Favela/Asfalto

Abstract

This chapter explores how the exotifying outsider gaze shaped my first encounter with Rio de Janeiro's favelas and the people living there. It shows how reified accounts the favelas imagine them as a series of problems to be solved through outside interventions. These accounts are challenged through ethnographic descriptions that focus on the changing demographics of the favelas and the diversity of opinions, experiences, and subjectivities among people from the favela as well as its other, the asfalto. The chapter concludes that the pacification project and urban development projects implemented prior to the 2016 Olympics largely catered to the needs of the population on the asfalto, intensifying militarized policing in the favelas and perpetuating a logic of war against populations and spaces symbolically coded as black.

Fig. 2.1

The favela of Babilonia in Rio’s Zona Sul

“Well, I reckon you will be living in a favela?” Bjørn, my supervisor, is half asking me, half telling me what he expects. “Yes, well, of course I will!” I stutter in response, though really, I never intended to live in a favela. As an Argentine, I feel a slight discomfort at the thought of traveling to Brazil to study inequality and violence. It feels normative and reifying. But perhaps I am also afraid of stepping outside my comfort zone. Maybe I feel a little knot in my stomach when I hear the word favela. To a part of me, steeped in prejudice, it sounds risky, uncomfortable, intense, and chaotic. And after all, I have reasoned, I am supposed to study the police. Is it safe to live in a favela while I am working with them? Aren’t they in conflict with the favela-based traficantes? I am hesitant but Bjørn's question is leading, and I don’t want to disappoint him. And so, without much thought, I answer. “Of course I will!” (Fig. 2.1).

“Is it okay if we move into a favela?” I ask Javier, my partner, when I get home. “Are you serious?” That was never the plan. “Yes” I reply. “And I have kinda already promised we will,” I add with a nervous laugh. Javier hesitates but is also curious. He grins and concedes: So it is—we will be living in a favela. But first we must find one. How do you “find” a favela?

The Outsiders Gaze

I search for favela hostel on the internet. After the pacification began, hotels, hostels, and AirBnB’s have popped up everywhere in many of Rio’s favelas. Most of them are found in those closest to the beaches of southern Rio. Babilonia Hostel is no exception. As the name indicates, it is situated in Babilonia: A small community clinging to the steep hillside behind Leme, a residential neighborhood just east of Copacabana. The place is owned and run by Hugo, a tall and slender man with a receding hairline, a pouty mouth, and a beard resembling Che Guevara’s. When the taxi drops me off in the favela, he is having lunch at one of the small restaurants, or botecos, by the road that leads to the community. As I step out of the car and into the oppressive December heat, Hugo leans back in his chair and raises his hand to get my attention. It takes a little while before I see him, just long enough for me to feel a knot tying in my stomach. I'm nervous. The taxi driver did not want to take me there. He considered the favela a “risk zone” and seemed annoyed when he understood where I wanted to be dropped off.

As I see Hugo nonchalantly greeting me, I lower my shoulders and exhale. He is eating with a young French couple who are also staying at the hostel. When they finish their meal, I follow them up the web of alleys and staircases of the favela with faked calm. Past the lively little botecos at the bottom of the hill, where Americans in white linen shirts and Panama hats sit side by side with sweaty workers in stained, sleeveless shirts, eating rice and feijão (beans) with farofa. Past the heap of plastic bags overflowing the garbage container. Past the pile of building materials—bricks and sand—and the row of parked motorcycles. Then over the little bridge crossing the flood trench, where waste is floating and the smell from the open sewer tears at the nostrils. Up a narrow, colorful stair leading into the heart of the favela. The walls are painted in yellow and green pastels, faded colors of the Brazilian flag. The door into one of the homes is wide open and the smell of deep-fried food and freshly boiled rice seeps down the ally. A young couple is sitting on the staircase, wrapped in what I can only presume must be a hot embrace, judging from the sweltering heat and humidity. Next to them an old, scruffy dog is resting in the shade. We continue upwards, turning right at the corner where a group of young boys sell sluggish marihuana and furious cocaine, past construction workers, half-built annexes, bags of cement, rebars, and formwork. Shattered sewer-pipes run down along the side of the stairs, leading us up the last few steep steps to the verdant green door of Babilonia Hostel.

From the roof terrace, we see straight down to the tall buildings at Copacabana, the oil platforms of the Atlantic Ocean, and the surreal, mountainous landscapes that have made Rio one of the most recognizable and photographed cities in the world. The rocky hills seem like dark towers covered in lush jungle, protruding between the row of white brick buildings that face the beach. As most of the favelas in Rio’s wealthy southern neighborhoods, Babilonia is built on a steep hillside, offering dazzling views of the city and sea. Below the hostel, Babilonia fans out. Seen from the top, it looks like the house has been built on top of the lower buildings—like a Jenga-game. The sound of children laughing, mothers shouting, couples arguing, and neighbors gossiping fades into the noise from the constant construction work.

In the evening, the workers lay down their tools, and the sound of buzz saws, shovels, and pounding hammers ebb out and is replaced by shouting young boys who gather on the rooftops to fly their kites. They are competing to see who can fly the highest while their fellow kite pilots try to cut each other’s glass-fiber lines. Neighbors poke their heads out the windows or watch from their balconies. They cheer and shout rousing comments that I still can’t grasp. As the sun goes down, the thick summer air fills with the pumping bass from loudspeakers conveniently placed on the terraces. It seems like the neighbors are trying to deafen each other with funk, the latest rhythmical innovation emerging in the favelas.

Hugo is young, white, and comes from Leme, the wealthy neighborhood of the asphalt right below Babilonia. There, luxurious residencies rise like a wave breaking against the beach. Prior to pacification he had, like many of his neighbors, never set his foot in the favela perched half a block above the building he grew up in. “I was terrified of the favela. I grep up with the discourse of fear” he explains.¹ Now he tells me that he feels at home here. Hugo studied psychology at the public university. When Babilonia was pacified, he started working for an organization that aimed to help children from the favela deal with trauma and experiences of violence. He does not like how the city is changing. It’s becoming streamlined and has lost much of its character. “Take Maracanã,” he says: “It used to be a stadium with room for 150.000 spectators. Most people could afford the cheap tickets. But prior to the World Cup, the stadium was renovated to match FIFA’s standards. Now there’s only room for 80.000 people and the tickets have become so expensive that it has become a stadium for the middle and upper classes.”

“The same goes for the UPPs” says Hugo. When the police established the UPP in Babilonia in 2010 the biggest changes experienced by the people living here were the formalization of services like electricity and cable TV. For those who used to have access to these things through illegal outlets, it meant a significant increase in costs of living: For the private companies providing these services, it meant more revenue (see, e.g. Freeman 2012). Apart from these changes, the biggest difference is that now, there are always police officers in the favela. “This isn't pacification” Hugo says. “It’s intense control.” Hugo tells me that he likes it better here than down on the asphalt. “In the favela, it is impossible not to know your neighbors. You have very little privacy. Everybody is watching each other, looking out for each other, and telling each other what's going on. This is a real community. The inhabitants here have a feeling of community that doesn't exist among people on the asphalt.” A couple of years ago, Hugo had decided he’d open a hostel here. He bought the house we are standing in now, painted it in seventeen different pastel colors, and equipped the rooms with squeaky bunk beds.

