Brazil’s official term for poor communities has conveyed stigma. A change has finally been made

By DAVID BILLER and DIANE JEANTET
Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s statistics and geography institute has announced it will start using “favelas and urban communities” to describe thousands of poor urban neighborhoods. The institute began using “subnormal agglomerates” in the 1990s. It’s a term that was widely viewed as stigmatizing. The change follows a process of reflection that began in the 2000s and dozens of meetings. The institute’s geography coordinator Cayo Franco told The Associated Press that the concept of “subnormality” was originally meant to refer to people’s living conditions. But that “many times it was understood as the condition of the people themselves.” The 2022 census’ preliminary data says that 16 million people live in such neighborhoods. The name change was announced on Tuesday.