The Maré complex—a group of 16 communities of over 130,000 inhabitants and innumerable civil society organizations located in Rio’s North Zone—was the 39th favela in Rio de Janeiro to go through the pacification process. Before the initial operation led by military and police forces, officials spent months negotiating and developing strategies, indicating the difficulties and risks involved in this particular operation. Maré has long been recognized as one of the city’s key crime headquarters. The community is home to three different drug factions (as well as militia groups) that control various sections of the favela. This highly complex structure of local governance translates to intense turf wars and confrontations between drug traffickers and the police, increasing levels of violence and endangering the resident population.
Maré’s Pacification “experience”
According to the initial state discourse regarding Maré’s occupation, the pacification of the complex was supposed to mark a new and improved approach to the policy and a rupture from the confrontational mentality that marked previous occupations of other favelas. What actually came to pass was the opposite, however. On May 30 2014, 1180 officers from different units of the state Military Police (including members of the BOPE and CHOQUE special units) as well as 250 Marines equipped with assault rifles—backed up by 21 armored navy tanks and four helicopters—entered the community. According to Rio’s Secretary of Public Security (SESEG) the entire operation took only 15 minutes to complete.
In the first 15 days of the “symbolic pacification” and occupation, 16 people were killed and over 160 arrested. Since then, there have been innumerable accounts from residents of illegitimate stop and frisk actions by soldiers as well as extreme use of force and abuse of power. Many residents view the army occupation as a strategy to control the community and promote the “superficial” improvement in the city’s overall levels of security at the expense of their freedom and rights.
For Rachel Willadino, social psychologist and director of Observatório de Favelas‘ division on human rights, the extended occupation of Maré by military forces (the first UPP unit is expected to be established this July) represents a reversal of progress and only reinforces the government’s push for militarized intervention and community confrontation. In an interview with Estadão in March 2014, she said that previously, the community had “had an important local discussion process about the UPP, one that recognized residents as protagonists and called for a state policy that goes beyond police action, but [as of last March], the dialogue channels [had] been interrupted.”
From months before the initial occupation and continuing to today, representatives from Observatório de Favelas and Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré have been actively engaged in the discussion about pacification and have positioned themselves at the forefront of initiatives aimed at demanding state accountability, denouncing the militarized model of occupation and state-led violations, as well as opening up spaces for promoting counter-narratives on community struggles and bottom-up pathways of hope.
Redes and Observatório’s work and presence in the community
Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré (Maré’s Development Network) is a grassroots organization that promotes tangible on-the-ground change through active citizen participation in advocacy and development work. The NGO works to provide high quality educational and job opportunities to uneducated and working class residents living in the Maré favela complex. Redes’ partner organization, Observatório de Favelas (Favela Observatory), is a civil society institution that conducts research, capacity-building, consulting work and public action aimed at producing knowledge and proposals on favela-related issues and urban phenomena. The Observatório pushes forward an agenda that expands citizens’ rights, based on the redefinition of favelas in the context of public policy initiatives, development and public security. Both Redes and Observatório are recognized and respected as effective organizations fighting for social justice, development and representation for favela dwellers in Rio, and both are based in Maré.
The couple born and raised in Maré, Eliana and Jailson Sousa Silva, founded Redes and Observatório, respectively, as influential civil society organizations. They are both respected university professors and Ashoka Fellows who have published widely and received various recognitions, but beyond that, they are on-the-ground educators and activists whose life experiences growing up in Maré—and their utmost belief in the power of people’s collaboration and agency in the fight for change—shaped their commitment to work towards improving residents’ life conditions.
Redes and Observatório’s projects span a wide range of themes and benefit from the support of various partners, ranging from local community associations to public schools, public and private organizations, and individuals. Additionally, the organizations enjoy an advanced infrastructure network from which they conduct their activities, including two libraries, arts centers, computer labs and cultural spaces.
Initiatives to advance the public security agenda
Thanks to the work, relationships, and reputations that Redes and Observatório have built over many years, oppressive and top-down public policies—particularly those related to public security—face an active and strong resistance force: “Maré isn’t a passive receptor of this public security model… The community possesses a well-organized social society that works continuously to influence and promote security and public services policies.”
By establishing resident-staffed institutions designed to create active citizen groups, Eliana and Jailson—with the support of their teams comprised of over 170 people—have created various participatory mechanisms to advocate for public security demands. Jailson explains:
“The question of the right to life and public security is an important demand for us, and we understand that the process of regulation of the favela space is strategic to guarantee these rights. Thus, within Maré’s framework, our organizations have been striving to construct dialogue with other local organizations as well as state agencies with the goal of producing innovative proposals in the field of public security, sustained in the defense of democracy and human rights.”
This work is done through seminars, conferences, extensive research projects, publications, and public forums that serve to expand visibility and unite community members in finding solutions for public security issues that impact their daily lives. The project A Maré Que Queremos (The Maré That We Want) is an example of a platform where members of the community come together to discuss and advocate for policy change and improvements in various areas including health, education, arts and culture, sports and leisure, infrastructure, labor and income generation, public transportation, and environmental sustainability, as well as public security. In 2010, representatives from the 16 favelas of Maré organized meetings and events to co-construct a common agenda of demands and interests for the development of the territory. These efforts resulted in the development of an extensive document that outlines those demands to the authorities.