I tell Hugo my intention to do research with the police officers of the UPPs. “Do you think it will be possible?” I ask him expectantly. He thinks it should be. “The police are the worst of Rio’s institutions. They are marked by corruption, violence, and power abuse. But there are good people there too,” he says. “People with good intentions who really want to do good. The female officer who used to be in command at Babilonia was good at her job and approachable.” “I need a place to live,” I say. “Do you know of anyone who rents out rooms in any of the pacified favelas?” Hugo nods. As a matter of fact, he owns the house next door. He is supposed to expand the hostel one day, but right now it stands empty. “You can check it out and see if you like it” he says. Alright, I think to myself. I’ve only been in Rio for a day, and I’ve already found a place to live. This is a promising start.

The house is big. It is three floors tall. The entrance is on the first floor, at the end of the narrow staircase that leads up to the hostel and to our neighbor Luca's house. He has two dogs. Uva is an old, chocolate-colored Labrador who drags himself up the stairs and spends most of the day slumbering in the shade. Violeta is his opposite. She is just ten months old and an authentic Brazilian viralata (mixed breed). Her fur is short and white, with specks of black and big pointy ears. She likes to bark in the hallway when Luca is at work—nonstop from six in the morning until eight in the evening, Monday to Saturday.

A frail barred door made of aluminum marks the point where the street ends, and the house begins. From outside you can look straight into the living room. It's sparsely furnished, with a red hammock and a cupboard placed beneath a window that faces the thick and verdant jungle behind the house. On the second floor there are two bedrooms. They are filled to the brim with the same rickety bunk beds that are in the hostel. There’s space for ten people, should we decide to invite guests. The top floor is a big roof-covered terrace. It's enveloped by the lush jungle growing around the house like a huge wall of trees. To the south, the deep-blue medow of the Atlantic Ocean fills the horizon. When we arrive, the terrace is a construction site, but once we have given it a little love, it becomes a home worthy of the favela. We find a couple of old window hatches behind the house that we use to build a big dinner table. Hugo's old folding staircase is equipped with wooden boards and transformed into a kitchen shelf. With a couple of layers of fresh paint, old aluminum cans are refurbished as benches and pots where we plant plants dug up from the jungle behind the house. Our sofa is an old, heavy bathtub, sawed in two and painted yellow, and our neighbor molds a discarded washing machine tumbler into a grill. When we hang the hammock from the roof beams our home is almost complete: The final touch is provided by Violeta, who moves in with us a few months into our stay in Rio and immediately stops barking. When my parents visit us from Norway my mother can’t hide her surprise. “I this how people live in here?” she exclaims. “I guess I could live in a favela too!” (Fig. 2.2).

Fig. 2.2

Dinner at our roof terrace with neighbors and friends, February 2015

It is still too early in December for the big wave of tourists to arrive, and there are more empty beds than occupied ones in the little hostel. Pierre and Adele, the couple from France, have turned one of the shared bedrooms into a private room, while I share a room with an American Marine officer. He wants to experience life in the favelas before going back to the United States. As a Marine, he isn't allowed to be here as it is considered too dangerous by the US government. He has spent the last year with the Brazilian Armed Forces on a military exchange, only seeing the favelas from BOPE’s helicopters. “The soldiers from BOPE are crazy,” he says. “They shoot first and ask later.” We are eating lunch at one of the botecos in Babilonia. As we are about to order, four police officers come strolling out of the alley that leads to the open square in front of us. Three of the men carry semi-automatic guns hanging from their shoulders, fingers firmly placed on the trigger, barrels pointing to the ground. The last officer has holstered his gun but keeps a hand on the weapon. The group moves slowly across the square. They examine their surroundings, inspecting the area and people there. The conversations at the boteco turn silent. Though we don’t want to be caught staring, our attention is focused on the armed men who are now standing in the middle of the square. They exude authority and aggression.

Rather than feeling safe, I feel alert and tense. My gaze is drawn to the face of one of the officers. He doesn't look like someone you want to rub the wrong way. He’s tilting his head slightly backwards in an arrogant posture that makes it seem like he’s looking at everyone from above. His lips strech down towards his jaw in a grumpy smile. I gently nudge at the American Marine, and nod towards the officers. He shakes his head in disapproval. “This does not invite to any form of co-operation” he says and explains how preoccupied his platoon was with building good relations with civilians when he was stationed in the Middle East. “I used to tell civilians that I was their best friend and their worst enemy—by which I meant that if they treated me well, I would do the same to them, but if they didn't, I would crush them.” Fair enough, I think to myself. If this guy thinks the local police take it too far, I won't object. On our way back to the hostel, we meet two of the officers. One is just raising his gun, resting it against his jaw and shoulder, ready to fire as he turns the corner. The American Marine explains that this position is called tactical entry. He is surprised that the police use it during their patrol rounds in Babilonia.

Pierre is short and skinny but has a big mouth. He usually smiles and greets the neighbors loudly and unabashedly as he walks up the stairs. I've seen him bumming cigarettes from them, engaging in conversations in Portuguese—which he speaks fluently. Now he is laying out his political views—loudly, at a fast pace, and only interrupted by his own deep laugh. He is rolling a big joint of marihuana that he bought from one of the boys at the boca do fumo (lit. ‘mouth of smoke’; local drug retail) earlier. He deliberates on European geopolitics: “France and the rest of Europe are becoming authoritarian” he affirms with confidence. “Soon, we will have no rights left!” He thinks that the legalization of gay marriage in particular signals the beginning of the end: “It's a part of the conspiracy to break down and destroy family-ties, so that the state can control us more easily.” I am bewildered and smile sheepishly: “Are you kidding?” But Pierre is dead serious. He says he is very happy to have a girl from Russia here. She has just checked in at the hostel—Rio is the first stop on her backpacking trip through South America. Now she is drinking caipirinhas with us on the rooftop terrace. Pierre says that he has a lot of respect for Putin. If World War 3 begins, there is no place he would rather be than in Russia. The girl nods and smiles. She explains that she has nothing against gays: “I have a lot of gay friends,” she says. But she hates lesbians. They make her sick. And she thinks gay people should respect religion more. Pierre agrees, particularly with her last point. And he adds that anti-fascism is at least as fascist as fascism.

Brazilian anthropologists who have studied policing and urban violence in Rio de Janeiro, usually highlight the need to pay attention to the importance of understanding the local context—the social, cultural, historical, political, and institutional particularities—in analyses of the dynamics of power and policing in Brazil (see, e.g. Machado da Silva 2004; Kant de Lima 1995; Misse 2006; Soares 2023). In the remainder of this book, this is what I’ll do, but the conversation that I had with Pierre and the Russian girl in Babilonia that evening in December 2014 foreshadowed the political developments that we have seen in many countries across the world and reminds us of the importance of situating the re-emergence of Brazilian authoritarianism within a larger, global trend (see, e.g. Shoshan 2021).

Favelado

Compared to other favelas, Babilonia is wealthy, small, and easy to navigate. Since it’s just a stone's throw from the beach and is considered relatively safe, it is popular among foreign tourists searching for “authenticity” and among South American bon vivants. Some fall in love with Rio and end up taking odd jobs as receptionists, cleaners, or bartenders at one of the hostels in the favela. Following pacification, young and trendy cariocas from the asphalt, like Hugo, have “discovered” the laid-back lifestyle of Babilonia, and every now and then, Hugo's university friends stop by to smoke maconha (marihuana) and watch the big ships slowly sail across the soft horizon where the sky meets the ocean (Fig. 2.3).

