Deconstructing a Miracle: Residents’ Perceptions of the Reconfiguration of Crime and (In)security In and Beyond “Pacified” Territories in Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: UPPs in Crisis: The Reorganization of Crime in Times of "Pacification" in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The Pacifying Police Units (UPPs) were initially presented as a miraculous solution to the problem of criminal violence in Rio de Janeiro. This paper deconstructs this representation by looking at the perceptions and experiences of residents of “pacified” territories with distinct trajectories of criminal and state presence. Based on ethnographic research in the city’s North and West Zones, it discusses the impact of “pacification” on forms of order, control and (in)security in the favelas. Specifically, it explores the reconfiguration of criminal networks following the installation of the UPPs from the perspective of favela residents: What has been the impact of the UPPs on their perceptions of crime and (in)security in and beyond “pacified” territories? I argue that such state practices in the urban “margins” and the related reorganization of crime lead to the reconfiguration of insecurity. While “pacification” diminishes some forms of insecurity, at the same time – by provoking the rearrangement of preexisting criminal and political networks, rules and order – it creates altered forms of insecurity that demand the reinvention of people’s coping strategies. Analyzing and contrasting these processes and (re)arrangements in two different settings – one a former stronghold of one of Rio’s major drug factions in the city’s North Zone that was occupied by the Brazilian army before receiving an UPP, and the other a “pacified” neighborhood in the West Zone previously controlled by a milícia (and, before that, by rivaling drug factions) – allows for an exploration of the impacts of differentiated histories of (il)legal governance on crime and (in)security in times of “pacification”.

Author

• Sara Koenders, University of Amsterdam