Attention! Close your eyes and open your nose to get a whiff of the smell which emanates from the largest Rio de Janeiro tenement of the 20th century: Pig’s Head.
The tenement consisted of a complex of attached houses which occupied nearly the entirety of Barão de São Félix street, bordering Morro da Providência. At its entrance was a large, arched gateway which had the statue of a pig’s head on top of it. This is what gave the tenement it’s name, which was used for decades as a term for all the city’s tenements. It was a true architectural labyrinth, housing between 500 and 2000 families; no one knows the exact number.
They were ex-slaves, poor immigrants, soldiers, longshoremen, infirm seniors, and all kinds of people who weren’t able to afford better housing in Rio de Janeiro. There, they lived among domestic animals and stables of breeding and pack animals. The negligence of public power became a police issue when Rio city hall decided the place was “unsanitary.”
In the early evening of January 26th, 1893, then mayor of the Federal District, Barata Ribeiro ordered police to occupy the tenement, the largest in Rio.
At 7:30am, troops from the first infantry battalion invaded the area and prohibited any entrance or exit. At the same time, cavalry police took over the surrounding streets, and another group of policemen entered the Morro, closing the gate to guarantee the expulsion of the residents.
The inhabitants didn’t even have time to remove their belongings. Women and children grabbed furniture, clothes, and animals, and soon the housing complex began to be demolished. The dismantling was so quick and so violent that it was covered in all of the newspapers.
Journalist Ângelo Agostini, from Revista Ilustrada, noted with irony: “Who would’ve thought a Barata [cockroach in Portuguese] was capable of devouring an entire pig’s head in less than 48 hours? Yet it devoured happily the bones, flesh, and meat, leaving not a trace.”
For the poor residents, with nowhere to go, Barata Ribeiro decreed that they could reclaim the demolished wood to construct houses on the nearby hill – Morro da Providência.