The action of armed groups linked to official forces in popular territories has historical roots
Adauto Lucio Cardoso*, Daniel Hirata** and Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior***
Security policy must be on the agenda for the 2024 municipal elections. The reason can be described very simply: crime and violence have great relevance in the city’s production, deeply impacting daily life. In this sense, the challenge is to build a public security agenda guided by democracy, socio-spatial justice and the right to the city. This is the argument defended in this article.
The activities of armed groups linked to official forces in popular territories have historical roots that date back to extermination groups and the so-called Minas Gerais police. In recent decades, this phenomenon has gained new contours in the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro, as well as in other Brazilian metropolitan regions. In the case of Rio, these transformations are linked to several factors. On the one hand, we witness the rise of organized drug trafficking factions controlling several Rio favelas.
On the other hand, the city’s population has been witnessing the expansion of militias and their control of several popular territories.
Especially those located on the outskirts. Both phenomena, trafficking and militia, seem to be intertwined and fed by an inefficient public security policy that violates human rights, which has demonstrated its inability to understand the dynamics of crime and its socio-territorial configurations.
So far, nothing new. But something recent deserves attention: in recent years we have witnessed an enormous capacity for criminal groups to reconfigure and transform themselves. The reason is the search for adaptation to security policies implemented by the State, including through the co-optation of public agents. This became evident with the latest complaints presented by the Federal Police and the Public Ministry regarding the murder of councilor Marielle Franco.
At this stage, in which the principals were, according to the authorities, fully identified, a family of the most traditional in the political scene of Rio de Janeiro emerges among the accused, with representatives at municipal, state and federal levels, from the Court of Auditors of Rio de Janeiro. State, the main oversight and control body, in addition to the police chief. As a whole, the criminal network that operated in Marielle’s barbaric execution shows proximity to misdemeanor practices, militias and professional killers, favoring their businesses.
In the case of the militias, the Map of Armed Groups of Rio de Janeiro, produced by the research laboratory Novos Ilegalismos – GENI/UFF and the Instituto Fogo Cruzado, indicates that the militias have advanced in controlling territories, even investing in expansion to new areas of the city and the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro. This advance has not only occurred in areas previously dominated by drug trafficking, but also in previously uncontrolled territories.
At the same time, academic studies and reports reveal that militia groups have been investing in new economic activities, previously not so explored, thus developing a new business model. In this aspect, the production and exploitation of real estate activities, infrastructure and urban services – mobility, gas, internet, among others – stand out, with direct effects on the production and management of the city.
The role of the militia in real estate activities deserves to be highlighted.
Based on cases reported by the press and other sources, we can identify four types of action: (a) control and intermediation of access to urban land, especially in environmental protection areas; (b) own production of housing units, whether carried out legally or not to be sold (sale or rent); (c) control of housing production promoted by public authorities, with emphasis on the case of complexes produced under the Minha Casa Minha Vida – MCMV program; (d) control of private production in controlled territories, with cases of expulsion of families who refuse to comply with the behavioral norms imposed by the militiamen.
In the cases of land grabbing and housing production, published reports show that the two processes complement each other. This happens through the regularization of enterprises, obtained through the distorted use of instruments originally aimed at fulfilling the social function of property, such as Special Areas of Social Interest (AEIS), which allow recognition of legitimacy and the possibility of legalization of popular housing areas.
As part of its land grabbing strategy, militia urbanism seeks to use this instrument to regularize the clandestine subdivisions it produces, either through bills initiated by councilors linked to criminal groups, or by pressuring the population that acquired the properties to seek support. at the Public Defender’s Office to seek regularization. These practices came to light quite clearly with the release of the Federal Police report on the Marielle case, in which a conflict between Marielle and the then councilor Chiquinho Brazão over the approval of bills was cited as the presumed reason for the murder. which made it possible to regularize areas occupied by the Militia in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro.
The drug trafficking factions, in turn, despite maintaining the narcotics trade as their main economic activity, also diversified their business model and began to control the trade in urban services, adopting practices initiated by militia groups. In several popular territories, there is also evidence of alliances between militiamen and drug traffickers, either to dispute the conflict with rival groups or to guarantee control of the territories.
Security agents and institutions, with rare and relevant exceptions, have fueled the vicious circle and the expansion of territorial control by armed groups through practices that have contributed to worsening the city’s scenario of insecurity and impunity. In general, it is worth highlighting two devices. In many popular territories, illicit practices are regulated by the so-called “arrego”, that is, by paying bribes to security agents who collude with the activities of criminal groups. Another device is military operations, which, in a violent manner and disrespecting the basic principles of human rights, have promoted murders and massacres in the popular territories where they occur.
Military operations in favelas and popular territories are spreading as a pattern of intervention by military police in several states of the federation, but the case of Rio de Janeiro appears as the main paradigm. Here, the massacres have not been episodic events, but part of a process of increasing police violence against the poor, black population living in favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, the violation of fundamental rights during police operations is not exceptional, with home invasions, destruction of property, physical and verbal attacks, harassment, deaths and summary executions being routine in the state’s favelas and outskirts.
Always positioned among the states with the highest percentage of deaths resulting from police intervention in relation to intentional violent deaths, the impact of police actions in Rio de Janeiro has national repercussions, occupying special space in the media and in academic and legal debates.
The public security policy of successive state governments in Rio de Janeiro has deepened the criminalization of poverty and the racist nature of the justice system, promoting the militarization of the city, which has a strong impact on the possibilities of promoting equality in its multiple dimensions .
The growing process of militarization and militiaization of urban space has strong impacts on the possibilities of exercising the right to the city.
It is, therefore, essential that the security policy agenda has true relevance in the debate on the 2024 municipal elections. It is essential to strengthen the actions of civil society, and even public agents, to confront the scenario of profound violence experienced in our country .
As an agenda for action, some paths seem unavoidable. We conclude by listing some of them: (i) expand the social and institutional debate on public security policy in favelas and popular territories; (ii) defend the development of state plans to reduce police lethality; (iii) debate and propose policies and measures aimed at demilitarization and greater control over the actions of the police, military and civil; (iv) support the defense of the end of military operations as a routine policing device in favela territories; (v) promote channels of social control and democratic management of state public security policies; (vi) establish community management mechanisms for popular territories in order to encourage patterns of local solidarity based on tolerance, peace, democracy and social justice; (vii) incorporate community strengthening measures and devices into urban programs implemented by the City of Rio de Janeiro, taking into account territories that are under the control of armed groups; (viii) assume control over the use and occupation of land in the city through participatory and democratic urban planning that is capable of preventing the unruly and violent expansion of the city through the dominance of armed groups.
Review: Renata Melo
*Adauto Lucio Cardoso is a professor at the Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR/UFRJ) and a researcher at the Metropolis Observatory.
**Daniel Hirata is a professor of Sociology at the Universidade Federal Fluminense and coordinator of the Study Group on New Illegalisms (GENI/UFF).
***Orlando Alves dos Santos Junior is a professor at the Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPPUR/UFRJ) and a researcher at the Observatório das Metrópoles.
**** This is an opinion article. The author’s vision does not necessarily express the newspaper’s editorial line Brazil in fact.
Editing: Mariana Pitasse
