Cortiço, or gueto is a Portuguese term commonly used in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 to describe an area of urban

Urban area

An urban area is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets.Urban areas are created and further...

 housing

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

 where many people live in conditions of poor hygiene and poverty

Poverty

Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

. Some cortiços can be seen in big Brazilian cities

City

A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

 such as São Paulo

São Paulo

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

,and Recife

Recife

Recife is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Brazil with 4,136,506 inhabitants, the largest metropolitan area of the North/Northeast Regions, the 5th-largest metropolitan influence area in Brazil, and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco. The population of the city proper...

. Cortiços (or tenements) differ from favela

Favela

A favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos . This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in...

s in being large houses divided into small rooms, rather than autonomously-built neighborhoods. People who live in cortiços are normally families in one very small room who have to share one bathroom and have no privacy.

The term was made popular by Brazilian writer Aluísio de Azevedo in 1890 with the book O Cortiço

O Cortiço

O Cortiço is an influential Brazilian novel written in 1890 by Aluísio Azevedo. The novel depicts a part of Brazil's culture in the late Nineteenth century, represented by a variety of colorful characters living in a single Rio de Janeiro slum.Azevedo's The Slum tells the stories of Portuguese and...

, a 19th century Realist/Naturalist novel.