Grassroots Memorials and the Right to the City: Legacies of Marielle Franco

• In Event: Human Rights and Memory in Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how activists mobilize grassroots memorials of Marielle Franco to position themselves socially and spatially within local and global struggles for urban rights. These activists are part of social movements rooted in community work in favelas of Rio de Janeiro and they use their skills to generate artistic interventions. By focusing on events after Marielle Franco’s assassination that were organized in the immediate aftermath of her death in Rio de Janeiro, this paper reveals how people in the city build collective memories of struggle as a way to claim a right to the city, as one of many narratives that aim to tell a cohesive story about the relationship between the various urban spaces and city residents. It also shows how agents engage with praxis - theory and practice - as they actively reflect and act during the process of shaping a narrative of collective memories through grassroots memorials in order to define collective memories. Finally, by examining the connections to moments and places in urban Rio, I argue that these acts of building collective and social memories of struggle are part of a larger debate on favela lives and the right to the city.

Author

• Pamela K Sertzen, Syracuse University