There are two roads leading up from the asphalt to the favela. Ladeira Ari Barroso is the main street and is always buzzling with people wearing singlets and Havaianas. Some drizzle with sweat as they walk up the hillside, others are shuttled up in white minibuses that run between the busy avenues of Copacabana and the meandering streets of the favela. There’s also a steady stream of mototaxis (motorcycle taxis)—a staple of the favela transport system—that howl their way up the hairpin turns. At the foot of Ladeira Ari Barroso, the Military Police have set up a control post signaling that the favela has been pacified. It is guarded night and day by a patrol car and two officers. At night the red lights cast long shadows down the street. The other access is not as easy to find. It lies nested between two high-rise buildings and even an attentive pedestrian knowing what he or she is looking for, could easily walk straight past the entrance without realizing it. The gateway is about as broad as a doorstep, and from the sidewalk the tight alley between the two buildings is only visible when you are standing right in front of it. The buildings on each side of the alley are so tall and close to each other that only a narrow strip of the sky is visible when you look up.

Fig. 2.3

A narrow alley separates the favela from the asfalto, July 2015

It takes a little while for the eyes to adjust to the low light of the alley. If you meet someone walking in the opposite direction, you must lean sideways against the buildings to let the other one pass. On the dark walls, someone has painted the insignia of the traffickers controlling the favela in black paint: ADA, Amigo dos Amigos, or Friends of Friends. They control the retail sale of drugs in neighbouring Chapeu-Mangueira. Babilonia is dominated by Commando Vermelho (CV): The Red Command. The proximity of the two gangs periodically leads to tension but normally these favelas are calm and quiet. Just above the gang symbol, someone has written a warning to the police: “You're gonna die, UPP!”

At the end of the passage, a dizzyingly steep staircase has been cemented onto the hill, leading up towards the homes in the favela. They are just visible between the foliage of the tall trees growing in a small courtyard behind the buildings. They mark the invisible border between asphalt and favela, camouflaging the hardship and violence of inequality; hiding it from the wealthy families that occupy the apartments facing the messy favela architecture. The stairs are broad enough for people to pass each other, allowing the sweaty and breathless bodies that climb them a moment of rest on their way up. I have counted the steps from the street and up to our house many times to ease the climb to the top. There are exactly 300 steps from the pavement to our doorstep. Where the first stairs end, there’s a small balcony marking the lower boundary of the favela. The alley to the left follows a tall wall with a low bench cemented into the ground. I have been told that it used to be one of the most lucrative bocas de fumo in Rio prior to pacification. The narrow entrance and long flight of stairs made it easy for the traffickers to control who came in and out of the favela. For intruders and police alike, attempting to enter the favela through the alley would be a lethal strategic error. However, it allowed the rich playboys from the asphalt easy access to the boca. They could comfortably buy drugs without having to enter the favela’s complex meshwork of alleys. For me, accessing the favela through the narrow passage feels like an adventure. Our neighbors, however, don’t like to use this access—they feel exposed in the eventual case of a shootout and complain that there are no comfortable places to rest on their way up the hill.

Now the main boca is in the middle of the favela, just below Hugo's hostel. Since he is not from Babilonia he hired João, a slim and strong black man, born and raised in Babilonia. João is Hugos right-hand man and lives in a small room at the hostel. The room’s only window was walled in when the neighbor added a new floor to their house. There is still a little gap of about 15 cm between the two houses—just enough to let in some fresh air. I have a hard time understanding what his role here actually is. He doesn't speak English and communicates very little with the foreign guests. A few weeks after my arrival, the electrician who installed the fans in the hostel rooms came by. He was an older, slim man. João wouldn't open the door for him, and they started shouting to each other, João from the terrace and the electrician from the stairs outside the entrance one floor down, while the neighbors poked their heads out the windows to watch. I didn’t understand much of what they were arguing about, but thought I picked up that the electrician threatened to go to the police. After some shouting back and forth, João jumped out the door and ran down to where the electrician was standing, smacking him at the back of his head. When he came back up, he was sweaty and agitated. He said they had been quarreling about money. The electrician said the work he had done cost 70 reals, and João had only paid him 60. The rest of the money, according to João, was for one of the workers who had helped him with the installations. “He's always trying to pull stuff like that,” João said in an irritated voice. “Everybody knows  how he is” I asked whether the electrician had threatened to go to the police. “No, he said he would go get his cousin. His cousin is a big, strong guy, and he always uses him to make threats. Luckily, he's an old man, so I instilled some fear of God in him” João explained.

That evening, João discussed what had happened with the neighbors. Discussing in this case means that one of the neighbors howled at João from his window, while João shouted back his version of events from the terrace at the hostel to anyone who happened to be in the vicinity. People here don't get together with a cup of coffee to share the newest gossip, they cry it out so that anyone who might be close enough can listen, ask questions, provide corrections, or chime in with opinions of their own, or so it seems. They don't knock on the door to see if the neighbor is home, they lean out from their balconies or shout through the windows. A couple of days later, I called on one of our neighbors from the hostel roof terrace. Hugo was there and burst out laughing. “You're already a favelado, Tomas!”

João has never met a gay couple without a feminine appearance, or at least so he claims. He seems to be incredibly curious about Javier and me and locks himself into our home at all times—as the dustpan that he uses for cleaning the hostel is placed in our house he has the keys to our front door. Don't ask me why—Javier and I find it odd but shrug it off. Maybe that's just what it's like here? Zero privacy, like Hugo said. Later, Hugo confides that João had wanted to surprise us in the middle of the act. He had never seen two men having sex and didn't “get” us. Instead, he surprises Javier as he's stepping out of the shower. This apparently makes him ill at ease, and from that point on, he never fails to announce his visits. To us, João’s curiosity is a reminder that just as we have been looking at the favela through an outsider’s gaze, to many of the people who live here, we are the odd ones.

The first generations settled on the hillsides of the Babilonia ridge at the beginning of the 1900s. Their homes were simple, mostly built with wood and clay. They did not have sewage or electricity. Water had to be carried up the hill from a well at the foot of the favela. When it rained, the dirt roads turned into mud. When it rained a lot, there was a real risk of mudslides that could bury people and buildings. Like most favelas, Babilonia was mostly inhabited by black people or migrants from the Brazilian Northeast. Many had domestic animals like hens and pigs, and some also grew their own vegetables. At first, each house had a small courtyard but as families grew, the homes were expanded, first sideways, then upwards (see Valladares 2000).

