The way out is in the territory of politics to establish commitments with popular interests
Lenin dos Santos Pires*, Taísa Sanches** and Lucas Bernardo Dias***
In February 2024, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, informed, through the “X” application, that street commerce on Rua Uruguaiana, in the center of Rio de Janeiro, was prohibited. As justification, he used an investigation by the Civil Police that showed that there was a street vendor who received stolen cell phones and sold them on the spot. For him, several of the stolen cell phones were sold there, justifying energetic action to curb such trade. The action was supported by the State Government, resulting in the closure of the place for the sale of goods by street vendors.
Years earlier, in April 2019, buildings built by militia groups collapsed in the Muzema neighborhood, in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, killing 24 people and exposing militia practices in the region. After the incident, the City Hall stated that it would take measures against irregular occupations and the State Government included the location, as well as the Jacarezinho favela, in the Integrated City Program.
What do these situations have in common?
They, like many others, are representative of the reality of Rio de Janeiro in terms of the difference in treatment of established powers in the face of the complex association between informalities and illegalities. Therefore, considering such concepts when debating the political and social challenges of Rio de Janeiro is essential in the present context.
A closer look at the dynamics of Rio de Janeiro society may reveal that different segments, directly or indirectly, are closely related to what we can call “informality”. In other words, it is through heterodox – but not extraordinary – forms of organizing work, the production and reproduction of housing, the distribution of goods and urban services, among many other dimensions that may escape a certain “formal ideal”, that the process of production and reproduction of the “city” takes place.
Commercial media, political actors in general and other sectors of society often combine informality with illegality.
But not quite. For example, the construction of houses on public land cannot be considered illegal, a priori, even if the property of those who occupy it is not legally recognized. After all, the principle of the social role of property is a cornerstone of our constitutional law and also involves everything that is under the custody of the State. Likewise, someone who appears on the streets to resell goods cannot be classified as illegal, especially when they are fighting for their dignity. In this case, illegality is observed when it is categorically explained where and how this cannot be done.
In all the situations described, we deal with the dimension of illegalism, as the philosopher Michel Foucault named. According to him, what can be classified as illegal results from a concept derived from legal formalism. Thus, there is what is foreseen by law, as well as what is prohibited by it. It is from this rigidity that we often try to determine what is informal. The reality in Rio de Janeiro, however, is not so simple, being made up of porous borders.
Instead of the supposed neutrality and universality of the categories that emanate from the legal order, the concept of illegalisms suggests that “order” and “disorder” are dimensions that vary over time, and may even interpenetrate each other. Its construction takes place from the struggles between the interests and political positions of the actors in a given field of dispute. Thus, the boundaries of the law vary and what is included in it is the result of the episodic correlation of the forces that compose and recompose the differential management of illegalisms.
Illegalism is not a concept opposed to illegality: it exposes the existence of games that incorporate different types of laws and norms, as well as a wide diffuse spectrum of social control practices.
Street commerce and access to housing
Working on the street is not an easy task. Adversities arise, among other things, from the lack of infrastructure that provides satisfactory conditions for its exercise. In a space like the central area of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro it would be no different. A place of countless disputes, its occupation by street vendors is permeated by negotiations, arrangements and agreements, legal or not, between street vendors, street vendors and public authorities. In this scenario, such activity can become an object of interest and intervention by public authorities, as well as by other actors who see the possibility of economic exploitation in it.
The modus operandi of the municipal government’s efforts draws attention, in what we can call “strategic action”. The operations that aim to curb street commerce, despite being specific and having a strong media appeal, are not a recent or isolated fact. With each event of international magnitude, for example, there is an intensification of street conflicts involving street vendors and municipal agents. This year, holding the G20 summit has been the password for authoritarian restraints. The event will be attended by representatives of the main world economies and actions are already being implemented to produce a good image of the city, that is, an approach marked by a moral perspective. All of this ends up constituting an embarrassing spectacle marked by the instrumentalization of physical and institutional violence, affecting urban subjects and social identities.
A similar situation can be observed in the city’s favelas. For years, they expanded with the support of the State, which while pretending not to see them, recognized them through policies of recrimination and removals. In other words, entire neighborhoods were created, and grew, without becoming completely recognized by urban legislation, except when removal policies were directed at them. This reality remained for decades, until public policies for land regularization and urbanization came into existence, such as Cada Família, Um Lote, under the Brizola government, or Favela-Bairro, under the César Maia government.