Since Maré’s occupation, Redes and Observatório have used community demands articulated in the A Maré Que Queremos agenda to repeatedly denounce the army’s actions in Maré and the high levels of violence residents have been forced to experience. Not only do Maré citizens have to endure the frequent turf wars and armed conflicts that break out between members of organized crime and public security forces in their communities, but they are also subjected to unfair and disrespectful treatment by soldiers. In an interview with Agência Brasil in November 2014, Pedro Franscisco, President of Conjunto Esperança’s community association, said: “The army has been in our community for seven months now and we have lost our privacy. We have breached gates, broken locks, and stalled projects because our youth cannot get around, teachers stop their projects, and the elderly no longer have a specific time to do their activities.”
In April 2014, only a few days after the army occupied the community, Secretary of Security Mariano Beltrame attended a public hearing in Maré organized by Redes and Observatório (alongside other civil society organizations) to discuss the pacification process and hear the community’s demands. Although some of the promises made at that time have not been realized, the presence of the Secretary in the community at all highlights the community’s power to establish platforms for citizen participation that can reach and impact the most important actors setting the social and economic development agenda in the state.
Jailson spoke to the significance of this rapport for the organizations and the community:
“In these many years of action, our organizations have become an important reference point for other organizations working in Rio’s favelas and peripheries. Likewise, we have constructed a respected and privileged dialogue with municipal, state and federal actors that allow us to influence propositions, advocate for the respect of residents’ rights and strengthen their mobilization.”
Public security in a new light
What Redes and Observatório are trying to advance through their development agenda on security in Rio favelas is a new understanding and approach to public security itself. Since the re-democratization of Brazil in the 1980s, the country’s public security framework has been dominated by the ideas of combat and public service. On the one hand, the police’s job is to “combat internalized enemies” and occupy “hostile territories” that “nurture” criminals. At the same time, public security is also envisioned as a public service to be provided to all citizens. One of the results of this “forced marriage” of two very dissimilar lines of operational approach is the provision of security to some parts of the population at the cost of others and the criminalization of the poor. According to Claudio Souza Neto, Professor of Constitutional Law at Rio’s Fluminense Federal University (UFF), the ambiguity of the 1988 article of the Federal Constitution on public security allows for the justification of both democratic and authoritarian policies by the police. This may help explain why the Brazilian police force is one of the most lethal in the world, killing an average of 5 people per day according to a 2012 study conducted by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety.
Within this public security paradox, Redes and Observatório are pushing for the creation of a security structure that moves beyond traditional law and conventional justice institutions, including the criminal justice system, prisons and the police. By investing in the advancement of platforms for citizen engagement that are helping raise and empower the community’s voices in the public security arena, the organizations are advocating for the need to bring in new actors and realities to democratize the formulation and operationalization of public security policies. They are calling for platforms through which processes can be continuously discussed and improved with active participation from civil society.
A common criticism against the state approach to development work in favelas argues that these communities are always seen as “police cases.” That is, regardless of what different needs favelas may have as individual territories, the state’s first response is always to invest in more policing and “security.” It’s a “one size fits all” method that speaks volumes to how the government perceives favela dwellers. Does Maré need more schools? Just send in more soldiers and that should take care of the problem.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has categorized the main threats to human security that people may experience in different contexts of their lives. These threats include economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security. In the context of informal urban settlements and low-income communities where the lack of basic needs and access to basic rights are so closely intertwined with crime and violence, is it ever possible to deliver sustainable personal and community security through public interventions if we fail to simultaneously address other forms of security? As Jailson Silva said during a talk at Stanford University in 2014, “there needs to be mobility, but not the right to come and go solely. The creation of a new paradigm requires much more. Mobility is also economic, educational and work-related.”
Recent developments, conclusions and future directions
This past month was marked by a series of violent events resulting in casualties in Maré. On February 12, military police fired shots at a vehicle carrying 5 passengers with no apparent warning, dismembering a 29-year-old and leaving him in critical condition. On February 20, a construction worker was allegedly mistaken for a drug trafficker and shot dead by the occupying forces. A day later, a public transportation vehicle was the target of yet another shooting by the army and five people were wounded. On February 23, an 11-year old child was shot in the back by police who, following the event, denied immediate care to the victim.
As a result of these repressive, indiscriminate and deliberate attacks by state security forces, Maré residents engaged in yet another demonstration against the pacification policy and the militarization of favelas in Rio, only this time the demonstration turned bloody. On February 24, a protest against police brutality in favelas took place on the margins of the community. Footage from the event circulating on social media showed police officers firing rifle shots and tear gas bombs at residents who, in return, threw rocks and raised wooden sticks against them. What began as a peaceful demonstration, with residents carrying banners with messages of hope and calls for social justice such as “Enough of the genocide against black people and the favelas,” turned into a battlefield. However, only one of the two sides was doing the shooting. Two people were killed and three wounded as a consequence of the event.
For Redes and Observatório, these incidents serve to affirm the community’s commitment to continuous peaceful resistance for their rights and autonomy in the face of coercion, repression and a militaristic state. Maré represents a unique case for Rio’s pacification policy because these two organizations together with dozens of associations, community media outlets and groups, working together, lead an organized civil society that has been actively involved in vocalizing struggles for human rights, social and economic demands and the development of social justice-oriented public policies for decades now. This is particularly important in light of the expected transition from occupation to UPP in July. Jailson said:
“We are moving to build new strategies within the security arena at Maré, especially as it relates to the process of implementation of the UPPs that should be initiated this trimester. We are seeking to contribute to the creation of a new type of intervention that takes into account the residents and local organizations as fundamental agents in the process.”
Veriene Melo is a PhD Student and Lemann Fellow at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is also a Research Assistant at the Program on Poverty and Governance at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) where she works on projects about youth education, the pacification and police violence in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.