Introduction
The proliferation of segregated spaces has become a marked feature of Latin American cities in recent decades. If the cultural and political history of the region is, above all, the history of its cities,Footnote 1 then the phenomenon of expanding private neighbourhoods around large cities is key to understanding the contemporary process of socio-historical transformation in these societies.
In the post-war period, Latin American cities became axes of demographic and economic transformation and important cultural arenas.Footnote 2 Between 1950 and 1975, the urban population of Latin America jumped from 39 to 54 per cent of the total. During this process of intense urbanisation, the city became an incubator for modern society.Footnote 3 The problems that arose from extreme urban concentration challenged the developmental trajectory within these countries and created political challenges to democracy and social progress.
Recent studies have argued that the private neighbourhoods that mushroomed after the 1980s in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Mexico have undermined the political dynamism of the Latin American city. The expansion of private neighbourhoods was a response to the demand among the elites for social isolation and has had far-reaching political implications. Life in these ‘islands’, or self-centred universes, empties public spaces, devalues citizenship practices and runs counter to the democratic values of freedom and social equality.Footnote 4 In these environments, social segregation is a status symbol for those who can live in leafy neighbourhoods, far from pollution and protected from urban violence.Footnote 5 Real estate advertisements create the desire for a total lifestyle that allows people to live among their peers and avoid the interaction between people from different social classes that is inevitable in the urban centre's public areas. Residents view themselves not as citizens but rather as successful consumers.Footnote 6 While there have always been differences between the living standards of the rich and poor in Latin American society, gated communities have become places where young residents can be born, raised and educated within protective walls. If they do not venture out into the city, they will have minimal contact with individuals from other backgrounds.Footnote 7
Some authors have related this phenomenon to the globalisation of lifestyle habits and consumption resulting from Latin American cities beginning to mimic the structure of US cities.Footnote 8 In the United States, a real ‘forting up’ took place in the 1980s as millions of Americans moved into gated communities. Generally, this type of housing has been understood as a threat to a social contract founded on principles of democracy and equality, and is a divisive political issue in the United States.Footnote 9 The ‘privatopia’ that these communities create, and whose regulations interfere with the personal lives of their inhabitants, has serious implications for civil liberties.Footnote 10 Others relate the expansion of private neighbourhoods in Latin America to the rise of neoliberalism and the retreat of the state that occurred during the administrations of presidents Carlos Menem (Argentina), Fernando Collor de Melo and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), and Alberto Fujimori (Peru), and which began under military rule in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s and has been left unreversed by the Concertación governments of the last 20 years.Footnote 11
The boom in gated communities has been accompanied by a concomitant increase in studies of this phenomenon. The majority deal with the 1980s onward, but this study focuses on the development of private gated communities in the city of Belo Horizonte in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. This was a pivotal democratic interregnum between the end of the authoritarian Estado Novo (1937–45) and the military coup of 31 March 1964. During these ‘golden years’, economic development was stimulated by openness to foreign capital and state policies designed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support such investment. At the same time, however, various social groups such as artists, intellectuals, members of progressive churches, students, union workers, slum dwellers and peasants became involved in social debates and political demonstrations to demand a more equitable distribution of the fruits of this growth.
Belo Horizonte was a highly significant city in Brazil during this period, and its development process was full of contradictions. From the end of the 1940s, the capital of Minas Gerais underwent significant industrialisation; it began projects focused on energy production and highway construction, and aspired to modernity. However, the demographic explosion that the city experienced resulted in disorganised urban growth and masses of destitute people whom the labour market could not absorb. Meanwhile, the region's economic growth favoured the rise of the middle class and increased the wealth of local elites. In this context, gated communities and country clubs emerged as differentiated spaces for recreation and socialisation and as axes for a particular political response to the social unrest generated by unequal growth.
Recent studies divide the history of gated communities in Belo Horizonte into two distinct periods. Between 1960 and 1970, homeowners were driven by an emotional relationship with the location, the houses in the neighbourhood were simple and unostentatious, and the residents' everyday lives were governed by a strong sense of community – they relished living an alternative lifestyle. In the second period, after the 1980s, flight to the gated communities was driven by the rejection of shared public space, a fear of urban violence, and the pursuit of conspicuous consumption.Footnote 12
However, this study argues that even in their infancy these gated communities promoted social segregation and differentiation through consumption. Access to these homes was already a status symbol. Crime was much lower there, and as these enclaves were located next to the rich neighbourhoods of the southern area of the city, they were guaranteed an exclusive class of visitor.Footnote 13 Walls were unnecessary. High-society socialising during golf matches and parties occurred against a backdrop of increasingly fearful and conservative reactions against the growing conflicts in Brazil. Thus, at a time of extremely high expectations regarding social transformation, this sector of society was busy re-entrenching Brazil's patrimonial, authoritarian and hierarchical roots. It is telling that just a fortnight after the military seized power in the country, the Serra D'el Rey Country Club completed all of the work on its first project. This study thus argues that the emergence of segregated communities in the city of Belo Horizonte in these decades had political significance.
This study draws upon interviews, society columns in local newspapers, articles in national magazines, official census data, studies conducted by the city of Belo Horizonte in the 1960s, advertising campaigns, country club regulations, mayoral reports, laws and biographical data on homeowners and visitors. Without ignoring the differing motivations of the residents, I focus on those who attempted to establish a sophisticated and luxurious lifestyle in Belo Horizonte's southern neighbourhood as a means of analysing the choices made by elites facing the challenges of a society in the tortuous throes of constructing a democracy.
