When the Police Come to Town: Safety and Order in a Rio de Janeiro Militarized Community

• In Event: Respuestas, percepciones de seguridad y vida cotidiana

Abstract

Although the expansion of military ideologies, discourses, and practices into policing and the control of urban spaces have been well-documented across both the global north and the global south, much less is known about how targeted communities experience these security interventions. The launch of the Favela Pacification Program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2008 provides a critical opportunity to explore how residents living in a militarized community experience changes to their safety and the local social order. Drawing upon six weeks of ethnographic fieldwork, including 200 hours of participant-observation and 25 interviews with residents, community leaders, scholars, and activists, this article suggests that three elements are critical to explain how residents make sense of their safety under militarization: (a) the historic and contemporary threat of violent drug traffickers to residents’ physical safety and the social integrity of the community; (b) the particular combination of coercive and consensual control and governing tactics employed in this space; and (c) the ability of the militarization intervention to maintain territorial control and sustain early improvements to public safety. It is suggested that future analyses of military approaches to urban governance pay greater attention to the historical and socio-political structures that shape the lived realities of targeted communities, the particular combination of tactics employed, and their changes and adaptations over time.

Author

• Anjuli Ferreira-Fahlberg, Northeastern University