Today, most houses are built with bricks and mortar. The community has a collectively built sewage system and is connected to the water and power grid. Most people have jobs and income, their children go to school, and in recent decades many more have accessed higher education. A growing proportion of favela dwellers are gaining middle-class status, and some favelas have a vibrant local commerce. In Babilonia, there are hostels, restaurants, bars, and kiosks. There are kindergartens, community houses, and a legion of motorcycle taxis and construction workers. Through many windows and doors big widescreen TVs cast a flickering blue glow. But at the top of Babilonia, just behind the first line of vegetation, a small clay hut defies any simple analysis of the favela’s demographics. It serves as a quiet reminder of the history of struggle and resistance that has shaped the community and bears witness to the inequalities that characterize social relations between favela and asphalt as well as within the favela (see Valladares 2000, 2010). Maria, my Portuguese teacher, tells me that when she sees how some of her neighbors live, she gets shivers down her spine. She was born and raised in Babilonia and once, a group of volunteers from the evangelical church she attends visited the clay hut at the top of the neighborhood. The group went to “see with their own eyes” how miserable the living conditions of some community members are. This was a different type of “favela tourism” than I had imagined before coming here.

Maria lives in the house that her father built when the family moved here from Mina Gerais, more than forty years ago. She was only a few months old when her parents decided to move to Rio, as her father hoped to find work as a public servant. Few families have lived here longer than them. Her parents have passed away, but the flock of siblings still lives in the family house. It has grown three stories tall, to accommodate a growing number of nieces and nephews. Maria’s flat is on the first floor. It's humble and contains a small bedroom, a bathroom with just enough space for a toilet and shower, and a kitchenette with two cooking plates and a fridge. Her unmarried brother lives next door, her sister on the second floor, with her daughter, while a second brother occupies the top floor with his family.

I practice my Portuguese skills with Maria three times a week. Today, she is feeling tired. The heat has been intense. Yesterday the thermic sensation was 55 degrees Celsius. “Have you considered getting air condition?” I ask. Maria shakes her head. She says she can't afford the power bill. She currently pays 30 reals, which is about 9 dollars and already finds it expensive. She used to be a cook at a boteco but now she works for a family in Lagoa, the wealthy neighborhood at the foot of Corvocado. “The family treats me well” she says. “With respect.” She does not have to be submissive when she is working for them, something she would never have accepted: “It's about maintaining a sense of dignity,” she explains. Also, it beats working at the boteco where it was always too hot. After a day's work there, she never had the energy to do anything but rest. The house in Lagoa has air-conditioning, which makes it easier to work in the sweltering summer heat, and her working hours are more flexible. She makes 1100 reals, which is about 330 dollars, and is annoyed at how easy it has become for some of her neighbours to receive social support through the Bolsa Familia-program. This government-run welfare plan is central to the Worker's Party re-distribution policies and partly attributed as one of the main drivers of the remarkable growth of Brazil’s middle classes during the PT years. Importantly, Bolsa familia has reshaped social hierarchies at a family level. Mothers have gained more power within households, as they were the formal recipients of funds. Maria, on the other hand, does not get support since she does not have children.

“You know, when I was young, we had to work really hard to make it. With Bolsa Familia, a lot of people are getting paid without doing anything.” As a member of an evangelical church, she believes in the value of hard work. But still, I am surprised by her critique. “Isn’t it good that life in the favela is getting easier?” I ask. “I don't consider this a favela,” she says. “When I think of a favela, I think about people having a really tough time. We're poor, but I don't think the difference between our everyday lives and that of the people in the city is that big. We have the same phones, the same TVs, and a lot of the same things as other people do. We had a dinner at the neighborhood association a while back. We prepared many kinds of food—canapés and a variety of local dishes. One of the men said that we eat the same food as the rich, and it was true. We really do eat the same food. We eat salmon, tenderloin—so I wouldn't call this a favela.”

The fact, some argue, that many Brazilians were able to adopt consumption patterns that were previously reserved for the rich during the governments of the Workers Party, has led to a lot of resentment among the middle and upper classes. How can people from the favela afford the same commodities that the middle class has been working so hard to achieve? How are they able to go on vacations and travel by plane? How can they eat at the same restaurants? Changes in consumption patterns have challenged the class identity of the wealthy, who fear the loss of privilege (see, e.g. Dunker and Kupermann 2023). Housekeepers, like Maria, have been central to the construction of middle-class status in the country and are therefore also source of social anxiety with regard to class identity (see Resende 2020). There are few things that make Latin American middle classes more unsettled than having to carry out the work that has been reserved for the servants or meeting them in arenas where they are equal. To many, the idea of washing their own bathrooms, ironing their clothes, or doing the dishes is inconceivable. The rights and work conditions of housekeepers have been one of the most controversial topics during the PT governments. Strengthening their rights has led to an increase in the cost of hire, making it difficult for the middle class to maintain this symbol of status. The next time I meet Maria, she is looking for work. The family that employed her could not afford a housekeeper any longer and the mistress had fired her on the day. “She could have given me a week’s notice,” Maria complains. Probably, we speculate, she did not want her to find a new job before she was certain that she did not need her, or she feared that Maria would not perform well once she knew that she was fired. A few days later, Maria tells me that the mistress has messaged her: She wants Maria to send her the recipe for the banana pie she used to make.

Police and Thieves

I'm at the hostel practicing my Portuguese when two of the kids from the neighborhood stop by to say hello to Hugo. They are siblings—a boy and a girl—and appear to be around eight or nine years old. Hugo points at me and tells the boy that I am here to study the police. “What do you think of the police?” he asks. The boy quickly replies: “They're corrupt.” “But there must be some good police officers as well?” Hugo suggests. “No” says the boy. “Nobody?” The boy shakes his head. Hugo insists: “So what do the police do, then?” The boy is adamant: “They oppress favela residents.” In earlier days, the kids used to play thief and thief, Hugo tells me. They pretended to be rivaling gangs, rolling make-belief joints, or dealing drugs. They don't play those games anymore. After the favela was pacified, they've played cops and thief, only here, nobody wants to be the cop.

Today, Maria has promised that we will talk about the pacification. She asks me what I already know. “Well, I know that the state wasn't very involved in the favelas before the pacification, only through occasional BOPE invasions where the police would enter the favela, kill a few drug traffickers, and apprehend some weapons and drugs,” I repeat the standard narrative that I have read and heard from others. “Well, that is not quite right” Maria answers. “First of all, no two favelas are the same. The state has always been involved to some degree in Babilonia. There have always been schools and kindergartens here,” she explains. She argues that few things changed with the pacification but mentions the opening of a new a center for professional training and improvements at the health post. “But there are a lot of police officers here now,” I try. “Oh yes, that's true. But there are thugs here as well. They're just not as visible as before.” I ask whether she talks with the local police officers or if she knows any of them. “I don't. And I try not to. If people see you talking to the police, they can get distrustful. There might be rumors that you're in love with one of them, and I try to avoid that.” For Maria, the pacification has meant a change for the better: “Before the pacification there was a lot of fear. People become slaves of fear.” She pauses. “Honestly, we felt like we were walking on eggshells.”²

Maria has lost two brothers who joined the drug traffickers. I want to know how she understands the violence in Rio: “There are many reasons why people are violent,” she says, “but poverty isn't one. You can be poor, but an honest worker. Some people are of a violent nature. Police officers who are violent at work are also violent when they get home: They are of a violent nature. Their problem runs deep. Like the traffickers, they want to carry guns because it gives them power over life and death.” I object to the idea of a “violent nature” arguing that it seems like an explanation that can easily stigmatize certain populations as more violent than others. But for Maria it’s the other way around: “The violence exercised by the poor is visible, but the violence exercised by the rich is hidden. In Brazil, the history of violence dates to the colonial era. It is the violence exercised through the exploitation of black people, through repression and economic inequality. Black people are still subjected to these kinds of violence.”

