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Abstract
As Brazil prepares for hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games—both of which will feature Rio de Janeiro prominently—what do patterns of social representation and state repression of predominantly Afrodescended communities say about the symbolic, political, and material dimensions of current black experiences in Brazil? This article focuses on the November 2010 massive police–military operations that targeted Vila Cruzeiro and the Complexo do Alemão in Rio. These operations are emblematic of a new public security paradigm inaugurated in 2008 that aimed at retaking urban areas from the control of drug dealers. How, if at all, does this new security paradigm represent a rupture with relation to historical patterns of anti-black violence perpetrated by state and non-state actors and institutions?
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Barbara Ransby for critical commentaries that much improved the essay. Alex Emboaba da Costa also had great insights, most of which will have to go in another piece.
Notes
Anti-black, here, is not to be equated with the high number of black persons in the police's ranks.
For useful accounts of past and present public security approaches, see, for example, Amar (Citation2013), Soares (Citation2000, Citation2006), and Cano (Citation2012).
Sylvia Leandro (Citation2010) and Michel Misse (Citation2011) exemplify and engage a growing body of analyses devoted to police lethality, in particular.
Because article 23 of the Brazilian Penal Code establishes that “there is no crime when [state] agents act I) according to necessity; II) in self-defense; and III) in the strict fulfillment of the legal duty or in the sanctioned exercise of the law,” the Public Ministry almost always archives police homicides and therefore deems them juridically acceptable (Leandro Citation2010: 1325, 1328).
Currently, there are 41 such areas (ISP, RJ).
Suburban municipalities include São Gonçalo, Duque de Caxias, Nova Iguaçu, and Belford Roxo; areas in northern and western parts of Rio's city limits include Madureira, Pavuna, Brás de Pina, Complexo do Alemão, Olaria, Penha, Jardim América, Vigário Geral, Maré, and Ramos.
My translation.
Attention must be given to historical black areas located in otherwise affluent geographies (Carril Citation2006), and how, in them, economic and physical vulnerability tend to follow patterns that are much closer to that of other disproportionately black neighborhoods. The favela communities of the southern part of Rio are cases in point.
For an analysis of the religious, political, race, and class aliances that are pertinent for the current Rio political contexto, see Amar (Citation2013), especially chapter 4.
Amarildo de Souza, resident of the largest favela in Rio, Rocinha, was killed by UPP officers in the UPP post. He was last seen alive on the night of July 14, 2013. See G1 (electronic news service by Globo), October 28, 2013. http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2013/10/pms-dizem-que-foram-ordenadas-ocultar-provas-de-tortura-amarildo.html (accessed November 18, 2013).
The cross-class box office success that recent Brazilian films such as Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite) and its sequels have enjoyed can be taken as an indication of this “us against them” mentality—which, in the movie, in sociologically apt detail, criminalizes both favelas and corrupt police officers.
On news media and hegemony, see, for example, Schiller (1991), Davis (Citation1992), Bagdikian (Citation1987), and Hall (Citation1980).
Two police officers were shot, and 14 civilians had been injured in the crossfire. A list of the materials the police apprehended during the confrontations provides a sense of the urban battles’ nature and intensity: 29 guns and pistols; 10 rifles; two shotguns, a machine gun, five grenades, and two home-made bombs. In possession of arrested suspects were a Molotov cocktail, two explosive artifacts, and nine liters of gasoline, among other items. Reacting against the state repression, as well as expressing their willingness to engage the broader public attention, the alleged bandits set fire to 37 vehicles. Unlike in relatively common events of previous years, when mostly buses were set ablaze as a protest against police intervention in territory the drug gangs deemed their own, this time the arsons were not only seemingly coordinated; they included passenger cars and trucks, and were widespread throughout the greater Rio (Soares Citation2010).
Motorcycles are the quickest means of transportation in neighborhoods such as Vila Cruzeiro, where they are often utilized as taxis, freight vehicles, as well as for everyday commute. It is common to see 125 s and 250 s, mostly Hondas and Yamahas, circulating through Rio favelas, many of which as the ever efficient (and often a little frightening, if you are not used to them) moto-táxis.
“Mesmo com todo esse aparato policial, Ana Paula, você verifica a disposicao da resistência … Eles estao ali para atirar nos policiais.” RJ TV news. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I29GkS0FImE (accessed February 6, 2011).
TV Globo Live reporting on November 25 2010. Globohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtCKaH5SpZo&feature=related (accessed February 12, 2011).
As described in the evening variety TV program Fantástico. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsd0TWLWzR4&feature=related (accessed May 12, 2011).
Even though this geographic advantage, since at least the 1980s, has been used by drug dealers as it allowed them to scrutinize and, when necessary, attack agents of the state or enemy factions, it served similar functions for the clandestine and armed left during the 1960s and 1970s, and earlier, until the turn of the 20th century, for those previously enslaved, criminalized, and otherwise unable to secure habitation in less precarious land (Moreira Citation2006).
Globo news, November 28, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGQnoNinyn4&feature=fvwrel (accessed May 11, 2011). Gláucio Soares, a sociologist interviewed during the program, stated that “the population, for the first time, wants to cooperate.” This seeming popular support, which the sociologist surmised based on data collected on the frequency of calls to a crime hotline, was the main reason for the heightened hope that, this time, state control over such embattled areas would be forceful and permanent.
Zone A are neighborhoods in the northern and western part of the city, except Barra da Tijuca; Zone B are neighborhoods of the southern part of the city, including Barra da Tijuca and Santa Teresa (FGV 2011: 4).
As I conclude this article, independent media reported the unjustified death of a young man in Jacarezinho by UPP officers. A popular protest against the occupying police ensued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RslNfiReGGU (accessed April 8, 2013).
Such was the case in Chapéu Mangueira, where persons from the adjoining Leme and Copacabana “asphalt” neighborhoods were buying houses and transforming them into youth hostels, whose prices were comparable to their counterparts on the seaside southern zone.
Talk by the author at the University of Texas at Austin on February 21, 2013.