As Classes Dominantes (The Dominant Classes)

There were eight of us reading a book about ideology. We didn't get very far because of the constant interruptions, and because nobody had time beforehand to read the ten-or-so pages to be discussed. So we read it out loud, and followed it with animated, undisciplined discussion. On the chapter ‘Ideology in the Positive Sense’, Tania commented, ‘It's like the song by Cazuza’, and she sang, ‘Everybody needs an ideology to live’. Everybody in the reading group agreed and sang the words with Tania. Helena said, ‘That's right, we all have to have something to believe in to enable us to carry on’. The reading group was made up of women from Santa Cruz, a favela in Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. Santa Cruz is classified as an invasion (invasão) – in other words, it is characterized by irregular occupation of the land, together with precarious social and economic conditions.

The first residents moved to Santa Cruz during the 1960s either to escape drought and unemployment in the rural interior or because they had been evicted from another area of unofficial settlement in Salvador. In 1970, there were just under 23,000 people living in the census area of which Santa Cruz forms a part.