I have been taking notes for a while on a possible book idea on the militia phenomenon in Rio de Janeiro — the cidade maravilha‘s answer to the CONVIVIR and (which became the) AUC paramilitaries of Colombia.
What I have so far is that the following proposition needs to be fleshed out (and rendered in plain English):
There is an historic nexus among the jogo de bicho, the narcoretail trade, carnaval, political corruption, television monopolies (Rede Globo and its allegedly illegal worldwide distribution rights deal with the racketeering-dominated LIESA — whose Web site Globo hosts), and mafia-style anti-democratic mini-states of exception (fiefdoms) with Clockwork Orange levels of gnostic ultraviolence.
If that all sounds crazy, consider the case of the TV Globo soap opera Duas Caras (Two Guys/Two Faces), which ran from October 1, 2007 and May 31, 2008 on the Globo network and in (dubbed) syndication elsewhere in South America (it was particularly popular in Ecuador, one reads).
The soap opera revolves around two central characters: a Rio real estate developer named Marconi Ferraço and a shantytown community leader named Juvenal Antena.
The pairing Marconi-Antena is suggestive of some relation of interdependency between the men: Marconi was the inventor of radio. Radio transmits. The antenna receives.
Interesting. I think there is something to that.
Antena is briefly an employee of Marconi — his security chief — but quits and founds Portelinha in defiance of the new order. Having thrived under the Old Boss, he ceases to receive orders broadcast from the New Boss.
In fact, the two men engage in a vicious power struggle, in the courts and in the streets, over property rights to athe abandoned construction site owned by Ferraço, which Antena and his people invade — recalling the invasions of the MST, a well-known militant agrarian reform movement in Brazil.
(I once observed the MST throwing a BBQ for Noam Chomsy, believe it or not. Superb ribs, gaucho style, and Brazuco-Deutsche keg beer, the best. I was not invited. But my eyes feasted.)
The shantytown is later reciprocally invaded by a drug gang — in cahoots with Marconi, I think.
In a broad way, the relationship between the two men represents the conflicting relationship between the two poles of Rio society: the “asphalt” and the “hillside” (morro).
That is, the on-the-grid formal, taxed, zoned and regulated, city and the off-the-grid, untaxed, unzoned and unregulated informal shantytowns.
In a last-minute plot twist among many others — the blockbuster concluding episode features no fewer than 11 marriages, an all-time record featured widely in Editora Globo bridal magazines — Juvenal Antena and Marconi Ferraço are discovered to be long-lost brothers.
Ferraço (spoilers!) atones for past sins and is reunited with his long-lost love in a Caribbean (fiscal) paradise, while Antena loses his bid for asphalt legitimacy and is left, significantly, lovelorn, alone, and stripped of his former power.
Now, Maria Lima Marques, an M.A. candidate at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, has observed as follows in a paper for a conference on interdisciplinary culture studies at the Federal University of Bahia in May 2008, titled “Hero or Criminal: Juvena Antena and the Personal Domination of the Portelinha Shantytown” (my trans.):
The Globo soap not only has based the Portelinha shantytown on a real-life shantytown, Rio das Pedras, but has portrayed the community as a model shantytown.
In real life, however, the Rio de Pedras shantytown is run by a vicious and lethal mafia of corrupt police engaged in vice, extortion and protection racketeering and parapolitics — the so-called militias of Rio.
Enthyeme: TV Globo presents shantytowns run by mafias of corrupt police engaged in vic, extortion and protection racketeering — as well as parapolitics, including political assassinations — in a utopian light on national TV.
Notes Maria (my hasty translation):
The Portelinha shantytown was inspired by the community of Rio das Pedras, bordering the Barra de Tijuca, in the Western Zone of Rio de Janeiro. That is, the soap opera was shot at a studio located in the same region. Rio das Pedras grew up in the 1960s and today has more than 40,000 residents.
On TV Globo and its proximity to Rio das Pedras, see
On militias and the Barra de Tijuca:
The latter tends to rebut the myth perpetuated by Globo, as well as by city officials and the foreign press, according to which
Compare:
Maria continues:
According to sociologist Marcelo Burgos, of the book The Utopia of Rio das Pedras, a Rio Shantytown, the community functions as a passport that enables the individual to take part in the city. It is a place where networks of solidarity coexist with a culture and a politics worthy of the city and the nation.