‘Night in the Alps’
In 1963, a feature published in the main newspaper in the state of Minas Gerais commended the progress of the Serra D'el Rey Country Club, located nine kilometres from the centre of Belo Horizonte and an estimated six minutes away by car. On a sunny summer day, the columnist dressed in shorts and dived into a pool of pure, running spring water.Footnote 14 He marvelled at the landscape and the horizon outlined by mountains and lush forest. Among the many species of trees, the quaresmeiras (the vernacular term for purple glory trees, Tibouchina granulosa) stood out, laden with purple flowers, in sharp contrast to the green vegetation and azure blue of the sky. Impressed, the columnist concluded, ‘It does not even seem like we are in Brazil.’Footnote 15 This became in effect an advertising slogan for the project, which was at that point engaged in intensive marketing.
Although they were used to attract future buyers, these words might seem strange to a reader familiar with the local landscape. After all, the elements described are actually characteristic of the region to the south of Belo Horizonte, within the Serra do Curral, part of the Espinhaço mountain range that stretches 1,000 kilometres across the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia. The mountains and valleys, the result of geological folds, are more than three million years old and are home to an abundant river system and rare biological richness. In the Serra do Curral, which reaches altitudes between 1,110 and 1,390 metres, the vegetation varies from rocky fields to Atlantic rainforest and savannah (Cerrado biome). The beautiful purple glory tree is in fact native to Atlantic rainforests in south-eastern Brazil and blooms abundantly between December and March.Footnote 16
Thus, the columnist's distinction between his surroundings and the rest of Brazil seems to have little basis. However, the idea that you could ‘feel like you are in Europe’ was an insistent appeal in the publicity materials of the country clubs and private gated communities that opened around Belo Horizonte in the 1950s and mid-1960s. To potential residents, the ads promised ‘a piece of Switzerland taken from the Alps and transported to Belo Horizonte’, ‘European scenery’ and a ‘European spring climate’.Footnote 17 Such claims were plausible because these early developments were located in the south of the city, a mountainous area where altitudes were higher than in the urban centre and whose forests and springs provided a very mild climate.Footnote 18
Country clubs, organised around sports and especially golf, had begun to appear in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Brookline, just outside Boston, was the location of the first in 1882. The diversification of industrial activities and services in the United States increased the demand for labour, which was met by millions of immigrants of different nationalities, beliefs and customs. The astonishing rate of urbanisation fuelled the desire for closed communities that evoked the villages of the past. In 1930, there were approximately 4,000 country clubs spread across several US cities.Footnote 19 Country clubs also appeared in Latin America in response to similar processes of urban growth, industrialisation and immigration. In Buenos Aires, the Hurlingham was built in 1888, followed by San Isidro (1911), Olivos (1928), Tortugas (1930), Hindy and Highland Park (1940s) and Olivos and Argentino (1950s). In Montevideo, Chimont (1905, now the Golf Club of the Cerro), Uruguay Golf Club (1922) and Lagomar (1956) were built. These clubs offered sports and weekend homes.Footnote 20 In Brazil, São Paulo's first country club opened in 1901 and was frequented by senior officials of British companies located in the city. In Rio de Janeiro engineers from Tramway and Light & Power Co. founded the Rio de Janeiro Golf Club in 1926, which offered social events in addition to sporting activities, while the Itanhangá opened in 1935, offering weekend homes. These developments also attracted members of the local elite, who were eager to adopt habits considered refined, elegant and ‘civilised’.Footnote 21
In the vicinity of Belo Horizonte, advertisements for developments made insistent comparisons with Europe in characterising the lifestyle that many tried to initiate in these country clubs, which were new in Minas Gerais during that period.Footnote 22 In the period analysed here, four such establishments were built: the Club Campestre (1951), the Retiro das Pedras Condominiums (1957), the Morro do Chapéu Golf Club (1958) and the Serra D'el Rey Country Club (1962) (see Map 1).
First Private Neighbourhoods, Belo Horizonte
The first neighbourhood in Belo Horizonte to offer social spaces to the upper classes was Pampulha; this was founded in 1943 in the northern area of the city and soon became the major symbol of modernity in Belo Horizonte. The central features of Pampulha were designed by some of the key names in the modernist movement in Brazil. A church, casino, house and dance club designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer were clustered on the shore of the purpose-built lake. Burle Marx was responsible for the landscaping, and Candido Portinari created sculptures, reliefs, mosaics and tiles. Future governor of Minas Gerais and president of the republic Juscelino Kubitschek, then the mayor of Belo Horizonte, constructed a large avenue and a trolley line that connected the centre of the city with Pampulha and its elegant environs.Footnote 23
However, Pampulha was different from the gated communities and country clubs under discussion here. Located in the northern part of Belo Horizonte, in a flatter area that was traditionally given over to agriculture, this neighbourhood also featured small and medium-sized farms, and much of the land was used to grow crops, raise pigs and chickens and conduct other similar activities. Even after the opening of Pampulha and the construction of mansions around the lake, a large number of the elite continued living in the central and southern zones. The golf course that Niemeyer had originally designed was never built. In contrast, it was no coincidence that the first gated communities and country clubs emerged to the south of the city where the mountainous terrain, the milder climate and the high-altitude forest enabled the advertisers and local elites to romanticise the landscape as European.
