Favela is a name given to slums in Brazil. They are primarily located in urban areas. Favelas were first built towards the end of the 19th century by soldiers who had no place to stay. One of the first to be built was called Bairros Africanos (African Neighborhoods). In these areas the slaves who gained their freedom but did not have a place to live and a job began to settle in time.

Before the first favelas were built in Brazilian history the general policy removed the poor from the cities and forced them to live in the countryside. However with the acceleration of migration from rural areas to cities in the 1970s the first favelas understood in today's modern sense began to emerge. Those who could not find work in the cities and had no place to stay started to settle in the favelas. According to a study published by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in December 2011 about 6 percent of Brazilians live in favelas. This means that about 11.4 million of the 190 million people live in these regions.

Favelas were formed before the intense occupation of cities and the domination of real estate interests. After the end of slavery and increasing urbanization towards Latin American cities many people from rural Brazil moved to Rio. These new immigrants sought work in the city but had little or no money unable to afford urban housing. In the 1920s favelas grew so large that they were perceived as a problem for the entire society. At the same time the term favela experienced its first institutionalization becoming a local category for the hilltop settlements of the urban poor. However it wasn't until 1937 that the favela was at the center of public attention when the Building Regulations (Código de Obras) first acknowledged its existence in an official document thus marking the beginning of open slum policies. The housing crisis of the 1940s forced the urban poor to set up hundreds of slums in the suburbs when favelas replaced rental homes as the primary type of housing for the poor Cariocas (Rio residents). The tumultuous period of favela growth spans from the 1940s when Getúlio Vargas' industrialization drive brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the former Federal District to the 1970s when slums spread beyond urban Rio and into the metropolitan periphery.

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