The Conundrum of Violence and Insecurity in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro (Review Article)

Over the past decade Brazil seems to have reinvented itself as a newly emerging
power in the Global South and indeed the world. Not only has fairly sustained
economic growth after the ‘samba crisis’ of the late 1990s boosted the
country’s position as a new ‘middle power’ (Armijo and Burges 2010), it has
also been a major factor behind a much acclaimed process of poverty reduction
and, indeed, the slow but certain decrease of income inequality. Governing
politicians from the coalition led by the leftist Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT,
Workers’ Party) have claimed that since 2003 an additional 40 million Brazilians
have been lifted out of poverty to enter the (lower) middle class. Brazil’s
high profile participation in BRICS, its newfound role as leader of South
America, and the hosting of the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Summer
Olympics (in the city of Rio de Janeiro) should be the icing on the cake of
this apparent story of success.
The fact that during the football tournament itself protests largely subsided
and criminal violence did not affect the daily routines does not mean that
‘emergent Brazil’ is not facing challenges. One of these challenges is without
doubt the problem of violence and insecurity in urban areas. This phenomenon has become so deeply engrained in Brazilian society that many consider it intractable
and have accepted it as part of everyday life (Caldeira, 2000). The
peculiarity of this pattern of violence and insecurity is that it is segmented in its
phenomenology and impact, in the sense that it is predominantly faced by residents
of poorer urban areas, including the iconic yet infamous favelas. As such,
violence and insecurity reflect a broader syndrome of what can be labelled
‘disjunctive’ or ‘unequal’ citizenship: citizenship is open to all Brazilians, but
citizenship rights and entitlements are unequally enjoyed, depending on specific
positions of class, place, ethnicity, and social connections (Holston, 2008).
The four books discussed in this review look at the causes and implications
of this problem for the case of Rio de Janeiro and its favelas. Rio de Janeiro
has been at the forefront of these developments and, until the early 2000s, it
was leading the statistics of lethal violence in cities in Brazil and, indeed, the
world (Machado da Silva, 2008). Ever since the publication of Zuenil Ventura’s
seminal Cidade Partida (1994), the idea that socio-spatial segmentation
and violence are intertwined has been a dominant trope in this body of work.