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Article

Comparative Political Studies


2022, Vol. 55(5) 789–831
The Logic of Criminal © The Author(s) 2021

Territorial Control: Article reuse guidelines:


sagepub.com/journals-permissions
Military Intervention in DOI: 10.1177/00104140211036035
journals.sagepub.com/home/cps
Rio de Janeiro

Nicholas Barnes1 

Abstract
How do organized criminal groups (OCGs) respond to military interventions
intended to weaken and subdue them? In many cases, such crackdowns have
proven counterproductive as OCGs militarize, engage in violence, and
confront state forces directly. Existing studies have pointed to several ex-
planations: inter-criminal competition, unconditional militarized approaches,
and existing criminal governance arrangements. Much of this work, however,
has focused on national, regional, or even municipal level variation and ex-
planations. This article takes a micro-comparative approach based on 18 months
of ethnographic research in a group of Rio de Janeiro favelas (impoverished and
informal neighborhoods) divided between three drug trafficking gangs and
occupied by the Brazilian military from 2014 to 2015. It argues that an active
territorial threat from a rival is the primary mechanism leading OCGs to re-
spond violently to military intervention. It also demonstrates that geographic
patterns of recruitment play an important role in where OCG rivalries turn
violent during intervention.

Keywords
organized crime, drug trafficking, gangs, military intervention, territorial
control, ethnography, Rio de Janeiro

1
School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK

Corresponding Author:
Nicholas Barnes, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, The Arts Faculty
Building, The Scores, St. Andrews, KY16 9AX, UK.
Email: njb22@st-andrews.ac.uk
790 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Following Latin America’s transition to electoral democracy in the 1980s, the


active role of the region’s armed forces in the domestic sphere was thought to
be coming to an end. Over the ensuing decades, however, numerous countries
in the region experienced an explosion of violence due in large part to the
emergence and expansion of organized criminal groups (OCGs), including
drug trafficking cartels, smuggling networks, militias, vigilante groups, death
squads, and prison and street gangs.1 Latin America now accounts for roughly
a third of the world’s violent deaths (Muggah & Tobón, 2018) as the region’s
police forces, in which citizens have little faith (Pion-Berlin & Carreras,
2019), have proven largely ineffective. As a result, many Latin American
countries have increasingly called upon their militaries to intervene.
Examples are not hard to come by. The Colombian military has engaged in
decades of operations against drug trafficking insurgents and cartels, among
other targets. Since 2006, tens of thousands of Mexican military soldiers have
been deployed to confront dozens of regionally concentrated drug trafficking
organizations (Shirk & Wallman, 2015). Military involvement in domestic
policing can also be observed in the various Mano Dura (Iron Fist) and Super
Mano Dura campaigns to combat street and prison gangs in El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala (Holland, 2013; Wolf, 2017). Since the 1990s, the
Brazilian military has engaged in a series of targeted interventions to combat
drug trafficking gangs (Samset, 2014). Today, more than a dozen countries in
the region maintain the active involvement of the military in domestic policing
operations (Flores-Macı́as & Zarkin, 2021). Roughly four decades after the
transition to electoral democracy, Latin America’s armed forces are once again
a permanent fixture of domestic policing in the region (Muggah & Sullivan,
2018).
And yet, the effectiveness of the military in combating OCGs has in-
creasingly come into question. Numerous scholars have found that instead of
weakening OCGs and reducing violence, military interventions encourage
many OCGs to further militarize, engage in violence, and, in some cases,
confront state forces directly. These behaviors remain a puzzle for social
scientists because, unlike Latin America’s guerrilla and insurgent movements
of the past, OCGs are not motivated by larger political transformation and
have no intention of taking over or breaking away from the state (Barnes,
2017; Kalyvas, 2015; Lessing, 2015; Phillips, 2018). Moreover, by milita-
rizing and engaging in outright violence, criminal groups forego their desire
for secrecy, increase the likelihood of further crackdowns, and, at least in the
short-term, sacrifice profits. Why, then, do some criminal groups respond to
military intervention with violence and confrontation?
Drawing on 18 months (June 2013 to November 2014) of ethnographic
research in a group of Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods divided between three
drug trafficking gangs and occupied by the Brazilian military, this article
provides the micro-foundations of violent OCG responses to military
Barnes 791

intervention. I argue that the fear of losing territory to a rival is the primary
reason OCGs respond violently to military interventions. I distinguish be-
tween active, latent, and absent territorial competition among criminal groups,
then show how these different threats shape criminals’ decision to fight, hide,
or flee during military intervention. Where OCGs face an active threat from a
rival, they will fight to defend their territory at all costs, including confronting
military forces directly. OCGs that face only a latent rival threat will hide by
demilitarizing and maintaining low profiles to avoid military enforcement.
Finally, OCGs which are unconcerned with losing their territory to a rival are
more likely to flee, displacing to other territories where they can wait out
military intervention. I also find that patterns of recruitment and OCG member
connections to specific territories and communities determine when and where
existing rivalries turn active during military intervention.
Overall, this article develops a generalizable theory of criminal territorial
control and competition while demonstrating the utility of micro-level eth-
nographic research in adding causal depth and specificity to existing bodies of
research within comparative politics. This article also intervenes in current
policy debates concerning the use of the military to combat OCGs. First, by
better understanding how OCGs respond to military intervention, we can
identify contexts in which such militarized strategies are likely to be especially
ineffective. Second, holding militaries accountable for their behavior during
intervention will require closer documentation and examination of the on-the-
ground tactics of military forces. And third, I find that even “softer” versions
of military intervention (e.g., “hearts and minds” or developmental ap-
proaches), are insufficient in gaining the support of marginalized communities
in which interventions often occur. While there is perhaps a role for the
military to play in combating some OCGs (see Pion-Berlin, 2017), this study
finds military interventions woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to provide
longer-term solutions to the presence of OCGs in Latin America.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. The first section evaluates
existing explanations for violent OCG responses to military intervention.
Section two develops a theoretical framework concerning the logic of criminal
territorial control and the consequences of military intervention. In the third
section, I summarize the research design and methods employed during
ethnographic fieldwork in Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro. I then describe
the territorial control and competition between Maré’s three drug trafficking
gangs prior to the arrival of the military and outline Maré’s occupation and the
various strategies the Brazilian military employed to combat the local OCGs.
In section six, I analyze how and why each of Maré’s three drug trafficking
gangs adapted to occupation. Section seven then discusses these findings in
light of the theory and explores several alternative explanations. The con-
clusion considers the possibilities and limitations of military interventions to
combat OCGs, more generally.
792 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Evaluating Existing Explanations


There are three prevalent explanations for why Latin American OCGs respond
violently to military intervention. First, some scholars have found that they
exacerbate inter-criminal competition. A series of articles focusing on the
Mexican Drug War have argued that the decapitation (arrest or death) of OCG
leaders by military forces leads to increased violence between and within
cartels due to succession struggles, fragmentation, and infighting (Calderón
et al., 2015; Guerrero-Gutiérrez, 2011; Phillips, 2015; Pion-Berlin, 2017;
Rios, 2013). Beyond decapitation, other scholars have pointed to various
mechanisms through which military interventions can produce increased
inter-criminal violence, including the loss of state protection (Snyder &
Duran-Martinez, 2009; Trejo & Ley, 2018), shifting drug trafficking routes
and territories (Dell, 2015), the weakening of incumbent criminal territorial
control (Dell, 2015; Osorio, 2015; Rios, 2013), as well as the increasing
profitability of the drug trade (Castillo & Kronick, 2020). Although they
point to slightly different causal mechanisms, these works highlight the
importance of inter-criminal competition in how OCGs respond to military
intervention.
A related literature explains the violent response of OCGs by focusing on
the nature of the intervention itself. According to Lessing (2017), uncondi-
tional militarized crackdowns (i.e. when state forces attempt to repress OCGs
irrespective of their violent behavior) incentivize these groups to confront the
state directly. They do so to demonstrate to state actors—both low-level
enforcement agents as well as policymakers—the cost of repression and to try
to reduce the price of ongoing bribery schemes. Alternatively, Durán-
Martı́nez (2018) argues that the involvement of the military in domestic
operations fragments the state security apparatus and, without a reliable source
of protection or enforcement, drug trafficking organizations are more likely to
militarize and engage in highly visible forms of violence.
A final explanation concerns the role of criminal governance arrangements
in how OCGs respond to military intervention. Trejo and Ley (2021) argue
that Mexican cartels seek control over local governments, populations, and
territories because it provides them with better information, higher levels of
security, and more illicit revenue streams. Especially amid intense crackdowns
by the state and conflict with rivals, the authors find OCGs will ramp up their
violence to gain or regain control over populations and territories. In their
study of Rio de Janeiro, Magaloni et al. (2020) argue that militarized in-
terventions against OCGs which maintain a local monopoly of violence and
cooperative relations with residents tend to backfire because they undo a
stable form of order. In cases where the OCG does not already collude with
public security actors, this may even lead to direct confrontations between the
state and OCGs.
Barnes 793