Campestre and Serra D'el Rey did not offer vacant plots, although many homes ended up being built in the vicinity following the clubs' establishment. Instead, they offered shares in the club, which was distinguished by its large green space and distance from the city centre.Footnote 24 The idea for Campestre came from a group of people interested in creating a countryside recreational space whose use would be restricted to a homogeneous group of visitors. The meetings took place at the headquarters of the Associação Comercial de Minas Gerais (Minas Gerais Chamber of Commerce) and the Federação das Indústrias de Minas Gerais (Federation of Industries of Minas Gerais). The physician Sylvio Raso submitted a proposal inspired by a Swiss resort that he had visited in 1946, which had featured sports fields framed by mountains, a model that could be emulated in the terrain in question. Serra D'el Rey was launched by the construction company Idelta and directed by, among others, Frederico Chateaubriand, who was a powerful director of media communications in the state.Footnote 25
Retiro das Pedras and Morro do Chapéu occupied land that had previously belonged to the Saint John D'el Rey Mining Company. The journalist José Araujo Cotta bought a large plot of land to build a film studio but the idea failed, so Cotta launched the Retiro das Pedras, selling 660 plots of 630 square metres apiece. The land for Morro do Chapéu belonged to Dr. Heraldo de Campos Lima, who had acquired the plot after a mining process contaminated the property's water with arsenic. In the mid-1950s he decided to subdivide the area, offering vacant lots of 2,000 square metres each.Footnote 26
In the initial phase, the plots were bought by members of a rising middle class: professionals, young doctors and engineers, senior government officials, university professors and businessmen. These individuals bore the costs of sinking wells and digging septic tanks, and the first houses were built in a relatively inexpensive and rustic style.Footnote 27 Despite the modest intentions of some residents, the developers began construction on collective leisure areas that included pools, sports facilities and even luxurious social areas for events. Nationally circulated magazines proclaimed the development of these areas as a sign of development more generally in the city of Belo Horizonte.Footnote 28 These leisure zones were independent of the gated communities, and many visitors did not own houses in those communities. They became very trendy, and frequenting them required membership in particular social networks based on prestige and distinction. After these recreational areas became associated with elegant living, wealthy people bought vacant lots and built luxury houses there in the early 1960s. Information on some of the architectural projects was published in the local newspaper as an example of the growing refinement of the gated communities.Footnote 29 These changes did not please all the visitors, as medical doctor and professor Eduardo Cisalpino relates:
I was early in my career, had to pay by instalments, and still did not have my own house in Belo Horizonte, but I wanted a place for my six children to play at weekends, [and] my wife was so excited. I had my garden. A community was created, everyone was collegial and was at home in other people's houses. Later the ‘newcomers’ arrived … My relationship with the clubhouse was zero [and] the restaurant was expensive. I went fishing, returned in my boots, all muddy, and drank a beer at the pool in the club. A socialite remarked that I was badly dressed … They began to want control. The ‘invasion’ was beginning.Footnote 30
The clubs had facilities for sports that were little known in Minas Gerais or Brazil at the time. Campestre promised volleyball courts, among other things, while the publicity for Serra D'el Rey promised a ‘country club on the British model’ and the construction of a badminton court.Footnote 31 Morro do Chapéu offered a nine-hole golf course and a horse racing track as well as plans to build a kart racing track, ‘the latest thing in resorts in the south of France’.
In addition to sports, there were facilities for activities common among the European elite. These included ‘real’ Finnish saunas, ice-skating rinks and nightclubs. Social gatherings included tastings of imported drinks and dinners with foreign menus. The bal masqué during Carnival, which required formal attire, imitated ‘the traditional Parisian balls’. Women attended charity events such as the ‘Night in the Alps’, whose invitation urged guests to dress as if they were at a ski resort and whose decorations, menus and drinks imitated the ‘genuine’ European style. A canine fashion show also caused a sensation; according to the organisers, this was the second such dog show in the world, the first having supposedly occurred in Paris. The female dogs wore clothes inspired by Brigitte Bardot, all in the French style, while the male dogs wore black ties, and a great deal was made of the value of the clothes on display. An institution for orphans received the proceeds from the ticket sales.Footnote 32
‘Tropical Capitalism’
Thus, visitors to the gated communities were able to forget, at least at weekends, the growing problems that were overtaking Belo Horizonte by the end of the 1950s. The city's population exploded from 211,377 inhabitants in 1940 to 352,724 in 1950 and 693,328 in 1960, hitting 812,000 by 1964. In that latter year, population density in Belo Horizonte's urban area of 330.23 square kilometres reached 2,459 inhabitants per square kilometre.Footnote 33
This accelerating trend resulted from the arrival of rural migrants seeking better living conditions and work in the capital. The urban centre in particular witnessed deepening social differences and inequality among its inhabitants. The old slums had a staggering population density.Footnote 34 In 1955, a survey of the municipality found 36,432 slum-dwellers in 9,343 households. A decade later saw 119,799 slum-dwellers in 25,076 households, with 14.75 per cent of the city's population living in these settlements. This represented an increase of 168 per cent in irregular housing and an increase of 229 per cent in the number of slum-dwellers. The shacks were of unsound construction, and the residents were without access to mains water, sewerage facilities, electricity or paved roads.Footnote 35 The infant mortality rate, which had gradually fallen after the Second World War, increased again from 74.2 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 92.3 in 1965, 107.3 in 1969, and 124.8 in 1973. The sudden population growth increased water consumption beyond the supply capacity, requiring infrastructure that would not be completed until the mid-1970s. Thus, the population of Belo Horizonte experienced a chronic shortage of drinking water for several years.Footnote 36
New informal settlements grew up nestled in the hills next to wealthy and middle-class neighbourhoods and in unoccupied areas of the city. The proximity of the slums to the other housing developments resulted in conflicts between residents and public authorities, with incidents in which squatters occupied vacant land and were evicted by the police; shacks were often destroyed and their residents removed to places far from the city centre. The Federação dos Trabalhadores Favelados de Belo Horizonte (Federation of Slum Workers in Belo Horizonte) was created in 1959; it fought to improve the living conditions in these settlements and campaigned for housing rights in the squatted areas.Footnote 37