On the dystopian quality of politics in the real-life community, see
- “Rio: Vote Quimby or You Will Lose Your Job”
- Ballots and Bullets: Delivering Elections With Mafiosos (DEM) And The Party of Mafioso Democracy in Brazil (PMDB)
According to the essays in this book, it is clear that the violence in question is identified with the arrival of the drug traffic. In Rio das Pedras, however, ruled by interpersonal relations of exchange and reciprocity, traditional values are established, with the Residents Association serving as the arbiter between alternative models of social organization, as well as the wielder of power.
By the same token, as the fictitious Portelinha shows, Rio das Pedras has managed to abolish the traffic in its area of influence, for which reason it is considered a special case among Rio communities. It is, however, emphasized quite clearly that a new form of patronage has been established here, driven by the exchange relations mediated by the Residents Association, which taxes the community in return for a security scheme to which all residents are required to submit.
And so on. You see where I might be going with this. The Antena-Marconi pair embodies the Weberian opposition gemeineschaft-geselleschaft) — business relations and family loyalties, say.
The piquancy of the plot thickens when possible political allegory is brought in: The Juvenal = Lula equation was much discussed during the run of the series.
Juvenal, played by one of Brazil’s most distinguished actors, Antônio (Achados e Perdidos, from a novel by the Brazilian Raymond Chandler, García-Roza) Fagundes, has many of the Northeastern mannerisms and demeanor of the President, some thought.
Hotly debated though, so let us not go there quite yet.
For now, let it be said that Maria is on the right track invoking Max Weber to puzzle this out:
Com base em textos escritos pelo autor da novela em seu blog, em autores como Maria Silvia de Carvalho Franco e Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Marcelo Burgos e fundamentando o conceito de dominação legítima em Max Weber, a análise vem de encontro à polêmica gerada pela personagem, que passeia pelas qualificações de bandido e herói, e já é de grande estima dos expectadores da novela.
Based on posts by the author of Duas Caras on his blog and on the writings of Maria Sílvia Carvalho Franco and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and using the Weberian concept of legitimate domination, we analyze the the controversy over the character of Juvenal Antena, who comes to be viewed as both hero and villain and who is greatly respected by program viewers.
On the purported great respect for Antena-analogs in the real world, see
That post is actually part of the Batman saga — the most notorious Rio militia is known as The Justice League and allegedly headed by a city councilman and his brother, a state legislator — which I probably have enough notes on for an extensive chapter or two.
Impertinent question: Do Globo employees have to pay protection to the Rio das Pedras militia for the right to come and go at its Barra de Tijuca studios? I accept tips: cbrayton at boizebueditorial.com. Your anonymity respected.
Enthymeme: Portelinha has an escola de samba. Globo has worldwide broadcasting rights to the carnival parades organized by LIESA — prime candidate for a RICO case given its ties to both illegal gambling and the narcoretail trade.
Is Globo inclined to let the militias clean up LIESA — selectively — for family viewing?
Are there militia-sponsored escolas in real life?
A couple of years ago, the Bovespa stock exchanged funded our local escola, the — mighty! mighty! all hail to the glorious! — Pérola Negra. We thought that was absolutely great.
Interesting note: The competing Rede Record came out with a competing soap, also with a militia theme, called Opposite Lives,
… a West Side Story-style Romeo and Juliet revamp set in a Rio de Janeiro favela beset by warfare among the police, militias (the militias are the police) and drug traffickers (but note well, Seu Fausto the cop-militiaman gets a cut of the drug trade)..
My dreamed-of book could even be built around a tale of these two soaps. Hey, yeah!
Unscientific concluding cultural generalization: Brazilians have a well-developed sense of irony.
Filed under: Brazil, Media, Organized Crime | Tagged: Globo Organizations, Infotainment, Organizações Globo, Organizações Tabajara, soap opera, TV Globo |
The New World Lusophone Sousaphone 