Military Occupation and Criminal Governance: Comparative Ethnography in Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: Violence, crime and insecurity in Latin America from a subnational perspective

Abstract

For more than three decades, powerful drug trafficking gangs have monopolized violence and substituted state authority with governance forms of their own in Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro, a set of 16 contiguous favelas in the city’s northern zone inhabited by a population of roughly 140,000. On April 1, 2014, however, a few short months ahead of the World Cup, Brazilian armed forces invaded and occupied Maré, thus reasserting the Brazilian state’s monopoly of violence in the area. For the subsequent 12 months, 2500 army and marine forces imposed a new form of order in Maré, characterized by frequent searches and seizures, fixed and mobile checkpoints, and around-the-clock patrols and operations. For their part, the drug trafficking gangs continued to operate though in a markedly diminished capacity. Many senior gang members were forced to leave Maré and the organizational structure of these organizations evolved as they adapted to an entirely new security environment. This chapter of a current book project uses primarily participant observation data collected from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork before and during this period of occupation to compare how three separate gang organizations and the residents living within these territories responded to such a dramatic shift in their security environment. This comparative ethnographic approach offers analytical leverage on the nature of criminal authority and order as well as a micro-level understanding of how militarized policing and military involvement in public security initiatives impact organized crime and citizen security in Rio de Janeiro.

Author

• Nicholas Barnes, Brown University