Extreme poverty increased the number of vagrants on the city centre streets, where these individuals would rely on deformities and signs of disease to appeal to the charity of passers-by. Along the Avenue Afonso Pena, which was considered the main artery of the city's financial, business and commercial life and included stores, corporate offices, banks, cafes, medical offices and language schools, the presence of these beggars created what the local press called ‘real shame for the population of Minas Gerais’ capital’. Newspaper articles suggested that these homeless people should be rounded up and dispatched to nursing homes and hospitals or that the police should clear away these ‘fake beggars’ and ‘vagabonds’ by limiting their presence on the streets.Footnote 38
This was just one aspect of the socio-economic environment in Brazil, however – and the flip side justified the euphoria of the state's upper classes. With a colonial past based on the production of significant amounts of gold and diamonds, which lasted until these resources were depleted at the end of the eighteenth century, Minas Gerais developed a strong rural agricultural industry beginning in the nineteenth century. However, the steel industry also presented great economic promise. Since the early decades of the twentieth century, the elites in Minas Gerais have sought prominence on the national and global stage, and towards this end they developed plans for economic diversification. In 1907, the Geological and Mining Service of Brazil estimated that the iron ore deposits in Minas Gerais amounted to 5.7 billion tonnes. No one wanted to export the raw ore because the general consensus among the elites and the government was that ‘ore does not yield two crops' and that it was necessary to import the technology to produce steel, thus facilitating broader economic development through forward linkages. However, insufficient transportation and energy infrastructure posed obstacles to these industrialisation plans. Despite the earmarking of the city's western region for a planned industrial park in 1940, with significant tax incentives and marketing targeting the industrial sector, the state government could not attract investment.Footnote 39 From the mid-1940s, the state government pursued public policies aimed at state-led industrialisation and made extensive efforts to attract foreign capital. This process had its ups and downs but eventually brought about major changes by the 1950s, when the infrastructure for industrial growth increased through direct state investment in highways and hydroelectric plants. With better transportation and access to energy, along with generous government benefits and subsidies, the steel, aluminium, cement, petrochemical, automobile and pharmaceutical industries grew. Additionally, the production and importation of consumer goods gained ground, and the daily life of the growing urban middle class began to include myriad appliances and consumer durables along with processed foods, toiletries, beauty products and off-the-peg clothes, all purchased in department stores and supermarkets. The wealthy minority found ever more opportunities to raise the level of sophistication of their habits, including fine food and air travel to Europe for vacations.Footnote 40
Juscelino Kubitschek took a decisive step during his tenure as governor of Minas Gerais between 1951 and 1956. Bringing together politicians, businessmen and technocrats, he proclaimed ‘Energy and transport’ as his administration's motto and indeed achieved the goal of developing these two areas of the city's industry. After raising funds from the World Bank, Kubitschek significantly expanded the area's electricity supply by constructing large hydroelectric plants and dams. To develop the transportation sector, he built 3,725 km of roads in Minas Gerais. The volume produced in the basic industries and the steel industry jumped from 170,262 to 587,152 tonnes between 1950 and 1960, reaching 2,059,641 tonnes in 1970. Cement production increased from 211,228 to 1,445,772 tonnes between 1950 and 1960, reaching 2,518,426 tonnes in 1970. In 1950 the Belo Horizonte industrial park included businesses in 16 industries, employing approximately 1,000 workers; in 1967, there were approximately 100 firms employing 16,000 workers.Footnote 41
The state government also supported the development of the fertiliser industry, the building materials and packaging industries, the food processing industry, the agricultural machinery industry and the electrical equipment and tyre industries, among others. Minas Gerais began attracting multinational corporations with its abundant natural resources, central geographic location, energy and transportation infrastructure and ability to facilitate capital goods industries, which was possible due to the presence of basic industry and large government tax incentives. Industrialisation took place predominantly in the urban environment around Belo Horizonte, creating unprecedented transformations within the city.Footnote 42
The 1960s continued this development trend despite the political and economic turbulence that resulted in the 1964 coup. Alongside the violent repression of social movements, the restriction of political rights and the workers' wage crunch, Brazil underwent a six-year ‘economic miracle’ after 1968, experiencing an average annual increase of 11.2 per cent in GDP. In Minas Gerais, the average annual rate of GDP growth was 5.3 per cent between 1960 and 1970 and 10.2 per cent from 1970 to 1977.Footnote 43 According to Diniz, Minas Gerais exemplified Brazilian capitalism, combining modern economic growth and savage social injustice through the decisive role of public authorities in attracting foreign capital under the state's unconditional protection. For Eakin, Belo Horizonte and Minas Gerais exhibited the key characteristics of Brazil's and Latin America's ‘tropical capitalism’: strong state intervention, subsidies, clientelism, powerful family networks, and technology transfer without effective technological innovation.Footnote 44
‘Eyes on Europe and feet in America’
In the context of this industrialisation, Minas Gerais' elites diversified their activities and profiles. The determined policies that the state and federal governments pursued in seeking to create businesses and attract foreign capital facilitated the emergence of a powerful technocracy united under the umbrella of developmentalism. Within this elite group, there were no rigid separations between distinct activities or sectors. Many people were either simultaneously or sequentially senior officials in government agencies, business entrepreneurs, technocrats in state corporations that were linked to the creation of basic infrastructure, engineers, developers and/or politicians. Business people were recruited for government posts, while politicians capitalised on opportunities to increase their wealth and became entrepreneurs.Footnote 45