Together, all of these studies have expanded our understanding of OCG


behavior amid military intervention by demonstrating the strategic consid-
erations of these organizations and their members. And yet, nearly every one
of these studies has approached this phenomenon from either the national,
regional, or municipal level.2 While some dynamics and mechanisms can only
be tested at these higher levels of analysis, there are several issues with such
approaches. For one, OCGs seldom operate at these higher levels of analysis
but are mostly confined to smaller areas within municipalities—either mar-
ginalized and impoverished urban neighborhoods or along rural drug traf-
ficking routes. While it is true that some OCGs can span multiple sub-national
regions, they are often highly decentralized organizations, comprised of a
patchwork of smaller gangs and cells, not acting under the direction of a
centralized leadership (see Calderón et al., 2015; Durán-Martı́nez, 2018; Trejo
& Ley, 2018). Instead, most OCG behavior is shaped by much more local
factors and can vary significantly across and within these overarching
organizations.
Second, to evaluate the impact of military interventions, scholars con-
ducting research on this topic have mostly used off-the-shelf public security
data of overall homicides, “drug-related homicides,” or other aggregate
categories because they are considered the most reliable measures of violence.
Such public security statistics should be used with caution. They seldom
accurately differentiate between types of victims or delineate the motivations
behind the violence (Albarracı́n & Barnes, 2020; Shirk & Wallman, 2015).
Criminal groups are also known to hide their violence and victims (Durán-
Martı́nez, 2018). Aside from the possibility of spurious results, such aggregate
statistics also mean that many of the various causal mechanisms listed above
are observationally equivalent. For instance, imagine a municipality that
experiences an increase in homicides following a military intervention. We
cannot automatically assume that OCGs are responsible for this violence as
existing studies have shown that, in some cases, much of the violence can be
attributed to the military (Flores-Macı́as, 2018) or other sources (Vilalta &
Muggah, 2014). Even if OCGs do become more violent, however, does this
mean that all of the OCGs within that territory became uniformly more vi-
olent? Could it be that some but not all engaged in more violence? Or could it
be that one OCG became much more violent while others became less or were
equally violent as before? By using aggregate statistics at even the municipal
level, it is impossible to know.
Third, because existing studies have mostly taken a birds-eye view of this
phenomenon, they seldom analyze the on-the-ground military tactics and
operations intended to combat criminal organizations and reduce violence.
Aside from overarching policies or structures, such as decapitation (Calderón
et al., 2015; Phillips, 2015), conditional versus unconditional (Castillo &
Kronick, 2020; Lessing, 2017), or cohesive versus fragmented (Durán-
794 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Martı́nez, 2018), it is still unclear what military intervention actually entails.


Do soldiers use overwhelming force to occupy neighborhoods or villages
where criminal groups operate or do they engage in more targeted operations?
Do they maintain manned checkpoints, conduct house-to-house searches, or
engage in more indiscriminate forms of violence? Do they seek to interdict
drugs and other illicit goods or are they focused on capturing and possibly
killing OCG members? What are their rules of engagement if and when
criminals resist? Existing studies of militarized intervention seldom capture
such variation and treat them as mostly uniform across space and time. Further
work must document and analyze the various activities of military troops so
that we can better understand their impact on OCGs and the communities in
which they operate.

The Logic of Criminal Territorial Control


This article advocates for a greater analytical focus on the micro-level be-
haviors and calculations of OCGs.3 Most OCGs throughout the world operate
in areas where the state is either unable or unwilling to enforce its rule of law
due to difficult geography, the prohibition of certain markets and activities, or
the ethnic or social distance between marginalized populations and the state
(Skaperdas, 2001). The size of these territories varies wildly. Most are no
larger than a prison wing, street corner, or city block, though some can grow to
the size of entire urban neighborhoods or rural municipalities. A wide variety
of groups with very different origins and motivations can exist within these
spaces. “What holds them all together,” according to Arias, “is a willingness to
seek to control and defend a particular territory as an operational base for illicit
activities” (2017, p. 20). However, unlike territorial control established by
insurgent or rebel groups, criminal territorial control does not necessarily
come at the expense of the state. In fact, criminal groups are perfectly content
to exist within and even work with the state so long as they can continue their
illicit activities. Instead, criminal territorial control is almost entirely focused
on ensuring their exclusive access and activities vis-à-vis other criminal
groups.4 Such control allows them to monopolize illicit markets, multiply
their economic interests, and expand their political and social influence within
those areas (Arias, 2017; Gambetta, 1993; Skarbek, 2014; Venkatesh, 1997).
It also offers members higher levels of security by allowing them to monitor
and prevent residents from collaborating with either state authorities or their
enemies (Arjona, 2017).5
Existing work on OCGs has yet to fully conceptualize territorial control of
this type. Scholars have mostly differentiated between contexts in which one
OCG has consolidated exclusive territorial control and those in which multiple
groups are competing for it: low or high consolidation (Arias, 2013), low or
high coordination (Moncada, 2016), monopolistic or competitive relations
Barnes 795

(Durán-Martinez, 2015), and monopolized or contested territories (Magaloni


et al., 2020). While such dichotomous frameworks are useful for mapping the
broad contours of criminal territorial control and competition, there are two
lingering issues with such understandings.
First, existing conceptualizations have mostly assumed that where terri-
tories are divided between multiple criminal groups, violent contestation is
inevitable. However, like other armed groups the world over, OCGs are
known to negotiate, make peace, forge alliances, and develop arrangements to
divide territory amongst themselves even as they retain their autonomy
(Aspholm, 2020; Idler, 2012; Skarbek, 2014; Vargas, 2016). High degrees of
criminal territorial control can, therefore, co-exist with the presence of
multiple OCGs and otherwise competitive environments. Second, the rela-
tionship between control and contestation remains unclear. Does contestation
mean that multiple groups are operating in and fighting to consolidate control
of the same territory? Or are groups located in two or more distinct territories
engaged in campaigns of territorial conquest?6 Is one group the primary
aggressor while the other is playing defense or are both equally engaged in
efforts to conquer territory? Such nuances have mostly been left out of existing
conceptualizations.
Building on these insights, I advocate for an OCG-centered approach. I
conceptualize criminal territorial control as the degree to which an OCG faces
a threat to their exclusive access to a delimited geographic area. I differentiate
between three types of threat: active, latent, and absent. An active threat is
when a criminal group faces a rival that is intent on taking over a territory in
which they operate. Active competition, therefore, can include everything
from all-out invasions, skirmishes, and drive-by shootings to targeted kid-
nappings and assassinations, as well as more subtle attempts to infiltrate and
take over a territory. Active competition always involves the use or threat of
violence. A latent threat, by contrast, applies to contexts where an OCG does
not currently face a rival that is actively trying to take over and exclude them
from a territory but due to their proximity or a history of conflict and territorial
turnover, the possibility of territorial contestation is high. Although violence
may continue to occur in these contexts, it is not related to territorial conquest.
Finally, absent threat means an OCG faces no competitors for territorial
control. This is often due to a group having successfully defeated and ab-
sorbed all local rivals or due to their relative geographic isolation. Another
possible reason for the absence of territorial threat is due to stable alliances or
arrangements with surrounding criminal groups or with the police. Any vi-
olence which occurs in these areas is also unrelated to territorial disputes.
While I do not theorize the underlying sources of these competitive dynamics,
I assume that they vary across space and time. Criminal groups can face
multiple threats from different groups, just one, or none at all. Each type can
persist for long periods or shift rapidly from one to another.
796 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Military interventions occur in any of the preceding scenarios. States can


call on their militaries to confront multiple OCGs in the midst of violent battles
for territorial superiority, in areas divided between rival groups but in which
territorial contestation is not ongoing and against a single dominant OCG
without any rivals. We can assume that military intervention is an attempt by
the state to reassert its monopoly of violence by eliminating criminal territorial
control. And yet, even the most well-designed military interventions are
incapable of fully accomplishing this goal. While the military may arrest or
kill numerous criminal group members, crack down on illicit markets and
behaviors, and reimpose the state’s ostensive control within an area, criminal
territorial control is seldom directly threatened by state intervention of this
type. Why?
For one, because the military never attempts to take over existing illicit
markets, an OCG’s source of revenue and, thus, its raison d’être remains intact
even though it may be diminished in the short-term. In addition, criminal
groups are often deeply embedded in the marginalized communities where
military interventions occur. They maintain lasting connections to residents
through familial and social connections and may even have their outright
support against a state that is viewed as abusive and illegitimate (Felbab-
Brown, 2010). Finally, military crackdowns are always short-term inter-
ventions and, thus, do not constitute a permanent and lasting solution to the
problem of the lack of state enforcement in these areas.
While not a direct threat to criminal territorial control, military inter-
ventions have been known to fracture criminal organizations, upset local
balances of power, and destabilize existing alliances and arrangements be-
tween criminal groups and with the police. The military’s ostensive control
also complicates an OCG’s ability to maintain their exclusivity by preventing
them from effectively monitoring and defending their territory against rivals.
Thus, military crackdowns have significant consequences for criminal ter-
ritorial control and competition. If a territorial threat becomes or remains
active following a military intervention, an OCG is presented with a dilemma.
They can flee, in which case they have likely lost their territory for good. They
can hide and hope that the military prevents the takeover by their rival. Or they
can fight, in which case they not only risk their lives confronting their rival but
are more likely to be arrested or killed by military forces as well.
I argue that an OCG’s decision to fight, hide, or flee in response to a
military crackdown is dictated by the nature of the territorial threats they face.
An OCG which confronts an active territorial threat post-intervention will
fight even if it means confronting the military. They have to respond this way
because a rival OCG is very much capable of accomplishing what the military
cannot. They will take over existing illicit markets, embed themselves in local
networks, and incorporate, kill, or expel all rival OCG members and, if
necessary, their families and social networks. They present a very direct and
Barnes 797

existential threat to an OCG and its members in a way that even the world’s
most powerful militaries do not. Thus, OCGs must fight to defend their
territory or they are likely to lose it for good. Alternatively, OCGs that only
face latent threats post-intervention will go into hiding to avoid enforcement
by the military. They will stay in their territory because they need to be ready if
and when a latent threat turns active, which may or may not occur during
intervention. A criminal group which faces no threats to their territorial control
following intervention are likely to flee to avoid enforcement by the military.
Due to the absence of a territorial threat, they can wait to return until the
military leaves.

