{"id":27231,"date":"2016-03-01T13:33:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T16:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=27231"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T15:08:07","slug":"the-spectacular-favela-violence-in-modern-brazil-book-review-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=27231","title":{"rendered":"The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil [BOOK REVIEW]"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, media coverage<\/a> of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas characterized<\/a> these neighborhoods as peripheral and violent, documenting organized crime, armed robberies and homicides as somehow inherent to the informal city. As misconceptions of the nature of violence<\/a> and crime in favelas flourished, academics have worked to deconstruct fallacious narratives<\/a> and provide clarity and depth in our understanding of\u00a0the production of\u00a0violence.<\/p>\n

The latest example of this work is\u00a0The Spectacular Favela: Violence in Modern Brazil<\/a><\/em> by Erika Robb Larkins. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2014, Larkins\u00a0offers an ethnographic account of the production and commodification of violence<\/a> in Rocinha<\/a>, the largest and one of the most famous favelas in Rio. She effectively weaves academic theory with interviews and experiences from her fieldwork, creating a thoroughly informative and accessible portrait of contemporary violence in Rocinha.<\/p>\n

Larkins writes that armed violence, at the hands of traffickers<\/a> and police<\/a> alike, is \u201cnot quiet or silent but performative.\u201d It is subsequently consumed by both Brazilian and international audiences, through news coverage, music videos, films and video games. Understanding how these processes of production and commodification interact is therefore critical when considering the role of Rocinha both in the city of Rio and in the context of the newer global imagining of favelas. Larkins meticulously disentangles\u00a0intertwined\u00a0forces of violence, focusing primarily on the narco traffic, the penal state, popular representations<\/a> of the favela, and the burgeoning market of favela tourism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Narco Traffic<\/h3>\n

Larkins begins her analysis of Rocinha\u2019s narco traffic through her conversations with Beto, a trafficker responsible for security. Though Beto\u2019s trajectory of involvement in a gang is representative of many others\u2019 experiences, his previous work in the Brazilian military points to the complicated relationship between the State and traffickers.<\/p>\n

In her examination of traffic governance in Rocinha, Larkins explains how\u00a0the narco traffic in Rocinha employs language to legitimize their role, often referring to their organization as a corporation or a state independent of the formal city and local government. Traffickers also utilize violence and spectacle in their establishment of control in neighborhoods. Under the lei do tr\u00e1fico<\/em>, or “traffickers’ law,” traffickers frequently punished residents who violate their rules publicly in order to reinforce authority.<\/p>\n

\"BOPE<\/a><\/p>\n

The Penal State<\/h3>\n

Many of the police invasions Larkins observed were similarly staged for public consumption. Though these operations\u00a0usually led to minimal direct confrontation, as traffickers were often warned beforehand, the representation of these events<\/a><\/span> \u201cas a clash between heroic forces of the state and enemy gang members is fundamental to understanding how the favela is policed.\u201d The theatricality of policing in Rocinha is\u00a0conducive both to\u00a0the circulation of news coverage and for subsequent depictions of the favela as a de facto war zone in popular culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Favela, Inc.<\/h3>\n

The favela has become an internationally recognized element of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s landscape, serving as a backdrop for countless music videos<\/a>, films<\/a> and video games<\/a>. The representation of favelas in these mediums has led foreign audiences to view\u00a0them as places of violence, organized crime and poverty.<\/p>\n

Larkins argues that the increased demand for a favela aesthetic has contributed to the production of what she identifies as \u201cFavela, Inc.\u201d In her analyses of favela representations in various mediums, Larkins points out that producers of this “brand” almost never come from the favelas they depict, and base their curated favela on stereotypes<\/a> and mass market appeal. She explains, \u201cThe aesthetics and discourses of Favela, Inc. obscure the larger historical, economic, and political factors that contribute to the reality they purport to represent.\u201d In this sense, \u201cmedia discourses<\/a> surrounding the favela are not only about the violence imagined to take place there, but are forms of violence in and of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tourism<\/h3>\n

\"Book<\/a>As tourists have poured into Rio in record numbers in recent years, the demand for favela tours<\/a> has increased exponentially. Rocinha is purportedly\u00a0the fourth most popular tourist destination in Rio after the Christ the Redeemer statue, Sugarloaf Mountain and Copacabana beach. Favela tourism<\/a>, though controversial, continues to attract foreign visitors who want to see another side of Rio\u2014one that they associate with\u00a0films like City of God<\/a><\/em> and Elite Squad<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Larkins describes the new market for favela tourism as \u201cthe embodied consumption of the violent favela brand.\u201d The principal objection to the tourism industry in Rocinha is the limited economic and representational benefit that residents receive. This, Larkins argues, is yet another form of violence that ultimately marginalizes residents<\/a> and benefits only\u00a0a small number of outside individuals who profit from the industry.<\/p>\n

The Spectacular Favela<\/em> brings essential context and substance to debates surrounding not only policing and violence in Rocinha, but\u00a0questions of\u00a0the representations of favela culture<\/a> and social agency of favela residents more broadly. It will be particularly important to consider the implications of the commodification of violence and the favela aesthetic as reporters, celebrities and tourists from around the world descend upon Rocinha and other Rio favelas in the build up to\u00a0the Rio 2016\u00a0Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, media coverage of Rio de Janeiro\u2019s favelas characterized these neighborhoods as peripheral and violent, documenting organized crime, armed robberies and homicides as somehow inherent to the informal city. As misconceptions of the nature […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1670,1463,1282,1334,1329],"tags":[705,125,221,1561,1845,1900,1366,5,12,156,453,194,30,1385],"writer":[1304],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-favela-tourism","8":"category-perceptions","9":"category-research-analysis","10":"category-reviews","11":"category-by-international-observers","12":"tag-commodification","13":"tag-drug-traffic","14":"tag-favela-culture","15":"tag-favela-tour","16":"tag-media","17":"tag-media-narrative","18":"tag-analyzing-media-portrayal-of-favelas","19":"tag-olympics","20":"tag-rocinha","21":"tag-south-zone","22":"tag-stigma","23":"tag-tourism","24":"tag-urban-violence","25":"tag-violence","26":"writer-meg-healy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81365,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231\/revisions\/81365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=27231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}