These technocrats had a strong presence in the golf and country clubs. In addition to maintaining the values inherited from their aristocratic families, which tended to have ties to traditional farming, they pursued every opportunity to signal their modernity. They were eager to show off their sophistication and to enjoy the same prestige as the elite groups in the ‘developed world’ – that is, Europe and the United States. Thus, they blended two cultural models: although they celebrated Brazilian elites' education in Europe, they also participated in the new consumption patterns created by the rise of the United States in the post-war international milieu. These patterns included buying cars, which emerged as a new lifestyle symbol and were used on many of the roads that the Brazilian government built from the 1950s. The motor car was also linked to the country's expectations regarding modernisation and the construction of a cohesive territory. President Kubitschek prioritised the automobile industry as an essential part of his agenda, the goal of which was famously to achieve 50 years' worth of progress during his five-year term. Ownership of a car became one of the highest consumption-related aspirations in Brazil, and was also indispensable for access to country clubs and gated communities.Footnote 46
The desire to attain ‘first-world’ standards has been a constant in Brazilian society. In the nineteenth century, during the monarchy, the ruling elites were said to have their ‘eyes on Europe and feet in America’.Footnote 47 The idealised model of civilisation was Europe, particularly France and England. At the same time, Brazil had a slave economy supplied until 1850 by an intense international trade in Africans and by an immense number of poor freed slaves who had no political rights and lived in destitution throughout the territory. With the proclamation of the republic, the Brazilians of the Belle Époque relied on the export of commodities such as coffee and rubber to help them emulate every last European habit and trend; they valued everything that arrived on the dernier bateau.Footnote 48 Even after the 1930s, in a strong nationalist period under the administration of Getúlio Vargas, the prizing of all things foreign persisted, as Claude Lévi-Strauss notes. While a visiting professor at the recently founded University of São Paulo Brazil in 1935, he was surprised by students who seemed to worship a series of stereotypes regarding the Parisian way of life and who were obsessed with the latest ideas and theories from France.Footnote 49
Although the Brazilian idealisation of Europe was not new, after the 1950s two factors increased this fascination among the Belo Horizonte elites. The first was the expansion of commercial airlines and tourism; the second was the presence of foreign executives and technocrats who arrived to promote and administer the state industries. Throughout the Western world, the advance of the commercial airline industry after the Second World War shortened the time it took to cross the Atlantic and increased opportunities for travel. The use of airplanes such as the Lockheed Constellation, Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-7 and DC-8 in civil aviation allowed for the overseas transport of hundreds of passengers with unprecedented comfort and speed. The European countries led in inbound tourism.Footnote 50
In Brazil, aviation and international tourism were connected after 1946 with the commencement of flights from Rio de Janeiro to London, Paris and Rome by Pan Air of Brazil. In 1961, there were also regular flights to Frankfurt, Lisbon, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and various Asian and US cities. In those years, Brazil was predominantly a tourist-exporting country.Footnote 51 In Belo Horizonte, the economic transformations that resulted from industrialisation and the federal and state funds injected into the construction of roads and dams engendered unprecedented air travel. The city's airport, founded in 1933, gained momentum in the 1950s. Despite its lack of access to international destinations, the proximity of the airport to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo facilitated connecting flights.Footnote 52 Nevertheless, international travel remained restricted to a small elite who could afford the associated costs. Symbols of prestige, trips to the old continent were also seen as an opportunity to immerse oneself culturally in ‘civilisation’. Travellers returned to Brazil flaunting their membership, however temporary, of this rarefied world.
In addition to creating more frequent opportunities for international travel, the influx of foreign businesses brought executives and technocrats to Minas Gerais. The British presence was already long-standing, as the Saint John D'el Rey Mining Company had arrived in 1834 to mine gold in Morro Velho, located in Nova Lima, a municipality to the south of Belo Horizonte.Footnote 53 After the 1950s, however, the number of businesses with foreign capital and technology rose significantly in the city's industrial park. Among the residents of the gated communities were foreigners who acted as diplomatic representatives of other countries for various firms. This and the increase in international relationships led to the creation of the Consular Corps in 1954, placing Belo Horizonte on Brazil's diplomatic map. The local elite began to have greater opportunities for social interaction with foreigners, and the gated communities and country clubs were important areas for co-habitation, both in the social areas and in the mansions. These types of contact conferred a certain cachet, and such events (as well as their guest lists) were publicised in the high-society columns in Belo Horizonte.Footnote 54
However, these gated communities could not cut themselves off completely from Brazilian reality by aping foreign living standards and creating illusory environments. The surrounding society was still facing the tensions between development, extreme poverty and social agitation. Businesses and politicians may have exulted in the possibility of achieving the same patterns of wealth and consumption as the international elites, but they also lived in fear of the threats to their future wealth and power created by the growing political turmoil.
Such fears were not unfounded. Unions and labour centres opened offices in the city centre, and demonstrations became frequent: in 1954, 3,000 miners from the Saint John D'el Rey Mining Company came down from the Serra do Curral to gather at Praça 7, a traditional meeting point on Avenue Afonso Pena, in vehement protest. In 1961, also in the city centre, miners protested, textile workers organised the ‘march of empty pots’, bankers organised pickets at the doors of financial agencies, and Belo Horizonte hosted the first Congresso Nacional dos Lavradores e Trabalhadores Agrícolas (National Congress of Peasant and Agricultural Workers), which initiated a radical struggle for agrarian reform. These various worker movements, with the support of intellectuals and sectors of the Catholic Church, facilitated political mobilisation in the city and encouraged radical projects geared towards social transformation.Footnote 55 Faced with these challenges, the elites in Minas Gerais closed ranks to ensure hierarchy and social stability by invoking local traditions (tradições mineiras).