Research Design and Methodology


This article employs a comparative ethnographic research design. By eth-
nography, I refer not just to interviews and long-term fieldwork but the use of
participant observation and “immersion in the place and lives of people under
study” (Wedeen, 2010, p. 257). Many ethnographers have focused on single
case studies to highlight complexity and contextual meaning while mostly
ignoring case comparisons and explicitly refuting claims of generalizability.
In a recent innovation, however, Simmons and Smith have argued that
ethnographers can better engage with broader theoretical debates by con-
ducting “ethnographic research that explicitly and intentionally builds an
argument through the analysis of two or more cases” (2019, p. 341). This
article takes just such an approach by comparing how three separate drug
trafficking gangs responded to the exogenous shock of military occupation
with an eye toward understanding the behaviors and rationales of OCGs more
broadly. To further elucidate and support the causal mechanisms, it also
leverages within-case temporal and spatial variation in how each of the gangs
responded to military intervention.
This article draws on 3 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil and 18 months of participant observation in Complexo da Maré, a
sprawling complex of 16 favelas (impoverished and informal communities)
and housing projects, in which three separate drug trafficking gangs operate.
In June of 2013, I moved to Nova Holanda (see Figure 1), one of three
contiguous neighborhoods, controlled by a gang affiliated with the Comando
Vermelho prison-based faction (referred to here as CVNH).7 Although I re-
sided in this one gang’s territory, I traveled extensively throughout Maré,
spending several days a week in each of the other gang territories, one of
which was also affiliated with the CV faction and located in an adjacent
neighborhood named Parque União (thus, CVPU) while the third gang was
connected to a rival faction, Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP). For the first
9 months I resided in Maré, I engaged in extended participant observation
798 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Figure 1. Map of organized criminal group territories in Complexo da Maré.

activities in each gang territory while interviewing gang members, community


leaders, and a variety of local residents.
On April 5th, 2014, nine months after I moved to Maré, 2500 Brazilian
army and marine troops invaded and occupied the entirety of Complexo da
Maré. The intervention represented the culmination of Rio’s once-heralded
Police Pacification Units (UPPs), a public security program intended to re-
capture the state’s monopoly of violence from drug trafficking gangs in
hundreds of favelas throughout the city. According to Rio’s public security
apparatus, the military’s occupation was intended to be short-term—just four
months—to weaken gangs and build local capacity before the installation of
four community policing units.8 This would never come to pass. Instead, the
military occupied Maré for 15 months, during which time they conducted
frequent searches and seizures, around-the-clock patrols, and installed fixed
and mobile checkpoints combined with “hearts and minds”-style counter-
insurgency tactics. I continued my fieldwork during this period, living in Maré
for another 9 months, concluding initial data collection in November of 2014.
I returned in July and August of 2015, immediately following occupation, and
again in 2017 and 2018 for several more months of follow-up research.
During the original fieldwork period, I spent 24 hours a day, seven days a
week in my field site. To the extent that a gringo (white foreigner) could, I
lived like other favela residents. I shopped at local supermarkets, ate at Maré’s
restaurants, used local forms of transportation, and attended numerous music
Barnes 799

performances, sporting events, and other cultural events. I became intimately


familiar with each of Maré’s 16 neighborhoods by walking or biking through
the labyrinth of streets and alleyways. Prior to military occupation, I attended
dozens of gang-organized concerts (bailes), birthday parties, and holiday
celebrations while subjecting myself to gang control and authority. During
military occupation, I attended numerous meetings and events organized by
the military and was subject to their daily operations.9 Such an immersive and
participatory methodology allowed me to document how each of Maré’s
gangs reacted to military occupation, including their illicit activities, territorial
presence, and use of violence. A supplementary appendix provides further
information and transparency about the ethical, logistical, and methodological
choices I made during and after fieldwork.
Given Maré’s large size (more than one square mile) and population
(approximately 140,000 residents), a comprehensive accounting of occupa-
tion through participant observation alone was not possible. Therefore, I also
collected several other forms of data. I conducted 205 semi-structured in-
terviews, 73 of which were with current and former gang members, 62 with
community leaders, 58 with a cross-section of residents, and 12 more with
scholars, researchers, and police.10 I identified most of these research subjects
through a “snowball sampling” of the various social networks in which I
became embedded. Interviews were conducted in private and lasted from 30
minutes to more than 3 hours. I did not record the interviews due to security
concerns but instead took copious notes during the interviews, which I im-
mediately typed up afterward.11 The names and dates of these interviews can
be found in the endnotes. All names are pseudonyms and I have avoided using
any specific information in the text which could be used to identify these
individuals. Beyond these semi-structured interviews, I also engaged in
hundreds of less formal conversations and thousands of daily encounters and
interactions across all three gang territories that I wrote up in more than 400
pages of field notes. Finally, I supplement all of these personal observations
and interviews with data collected from local newspapers as well as studies
conducted by local NGOs.12

Criminal Territorial Control in Complexo da Maré prior


to Military Occupation
To fully understand how Maré’s gangs responded to military occupation, we
must first delve into the nature of gang territorial control and competition prior
to the arrival of the military. Maré’s gangs first emerged in the 1960s and
1970s as loosely organized groups of young men that engaged in armed
robberies and/or the sale of marijuana. By the early 1990s, several local gangs
were integrated into two separate prison-based factions, Comando Vermelho
and Terceiro Comando, which had emerged during Brazil’s dictatorship
800 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

(Amorim, 1993; Arias, 2006).13 Through these affiliations, Maré’s gangs


gained access to Andean cocaine, more powerful weaponry, and, like other
gangs throughout the city of Rio, expanded from small groups of men to much
larger, younger, and more militarized organizations.14 They also began to
more violently compete with one another and gradually consolidate their
dominant position within these neighborhoods. Over the next two decades,
inter-gang violence and competition was a near-constant in Maré and led to
significant territorial turnover, especially during the 1990s. By the late 2000s,
however, Maré’s criminal territories had stabilized and, despite some ongoing
violence and competition, three drug-trafficking gangs as well as a milı́cia
held consolidated control of their turfs prior to military occupation in 2014
(see Figure 1).15
Maré’s gangs maintain a constant and militarized presence within their
territories. During the first 9 months of fieldwork, I observed gang members
ostentatiously displaying their semi-automatic weapons and riding motor-
cycles up and down the streets of their turf every day. All three of the gangs
had placed numerous olheiros (lookouts) and fogueteiros (firecrackers) to
monitor the entrances to their territories for police and rival gangs members.
Each gang sold drugs at roughly three dozen open-air markets called bocas de
fumo (literally, mouths of smoke), which were little more than small plastic
tables with bags of different quantities of marijuana, cocaine, and crack. One
or two gang members called vapores (sellers) were responsible for the ex-
change of money and drugs while gerentes (managers)—with the help of
endoladores (packagers)—cut the drugs into different quantities, packaged
them, and then collected the profits that were eventually passed onto the Dono
(gang leader). Several heavily armed soldados (soldiers) were always located
around the bocas, providing security.16 Prior to occupation, most of Maré’s
bocas operated 24 hours a day with the exception of a few hours in the early
morning. All of these bocas were stationary and several had been located in
the same place for more than two decades.17 During my fieldwork, the three
gangs also sold significant quantities of drugs at massive street parties, called
baile funks, held on weekend nights and attended by thousands of local
youth.18
While much of gang control is derived from their militarized presence and
ability to prevent rivals from entering their territory, they also maintain more
intimate relations to local populations. First, all three of Maré’s gangs had
significant familial and associational networks within these communities.
Most gang members were born and raised in these neighborhoods and many of
the more senior members have several girlfriends with whom they had
multiple children. Each of Maré’s gangs also implemented an informal though
highly effective form of social order. For the most part, gang members re-
frained from abusing or predating on residents unless they suspected them of
collaborating with their rivals or the police. Gang members were also often
Barnes 801

involved in the arbitration of disputes between residents and prohibited in-


terpersonal violence, theft and robbery, as well as some cases of domestic or
sexual violence. Gang punishments for such transgressions included threats,
beatings, expulsion, or even death depending on the severity of the infraction
and the specific persons involved.19 The gangs also offered some residents
access to informal and illicit markets and, to varying degrees, engaged in
limited forms of welfare. Some of the poorest families received a cesta básica
(monthly food basket) from gang affiliates and members of all three gangs
were known to distribute small sums of money or other forms of economic
assistance. Although some residents overtly supported, collaborated with, or
received benefits from the gangs, I found that most of Maré’s 140,000 res-
idents tried to avoid any direct involvement while remaining obedient of their
rules.20 A small minority were either overtly critical or willing to denounce the
gangs through an anonymous hotline (Núcleo Disque Denúncia, 2010).
Despite relatively similar structures and activities, each of Maré’s three
gangs existed within very different security environments in the lead up to the
military’s arrival (see Table 1 for a summary). The following sections describe
these differences to better evaluate the impact of occupation.

