Making A Commitment to Salvador, Bahia: A City of Contrasts and Inequalities
Grateful to the Steve Biko Institute for hosting me in Salvador and the strategic dialogue we had about the future.
In the coming months, I’ll be mobilizing support for organizers in Salvador, Bahia to strengthen the movement for the rights and economic opportunities of Afro-Brazilians here and in the wider region. I am compelled to action by the African-descended cultural and spiritual traditions here in Salvador that survived both centuries of enslavement and the generational poverty and marginalization that followed.
Here in Salvador, Bahia there is a substantial percentage of the population living below the poverty line. Unsurprisingly, poverty in Salvador is highly correlated with race, gender and their intersections. The presence of favelas and informal settlements, referred to here as "peripheral neighborhoods" or "suburbios" in were visible as we traveled throughout Salvador. These areas are plagued by inadequate housing, limited access to quality social services, and high levels of poverty.
The Gini coefficient for Salvador was 0.65 in 2019, which demonstrates a higher level of income inequality than Brazil as a whole.
Approximately 26% of Salvador's population lived below the poverty line in 2019 which, is higher than the national poverty rate of 24%. This means in practice that out of every four people in Salvador 1 lives below the poverty line.
Human Development Index (HDI): Salvador had an HDI of 0.759 in 2010, below the national average, highlighting inequalities in education, health, and income as well.
Gaining a foothold in high-poverty regions of Salvador in order to mobilize communities around practical solutions to improve their living conditions and create opportunity pathways is among the greatest challenges facing the movement here today.
With the right human and financial resources, there is a major opportunity to launch successful community engagement and mobilization campaigns neighborhood by neighborhood. And there is an opportunity to create narratives about how the uplift of these communities can in-turn accelerate growth and development that benefits everyone.
I attended a massive march and demonstration in Salvador on July 2nd celebrating the 200 year anniversary of independence in Salvador. The slogan of the contingent of Afro-Brazilian organizers I marched with was, “No Independence Without Us.” This is the first time that organizers remember the narrative history of independence lifting up the contributions of indigenous and African-descendants.
With the momentum of recognition and increased awareness the priority now for local organizers is to build an independent Afro-Brazilian organizational infrastructure that can work inside and outside of formal institutional channels to advance a broad agenda for equity in the city. This infrastructure will include an independent resource base, digital and field community outreach capacity, communications capacity and data collection and tracking systems among other elements.
In Salvador, Bahia movements of Afro-Brazilians are trying to create this infrastructure with fewer financial resources, and often without the formal training and assistance that we benefit from the most here in the U.S. And like here in the U.S., organizers are facing a fierce and sometimes violent backlash from elites who resist the very acknowledgement of racial inequity in the economy, education or other aspects of life.
We identified some concrete training and technical assistance needs as well as collaborative areas for learning exchange to support the movement here. I'll also be working to translate a number of training modules on a range of topics such as fundraising, community engagement, data collection and tracking into Portuguese to make them more widely available here in Salvador.