‘Make Yourself at Home’
On a Sunday night in May 1962, viewers in Minas Gerais watched a TV interview with Samuel Werneck, the president of the Serra D'el Rey Country Club. Werneck came from an illustrious family and was a successful lawyer and judge. Responding to the reporter's questions, he presented the main attractions of the club, which had been founded in January that year and was in the initial sales phase. The stated primary appeal of Serra D'el Rey was that it was ‘a club for select people’. This slogan had a double meaning. The first was numeric: according to its statutes, the club would never have more than 500 members. Unlike in other clubs at that time, the visitors were usually part-owners of the club, thus reinforcing the club's exclusivity. The second meaning of the phrase alluded to the board's strict evaluations of potential members, which took into account their professions and families in determining their social status. The selection process would privilege only ‘the cream of Minas Gerais society’ according to economic and moral standards: successful men, honest businessmen and respected fathers with ‘proven ideals and good conduct’ would be admitted.Footnote 56 Once accepted, these members would find themselves in an ideal space for harmonious living, as in an extended family.Footnote 57 The board of Serra D'el Rey published its membership list for nearly a year in the newspapers of Belo Horizonte. The dozens of announcements all featured photographs of four of the 500 owners, invariably dressed in suits and ties. The captions indicated the owners' names, professions and companies. Sometimes, the column included the positions that these individuals had previously occupied. Serra D'el Rey thus affirmed that membership was for successful men such as bankers, technocrats, owners of real estate developments, judges, politicians, businessmen, doctors and engineers. Depicted as married men, these individuals were even more emphatically portrayed as ‘good people’. The issue of gender was essential in these articles, as in society in Minas Gerais more generally at that time. Women were always in the shadow of their fathers or husbands; modest and Catholic, they were destined to play the role of housewife, mother and charitable socialite. Women were not owners in the gated community. All were viewed as dependents, and their names appeared last in the list of information regarding their husbands.Footnote 58
Werneck's interview, which was part of an intense state-wide media campaign, reveals what was at stake in the emergence of country clubs and private gated communities in Minas Gerais during this period. This included the quest for social standing and self-segregation, the exaltation of hospitality and the reassertion of the wealthy upper classes in the midst of great social and political transformation. Another set of advertisements included pictures of the club's various attractions, thereby reinforcing the ideals of sophistication, wealth, comfort and aristocracy that were associated with the club. In one advertisement, a picture of champagne accompanied commentary on the types of restaurant services that the club offered, the nightclub and the rooms that were available for reading, games and music. Another advertisement praised the aesthetic environment of the club, the interior design of which combined Minas Gerais tradition with the pleasures of a British club five minutes from the tumult of the city (Figures 1 and 2).
Newspaper Advertisement for Serra D'el Rey (1)
Newspaper Advertisement for Serra D'el Rey (2)
According to the interview, the communal buildings would be richly decorated in the colonial style with fine furniture made of distinctive Brazilian rosewood.Footnote 59 The restaurant offered a refined selection of imported drinks and a menu of local dishes, thereby combining ‘the typical Minas Gerais way of life’ with the sophistication of the club. Through these efforts, the creators of Serra D'el Rey united two aims. First, they founded a club in emulation of the ‘British fashion’. This desire was related to the proximity of the Saint John D'el Rey Mining Company in Nova Lima, where 161 British residents lived in 1950. They formed a closed society in terms of their cultural, linguistic, religious and social characteristics. The English families remained very stable, educating their children and conducting religious services, weddings, baptisms and burials without mixing with Brazilians or immigrants of other nationalities. In Nova Lima, they lived in the neighbourhood of Quintas, far from the residences of other Brazilians. There, they had an exclusive club that offered tennis, cricket and soccer, and they engaged in cultural activities such as film screenings, musical events, dance parties and readings. According to Eakin, these families established a small but truly British community in the interior of Brazil.Footnote 60 In intending to emulate this British club, the founders of Serra D'el Rey displayed their admiration for the segregated, sober and sophisticated lifestyle of the highest officials of the Saint John D'el Rey Mining Company. The second aim was to combine that British lifestyle with the local traditions in the form of ‘traditional Minas Gerais hospitality’ communicated in the proverbial greeting, ‘Make yourself at home’. This environment would simultaneously exude ‘refinement and sincere comradeship’. The clubhouse porch overlooked a natural scene that featured springs, forests and mountains. Visitors would be sufficiently close to the urban centre to guarantee access to metropolitan comforts but would also be far enough away to enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside.Footnote 61
The emphasis on club membership as a sign of upper-class distinction attracted potential buyers from an elite whose power was based on material wealth and a far-reaching network of political clans. In a tradition dating back to the colonial period, the elites thus reinforced the ideal of social hierarchy and the patronage system underpinning Brazilian society. Through nepotism and protection schemes, families gained prominence among networks of friends via the bonds of loyalty and trust. Employment decisions were made according to factors other than merit, and political offices were filled as a private matter.Footnote 62 It is telling that the president of Serra D'el Rey, in the interview cited above, spoke of the members of the club as a large family. The broad range of information provided about each owner's credentials was also purposeful: it positioned the country club as a place of privileged social relations. The wife of one influential member recalls: ‘Serra D'el Rey was closed, exclusive. Campestre became less rigorous; it had too many people. We wanted a selective environment. There were weekly dinners with a top chef. Belo Horizonte had very few sophisticated places at that time, and this became the place to go.’Footnote 63
In those years, new opportunities for wealth creation and accumulation were emerging in the industrial, construction, steel and commercial sectors and within state corporations.Footnote 64 The development of new connections and the consolidation of established relationships made it possible for an individual to position himself in the social hierarchy and to participate by exchanging favours and jobs and exerting influence. The possibility of interacting socially with foreigners associated with international capital businesses was a key selling point for these clubs. Although some industries were located in the interior of the state, the head offices and most senior officials were concentrated in Belo Horizonte.Footnote 65 In this context, Morro do Chapéu was a strategic location. In 1959, Yukichi Sugihara, the director of the Japanese steel company Usiminas and the vice-president of the Bank of Tokyo, was enthusiastic about establishing a golf course there. He asked his Japanese network to design the course, offering it as a gift to the club. Bias Fortes, governor of Minas Gerais between 1956 and 1961, provided the tractors for the construction project. Soon after, a law was passed that recognised the Morro do Chapéu as a civil community with public utilities. The idea of offering public utilities was likely connected to the state's attempts to attract foreign capital and encourage relationships with elite politicians and mining entrepreneurs.Footnote 66
Among the foreign golfers, in addition to representatives from Usiminas, there were senior officials from companies such as Mina de Morro Velho, which employed British capital (Leslie Clemence and Cecil Suter); the North American Hanna Mining Corporation (Earl Irving); the US Geologic Service, which conducted the mining of iron deposits in Minas Gerais (John Van Dorr); Belgo Mineira (Joseph Hein and Henri Meyers); the German company Mannesman (Helmuth Ritscher); and the Brazilian and French Bank (Geofrey de Vogue). Members of the consular corps with country houses included Elinor Halle, cultural attaché of the US Consulate, and Claes Bjerke, Swiss consul.Footnote 67
Thus both local elites and foreigners could cut themselves off from other inhabitants of Belo Horizonte. Despite the differences between the visitors in terms of their wealth and influence, this self-segregation was itself a status symbol, creating a space for the ‘cream of society’, ‘the most authentic elite’ and ‘the elegant aristocracy’, as they were described in the society columns of the time.
