Parelheiros

Parelheiros is rural district located in the extreme south of the city of São Paulo, and is also one of the districts with the largest territorial area. Very little inhabited, most part of its area is covered by ambiental reserves of the Atlantic Forest. In Parelheiros there are also two indigenous villages of a Guaraní subgroup with about one thousand residents. The region also received many German imigrants in the beginning of 1800. The inhabitants of the place have the lowest purchasing power of the city. The district is quite disconnected from the central districts of the city because of the little amount of public transportations and roads.

The district covers 353 km², representing 24% of São Paulo, with human occupation 2.5% and scattered 7.7%. With the totality of its territory in areas of protection of springs, the region comprises important parts of the Atlantic Forest and the most preserved areas of the city. It includes parts of the drainage basins of the reservoirs Guarapiranga and Billings, that are responsible for the supply of 30% of the population of Greater São Paulo. It is cut by a drainage railroad of the agricultural production to the port of Santos and to a disabled suburban extension.

The Cratera da Colônia, with 3.5 km², is a geologic mark produced by a meteorite many million years ago. Part of it is occupied by 25 thousand people in irregular divisions of lots, another is occupied by a State penitentiary (about 1500 prisoners), and the rest (approximately 50%) is preserved as a traditional agriculture area. The area is maintained by Condephaat (Res. SC 60 de 20.08.2003). It was originally inhabited by Tupi Indians and in the 20th century a Guaraní subgroup established itself there and today there are two villages of the Guaranis - Aldeia Krukutu and Morro da Saudade.

In spite of the restrictions imposed by the environmental legislation, the area presents intense urbanization and disorder, with part of the population living of precarious form and serious impacts on the natural processes of production of water, due to the waterproofing of the soil, to the desforestation, to the spilling of sewers and the aggradation of the bodies of water.

Following the current urbanization process, the population grows in an irregular way, with low income, increasing in an inadequate way the deficit of services and infrastructure. Now the number of the population is of approximately 200.000. The population flow can still increase more with the passage of Rodoanel foreseen to cut the area.

Nature

Nowadays it has elevated pluviometric indexes and lower temperature in the winter, with frequent frosts. It is the most preserved area of the city of São Paulo with remainders of the Atlantic Forest (62,4%) and reforestation of about 4% (pinus, eucalyptuses). It includes parts of the drainage basins of the reservoirs Guarapiranga and Billings.

History

In the region of Parelheiros, there were already some caboclos before the arrival of the Germans (1829). The place received its current name because of the diverse horse-riding races (parelhas, in Portuguese) between the Germans and the Brazilians. Before it was known as "Santa Cruz" (Saint Cross), because a cross existed there, put by a devotee called Amaro de Pontes.

Parelheiros stands out in relation to the Paulista Colony because of the fact that a road opened in the 19th century, by Henrique Schunck (German), father of the founder of Cipó (nowadays district of Embu-Guaçu). The street of Parelheiros, nowadays Avenida Sadamu Inoue, connected the villages Embu-Guaçu and São José, where you could leave for the districts Rio Bonito and Santo Amaro, preventing, like this, the passage by the Colonly, where there was the oldest road of Conceição.

In the middle of the 20th century, principally after World War II, diverse Japanese people disembarked in Port of Santos. Most of them stayed in the so called "Cinturão Verde Metropolitano de São Paulo" (Green Metrpolitan Belt of São Paulo).

Like this, the neighborhoods of Jaceguava and Casa Grande – that are part of the Subprefecture of Parelheiros – were being occupated by Japanese families, where they would dedicate to agricultural labor.

Searching for a cheap accommodation, a very numerous population chose the springs of Santo Amaro to reside. With the possibility of finding lower renting costs or even owning a house, with some sacrifice, many lots surged, many of them irregular,because of the publication of the state law of the Protection to the Springs in 1976.

The inexistence of large spaces in urban areas led into getting into the lands of the caipiras of Santo Amaro, of a soil exhausted by rudimentary houses. Lotting their territories was the best way to get away from the problems, for the increase of taxes territories began making the big properties more expensive. The solution was to divide the country houses and farms into lots, giving place to the emergence of towns, gardens, and parks leaving that the interests of the real estate speculation determined the location of home of the hard-working population, increasing, in the deelimitation of the urban plan, the disorder in the use of the soil.

Profile

The Foundation SEADE showed that the young population of this region is the largest in São Paulo.

In 2004, the risk of a man between 15 e 24 years to die in Parelheiros was 21 times bigger than in Pinheiros. [pt icon [http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u98407.shtml Homicídio de jovens em Parelheiros é 21 vezes maior que em Pinheiros] Folha Online, August 19 of 2004.]

References