I try to read the major local newspapers every day. They are mostly tabloid and conservative, but they give me an impression of what is on the public agenda. During my first few weeks in Brazil, situations of armed violence or police action are addressed daily, producing the sensation of an ongoing emergency. If the papers can't find anything new to report on, they follow up on earlier cases, like this story from an event that occurred in March 2014:

The family of Claudia Silva Ferreira has started a new process against the federal administration in Rio de Janeiro following the murder of the public employee. The relatives demand lawful compensation for the moral harm incurred and the psychological treatment of Claudia's mother, sister, and brother—who was killed during a police operation in Morra da Congonha, in Madureira, and dragged after a police vehicle for at least 300 meters along the Estrada Intendente Magalhães, northern zone of Rio, before being rescued.

Claudia was black and from a favela. She was shot during a gunfight between traffickers and police officers who, following the shootout, hurled her body into the trunk of the patrol vehicle—allegedly to drive her to the hospital. While the vehicle was driving down the road, the trunk opened and Claudia, who according to the obduction report had already died, fell out. Claudia's clothes got stuck in the patrol vehicle and she was dragged along the asphalt behind the car. The macabre scene was filmed by the people in the vehicle right behind the police, and the video quickly reached the news. The two officers responsible were never charged. They continued to work as military police officers and had risen in the ranks. As of March 2018, they had killed a total of eight more people during police operations.

Beto often stops by to repair things at the hostel. Lately, he has been helping us make our apartment livable as well. He has modified our new cooking stove so that it works with bottled propane which is different from the propane delivered by grid on the asphalt; he also fixed the roof of our terrace, built our table, and melded our grill. Beto is handy and makes his living as a janitor/construction-worker/mechanic/blacksmith/inventor. He can repair most things that are broken and likes to recycle old materials. I always bump into him walking up and down the alleys with building materials. Sometimes he shows up with the assistant that he has hired to help him finish tasks he can’t find time for himself. He has printed a set of T-shirts that read “Beto's Workshop” on the chest. “I was the one who gave Hugo the idea of using the old window frames for your table,” he tells me one day. “And the staircase shelves.” The bathtub sofa is also the work of Beto. He is not shy and repeatedly reminds me of his intellect. “I am smarter than most” he'll say. “And had I been born somewhere else I would have been a professor!” I nod in agreement, although I find it difficult to imagine Beto buried behind books in a stuffed office.

Since our house does not have a doorbell, Beto usually announces his arrival by flipping our main power switch, which is placed out in the street, on and off. We have only known each other for a couple of days when he discreetly asks me whether Javier and I are a couple. He laughs with relief when I tell him that we are. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while, but I was afraid to be wrong! The only people who don't accept different sexual orientations are those who were bullied as kids,” he says. If it was up to him, everybody would be free to do as they pleased. He invites me home, to show me the new apartment he is building above his house. Beto wants to rent it out—preferably to foreigners.

He tells me that he was 17 when his first daughter was born. He became a grandfather at 33. Now he has four children with four different women. We laugh at his impulsiveness, but Beto soon becomes somber. He tells me that he grew up without a father but that his mother was always there for him. She assumed the role of both parents and if Beto could start life anew he would still choose to live without a father. When he grew up, he lived in Paraíba, in Northeastern Brazil. He is what people from the south pejoratively call nordestino. Nordestinos, who often have mestizo or afro-Brazilian roots, are usually looked down upon by the cariocas—those born and raised in Rio. They see nordestinos as lazy and incompetent. Beto of course, is neither. When he came to Rio early in the 2000s he first settled in Cantagalo, a favela that sprawls across the homonymous hill that separates Copacabana from Ipanema. It's a bigger favela than Babilonia and according to Beto, there is much more violence there: “Even now, with the police present, the drug traffickers still carry guns,” he says. “I didn’t know that things were that bad in Cantagalo” I reply. “That's just because the police there have made a deal with the traffickers. It's the police who own the bocas there.” He tells me that the police in Babilonia are not corrupt, but he advises me to watch out for one of the patrol units. The residents refer to it as Cabeça Branca (White Head) due to the snow-white hair of the officer in command of the unit. I think of the intimidating officer I saw by the boteco a few weeks ago. Wasn't his hair white? (Fig. 2.4).

Fig. 2.4

Beto installing the lamps he made with old satellite dishes on a terrace in the favela

From time to time, the police unit breaks into people’s homes and turns them upside down. “The way the police treat people here is not good, but it is still better than before. They used to shoot first and ask later.” Beto claims that police officers often mistake him for a criminal because of the tattoos on his arms but says that he is no longer afraid to get shot. One of the officers who worked here before used to hang out with the traffickers. Occasionally, he’d smoke weed with them. The boca is located right next to Beto's home so he always knows what's going on. Once he filmed the officer smoking weed with the traffickers. For a while, he was tempted to share the video, but he eventually desisted: “It would only have backfired,” he concludes. Despite this Beto does not mind the police. His brother works as a police officer in Maranhão and was one of the few persons who helped him when he was at his absolute lowest in life. For three years, he was addicted to crack. In contrast to cocaine, which cost between 6 and 20 dollars per gram depending on the quality and is often considered an elite drug, a user dose of crack can be bought for less than a dollar. Users often gather around local marketplaces called crackolandias. Beto was able to overcome his crack addiction and says that he can thank his mother and brother for that: “My brother lent me money, even if he knew I was an addict.”

In Paraíba, the police act differently from here, Beto says. There, they don’t try to conceal the close bonds they cultivate with traffickers. The police of Paraíba might drive straight up to the bocas to demand their payment. Corruption in Rio’s is less visible. “Do the people who live here in Babilonia want the police to be here?” I ask. Beto doesn't hesitate for a second: “You bet!” He tells me that BOPE recently arrested one of the most powerful traffickers in Babilonia. He’s happy that they got him: “The guy thought he was better than everybody else just for being a gangster.” He doesn't like people with that kind of attitude. He is a trabalhador (worker); he goes to school; He is much better than that thug. Before the pacification, the traffickers carried weapons as big as themselves, waving them about, accidentally firing shots. “Under the drug rule, you wouldn't be here” he tells me. “Have you ever seen heavily armed people without training carry guns?” Although Beto prefers the police to the traffickers not everyone is of the same opinion. Many neighbors view the police as uniformed criminals. Personal dynamics are important: If the traffickers in charge are perceived as more or less reasonable, they can, according to the situation, be a preferred option to the officers from the Military Police (see Feltran 2020).³

The facções, or factions (as Rio’s different gangs are referred to), consists of networks of local gangs territorially anchored in the favelas. Every favela has a gang-leader or dono do morro (lit. owner of the hill). The donos act as chiefs in the areas they control. They run the drug retail and are loyal to the leaders of their faction, who manage the criminal network from the prison cells at Rio's high-security prison, Bangú. This might sound odd but is true to the history of Rio’s drug factions, who emerged among inmates in the prison of Ilha Grande towards the end of the military dictatorship, when political prisoners served their sentences alongside common criminals. The political prisoners, who were experienced in guerrilla warfare, taught their fellow inmates how to get organized, and so the Red Command, Rio's largest faction, was born. To this day, prisons remain an important arena for the recruitment of gang members, socialization, and the administration of Rio’s drug trade (see Penglase 2008).

