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To what extent should government intervene in controlling the growth of the favelas settlement

in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?

January 14 , 2023
Word count: 1254
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Brazil is a democratic state. A democracy, however, cannot be completely implemented if

the majority of its people, especially young, underprivileged Brazilians, lack access to basic rights and

services. Nearly a million of these underprivileged people live in Brazilian favelas, which are

historically destitute and overlooked areas of the country. Additionally, 2 million residents of the Rio

de Janeiro’s impoverished favelas are struggling to cope with police brutality and corruption (2020).

The payment of the bribes usually exceeds ten billion reals, and is considered by the US departments

of Justice to be the largest case of bribery (Veja, 2016). Rio de Janeiro has a reputation for being

among the world's most violent cities. Despite the fact that organizations from around the world

have recently provided funds to help residents of the favelas, the problem hasn't been resolved and

has become a source of concern for a wide range of people. Politicians, NGO workers and

researchers, have been discussing this issue since 1940s.

Clarissa Huguet, who is an NGO Viva-Rio worker, and Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, a Brazilian

political scientist, established that: inhabitants of favelas are directly linked with criminality, and

drug trafficking (2008). Due to this connection between poverty and crime, poor Brazilians are

routinely subjected to cruel treatment, whether as victims of drug traffickers or dishonest police

officers. Adding to this issue, Professor James N. Green, wrote article with his students called:

“Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Past and Present”, which was published by the Brown University Library in

2011 and they proposed that, since the 1940s, corruption of police officers and government, has

been a concern to inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro's Favelas (2011).

Agreeing with Huguet and Carvalho, Enrique Desmond Arias, Ph . D, and Corinne Davis

Rodrigues, both scholars, identified that: a dysfunctional police department that frequently receives

bribes from the criminals it claims to be fighting is the main cause of the city's persistent violence

(2014). Rio de Janeiro has a long history of police brutality and corruption, which for years only

fueled the conflict between drug traffickers in charge of Rio's favelas and the police. Robson

Rodrigues da Silva, a senior researcher, added to this issue and said that Rio's police are engaged in a

loop of raiding favelas, shooting drug dealers, and vanishing yet again. Apparently, the frequent wars
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between different traffickers lead to more shootouts, endangering the lives of the innocent people

living in many of these favelas (Rodrigues, 2014).

Represented by statistical data shown by John Lee Anderson in his The New Yorker article

called "who controls the streets in Rio de Janeiro", Rio de Janeiro's police kill more people than any

other police in the world; they admitted to killing 1118 people a year, who were resisting arrest,

which works out to 3 people every day (2009). To finalize the statements proposed, the Brazilian

police are notorious for exerting unnecessary violence on the residents.

Paes-Machado and Noronha have a comprehensive study on this subject. Scholars argue

that police officers misuse their power over citizens, and they violate Brazil's constitution (2016).

The favela inhabitants are vulnerable since they lack social and political visibility and the resources

to file complaints about the harm done (Arias and Rodrigues, 2006). As mentioned earlier, Veja, the

Brazilian weekly news magazine, highlighted that federal police of Rio de Janeiro is the largest

corruption scene in the history of Brazil(2016).

One of the recent cases of police brutality was on 22 July 2022. During the raid, at least 18

people died and politicians were talking about how to deal with the high crime rate, and there were

complaints about excessive police aggression. The raid was targeted at a crime gang that broke into

nearby neighborhoods, robbed banks, and stole cars. Even in densely populated residential areas,

Favela's police employed helicopters to fire at targets. Due to this, many innocent people died.

Talking about this issue, Rio de Janeiro's governor, Claudio Castro, declared on Twitter that he would

keep fighting crime with all of his might and that he wouldn't give up on ensuring the state's

residents' safety and serenity (2022). However, opposing this, Marcelo Freixo, Castros’ main rival in

elections and a leftist, defended criminals who were attacking police, and told the governor that he

used " police to make politics" (2022). Since the May raid that left more than 20 people dead in a

favela in Rio, the government's approach to combating violence and organizing crime has been

under question.
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Rio de Janeiro has a long history of police brutality and corruption, which for years only

fueled the conflict between drug traffickers in charge of Rio's favelas and the police. The

reason for this issue, according to the already mentioned Huguet and de Carvalho, is that police

officers receive extremely poor salaries and they all work additional jobs to support themselves.

