Favela Citizen
by Mariana Oliveira and Cristina Rigitano
A resident of the City of God favela in Rio de Janeiro addresses a panel of policy makers, researchers and activists at a public debate supported by the Citizenship DRC. (Agencia Olhares)
It was cold and clear the night of the Saint John’s festivities, a June tradition of bonfire parties that started in the North though is now popularly celebrated even in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, in the south. The children were dancing in a circle around the fire when the crackle of gunshots tore through the cheerful rhythm of forró.
Dressed in black, armed with automatic assault rifles and supported by an armoured vehicle (which has been nicknamed by the local population as caveirão, or“big skull”), Rio’s elite police force, called the BOPE (Batalhão de Operaçðes Especiais), stormed the community.
The music stopped. Some laid down right where they stood; others scrambled for cover. One resident, Enir Ventura, recalled the scene: “The children ran in screaming, ‘Aunt Enir, don’t let them kill me!”
The police refer to these deliberately intimidating operations as an invasion. Appropriately so, some favelas are under strict control of the drug traffickers: no cops allowed. In the middle of this war are the civilians, whose interests have been ignored by both sides. Some citizens, like Enir, are now working to change that, combating the violence of the favelas through the non-violent means of community organising.
Research by the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability looked at these grassroots efforts to counter the violence in Rio, and recently hosted politicians, government officials and civil society leaders in public debates in four favelas to encourage new policies to support the many, though inchoate, initiatives to build peace through consensus-building.
The battle between drug traffickers and police in Rio de Janeiro has been escalating for three decades, with each side gradually adopting more violent and repressive tactics. The drug traffickers are notorious for restraining opponents inside a stack of tires, then burning them to death. The police in Rio have come under U.N. scrutiny for their role in summary executions; one of the largest to date was a massacre of 30 people, including several teenagers and a child.
In Rio more people are killed than in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. From 2000 to 2006, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians killed 727 youngsters. During the same period in Rio, 1,500 youngsters were murdered.
“We have the police that most kill,” says the State Deputy Marcelo Freixo, speaking at one of the public debates in Rio de Janeiro, “The government has to learn how to talk with the population”.
After years of so many embarrassments, security officials in Rio are now convinced they have the strategy to eradicate the drug gangs. The State Governor, Sérgio Cabral Filho, with the support of the municipal government, has developed a tactic of flooding the favelas with a constant and ubiquitous police force. The scale of such an operation has been made possible by the rise of public order on the political agenda. Inspired by New York’s zero tolerance policies, the Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, has adopted his own programme to enforce the city’s laws, no matter how small, dubbing the effect the “the shock of order.” The occupations are seen as a way to quickly restore government control in parts of the city that have been run by parallel states. In many cases, the drug traffickers are in charge, even providing basic services with their proceeds. In about a third of the favelas, however, militias formed of police and other government security agents set the rules, though operating outside of formal laws and institutions.
So far, the government has sought to reclaim its authority in four favelas, but only in one, Dona Marta, have the police been successfully trained to cooperate respectfully with the community. In other cases, some residents complain that the cruel despotism of the drug traffickers has been replaced by the slightly less cruel, but no less corrupt, despotism of the police.
According to the joint research conducted by UK-based Institute of Development Studies and community activists in four favelas of Rio, the latest plan to overthrow Rio’s drug barons is another doomed military solution to a political problem: the powerlessness of favela residents. Shifting the power from drug traffickers to police may be of benefit to the state, but for residents of the favelas, the change has done little to restore their rights as citizens.
Where policemen and drug traffickers may have grown up playing football together, the legacy of violence is a deeply fractured community; the distrust and anger is felt every day between neighbours. The use of force, even by police, tends to reinforce these divisions, when what is needed is broader consensus and a sense among residents that they can exercise their rights as citizens to shape their own community,
The research, however, found that residents did not believe the term citizen applied to them at all. In the absence of peace and security, they said, citizenship is inexistent.
Enir realised this essential dilemma on the night of the BOPE incursion. “That night I lost my voice, yet I also became aware that I needed to do something”, she said.
Enir had already been active running programmes for youth, teaching Capoeira and Samba to young men whose lives were surreally divided between the normal activities of adolescence and gang warfare.
“One day”, Enir stated, “I took a group of children, from age 4 to 17, to visit the police’s local headquarters. When they set down to have lunch with the lieutenants and sergeants: all policemen, I realised I had just showed to both sides that it is possible to work with union,” she said.
That small step, the first of many dialogues she has hosted, has begun to encourage what Enir calls “the community’s participation in local power.”
Through various efforts, including the recent public debates, the government has become more open to modifying its approach. A small but growing group of politicians recognises that social inclusion and participation are crucial to solving the issues in the favelas. In Dona Marta, the police officers are carrying out community service in addition to patrolling the streets, and collaborating with foundations and local groups to more effectively channel charity there.
Lieutenant Colonel Cid, who is also Sub-secretary of Planning and Operational Integration at the Public Security Secretary, surprised the crowd while speaking at a public debate held in Cidade de Deus: “The secret is the participation of the community. Security isn’t done without the participation of all; popular support and interest are necessary. In the past, the police fought violence with violence, but today the context is different.”
The willingness of officials to listen has been a major breakthrough for advocates, opening a rare space for them to exercise their citizenship. But the optimism is tempered by a recognition of how long community organisers have worked for this small victory.
Related Resources
Violence, Social Action and Research, edited by Jenny Pearce and Rosemary McGee, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 40 (3): 2009.
New forms of citizenship: democracy, family and community in Rio de Janeiro by Joanna Wheeler, Gender and Development Vol 11 (3): 2003.