The donos wield considerable power in the favelas. They act as legislators, judges, and executives, controlling anything that could disturb the local order and threaten their positions. As a rule, they are young men, some of them in their teens. Some donos are known to be moody, temperamental, and potentially dangerous. They assert their masculinity through violence and attacks on the police but also by assuming the role of benevolent providers through handouts to local populations. “When they're bored, they go like: Ey, let's go shoot up the police!” Beto says. He tells me that some of the toughest gangs initiate neophytes by making them kill police officers. Volatile and temperamental donos are feared and exercise their authority through chaos and violence. Others are business-minded. They are more concerned with keeping the peace and avoiding unnecessary confrontations that could attract attention from the police and negatively impact their “business.”⁴

Beto says that in Babilonia, people generally support the police. I am aware that for many favela residents, the drug gangs are perceived as more trustworthy providers of security than the police, and press Beto on this point: “Doesn't anybody support the drug traffickers?” Beto hesitates. Well, yes, some people do, he answers. “Not even God can please everyone.” When the police behave like criminals, beating people up and exercising authority with violence, they earn less support. One of the officers who worked here was known to be particularly aggressive. He was unpopular, even among his colleagues. He ended up being shot in the back while patrolling in Alemão, Beto says. He didn't die but was paralyzed from the waist down when a bullet hit his spine. I ask him how he knows this. “When a police officer is unpopular, everybody knows when something happens to them. Another officer who used to worked here died in a car crash on the bridge to Niteroi. Everybody here got the news.” Beto’s description of the relation between police, traffickers, and favela residents is illustrative of what has by now been well-established by social scientists studying urban violence in Brazil: That policing is negotiated by a multiplicity of social actors and according to different normative orders (see, e.g. Albernaz 2020; Feltran 2020; Larkins 2015, 2023). Rather than assuming a simple and straightforward relation between police, crime, and population, nuanced ethnographic analyses allow us to disentangle the complex relationships and personal dynamics that shape people's understanding of policing and security.

Neoliberal Militarization

Paulo has invited me for dinner with some of his friends in Santa Teresa, the sleepy, bohemian neighborhood on the hills between Rio’s city center and Corcovado. Normally, the bondinho (tram) would transport tourists along the old tramline running across the viaduct in Lapa and up the cobble-stone streets where nineteenth-century villas and mango trees compete for attention. But like much of Rio's infrastructure the tram is temporarily closed for renovation ahead of the Olympics. Paulo's friends are intellectuals from the Brazilian middle class. One is a reporter, another a social geographer, and a few are social workers. Like Hugo, they are critical of the urban transformations that are being implemented ahead of the Olympic games, particularly of what they perceive as an increased privatization of the public sphere.⁵

Paulo is finishing his PhD in Social Anthropology at the UFRJ—The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, one of the city’s two largest public universities. His boyfriend, José, is also an anthropologist and curious about my fieldwork. “You're sticking your head into a beehive” he says. He is critical of the UPP project. It is a militarization of the favela, he says. This is a critique I have heard before (see, e.g. Saborio 2014). “Haven't things gotten better?” I ask. “Yes, well, the [overall] situation in the city has become better. Ten years ago, the situation in Rio was completely different,” José replies. There were often gunfights close to the university where he studied with a warlike events in the streets. He had lived in an apartment building in a gorge with favelas controlled by rivalling gangs flanking the narrow valley. At night, the sky was often lit up by red gleams of light as the gangs attacked each other. But he warns me about giving the UPPs too much credit for the changes: “All of Brazil has changed a lot in the last ten years but there is no doubt that many children in favelas like Babilonia have more options now than before.”⁶

José repeats critiques I’ve heard before: Most pacified favelas are either close to rich neighborhoods or next to installations built for the Olympics. In areas close to pacified favelas, rental and property prices have multiplied. Investments in urban infrastructure and social policies that were promised as part of the pacification project have been discontinued. Instead, the pacification has ushered in the formalization of services like electricity, internet, and cable TV, increasing the costs of living of many favela residents (Sørbøe 2013; Ost and Fleury 2013). The state has largely abandoned the developmental rhetoric used to legitimize the establishment of the first UPPs and is prioritizing policing activities. According to Paulo, the goal is not to improve the lives of the poor but to increase private profit and make the city attractive to international investments. The pacification is essentially a neoliberal project that first and foremost has contributed to a sense of security for tourists and wealthy inhabitants. The drug traffickers have been pushed out of the city center, relocating to Rio’s suburbs where there are neither tourists nor rich elites. Out of sight, out of mind—the problems are swept under the rug.⁷

As traffickers that migrate to new favelas can no longer base their power on social networks they increasingly resort to violence. Many of Rio’s suburbs have experienced an increase in violence following the pacification. “Very few people know what's actually going on in the suburbs of Northern Rio,” Paulo says. That's where the true poverty is. He tells me that Complexo da Maré, which sprawls along the highway to the international airport, is often called “the Gaza strip” because of the frequent shootouts between the three different factionsying for control in the area. In March 2014 the Brazilian Armed Forces occupied Maré to suppress armed violence during the World Cup. I drove past the favelas a few days ago and saw roadblocks with sandbags, soldiers, and big tanks guarding the communities. It unmistakably looked like a warzone. José says that the name of the project is telling: In Brazil, pacification was the word that the Portuguese colonizers used to describe the violent efforts to “civilize” the native population. Present-day pacification could also be seen as a project of forced civilization, where the goal is to “tame” the “wild” inhabitants in the favelas, Paulo adds (see de Oliveira 2014; Neocleous 2013). At its core, it is a deeply racist project.⁸ What José and Paulo are signalling is how the cultural production of the favelas as the locus of urban violence and places that needed to be civilized and tamed, legitimized the massive deployment of police power through the UPPs.

You Can’t Call It Pacification If It Doesn’t Bring Peace!

Rocinha claws itself up the hillside between the two slender peaks of Dois Irmãos and the ridges that split Rio in its three characteristic zonas (zones): Sul, norte, and oeste (south, north, and west). The favela is known as the biggest in Rio and some even suggest it’s the biggest in Latin America. In truth, both claims are a little exaggerated. Even in Rio, several favelas are comparable to Rocinha in population and size, but most of these are “favela complexes” or “conglomerates” such as Complexo do Alemão or Complexo da Maré where the nesting of favelas compose neighborhoods with the population of medium-sized towns. It is hard to tell exactly how many people live in Rocinha, but some estimates suggest as much as 150,000 inhabitants. Rocinha and the rest of Rio’s favelas are important to the city's economy—not just as areas for drug retail, but as home to a formidable workforce and with an important commercial sector of its own, which has grown during the Workers Party governments. In Rocinha, several recent infrastructural projects have improved access in the community (see Sørbøe 2013). There have been public investments in a new road within the favela as well as a new metro line that connects Rocinha to the rest of the city. For a long time, there were plans to build a cable car that would ferry passengers up the steep hillside, like those built in Providencia and Complexo de Alemão. But the most significant official initiative during this period, at least in terms of the attention it garnered, was the pacification, which promised to put an end to the rule of Rocinha’s drug gangs (Fig. 2.5).