These low salaries "open the possibility to corruption and the collaboration of police agents with

criminal organizations," the scholars conclude (2008, p100-101). Drug gangs offer bribes to some

police in order to maintain a peaceful interaction and friendly connection. The two further confirm

that police officials are the ones who supply rifles to trafficking organizations. Due to their

connections to the drug trade, politicians and police officers were found to be corrupt.

Even though some scholarly solutions to systemic violence and the police were found, their

effectiveness was questionable.

One solution was found by Aaron Schneider, who works in studies of comparative

international development at the University of Denver, and he proposed that decentralization could

possibly solve the issue of corruption (2003). Scholars argue that decentralization can, under the

circumstances, lead to a host of benefits, including greater accountability, less corruption in favelas,

stronger responsiveness of policy to local concerns, and greater experimentation. However, a

number of scholars have critiqued this, arguing that under many circumstances, policy

decentralization can have deleterious effects. C. Simon Fan and Chen Lin, who are working in

the departments of economics, and Daniel Treisman, who's working in the department of Political

Science, have argued that excessive decentralization can increase corruption as lower-level

policymakers become largely unaccountable to superiors(Fan et al., 2009).

Another solution was presented back in 1960s when the government of Rio de Janeiro tried

to fully eliminate favelas; however, the effects of this policy on impoverished people were atrocious.

Nicole Maria Turcheti e Melo, who has a degree of masters of arts in development studies, described
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this act and concluded that: the governments’ official policy was to remove the favela inhabitants

and to transfer them to other areas in the periphery (2010). They proceeded to abandon it in 1970s,

since the population of favelas inhabitants was still growing and it became obvious that, elimination

of favelas wasn’t a viable solution. Around 140,000 people were displaced due to this, impoverished

people were punished for their poverty, and they eventually came to typify the marginal population

that the government had portrayed them to be in order to justify the elimination of their

communities . the government had portrayed them to be in order to justify the elimination of their

communities.

In nearly every area of Rio de Janeiro, there are favelas, which are complicated, unusual, and

extremely crowded settlements. The government of Brazil needs to implement new policies since

favelas have so many issues. As was already mentioned, corruption of government and police

officers in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro is one of the biggest problems that need to be fixed, or else it

will continue to kill innocent people. Brazil will undoubtedly be on the same level as other countries

in terms of fighting crime and violence and saving the people living in favelas if the government

continues to pay attention to favelas and implements new strategies and policies.
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References :

(2003). ResearchGate | Find and share research. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aaron-

Schneider-4/publication/237480025_Decentralization_Conceptualization_and_Measurement/

links/5c7438dca6fdcc47159bead6/Decentralization-Conceptualization-and-Measurement.pdf

Arias, E. D. (2014). Violence, Citizenship, and Religion in a Rio De Janeiro Favela. Latin American

Research Review, https://doi.org/10.1353/lar.2014.0053

Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, past and present | Brazil: Five centuries of change. (2011). Brown

University, Library. https://library.brown.edu/create/fivecenturiesofchange/chapters/chapter-9/

favelas-in-rio-de-janeiro-past-and-present/

Para EUA, Odebrecht praticou ‘maior Caso de suborno Da história’. (2016, December 21).

VEJA. https://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/para-eua-odebrecht-praticou-maior-caso-de-suborno-da-

historia/

Political decentralization and corruption: Evidence from around the world. (2009). Science

Direct. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272708001291

Huguet, C., & Szabó de Carvalho, I. (2008). Violence in the Brazilian favelas and the role of the

police. New directions for youth development, 2008(119), 93–12. https://doi.org/10.1002/yd.275

César Muños Acebes. (2021, August 15). Nytimes.com. The New York Times - Breaking News, US

News, World News and Videos. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/opinion/international-

world/brazil-blacks-police-brutality.html

John lee anderson, (2009, September 28). Gangland. The New

Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/05/gangland

A raid in a Rio favela left 18 dead, sparking renewed police violence complaints. (2022, July 22).

NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1112870936/deadly-raid-rio-favela-police-violence
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