The Vila Estrutural. In the proximity of Cruzeiro and the Plano Piloto, between the national park of Brasilia, the road Estrutural and the watercourse Cabeceira DO Valo, is the Vila Estrutural. The settlement of the area goes back to the seventies, as the first provisional accommodations was established by waste collecters, in the proximity of the „Lixão“, the waste depot of the Distrito Federal, also known as „Lixão do Jóquei Clube“. At that time the settlement consisted of about 130 persons, in wooden boxes and on the landfill founded plastic.
Today the Vila Estrutural is the largest illegal settlement of the Distrito Federal, in that live about 6000 families, 25,000 persons with an average income of under two minimum wages [ < 180 euro ].
1999 was registered 3,967 families. Their names are part of a data base of the secretariat for Urbane development and housebuilding [ SEDUH ].
In the eighties the settlement grew very slowly and impaired the national park only small. The settlement became however more concrete by the mixture of the garbage collecting tanks with the small farmers ever. Here they had settled along the watercourse Cabeceira do Valo to operate around cattle breeding and cultivate vegetables.
The government had introduced the operation Tornado from in July 1997 with the goal to protect the property of the government of the Distrito Federal as well as the environment. Numerous, sequential initiatives were started, to stop further spreading of the Vila Estrutural. But all attempts to achieve this goal remained without success.
The public streets suffer under permanent problems: In the dry season [ May until Octobers ] the dust formation is intolerable and in the rain season [ November until April ] the roads transforms into mud runways. The inhabitants do not like to resettle the catastrophic conditions of the roads resettling into other regions. A reason for it are probably hoped for real estate gains, which would experience the Vila due to their privileged situation, if the area is only legalisiert.
1993 were already 393 families registered in the region, about 149 worked as a waste collecter. In the year 1994 this number was doubled.