Currently, the real estate market within the favelas is quite representative in the city of Rio de Janeiro, being carried out mostly outside the legislation. Renting, buying or building a property in favelas are practices permeated by agents and organizations that regulate, control and exploit access to land and housing, but that do not operate within the limits considered legal, without, however, being restricted by the State.
Among the agents that operate in such a market, it is important to differentiate between those who have historically been in charge of the collective representation of favelas, such as residents’ associations, which regulated access to properties, and figures whose interest is guided by the financial benefits arising from their exploration and control, that is, criminal militia groups and those related to drug trafficking. Such criminal groups incorporated control of the real estate market into their practices when they realized the opportunity to gain profits there. They do so in conjunction with other practices and through the use of violence and coercion, that is, the gaps in informality paved the way for practices related to illegalism. The buildings that collapsed in Muzema represent just one example of this reality.
A recent study published by the Observatório das Metrópoles (RJ) and the Study Group on New Illegalisms (GENI/UFF) demonstrated that militia control practices have expanded to the condominiums of the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program, surpassing the power of drug trafficking networks in these areas. spaces. This expansion of militias is related to less police control (from the State) when it comes to these groups. The map below is representative of this.
Number of licensed units (2009-2020) by administrative region, Minha Casa Minha Vida units and militias in the city of Rio de Janeiro / Disclosure
In other words, there is low police repression when it comes to curbing militia practices. As a result, these groups gain more space to operate between the limits of the legal market – affecting housing programs – and the illegal market – through the violent control of access to condominium housing units.
In Rio de Janeiro, living, working and living are verbs intertwined with notions of informality and illegalism. There are several examples. There are great difficulties in obtaining TUAPs (Public Area Use Fees) – the authorization that regularizes the activity of street vendors, granted in a precarious manner by the municipal administration, accentuating conditions of vulnerability and making traders hostage to extortion schemes. Subject to due proportions, the same applies to favelas, when the non-regularization of properties turns residents into objects of opportunistic action by drug traffickers and, above all, militiamen.
While the city hall and the state government express surprise at the supposed existence of an “asphalt militia” to justify, in theory, government action in the name of “public order”, the militias themselves continue to grow and cause terror in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. , profiting economically and politically.
These nuances that involve the relationships of living, working and living in the city are permeated by a complex game of interests, involving countless disputes between the most varied state and non-state actors, characterizing, in turn, a tenuous line that not only delimits the borders between informality and illegalism, but, above all, between the tolerable and the intolerable.
In this game, the double regulatory role of public authorities is observed: sometimes participating in the official regulation of these markets, creating barriers that are often insurmountable to popular interests, and sometimes getting involved in their regulation, let’s say, unofficially. In the latter case, it anchors in them, among other things, the payments and rewards of its agents who operate in the diversion, as well as the marginal satisfaction of interests of social actors captured by its dynamics. This is the case, for example, of the sellers and residents we have described so far.
Given the complex scenario exposed, it is important to visualize ways to overcome it. The way out is in the territory of politics and involves the decisive initiative to establish lasting commitments with popular interests based on the approximation and continuous listening to the segments built in the so-called informalities. The commitment of public authorities to the democratic regulation of work practices, access to housing, among many other dimensions in which illegalism can be observed, is fundamental and urgent, generating security and well-being to achieve what can be considered as full “right to the city”.
Review: Renata Melo
*Lenin Pires is a professor at the Department of Public Security at UFF, part of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Conflict Administration (INCT-InEAC) network, coordinating the Laboratory for Studies on Conflict, Citizenship and Public Security (LAESP).
**Taísa Sanches is a postdoctoral researcher (FAPERJ) and visiting professor at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and Planning (IPPUR) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). It is part of the Observatório das Metrópoles network (Núcleo RJ).
***Lucas Bernardo Dias is a public manager specializing in municipal management, with a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the Institute of Urban and Regional Research and Planning (IPPUR) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). It is currently part of the Observatório das Metrópoles network (Núcleo RJ).
****This is an opinion article and does not necessarily express the editorial line of the newspaper Brazil in fact.
Editing: Mariana Pitasse