Fig. 2.5

Mototaxi’s passing in front of Rua 2, on the main road that runs through Rocinha

Rocinha was pacified in November 2011. During the “occupation,” the police did not fire a single shot. Some consider this an achievement or at least a sign that police practices were changing. Most drug traffickers had been notified of the operation days in advance and evacuated the community. Soon the police established Rio’s largest UPP in the favela, with a force of around 700 officers. This was an important symbolic event: Due to its size, location, and history, Rocinha occupies a special place in the public imagination. During the first year of pacification the police received a lot of support from Rocinha’s residents. But it was also here, in Rocinha, that the tensions inherent in the pacification project first became publicly visible. The event marking the turning point in the public perception of the UPPs was the disappearance of Amarildo de Souza following his detainment by UPP officers in June 2013. Coinciding with the wave of protests that swept the country, Amarildo is often referred to as o estopim—“the fuse” that made the bomb go off. It was later revealed that officers from the local UPP tortured him to death and that BOPE officers had assisted them in disappearing Amarildo's body, reproducing the practices of policing that had been institutionalized during the dictatorship (see Menezes 2013; Sørbøe 2013).

It is Saturday and I am on my way to meet Larissa who lives Rocinha. I catch a bus that takes me through some of Rio’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Ipanema, Lagoa, Leblon and Gávea. Save the shopping areas of Ipanema the streets are calm and quiet. In Gávea large walls face the street, and I can barely glimpse the big, exclusive villas, hidden behind them. A security guard sits in a tiny shed, controlling who is let in through the gates that limit access to the neighborhood. As we reach Rocinha, the contrast to the streetlife changes. Minibuses, mototaxis, private cars and cabs, a police vehicle, and dozens of pedestrians are moving up the narrow and steep road that runs through the favela from east to west, over a pass with unbeatable views of most of Zona Sul. The road is lined by kiosks, hair dressing salons, motorcycle workshops, vegetable markets, street food vendors selling fried coixinhas dripping in oil, shops selling everything from cheap Chinese cell phones, beach towels, bathing shorts, and Hawaiianas. Rocinha seems like a city within the city—the streets here are stripped of snobbery and bustling with life.

The bus I’m in seems way too large for the hairpin curves but the driver knows what he’s doing. At one turn, the traffic suddenly changes direction, and the bus switches to the left lane while cars drive past us to the right. This is the only way we can make the sharp turn without blocking the entire road. The traffic almost stops but instead of honking their horns and yelling insults at each other, the drivers trade jokes and greetings through their car windows before driving on. Suddenly, as we approache the hairpin-turn of Rua 2 (2nd Street) the bus driver points out the frontshield, calling out to the passengers: “Caveirão!” A massive, black, armored truck is parked in the middle of the road ahead of us. It's the vehicle used by BOPE during special operations and a sign that something is going down. Caveirão means “big skull” and this is exactly what’s painted on the side of the car: A big skull pierced by a battle knife on top of two crossed revolvers. One might mistake it for a pirate flag but in fact it’s the emblem of the police’s Special Unit. A group of officers, perhaps ten in total and armed with machine guns, are standing by the curb while a couple of their colleagues direct the traffic which has come to a complete halt. One officer is standing in the middle of the street, waving his gun at the people in the cars, like it’s some sort of traffic sign. He has a massive gold watch on his right wrist and if it weren’t for his black uniform, I could easily have confused him for a gangster.

When I exit the bus Larissa is waiting for me in the bustling street. She has been at the beach and is wearing a yellow bikini and denim shorts, exposing a big dragon tattoo on her back. Her sunglasses are placed on her sun-bleached hair which she has tied back in a bun. We greet each other, and she nods in the direction I just came. “Vamos?” She waves at me to follow her. The noise from the traffic and loud music pumping out the doors and windows of the buildings around us makes it impossible to talk. Larissa leads me through a narrow alley at a quick pace, leaving the motorcycles and cars behind. Above us a jumble of electrical wires run down the alley, blocking much of the daylight out. Ahead of us children are playing in the shade between the tall buildings. The sun is about to set, and Larissa wants to take me to the top of the favela to look at the view before it gets dark, so we catch two mototaxis and head up the same road I’ve driven down. This time, it feels like we’re in a motorcycle rally up the busy street. “What do you think of the pacification?” I ask her, sitting on top of the favela and looking out over the city. “The pacification?!” She scoffs. “You know, Rocinha hasn't been pacified. You can't call it pacification if it doesn't bring peace. The police have moved in, but the traffickers haven't moved out, so now it's worse than before.” After Amarildo the situation has only worsened. The police can’t keep the peace the way the traffickers were able to. Many neighbors feel nostalgia for the time before pacification. “Now even small children are getting raped here. That would never have happened under the rule of the traffickers.” The police can't follow you everywhere, she explains, so the people who used to be too afraid to do things like that aren't afraid anymore.

In the middle of Rocinha, the government has built a multicolored and modern apartment complex. It’s symmetrical and clean architecture stands out against the organic construction of the houses around it. The apartments were built to relocate neighbors who had to move when the new road was opened as a part of a recent state initiative to accelerate the urbanization of the favelas. From were we're standing, the new buildings look nice and orderly. Between them there is a spacious walkway with benches and palm trees. I ask Larissa whether the relocated families are happy with their new homes. “Well, some are, and some aren't. The ones who had bigger apartments before are not particularly happy.” The area where Larissa lives is a lot safer than some of the alleys further up the hill, where confrontations between police and traffickers are frequent. I tell her that I saw the caveirão on my way here and ask if that's a common sight. “A caveirão? No, that's not common. Where did you see it? Further up in the favela?” I point and explain as we walk past the place where the armored car had been a moment earlier. “Oh… Yes, it happens,” she says. Some areas are still prone to confrontations between police and gang-members.

Larissa explains that there is still a lot of prejudice towards the favelas and its residents: “People from the asfalto are afraid to come here. They think they'll be robbed, but nobody gets robbed here. The favela is full of thieves, but they go other places to steal. To Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leme. Here, you're just another face in the crowd.” Larissa stops. “Take a picture!” We are standing in the middle of Rua Nova (New Road). The music is pumping across the street which is brimming with life. Neighbors have planted trees and bushes along the road, and now they are sitting out in this urban garden chatting and sipping beer. In the horizon, looming over us as the last daylight fades, lies Pedra da Gávea with its unmistakable pancake-shaped mountain top casting its shade towards the Atlantic Ocean. Since my arrival in Rio, my own fears and preconceptions have been challenged. I recall how nervous I was when I first stepped out of the taxi in Babilonia. In hindsight, it was unwarranted, and it makes me reflect on how my first encounter with the city has been shaped by essentializing representations of the favela and the people who live there.

