. When the man who cared for the land and animals became ill, the area fell into disuse and residents started disposing of their rubbish there. Over time, the mound of trash grew bigger until it swelled to the size of a landfill, with mattresses and other detritus cascading down the hill, overflowing onto streets and into neighbours’ homes. The dump was home to poisonous snakes and scorpions, and the decomposing trash produced toxic methane gasses linked to cancer and other serious diseases.
Local officials had promised to extend rubbish pickup and other basic services to the favela, home to 18,000 people. But Carro didn’t expect anything to change – she had experienced their lofty promises and delayed action before. So she took things into her own hands, carrying out a revitalisation of the community inspired by Parque Sitiê, a landfill turned ecological reserve in Rio de Janeiro’s Vidigal favela.
More:
https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/sao-paulo-landfill-public-park