TCP: Conquest and Collusion


In the years leading up to military occupation, TCP was the largest and most
profitable gang in Maré. It controlled 10 of Maré’s neighborhoods, home to
roughly 68,000 residents. This was not always the case. In early June of 2009,
the TCP gang, which at the time only controlled four of Maré’s neighborhoods
(see Figure 2(a)), mounted an all-out invasion of their Amigos dos Amigos
(ADA) rival’s turf, managing to gain a small foothold in the area (Figure 2(b)).21
Over the course of the next several weeks, in extremely violent gun battles, TCP
slowly—block by block—conquered the rest of ADA’s territory.22 While some
low-level members were absorbed into TCP, ADA’s leaders and more senior
members fled and found refuge in Complexo do Caju, another set of favelas
located less than a mile from Maré, from which they would mount several
unsuccessful attempts to retake their former turf in the subsequent years.23
Immediately following TCP’s conquest, they installed more than a dozen
new bocas and the gang’s weekly revenue ballooned to an estimated
R$3 million.24 With these expanded drug profits, TCP purchased more
weapons and hired more than 100 local youth to defend their territory, ef-
fectively tripling the size of the gang to an estimated 250 members.25 The
leader of the TCP gang and many of the most senior members also moved their
homes to these neighborhoods, further consolidating their presence within the
area.26 In addition, the gang sought to cleanse their new territory of “in-
formants” who may have provided support to the ADA gang.27 Josué, in
charge of TCP’s security at the time, told me the gang had killed roughly 30
802 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Table 1. Comparison of OCG Territories in Complexo da Maré.

TCP CVNH CVPU

Descriptive characteristics

Number of neighborhoods 10 3 1
Population sizea 67,627 33,185 20,567
Territory size (sq. mile) 0.68 0.23 0.09

Pre-occupation illicit markets and organizationsb

Drug trade Retail Retail Retail


Number of Bocas 20 10 5
Weekly baile funks 1 1 2
Estimated revenue (BRL/week) 3,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000
Estimated active membership 250 150 + 100 100
members
from foreign
CV gangs

Pre-occupation situation

Territorial threat Active (CVNH) Active (TCP) Absent


Latent (ADA)
Relationship to police Collaborative Competitive Competitive
Degree of militarization Medium High Medium

Occupation situation

Territorial threat Latent (CVNH) Latent (TCP) Absent


Active (ADA)
Drug trade Retail Retail Retail
Bocas Mobile Mobile Mobile

Outcome

OCG strategy Fight Hide Flee


a
Redes da Maré (2019).
b
Information compiled by author from participant observation and interviews (6/2013–4/2014).

residents suspected of such behavior in the years after the takeover. “We killed the
men but if it was a woman, it depended on what they said.”28 I asked how they
knew who was an informant. “The other residents denounced them,” he told me.29
After 2009, the TCP gang also developed a more collaborative relationship
with the public security apparatus. In interviews with several TCP gang
members, they described how the gang paid an estimated 20% of their total
revenue, to the local Police Battalion and another R$100,000 to the Special
Barnes 803

Figure 2. (a) Complexo da Maré Territorial Control in 2009. (b) Terceiro Comando
Puro conquest of Amigos dos Amigos in June of 2009.

Police Operations Battalion (BOPE), an elite trained counter-gang unit akin to


the SWAT in the US, which had moved their headquarters to an adjacent
military base in 2011 (see Figure 3).30 According to Josué, “The bribe
804 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Figure 3. Map of Complexo da Maré with BOPE headquarters (installed August of


2011).

(arrego) was usually paid under the Yellow Line (Linha Amarela) bridge.
Their car would pull up and a mototaxi would make the dropoff. We paid a
bunch of the shifts (plantões) that way. The [police] commanders were even in
on it.”31 Internal investigations later revealed that several BOPE members
were, in fact, receiving regular bribes from TCP and at least 10 police inside
the local Police Battalion were suspected of involvement as well.32
In the months leading up to Maré’s occupation, however, TCP’s close
connection with these local police units did not prevent the state’s public
security administration from taking a stronger hand in preparing the entire area
for its occupation. A variety of special police units began to engage in more
frequent operations, eventually surrounding, then occupying the entirety of
Maré including the TCP area several weeks prior to the arrival of the mili-
tary.33 By the time the military arrived on April 5th, police had reportedly
arrested 162 individuals suspected of involvement with Maré’s gangs.34 Many
of the remaining TCP members initially fled or went into hiding, leaving only
the youngest gang members on the streets.

CVNH: Playing Defense amid Frequent Enforcement


The CVNH gang existed within a very different security environment in the
years leading up to military occupation. First, they maintained a more
Barnes 805

antagonistic relationship to Rio’s public security apparatus. As mentioned


above, in August of 2011, the public security apparatus moved BOPE’s
headquarters to an abandoned military base on the outskirts of Maré to prepare
the area for its eventual Pacification (see Figure 3). Unlike TCP, however,
neither CVNH nor CVPU developed collusive arrangements with BOPE and
intensive police operations were a regular part of life in the two CV-controlled
territories.35 BOPE operations always included several armored vehicles and
helicopters, which flew low over the community to prevent gang members
from using rooftops to escape. Despite their highly militarized nature and
frequency, only rarely did BOPE operations result in arrests or outright vi-
olence.36 Instead, CV gang members shot off fireworks as a warning to gang
members (and residents) of an incoming BOPE operation. Gang members
would immediately find hiding places and wait until BOPE had left before
reemerging and resuming the drug trade.37
In addition to the increased attention from BOPE and the public security
apparatus, CVNH also faced an active threat from their TCP rival. Since their
conquest of the ADA area in 2009 until occupation by the military in 2014,
TCP made periodic attempts to invade and conquer CVNH’s territory.
Longtime CVNH gang members described how they often had to rush to
defend their territory in these cases.38 On one occasion in 2011, TCP even
managed to take over the CVNH area for several days before being forced to
retreat due to lack of ammunition and support.39 In October of 2013, several
months after moving to Maré, I witnessed another such invasion attempt when
dozens of well-armed TCP members tried to cross the border into CVNH
territory. The ensuing shootout between the gangs in and amongst the homes
and business of these tightly packed streets lasted for more than an hour during
which time gang members discharged more than a thousand high-caliber
rounds. As a result of these invasion attempts, the CVNH gang ramped up
their militarized presence within their territory and placed a series of around-
the-clock security checkpoints along the border.40
Finally, beginning in 2013, the CVNH gang received a large influx of CV-
affiliated gang members from around the city. As other CV-affiliated gang
favelas in the Northern Zone (notably, Jacarezinho, Manguinhos, and Lins)
were swallowed up by UPPs, hundreds of CV members fled their home
territories. Some of them found refuge in Nova Holanda as it remained one of
the last “unpacified” CV strongholds in the city. By the end of 2013, the
number of gang members in the CVNH area had nearly doubled to more than
250.41 This massive influx of gang members allowed CVNH to better defend
its territory and even make several incursions into TCP territory. Skirmishes
and continued violence along the border persisted until occupation. However,
as occupation approached and the intensity of police operations increased, the
foreign CV members fled along with many of CVNH’s most senior members.
806 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

As in TCP’s territory, the only CVNH gang members that remained on the
streets when military occupation began were adolescents.

CVPU: Low Violence amid Frequent Enforcement


Finally, the CVPU gang, much like their CVNH counterparts, faced signif-
icant police attention and enforcement in the years preceding the arrival of the
military. BOPE and other police units conducted frequent militarized oper-
ations like the ones described above. Oftentimes, a BOPE operation which
began in the CVNH territory would make its way into CVPU’s area or vice
versa. Like CVNH, the CVPU gang mostly refrained from engaging directly
with the better armed and trained BOPE, instead preferring to melt into the
population and wait for the short-lived operations to conclude before retaking
the streets. Unlike their CVNH allies, however, this gang experienced no rival
threat or violence. According to interviews with CVPU gang members and
residents, no one could remember any invasion attempts or shootouts between
gang members in their lifetime.42 As such, the presence of the CVPU gang on
the streets of their turf was considerably less militarized than the CVNH gang
and, notably, the gang’s leader did not allow foreign CV gang members to use
the area as a base of operations in the lead up to occupation.43 Despite ongoing
BOPE operations, the CVPU turf continued to be the most stable and least
violent of Maré’s three gang territories in the years preceding occupation.
Nonetheless, like the other two gangs in Maré, with the arrival of the military,
CVPU was no longer present on the streets save its youngest members (12–
14-year-olds).