Conclusion: Civilizing Violence

When I arrived in Rio in December 2014, I was forced to face my own prejudice and orientalizing representations of the favelas. I soon realized that the images they evoked in me were based on outsider perspectives that cast favela residents as either dangerous or vulnerable—imaginaries that in both cases have a powerful othering effect: Justifying violent “interventions” by police or infantilizing treatment by other state institutions and NGO’s. In most of these instances, the favelas and their residents are framed as a series of “problems” that need to be solved by outsiders (see Valladares 2000; Machado da Silva 2002, 2010; Magalhães 2013; Larkins 2015). This outsiders’ gaze on the favelas shaped my initial interactions with the people I met. Reading between the lines of my first conversations with my new neighbors, it's as if I am trying to determine whether they are better off with or without the UPPs—regardless of whether policing is felt as a pressing issue by those who live there. Following the return of democracy in 1985, understandings of the “favela problem” as centered around violent crime and armed drug trade has shaped the design and implementation of “interventions” such as the UPPs, leaving many of the challenges perceived by the people living in the favelas unaddressed.⁹

Another characteristic of orientalism (Said 1979) is homogenization: A tendency to pin down the other in a fixed, essentialized identity. Are people living in the favelas supportive of the police or traffickers? Are they honest workers or thugs? Do they trust the formal justice system, or do they rely on popular justice? In all these questions, which conditioned my first encounters with the neighbors of Babilonia, they are treated as a homogeneous population, always identical to themselves (c.f. Pinheiro-Machado and Scalco 2021). My interactions with João, Maria, and Beto, as well as many other favelados (a derogatory term that is often used as a badge of honor among people from the favelas) showed me the heterogeneity and complexity of identities, values, dreams, practices, ways of life, and opinions that exist within the favelas—the same heterogeneity that exists on the asfalto. Like Beto’s answer when I pressed him on the favela residents’ stance on the police: It depends. Thus, in my ethnographic account of Babilonia and the other favelas I visited, I have tried to show the diversity of subjectivities, experiences, and positions that exist there; the changing socioeconomic status and demographic of its residents; and the different understandings of violence, conflict, and policing within pacified communities.

I have also touched on the impact and reception of the state-run welfare program Bolsa Familia which Maria, a evangelical devotee, rejected on the grounds that it made life “too easy” for young generations. It is likely that her opinion was shaped by a religious ethos of suffering as a way to redemption, but importantly, she shows us how the Workers Party welfare policies reshaped social hierarchies on a family level.¹⁰ Not only did Bolsa Familia make it “easier” for younger generations but it also shifted the power dynamics between husband and wife as the program relied on direct cash transfers to mothers. Acknowledging how the politics of inclusion disturbed social hierarchies, especially those of the home and family, is important to understand the strong rejection of the Worker Party which Bolsonaro capitalized on (Duarte and Martínez-Moreno 2023; see Gregori, forthcoming; Martínez-Moreno 2023). Both Maria and the family that employed her were affected by these changes: For Maria, Bolsa Familia was perceived as undermining her hard work, while the rights that she had gained in relation to her employer challenged her mistress’ entitlement and taken-for-granted privilege—expressed in the casual way in which she laid Maria off, while still expecting her to attend to her whims.

The changing consumption patterns among favela residents that Maria describes are one of the most visible aspects of the increased quality of life for many of Brazil’s urban poor while the Worker’s Party ruled. During this period the urbanization of favelas accelerated as new schools, health centers, and libraries were built inside different communities. However, when people were asked to explain this increase in quality of life, they seldom gave the credit to the politicians: Rather, many had adopted a (protestant) work ethic that explained this as the fruits of their own hard work or the intervention of God (Meirelles and Athayde 2014).

A second conclusion to be drawn from the ethnography presented in this chapter relates to the changes that the pacification produced in the exercise and expression of what Machado da Silva (2004) has described as the grammar of “violent sociability”—i.e. social relations mediated through the language of force (see also Machado da Silva and Menezes 2020). While problematic in its assumption that violent sociability is a feature characteristic of the favelas (as it reproduces tropes of savagery; can easily be seen as the result of state absence rather than of state practices; and ignores the non-violent forms of sociality that shape these self-governed spaces), it captures the outsiders view of the favela quite well, and it certainly describes the kind of formation that was targeted for intervention at the UPPs. As a civilizing project, the pacification was meant to “tame” the violent sociability or “warrior ethos” (Zaluar 2010) of the favelas but also within the police, and has been analyzed as a “rationalization” of violent social scripts and “modernization” of illicit economies (Machado da Silva and Menezes 2020; Soares 2011).¹¹ I will return to this point in subsequent chapters.

In other words, the pacification project relied on the idea of the favelas as problematic territories that needed to be “civilized” through solutions designed by outsiders—saviors who could “bring peace” and “investments” to “pacified” communities. In this vein, scholars have noted how one of the immediate effects of the UPPs was the formalization of a larger part of the favela economy (in particular public services such as light and internet) (da Cunha and Mello 2011; Sørbøe 2013). Furthermore, the project produced a dramatic increase in the value of real estate in and close to pacified areas. It should be no surprise then, that with few exceptions, most UPPs were established close to future Olympic venues and developing urban areas. Thus, the dynamics of war and peace created business opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors through the fluctuations that it produced in the local real estate market and attracted foreign investments (see Braathen 2013; Freeman 2012; Nordstrom 2004; Williamson 2016). This points to another one of the “modernizing” elements of the pacification policy: The regularization and formalization of favela territories and economies clearly express what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as territorializing state dynamics—the implementation of a new set of rules in areas that had been perceived as lawless and ungoverned (Salem and Bertelsen 2020).

In my conversation with Paulo, I struggled to align his critique of the Brazilian government as deeply racist with the poverty alleviation and socially inclusive politics of the PT-government and the decreasing levels of inequality in Brazil in the decade prior to my arrival in Rio. Paulo reminded me that while the national government was left-leaning, the State government of Rio de Janeiro, who implemented the pacification policy, was ruled by the right. However, the tensions between inclusive social policies and racialized policing are difficult to grapple through the division of the political field in right and left. Intellectuals have offered different concepts to describe the sociopolitical realities of Brazil, from the notion of a “disjunctive democracy” (Holston 2007) which highlights the uneven application of democratic values and practices according to social hierarchies, or that of “violent pluralism” (Arias and Goldstein 2010) which places emphasis on the way violence is an inherent part of political mediation in Latin American democracies, to the work of Brazilian scholars like Roberto DaMatta (2020) and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (2019) who have studied the history of Brazilian authoritarianism, and how it manifests in the present.

In Brazil, black intellectuals like Abdias do Nascimento (1978, 1989) and Leila Gonzalez (1988) have been especially critical of arguments that cast colonial projects as beneficial to the colonized, for example through development, and the pacification rhetoric of bringing peace and social inclusion to the favelas certainly corresponds with this kind of reasoning (Ystanes and Salem 2020). I have just shown how the UPPs represent an intensification of militarized policing in the favelas: As a strategy of policing that sought to solve public security challenges through the armed suppression of drug traffickers, it perpetuated the logic of war against territories and subjects symbolically coded as black. But the UPP project also expressed the tension between two different visions of Brazil—a liberal vision and an authoritarian one. These are complementary rather than mutually exclusive positions: Militarization and racialized warfare are not the purview of authoritarian systems but part and parcel of liberal states and in particular neoliberal regimes of governance, for example, through the exercise of civilizing violence (see, e.g. Mbembe 2003). However, authoritarian and liberal systems tend to organize and legitimize violence in different ways, and in the following chapters, I will show how the war machine and state dynamics-framework might open for an analysis that can explain some of the apparent contradictions manifested at the UPPs.