The site of Recife's Bras'ilia Teimosa favela emerged as a flash point of economic and political interests in the 1930s and the scene of subsequent strife into the 1980s. The name of this district is a contemptuous allusion to the new capital of Brazil, with its forward-thinking planning policies and urban design, in stark contrast to the favela. This concise account unearths events surfacing through periods of revolution, dictatorship, populism, Cuban Communism, the 1964 military coup d'etat and crackdown to the amplified reverberation of civil society voices and engagement decades later. Shifting ideologies and jolting transitions between regimes directly affected what occurred on this 110-acre parcel of urban land. Between 1934 and 1984 competing groups and individuals came to covet this space because of its strategic location and political consequence. Bras'ilia Teimosa is about the politics of ouster and the power of resistance. What took place there still resonates in squatter settlements