Military Occupation: A New Form of Order


On April 5th of 2014, Brazil’s military was given direct authority over the
entirety of Complexo da Maré, what has legally been termed “a Guarantee of
Law and Order” (Samset, 2014). At dawn, 2050 soldiers from the Army’s
Airborne Infantry Brigade, 450 Marines, 200 military police, and an advanced
tactical police squad from Rio’s 21st Police Battalion invaded and occupied
Maré.44 Within an hour, dozens of tanks, trucks, jeeps, and other militarized
vehicles, as well as hundreds of heavily armed and camouflaged soldiers were
stationed on the streets in all 16 of Maré’s neighborhoods. Troops immediately
began search and seizure operations in the numerous homes and buildings for
which they had warrants.45 Even before the actual occupation of the territory,
the military had constructed a large base camp on the military grounds of the
Center for Preparation of Reserve Officials, just outside of Maré (see
Figure 4), where barracks were constructed for all 2500 troops.
The military quickly imposed a new and very different form of order
throughout Maré. Roughly a third of the soldiers were on-duty at any given
Barnes 807

Figure 4. Map of Complexo da Maré with the Center for Preparation of Reserve
Officials military base.

time. Of these, 400–500 were assigned to mobile patrol units from which
soldiers monitored each of the gang territories. During the day, these mobile
units also conducted on-foot patrols in many of the narrow streets and alleys
through which the larger vehicles could not pass. At night, soldiers stayed on
the main thoroughfares with tanks replacing trucks and jeeps. According to the
Commanding General Roberto Escoto, this “saturation patrolling” strategy, in
which units were constantly moving through Maré’s streets 24 hours a day,
was necessary to avoid patrols becoming “static” and allowing the gangs to
operate in areas where the military was not.46
The military also set up 24-hour checkpoints around Maré, many of which
were strategically placed along the major thoroughfares, entrance points, and,
along the border between the TCP and CVNH territories. At these check-
points, soldiers stopped and searched cars, motorcycles, and persons for
weapons and drugs. The nature of these searches were highly targeted and
racialized. Darker skinned adolescents and young men were disproportion-
ately stopped and searched, a strategy the military assured residents was
necessary.47 Some of my interlocutors were searched dozens if not hundreds
of times during occupation and regularly expressed frustration and anger over
these methods.48 “They [the soldiers] can treat us like that cause they’re
wearing the fatigues but you take them off and you’re just another guy like me
from a poor family,” one gang member told me.49
808 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

In addition to their imposition of force, the military borrowed a series of


measures used by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. First, they
organized a company of roughly 140 soldiers to gather intelligence about
Maré’s gangs and to identify their members.50 They also created a hotline,
Disque Pacificação, the number for which was emblazoned on the sides of
every military vehicle, which they encouraged residents to use to denounce the
gangs.51 The military also implemented what can be termed a “hearts and
minds” approach to combating the gangs. They allowed for significant up-
grades to local infrastructure including the construction of 18 new schools.52
They organized dozens of public and private meetings with local NGOs,
representatives of Residents’ Associations, as well as state service pro-
viders.53 They held cultos (worship services) for the soldiers at local con-
gregations and promoted a series of ações sociais (social actions), including
maternal health, painting, and music classes, Luta Livre (Jiu-jitsu) training
sessions, school presentations, and music concerts. They even organized an
event where they offered formal identification documents to residents.54
To say that military occupation transformed life in Maré is an under-
statement. Some of Maré’s residents’ lives improved dramatically as they and
their families were no longer subject to the security and health concerns that
corresponded to gang violence and the drug trade. Gone were the numerous
bocas de fumo, the massive baile funk parties, and the hundreds of well-armed
gang members hanging out at corners and riding their stolen motorcycles up
and down Maré’s streets. The benefits of military occupation, however, were
not felt evenly across Maré’s population. As referenced above, the freedom
and movement of young men and adolescents, in particular, was curtailed.
Moreover, impromptu parties and family events, forms of recreation and
leisure common in most favelas, diminished significantly because the military
made the bureaucratic process for organizing them so difficult. As a result,
many residents spoke nostalgically of gang control. “There was a lot more
freedom before. There were a lot of motos and parties. I miss it,” one young
mother told me.55
Some residents also lost access to forms of economic assistance and
governance upon which they had previously relied. A variety of informal
economies vanished. Streets once lined with shacks and carts selling all
manner of food and household item were no longer allowed and hundreds of
families lost the income they made at the baile funks. In addition, the military
imposed a more regularized building code under which many residents
bristled. The military even bulldozed several dozen informal huts and shacks
(family homes).56 The military was also less effective in resolving inter-
personal disputes and lower-level crimes. One gang member reported that a lot
of boys and adolescents were using the opportunity of occupation to steal and
break laws because they knew the gang was not going to punish them.57
Although anecdotal, such evidence supports findings from other “Pacified”
Barnes 809

favelas, where increases in theft, domestic and sexual abuse, and interpersonal
violence were reported (Cano et al., 2012; Savell, 2014).

Gang Response and Adaptation to Military Occupation


For the first couple of weeks of occupation, all but the youngest gang members
(12–14-year-olds) were in hiding or fled.58 And yet, the gangs were able to
quickly adapt to their new reality. First, all three gangs shifted their drug-
selling techniques. Instead of stationary bocas de fumo located near all of the
entrances and on all of the major thoroughfares, the retail drug trade moved
deeper within Maré and became mobile. I immediately observed young gang
members carrying backpacks and placing themselves in the alleyways along
the major streets. Initially, they were careful to not call attention to themselves
but eventually, they more openly advertised their product by shouting:
“Craque, maconha, pô!” (Crack, marijuana, powder!). The gang members
with backpacks were always accompanied by several other unarmed youth
that served as lookouts, watching for any sign of the military on the sur-
rounding streets. If and when a military truck or foot patrol came by, the boys
would scatter, quickly ducking into a side street or turning down one of the
many alleys which crisscross Maré’s neighborhoods. In most cases, the
mobile bocas went unnoticed by the troops but on several occasions I watched
soldiers pursue these young men. When this happened, the boys would throw
their backpacks onto awnings or rooftops after turning a corner so that, even if
caught, the soldiers would find no contraband. The mobile bocas became a
permanent aspect of the occupation period in each gang territory.59
This method of drug sales allowed the gangs to maintain at least some of
their revenue. The loss of their open-air drug markets and baile funk parties,
however, cost them significantly. According to CVNH gang members, drug
revenues decreased by roughly 75% from between R$1,200,000 to
R$1,600,000 each week to just a few hundred thousand while TCP reported
that their revenues were just one-tenth of what they were before occupation.60
That said, the cost of maintaining the gang also diminished. TCP’s costly
bribery schemes were gone as police were, for the most part, no longer
actively operating in the area. At least initially, the gangs no longer had to
supply their members with the same quantity of weapons and ammunition as
before. Moreover, the salaries of a huge number of gang members which
formerly provided security, served as lookouts, or made money in the drug
trade (either through sales, transportation, or production) were no longer paid
or were significantly diminished.61 According to gang members, many of
these members were left to fend for themselves. Some found formal or in-
formal work while others attempted to leave gang life (more on this below).
Senior gang members continued to earn reduced amounts from the drug trade
or from salaries paid by the gang leader.62
810 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

While all three of Maré’s drug trafficking gangs lost their ostensive control
of the streets and each implemented the mobile boca strategy of retail drug
sales, it quickly became apparent that the dynamics of territorial control and
competition had shifted as a result of occupation. As occupation progressed, I
observed how each gang shifted its structures and activities according to the
security environments in which they found themselves.

TCP: Active Threat and Fighting


Although most TCP members initially went into hiding, within a couple of
weeks, it was clear that they had decided to take a different approach. Visiting
these neighborhoods each day, I noticed multiple TCP gang members were
openly carrying pistols and providing armed security for the mobile bocas.
While not as ostentatious as before occupation, their armed presence was
noticeably different from both of the CV gangs where few if any weapons
were observed for the duration of occupation. It was also apparent that TCP
members were willing to engage military soldiers directly. Over the first
month of occupation, TCP members were involved in several shootouts and
confrontations with soldiers that resulted in the deaths of a couple of innocent
bystanders.63 In a series of public and private meetings 1 month into oc-
cupation, both residents and military officials commented on the volatile
situation in the TCP-controlled area.64
The primary reason why TCP shifted from a hiding to fighting strategy was
due to the active territorial threat of their longtime rival, ADA.65 Quickly after
occupation, ADA gang members began infiltrating the area from which they
had been expelled in 2009. Many of these ADA members, including one of its
leaders, had been born and raised in Maré and, since TCP no longer controlled
the streets and could not monitor the numerous entrances to the area (see
Figure 5), ADA was able to surreptitiously infiltrate their former turf. During a
massive public audience in Maré, Rio’s Public Security Secretary, Mariano
Beltrame, refuted the possibility of territorial contestation between gangs in
the midst of military occupation.66 In a private meeting with NGO officials,
however, the Commanding General of the Occupation Forces, Roberto Es-
coto, admitted that ADA members had, in fact, managed to infiltrate the area.
Despite military checkpoints and vehicles being placed at all of the entrances,
they could not check the many thousands of residents crossing over these
borders every day.67 According to the General, ADA’s presence had already
resulted in a series of confrontations between the gangs and with soldiers. In
further interviews and public meetings, numerous residents corroborated the
General’s admission, remarking on the presence of gang members they did not
recognize and describing confrontations between the rival gangs and with
soldiers.68 According to Thiago, a resident of one of these neighborhoods,
“They [TCP] had to get back on the street. They retook their posts, monitored
Barnes 811