The Upper-Class Mindset
The Minas Gerais gentry had always organised exclusive arenas for their interactions. The novel aspect of this new mode of organisation, however, was the group's desire to distance itself from the city centre. Compared to the conflicts and social problems associated with beggars, slum-dwellers and workers, who were often viewed with repugnance and identified with crime and poverty, the world of equals created by the gated communities and country clubs was envisaged as an extended family where harmony and hospitality prevailed, and reproduced the myth of the Brazilian ethos of cordiality.
As Sérgio Buarque de Holanda noted in his analysis of the ‘cordial man’, the excessive value put upon family in Brazilian culture stems from the discontinuity between the nuclear family and the public sphere and from the predominance of the private sector in public affairs. Bonds of affection and protection cement relationships inside closed circles and become barriers to impersonal sociability. In the family or in familiar environments, ‘pleasantness in conversation, hospitality and generosity’ predominates. These qualities do not constitute politeness among citizens but are instead part of the pattern of intimacy that exists between the members of such circles, who are often hostile towards outsiders.Footnote 68
A common anthropology of the Brazilian character views a warm, engaging and friendly way of receiving others – invariably devoted to ‘important’ people and especially foreigners from the ‘first world’ – as reflecting the values of a harmonious, tropical society that is averse to conflict. In practice, authoritarianism is visible in these norms; friends receive special favour, and hierarchies are reaffirmed.Footnote 69 On a daily basis, any threat to hierarchical relationships based on social rank and power can be thwarted by the harsh and abrupt question, ‘Do you know to whom you are speaking?’ This expression reveals simultaneously the upper-class and slave roots of Brazilian society.Footnote 70
This patrician sentiment is evident in the 1962 development proposal for Serra D'el Rey, in which the directors suggest ‘reviving the most noble traditions of Minas Gerais’ in an environment inspired by the ‘great colonial mansions of our grandfathers’ and the ‘grandeur of the colonial period’.Footnote 71 These phrases refer to the nineteenth century in Brazil, the era of slavery, which was abolished only in 1888.Footnote 72 The club's statutes did not make any reference to racial issues, but a close look at the dozens of photographs of members that were published in newspapers reveals a sequence of invariably white men in the club's carefully selected environment.Footnote 73 The ‘colonial environment’ established a segregated workforce as essential to the leisure of the elites; the country club had a ‘babysitter house’ that allowed families to rest quietly without having to take care of their small children.Footnote 74 Housemaids were an abundant and inexpensive workforce, and their work was not governed by any regulations. Many of the women living in the city slums worked in domestic service.Footnote 75
These genteel sporting events, European costume parties and colonial-style mansions existed against the backdrop of one of the most politically turbulent periods in Brazilian history, a period that saw the surprising ascension of a popular social movement from the political left. By the late 1950s, different sectors of society were getting involved in politics, demanding social change. In the countryside, the Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues) were demanding agrarian reform. In the cities, the União Nacional dos Estudantes (National Students’ Union), the trade unions and the progressive wing of the Catholic Church were discussing the need for structural reforms to bring about social equality. Concerned at these developments, a group of businessmen and military personnel founded the Instituto Brasileiro de Ação Democrática (Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action) in 1959 in Rio de Janeiro as a conservative, anti-communist institution.Footnote 76
On 25 August 1961, the resignation of President Jânio Quadros raised the spectre of civil war in the country. Vice-President João Goulart, who had served as minister of labour under Vargas and vice-president under Kubitschek, had on two occasions acted in close cooperation with the union movements. This prompted a backlash from the political right, which accused him of being a communist. At the time of Quadros’ resignation, Goulart was on official business in the People's Republic of China. After a stand-off between the Right and Left, the adoption of parliamentarianism enabled the maintenance of legality, and Goulart took office in September 1961. Soon after, conservative groups of businessmen and military personnel created the Instituto de Pesquisas e Estudos Sociais (Institute for Research and Social Studies, IPES) with the goal of reacting to the leftist trend in Brazilian politics in an organised manner. IPES distributed books and pamphlets, gave lectures, stockpiled a secret supply of weapons and ammunition, and provided generous funding to political campaigns committed to the anti-communist cause.Footnote 77
In Minas Gerais, IPES was organised through a local association. It brought together various elite groups opposed to communism and to the Goulart administration. The IPES leaders had much in common with the entrepreneurs who attended the meetings, the politicians whose campaigns were financed by IPES and the ‘high-society’ individuals who patronised the country clubs.Footnote 78
A number of events fuelled local political unrest, some of which directly involved businesses whose directors were regulars at the golf course at Morro do Chapéu. In October 1961, the Ministry of Mines and Energy suggested cancelling several mining concessions for iron ore in Minas Gerais for the Hanna Corporation, to take effect in 1963. On 7 October 1963, the military police clashed with Usiminas workers who were striking for better working conditions and to protest against being frisked before leaving the plant, which they considered humiliating. The police fired on the unarmed demonstrators.Footnote 79 In the first weeks of 1964, preparations for the congress of the trade union confederation, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores, in Belo Horizonte drew protests from the Right in an ‘anti-communist crusade’.
