Security and Inclusive Citizenship in the Mega-City. : The Pacification of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro.

Abstract

Rio de Janeiro is one of the most unequal cities in the world. The socio-spatial segeregation between the formal city and the informal settlements known as favelas has led to an image of the city as irremediably divided. The almost systematic association between poverty and violent crime from the 1980’s and onwards as drug factions started controlling these territories made the favelas synonymous with a space outside of the law, where criminals and police were constantly fighting. This discourse of a “war” against the drug factions has maintained and reproduced stereotypical notions of the favelas as inherently violent, creating and simultaneously justifying specific forms of state management of these territories and their populations while reproducing dynamics of segregation in the city. In the coming years Rio de Janeiro will host the international mega-events of the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. This represents opportunities for increased trade, investments and economic growth, and the ability to distinguish itself as a major political and economic actor. It however also demands that Rio de Janeiro confronts the statistics where it exhibits poor rankings, such as indicators on crime, violence and inequality. The favelas represent a pressing image of these issues in the city. The hard-hand policies of the police interventions in the favelas within the discourse of war had proved incapable of reducing the levels of crime and were losing political legitimacy. In order to improve the security situation in Rio de Janeiro before the international sport events a new public security program called the pacification program (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora or UPPs), was developed in 2007. The pacification program is promoted as a new approach to governmental interventions in the favelas; combining proximity policing and infrastructural, social and economic projects in order to bridge the gaps between segregated territories and populations. Both the residents and the government hope the pacification can represent an approximation process between the “pacified” favelas and the “asphalt”, which the formal city is often called as a contrast to the narrow, unpaved pathways of the favela. What is meant by approximation is however not given and depends on who talks about it and what interests are at stake. This thesis examines what the pacification means in practice; in the everyday life in a pacified favela and in the perceptions of the diverse actors that are affected and/or involved, to evaluate what kind of approximation process the pacification program produces. As the pacification is a project in the making, it is too early to say what it will mean for the urban integration in the long run. What we can say something about today, however, is how the residents of a pacified favela consider the program and its effects on security and on their sense of citizenship, and whether it in their eyes represents a step towards inclusion of the favela and its residents in the city on more equal terms.