Figure 5. Close-up of the Terceiro Comando Puro territory.

the entrances that the army didn’t, and started carrying guns to defend their
community.”69
The details of these inter-gang dynamics also became known to me through
my involvement with an NGO project designed to rehabilitate gang mem-
bers.70 Nearly 30 TCP members would eventually enroll in the program and,
over the course of 6 months, I accompanied the project while conducting
dozens of interviews with them. Many of these men described their frustration
that the military was either unwilling or incapable of preventing ADA from
making incursions into their territory. They feared their rival would manage to
take back the territory, which would mean they and perhaps their families
would be expelled or killed even if they were no longer formally involved with
the gang. In one memorable interview, Josué, described how ADA had been
searching for him, “They went to my house and grabbed my wife. They
pointed a pistol in her face and asked where I was. They told her they were
going to kill me. My kids were there too.”71 Other former TCP gang members
reported that ADA had been searching for them as well and that their situ-
ations were becoming similarly insecure.72 The coordinators of the reha-
bilitation program told me they were having a difficult time keeping some
these men in the program.73 By the end of occupation, nearly half of the TCP
members had dropped out or were suspected of rejoining the gang.
Despite the military’s efforts to quell the violence, as occupation pro-
gressed into its sixth and seventh months, ADA gang members continued to
812 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

make incursions into the area. Confrontations intensified as the two rival
gangs as well as the military engaged in daily shootouts.74 “The situation is
horrible!” Olı́via, an NGO worker and resident of ADA’s former territories,
decried. “The streets are totally empty after 2 pm because everyone knows that
ADA is hiding in some of the houses.”75 Local schools, which serve more than
7000 students, were closed for several weeks.76 Even after ADA’s leader was
arrested in Maré in late September, invasions, skirmishes, and shootouts
between the gangs and with military soldiers continued through the end of the
year and into January,77 sometimes spilling out onto Avenida Brasil and
stopping traffic on the city’s busiest highway.78 Riding my bike through these
areas in the mornings and early afternoons, I observed TCP members armed
with semi-automatic weapons congregating in several areas. When army
patrols came near, these men ducked into houses, waited for the patrol to pass,
before reemerging to monitor the streets.79
For TCP gang members, the imperative to defend their territory against a
rival outweighed the possibility of arrest or even death at the hands of the
military. In several cases, TCP members even initiated confrontations with
military personnel in what appears to be purposeful efforts to provoke them.80
According to Valdemir, “TCP was shooting at the army to call attention to the
fact that they were still strong. They were also preventing ADA from invading
because there would be more soldiers on the streets.”81 In this way, con-
fronting state forces can actually help a criminal group preserve their territorial
control. This logic matches a phenomenon Lessing has theorized, in which
anti-state violence sends “a signal not to the state but to members of the drug
trade itself” (2017, p. 84). Such a strategy, however, can be costly.
In response to the growing levels of violence, the military implemented
even more aggressive tactics. They closed parts of Avenida Brasil to mount
massive operations involving dozens of tanks and militarized vehicles.
Hundreds of soldiers went house to house searching for gang members.82
They broke down doors and entered homes and buildings without warrants.
After a number of soldiers were injured and one killed in an encounter with
TCP members, the military ramped up their coercive presence even further.83
They installed permanent bunkers with machine guns at strategic points in the
community and placed snipers and lookouts on the rooftops of schools and
apartment buildings. Finally, in early 2015, TCP scaled back their fighting
strategy. According to Valdemir, “the leader (chefe) has ordered to stop
shooting at soldiers because the army was gaining the upper hand.”84
Confronting the military had taken its toll on TCP but, by then, ADA had
ended their takeover attempts as they had also suffered the consequences of
months of fighting. The threat presented by ADA once again reverted to a
latent one. TCP was able to relax their confrontational tactics without the
possibility of losing territorial control.
Barnes 813

For their part, residents of the TCP area became increasingly frustrated
with the behavior of the military and began protesting, which occasionally
brought them into direct conflict with the military.85 Several residents with no
known gang involvement were allegedly shot and killed by soldiers.86 In a
public meeting with the press, numerous residents and civil society leaders
described dozens of violations and episodes of violence and abuse in this
area.87 Survey results confirm these qualitative findings. Residents of the TCP
area reported twice as many violations by soldiers and twice the number of bad
or terrible evaluations of the military (Silva, 2017, pp. 75–79). Some sporadic
confrontations between TCP gang members and military soldiers would occur
until the very end of occupation on June 30th, 2015,88 likely the result of these
much more aggressive tactics. By the end of occupation, 23 soldiers had been
injured and one killed in confrontations with OCG members, nearly all of
them in TCP territory.89 Of the 12 civilian deaths that the military was re-
sponsible for in Maré, 11 of them occurred in the TCP territory, 8 of which
were alleged gang members.90 Nevertheless, when the last of the troops
vacated Maré, TCP quickly reasserted its full control over the area and their
bocas de fumo were up and running within a matter of hours.

CVNH: Latent Threat and Hiding


The response of the CVNH gang was very different than their TCP rival.
Although the CVNH gang can be described as the most heavily militarized
and antagonistic towards the police prior to occupation, CVNH chose a very
different strategy for the duration of occupation: hiding. During the 9 months I
lived under military occupation, I only observed CVNH gang members
carrying a pistol once.91 During 15 months of occupation, local newspapers
only reported two incidents involving gunshots in the CVNH area and it is
unclear whether CVNH members were even involved in these episodes.92
CVNH’s hiding strategy occurred largely because the active threat from TCP
reverted to a latent one for the duration of occupation.
The violent confrontations and shootouts between CVNH and TCP along
the border, which had characterized the period leading up to occupation,
ended immediately. Neither of the two gangs would attempt to invade or
infiltrate their rivals’ territory during occupation. This was partially because
the military had strategically placed around-the-clock checkpoints and mil-
itarized vehicles at several places along the border where the gangs were
accustomed to invading each other’s territory (see Figure 6). Similar check-
points, however, had been unable to prevent ADA from infiltrating TCP’s
territory. Why did neither TCP nor CVNH try to infiltrate each other’s territories?
Unlike ADA, neither of these gangs had members that were born and raised in
their rival’s territory and, therefore, neither group was motivated to “retake”
their home turf. Moreover, their members lacked the intimate knowledge and
814 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

Figure 6. Close-up of the CVNH territory.

social connections that would have allowed them to remain undetected in


enemy territory amid a military occupation. Thus, the TCP-CVNH rivalry
remained latent for the duration of occupation.
The lack of active territorial competition between CVNH and TCP was
most visible along their shared border, an area referred to by residents and
gang members alike as the Faixa da Gaza (Gaza Strip) because of the amount
of violence which had occurred there over the years. Quickly following
occupation, numerous shops and stores appeared where none had existed
before. Residents were able to move through this area without being con-
cerned about shootouts or being questioned by gang members though they
were often stopped by the military. In a public meeting held in early July,
nearly 3 months into occupation, numerous residents from the area remarked
on the lack of shootouts and greater calm that occupation had brought to their
lives.93
Nearly 20 CVNH members would eventually join the gang rehabilitation
program mentioned above. I accompanied this group as well. The former
CVNH members did not describe the same difficulty with the occupation like
their TCP counterparts. In fact, many of them believed occupation to be an
improvement over the previous era of gang control, suggesting that the need to
defend their territory against an aggressive rival had caused a lot of problems.
In fact, nearly every one of CVNH’s members had participated in or been
present during at least one shootout between the gangs while several reported
Barnes 815

being involved in more than 20.94 Such long-term and frequent violence had
clearly taken its toll on many of the CVNH members. Severino, for instance,
thought “it would be better for everyone if there weren’t territories.”95 Inácio,
a former senior member, even hoped that the drug trade would eventually
become more like the United States where “you just call someone and they
bring the drugs to your house.”96 Former CVNH gang members also believed
the military to be less violent and aggressive than Rio’s military police, which,
given BOPE’s focus on the CV areas in the lead up to occupation, is un-
surprising.97 While many of the CVNH members also complained of a lack of
parties and entertainment during occupation, they found military occupation a
much less stressful environment and, according to the coordinators of the
program, the CVNH members did not have the same issue with recidivism at
least during occupation.98
Although many of the senior CVNH members initially fled the area at the
beginning of occupation, after less than a month, I heard reports that they had
returned and were hiding out.99 In the subsequent weeks and months, I
occasionally observed these men, unarmed and unaccompanied by the large
security details which had surrounded them prior to occupation. They
maintained low profiles. Inácio, a close friend of the gang leader, said he had
returned because “he doesn’t want to lose his territory which can happen if you
spend too much time outside.”100 Several other CVNH gang members agreed
that it was important for the gang leader to not be absent, especially when
occupation ended, and police operations and violence with TCP resumed.101
Although territorial threat remained latent and CVNH members stayed in
hiding for the duration of occupation, conflicts between residents and the
military nonetheless emerged. For one, the military, responding to the in-
creasing violence within the TCP area, began to engage in more aggressive
practices throughout the entirety of Maré. In public meetings, residents de-
scribed increasingly hostile interactions between residents and the military.102
I personally witnessed several occasions in which soldiers pointed their rifles
at local youth and shouted racial slurs and insults at them.103 Frustrated youth
began to harass and provoke the soldiers. Large groups of 20–30 youth would
congregate on the main streets of CVNH’s territory late at night, shouting
obscenities, and throwing rocks and bottles at the soldiers.104 Troops used
rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds.105 According to CVNH
gang members, these boys and adolescents were not gang members but
wannabees and hangers-on.106 Confrontations between unaffiliated youth and
the military continued until the end of occupation on May 1st, 2015, two
months before they would leave the TCP area.107 Within a matter of hours, the
CVNH gang had resumed their heavily armed presence, disbanded the
troublesome youth groups, and reestablished their open-air drug markets.
816 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