The Minas Gerais elites ended up playing an important role in the military movement that overthrew President Goulart on 31 March 1964. Magalhães Pinto, the then-governor of Minas Gerais (also a banker and an entrepreneur), allied himself with military generals in mobilising the armed forces of the state to guard against the ‘communist threat’. On 1 April, Goulart decided not to resist and fled to Uruguay. In the weeks following the coup, as the social movements were repressed, the ‘revolutionaries’ (as they called themselves) were applauded for the victory of the movement. The country clubs surrounding Belo Horizonte saw many lunches, dinners and cocktail parties arranged for the members of the armed forces and for Governor Magalhães Pinto. Indeed, the governor and Carlos Luiz Guedes, one of the military officials most active in the coup, frequently visited the country clubs of Serra D'el Rey and Morro do Chapéu.Footnote 80
During the years that followed, the military regime progressively shifted to the right. It entrenched itself in 1968, when Institutional Act 5 suspended constitutional rights, restricted political rights more generally and expanded the powers of the president of the republic, initiating a period of torture, violence and intolerance. Two events at the clubs reveal the extent of the support given by this segment of high society to the authoritarianism of the developing savage capitalism in Brazil. The first exemplifies the patronising and detached attitude of the elites in this region towards the injustice and social inequality that prevailed in the country. In 1965, Morro do Chapéu organised a party called the ‘slum masquerade’. That night, the ‘snobbiest hill in the city’ set up decorations that looked like urban shacks without water or electricity.Footnote 81 Despite this allusion to inner-city squalor (and the irony of the title, given that the slums were generally located in the hills in the urban centre of Belo Horizonte), the guests were smartly dressed, and the proceeds of the event were, as usual, donated to the ‘poor’.Footnote 82
The second event exemplifies the patrimonial traditions that persisted within elite Brazilian society during the military dictatorship. In 1970, the directors of the clubs and gated communities at Serra D'el Rey, Campestre, Retiro das Pedras and Morro do Chapéu sent a request to the secretary of public security in Belo Horizonte. At times of crackdown, a police checkpoint at the entrance to the city stopped and searched persons suspected of political crimes. The directors did not disagree with this practice, but it delayed access to the gated communities. For this reason, the directors asked that the barricade be moved back and installed just after the entrance to the clubs: this would neither hinder the police's campaign against the ‘subversives’ nor inconvenience the clubs’ respectable members and owners driving to their country homes.Footnote 83 One might guess how some of the members may have felt when their vehicles were stopped for inspection – after all, did these officers ‘not know to whom they were speaking’?
Against this backdrop of pervasive repression, it is nevertheless important to remember the diverse motivations of the inhabitants of these gated communities. There were other lifestyles in practice in addition to those discussed here. An interview with Murilo Cisalpino, who was six years old in 1964, is illuminating in this regard:
My memories of Morro do Chapéu can be summarised by the words ‘freedom’ and ‘adventure’. They were days full of walks, many times in unknown and dangerous places … Another delightful part was our home. Taking care of the gardening with my mother … sitting alone on the bench that my father put under the casuarina in the garden. The casuarina trees, when touched by the wind, ‘whistled’, ‘sang’, I think because of the shape of the leaves … To sit there, looking at the hills, listening to that sound, hearing the birds …Footnote 84
This statement highlights how a range of values, mindsets and conceptions coexisted in the gated communities, making questionable any kind of univocal analysis.
Conclusions
Since the return to democracy in 1985, urban planners, geographers and sociologists have addressed the growing phenomenon of gated communities in Brazil, which seem to undermine the principles of democracy and equal rule of law. (It has even been hard for the census-takers of the Brazilian federal government to get access to these communities for basic data collection, as if somehow they were autonomous territories.Footnote 85) The historical development of these gated communities, however, remains little explored. This study, which has examined the creation of the first country clubs and gated communities in Belo Horizonte between 1951 and 1964, shows how the growing spatial segregation/differentiation of this city exemplifies the economic and political dramas unfolding in wider Brazilian society at the time. Unlike the literature on the later gated communities in Belo Horizonte, which focuses on elite attempts to self-segregate and to cultivate a sophisticated lifestyle from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, this study explores the origins of this process in the 1950s, a time of industrialisation and government development policies that enabled the elites to amass greater wealth and diversify their portfolios. These same processes generated abrupt urbanisation, the formation of pockets of poverty and a period of social protest and turbulent democracy, to which the creation of exclusive communities was one of a range of socially and politically conservative reactions. The notion of preserving the ‘authentic traditions’ of Minas Gerais acted as a cultural bulwark against the leftist social movements of the day. Since then membership of country clubs and gated communities has become, among other things, a status symbol. These establishments reinforce hierarchies, perpetuating a political game based on the exchange of favours, position, influence and patronage. As this lifestyle replicates values that were prevalent in Brazil's slaveholding society, it continues to have sobering implications for contemporary gender and racial dynamics.
The southern zone of Belo Horizonte, where the first gated communities emerged, now has the largest concentration of real estate developments. There are continuities between the past and present motivations of the owners, whether they seek a quiet life close to nature or a sophisticated lifestyle and ‘life among equals’. However, new factors have also emerged. Urban violence has created a need for walls, electric fences and robust private security. The majority of these houses are primary residences rather than being exclusively used for weekend outings, thus generating a demand for services. The expansion of the poor peripheral neighbourhoods surrounding the gated communities has brought closer the ‘undesirables’ who, paradoxically, work in the latter as bricklayers, maids, nannies, gardeners and other service workers. The socio-economic standing of the residents has increased: land speculation has driven up the price of land and houses, and the expanding range of shared facilities has required an increase in monthly fees. The residents’ pursuit of a leafy paradise continues but is more challenging in a region on the brink of environmental collapse. There are problems related to waste disposal, the water supply, the sewerage network, the flow of traffic, increased building areas and recurrent forest fires, with serious threats to wildlife and water sources. Whatever the utopian or segregationist impulses that motivated the Minas Gerais upper classes to create these gated communities, it seems that they are in Brazil after all, and have exacerbated many of the unresolved social and environmental problems that their residents have been trying to escape since the 1950s.