CVPU: Absent Threat and Displacement


Like Maré’s other two gangs, the mobile bocas were the only visible aspect of
the CVPU gang immediately following the military’s occupation. Despite this
similarity, the CVPU response was distinct from either of the other two gangs.
I never observed pistols or rifles on the streets and, aside from several mobile
bocas, more senior gang members did not return to this neighborhood like in
CVNH’s territory. Residents also complained that the absence of the Dono and
senior gang members made resolving problems within the community very
difficult.108 CVPU’s choice to remain outside their territory during military
occupation was the result of the relative absence of a territorial threat.
Despite spending significant amounts of time and maintaining numerous
contacts in this area, I had a difficult time finding CVPU members to interview
during occupation. While both the CVNH and TCP gangs had a large number
of members join the gang rehabilitation program, not a single CVPU member
enrolled. Why? First, I noticed that many of the TCP and CVNH gang
members that did enroll were older—the average age was 25—and most had
experienced significant violence during their tenures.109 All but four of the
gang members in the program reported that they had lost at least one if not
several friends to violence.110 Many of them were disillusioned with gang life
and described the cumulative effects of stress from the fear of victimization
and death.111 Although the CVPU gang had suffered intensive policing
operations following BOPE’s arrival to the area in 2011, neither residents nor
gang members could ever remember shootouts between gangs. In fact, the
gang had no territorial threat (latent or active) from any rivals for the past
several decades largely because CVNH provided them a buffer against their
closest rival, TCP (see Figure 7). The relationship with CVNH, although not
always harmonious, had never involved any violence and the two gangs had
remained allies and part of the same overarching faction for more than two
decades. This more stable environment meant that CVPU gang members were
less likely to be traumatized by their gang tenure and, therefore, the draw of
rehabilitation and leaving the gang life less attractive.
Another explanation for the lack of CVPU members in the rehabilitation
program is that some of the TCP and CVNH gang members used the program
as a way to stay in their respective communities during occupation given the
higher levels of threat and their possible need to defend their territory. CVPU
members, by contrast, could stay away, avoid possible enforcement and
harassment by the military, and still be unconcerned that their territory would
be there for them when occupation ended. Either way, the lack of territorial
competition (prior to and during occupation) likely shaped the willingness of
CVPU gang members’ to enter into the rehabilitation program.
Finally, the antagonisms and confrontations between the military and
members of the community were neither observed personally nor described in
Barnes 817

Figure 7. Close-up of the CVPU territory.

interviews with residents in this area. In public meetings, nearly all of the
denunciations and complaints came from other areas of Maré. Again, part of
the reason may be that Parque União had been a less violent and unstable area
for quite some time and, consequently, more economically secure. In fact, this
neighborhood has many of Maré’s most expensive shops and restaurants and
receives many visitors from outside. Parque União is even referred to by local
residents as the Zona Sul (Southern Zone) of Maré, a reference to the wealthy
and touristy neighborhoods surrounding Rio’s iconic beaches. This less so-
cially disorganized context likely helped contribute to a more pacific occu-
pation. And yet, despite the CVPU gang being little present in their territory
for the duration of occupation, when the military left for good on May 1st of
2015, CVPU gang members quickly returned to the area, reasserted their
presence on the streets, and resumed the open-air drug trade.

Discussion of Findings and Alternative Explanations


From the case studies above, it is clear that the military’s occupation of Maré
meant that all three gangs could no longer effectively monitor and defend their
borders. In the case of TCP, ADA used this opportunity to infiltrate their
former turf which precipitated TCP’s fighting strategy. Violent contestation
between these gangs also led to direct confrontations with the military. This
finding corroborates existing work that points to the weakening of incumbent
818 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

territorial control as a key mechanism driving violent OCG responses to


military intervention (Dell, 2015; Flores-Macı́as, 2018; Osorio, 2015; Rios,
2013). However, weakening incumbent control alone does not account for
why only the ADA-TCP territorial rivalry became active during occupation.
Drawing on the work of Daly (2016), I argue the geography of recruitment
is key to understanding why some OCG rivalries turn violent in the midst of a
crackdown. In her seminal book, Daly finds that the dynamics of territorial
control and competition between Colombia’s paramilitaries were shaped by
patterns of recruitment leading some of these groups to remilitarize after
signing peace agreements in the early 2000s. While the context investigated in
this article differs in important respects, recruitment patterns clearly mattered
for where rivalries turned violent during Maré’s occupation. The information
and social networks available to ADA members were instrumental in both
their desire and ability to attempt to retake their former turf.
First, having grown up in these neighborhoods, ADA members were
intimately familiar with the local geography. They knew how to infiltrate the
area without being detected and could easily navigate the area’s labyrinthine
streets and alleyways. In addition, because of their continuing connections to
some residents in these neighborhoods (which TCP had unsuccessfully at-
tempted to eradicate), ADA had places to hide and likely obtained information
from residents about military and gang positions and behavior. Even if they
were ultimately unable to retake the territory, ADA’s more than 6-month
campaign to reconquer this area in the midst of an intense military crackdown
is a testament to the importance of local information and social networks in
territorial battles between Rio’s gangs.
The ADA gang also clearly had the desire to reconquer their former
territory. Beyond any material motivations, “turf possesses a symbolic value
that often trumps its economic value. Turf is typically the setting of a group’s
collective memories, a meaningful geographic space for young men as they
transition from childhood into adulthood” (Papachristos et al., 2013, p. 420).
In this light, ADA’s gambit, although incredibly risky, was an opportunity for
their members to return “home.” Overall, the geography of recruitment and the
personal connections of OCG members to particular territories offers one
plausible mechanism for why inter-criminal competition gets activated in the
midst of a military crackdown.
The very different responses by Maré’s other two gangs demonstrate how
even non-violent OCG strategies are also shaped by territorial considerations.
Most senior CVNH gang members returned to their territory quickly after
occupation and maintained a noticeable though low-profile presence. CVPU,
on the other hand, mostly stayed away. I argue that this difference is also
related to territorial imperatives. For more than two decades, CVNH had
fought an on-again off-again war with their TCP rival. Even if that threat was
diminished during occupation, they were not going to quickly forget about
Barnes 819

their longtime rival. CVNH needed to be prepared for the reactivation of this
territorial threat whenever occupation ended.112 Meanwhile, CVPU’s grip on
their territory was never in doubt. The gang has been led by members of the
same family since the 1990s and has never faced any territorial competi-
tion.113 Returning to the community during occupation was unnecessary and
would have only put them in danger of being discovered and arrested.
There are several plausible alternative explanations which must also be
addressed. First, could the violent reaction of TCP be the result of some other
internal gang process? For instance, TCP’s leader was arrested by Federal
Police in a luxury apartment in the Western Zone of the city several weeks
prior to occupation.114 Perhaps TCP members became violent due to the lack
of control of the rank-and-file or because of internal conflicts rather than the
threat from ADA. However, in interviews with TCP members, they all
maintained a clear idea of the leadership structure of the gang, never once
mentioning any internal fighting or conflicts. In addition, because Rio’s gangs
are thoroughly connected through prison-based networks, gang leaders retain
their leadership and continue to dictate some gang-level policy in spite of
incarceration. It is more likely that the arrest of TCP’s leader prior to oc-
cupation further reinforced ADA’s belief that they could take back their
territory.
Another possible explanation is that the various gang responses were the
result of the military’s different approaches to confronting them. The troops, at
least initially, were divided into three bases, called “strongholds” (pontos
fortes), a strategy the military had developed to combat Port-au-Prince’s gangs
as part of Brazil’s deployment in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in
Haiti (Harig, 2019). Perhaps each stronghold varied their tactics to produce
different gang reactions. However, the military’s strongholds did not match up
with the borders of the gangs but overlapped them significantly.115 Moreover,
the entire troop contingent, from the General down to every soldier, were
rotated out of service every 2 months. By its end, 23,500 troops eventually
took part in Maré’s occupation.116 While the strategies of the military certainly
evolved over time, the differences between Maré’s gangs were observed
across multiple troop deployments. The military’s behavior does not account
for the different gang responses.
Next, following the work of Lessing (2017), perhaps TCP remilitarized and
confronted the state in their effort to return to a corrupt equilibrium, from
which they benefitted before occupation. Brazil’s military, however, has no
history of corruption like Rio’s police and, by all accounts, soldiers did not
engage in any corrupt behaviors while in Maré. In fact, part of the reason why
the military decided to rotate their entire personnel every 2 months was to
prevent the emergence of such corruption schemes. It is unlikely that the TCP
820 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

gang would have engaged in a yearlong campaign of violence and con-


frontation if they had little hope of developing durable corruption schemes.
Finally, Magaloni et al. (2020) argue that we should observe CV-affiliated
gangs responding to state intervention more violently than the other factions
(ADA and TCP) due to CV’s greater organizational capacity (it is the largest of
the three factions) as well as its longstanding antagonistic relationship with the
state. The results from Maré’s military occupation were quite the opposite,
suggesting that micro-level territorial imperatives outweigh overarching
faction affiliations and policies. Magaloni et al. also argue that preexisting
criminal governance regimes determined the outcomes of Rio’s Police
Pacification Units (of which Maré’s occupation was technically a part though
UPPs were never installed). They hypothesize that Pacification interventions
should reduce violence and improve security in territories where gangs
maintain abusive relations with local populations while deteriorating social
order where they cooperate with residents.
Overall, I found Maré’s gang-resident relations preceding occupation to be
neither wholly abusive nor cooperative but considerably more complex, multi-
faceted, and variable. That said, in the period leading up to occupation, the most
abusive gang-resident relations were in the CVNH territory due to the large
number of foreign gang members which had been allowed to reside in the area.
These men were much more likely to threaten and abuse residents than native
gang members.117 Vinicius, a local teacher described the importance of gang
members being cria (born and raised in the neighborhood) in this way:

Guys from outside create problems in the community because no one knows
them. I don’t know them! It’s different when you know someone from infancy.
The conversation is different. You ask how their kids are, you talk about family.
The community will always seek out the gang members from here to resolve
problems.118

For many residents in the CVNH territory, occupation improved the se-
curity environment dramatically because they no longer had to deal with
abusive foreign gang members or the violent confrontations between CVNH
and TCP. Thus, Magaloni et al.’s predictions seem to be borne out in this case.
However, the less abusive relations between CVPU and residents also resulted
in a more pacific occupation period. Overall, governance dynamics preceding
occupation do not seem to determine the outcome of such interventions.
Rather, I would argue that both governance dynamics and OCG responses to
state intervention are subservient to territorial imperatives vis-à-vis rival
groups. Such a finding is reminiscent of civil war contexts, where the need for
territorial control trumps all other considerations (Arjona, 2016; Kalyvas,
2006; Metelits, 2010).
Barnes 821

Conclusion
By the time the last of the troops left Maré on June 30th, 2015, the Brazilian
military had conducted an estimated 83,000 operations, arrested 674 indi-
viduals, apprehended 255 minors, and made 1356 seizures of guns, ammu-
nition, drugs, and stolen vehicles.119 And yet, within hours of the military’s
departure, each of the three gangs had reestablished their presence on the
streets and dozens of bocas de fumo were open for business. The four Police
Pacification Units which had been planned for Maré never came to fruition
and none of the military’s development or security initiatives remained in
place. If the goal of military occupation was to permanently weaken the gangs
in the area and reestablish the Brazilian state’s monopoly of violence for the
long-term, it had failed.
That said, according to Rio’s Institute of Public Security, the homicide rate
in Maré did decrease from 21 to 6 homicides per 100,000 during occupa-
tion.120 From this perspective, it might seem like occupation was a success.121
And yet, this number obfuscates the frequent confrontations and shootouts
between TCP and ADA that shut down schools and major thoroughfares, as
well as the numerous human rights abuses by the military.122 A myopic focus
on the homicide rate also ignores the increase in low-level crime and public
disorder in some areas of Maré, yet another reminder that social order can
actually deteriorate when OCG control and authority are removed (Arias &
Barnes, 2017; Magaloni et al., 2020). The falling homicide rate also masks the
fact that 2500 military troops with all of the resources of the Brazilian state
never really threatened the long-term presence and viability of Maré’s gangs.
Their divergent experiences during occupation further demonstrate the OCG
capacity to adapt to wildly different environments. Like other OCGs
throughout the world, they do not require a specific organizational form or
leadership structure to operate and can effectively reproduce themselves
without significant revenue streams for extended periods of time. The absence
of violence does not necessarily signify the underlying effectiveness of these
operations. Public security policy must understand that these groups are
incredibly resilient to such militarized operations, whether or not they engage
in outright violence.
In this regard, perhaps the biggest failure of the military in Maré was its
inability to garner resident support in their efforts to combat the gangs. This is
not for lack of trying. The Brazilian military had spent several decades de-
veloping just such a methodology from existing counterinsurgency policy and
stabilization missions (Harig, 2015a; Hoelscher & Norheim-Martinsen, 2014;
Siman & Santos, 2018). In fact, an estimated 60–90% of the Maré troop
contingent had already been deployed to Haiti, where they used an almost
identical set of development tactics and militarized operations (Harig, 2015b).
In Maré, the military made significant upgrades to the infrastructure,
822 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

collaborated with local civil society, and engaged in 24,000 social actions,
spending an estimated R$ 350 million in the process.123 Despite these efforts,
less than 50% of 1000 surveyed residents said the military had had a positive
impact in Maré (Silva, 2017, p. 87). According to one community leader:

The ‘Pacification’ of Maré’ was a lie and an abstract term that doesn’t reflect the
reality. …They haven’t implemented more responsive institutions and although
they have sought out civil society to develop relationships, this is more in theory
and serves as subterfuge for them to control the space.124

Overall, the use of military interventions to combat OCGs needs to be


dramatically rethought. Even community-oriented policing and “hearts and
minds” approaches have mostly failed to gain the long-term support of these
communities and truly weaken the long-term presence of criminal groups.
Although development projects and building relationships with local orga-
nizations are important, they often do little to address the more urgent sources
of precarity and violence in these communities. In particular, young men and
adolescents from marginalized areas cannot be merely controlled through
arrest, detention, and stop and search procedures. They must be engaged,
reincorporated into community structures, and offered viable economic and
social alternatives. As long as gangs and other OCGs have such a constant and
unending source of expendable labor, their influence and control will not
wane.
Perhaps the best we can hope for in the short-term is to limit criminal
territorial competition. Contexts of latent and absent criminal territorial
competition, especially, could open space for these less repressive and violent
public security policies and more positive, longer-term relationships with
marginalized communities to emerge. These dynamics may even allow for
criminal groups to further demilitarize while gang rehabilitation programs—
similar to the one described in this article—and other transitional justice
mechanisms can be offered to young men and women to bring them back into
these communities. Maré’s local civil society organizations have been de-
manding these more accountable, responsive, and restrained public security
policies for decades. Such a shift, however, depends on the willingness of
public security actors, political coalitions, and the general public to seek a way
out of the cycles of militarization that have thoroughly overwhelmed Rio de
Janeiro and much of the rest of the Americas.

Acknowledgments
I would first like to thank all the current and former gang members, community leaders,
and other residents of Complexo da Maré that agreed to participate in this project and
generously shared their time, opinions, and memories. I am forever indebted to my
Barnes 823

research collaborators and the numerous social movements, non-governmental or-


ganizations, and political institutions in Maré and the rest of Rio de Janeiro that opened
their doors to me and supported this project. I also thank Juan Albarracı́n, Rawan Arar,
Ned Littlefield, Lucı́a Tiscornia, Richard Snyder, the editorial team at Comparative
Political Studies, and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful criticisms and
questions. A special note of gratitude goes to Roxani Krystalli who provided excellent
comments and much needed encouragement on the supplementary appendix. Earlier
drafts of this article were presented at LASA 2019 in Boston, MA, and APSA 2020
virtually. The fieldwork on which this article is based received generous funding from
the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S.
Department of Education Fulbright Program. All mistakes are my own.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests


The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

ORCID iDs
Nicholas Barnes  https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9559-6676

Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes
1. I employ the overarching concept of OCG here because: (a) it is, practically
speaking, extremely difficult if not impossible to clearly separate gangs from
cartels, mafias, or other criminal and extra-legal armed groups (Barnes, 2021;
Varese, 2010); and (b) the use of OCG falls in line with other recent work on this
subject (Magaloni et al., 2020; Trejo & Ley, 2018, 2021). In this article, I will use
the terms gang and OCG interchangeably.
2. Magaloni et al. (2020) is a notable exception.
3. See also Albarracı́n (2018); Arias (2017); Arjona (2017); Berg and Carranza
(2018); Daly (2016); Durán-Martinez (2015); Moncada (2016, 2019); Magaloni
et al. (2020); and Wolff (2015) among others.
4. There are some exceptions to this rule. Idler, for one, finds that criminal and other
non-state armed groups can sometimes peacefully share territory in Colombia’s
borderlands (2012, p. 77). Recent research has also found less well-structured
gangs in some Brazilian cities (Wolff, 2015) and rural transportistas in Central
824 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

America (Blume, 2021) to share territory, though not always peacefully, because
they lack the capacity or desire for exclusive control.
5. Some OCGs also provide essential goods and services that the state does not
(such as dispute resolution, social welfare, and access to illicit markets), that
allows them to gain the more active support of a segment of the local population.
Beyond a basic level of order that comes with the control of violence, some
OCGs will develop more significant ruling structures and institutions to govern
various aspects of resident life while others may only offer only rudimentary
mechanisms for dealing with residents. This variation in governance activities is
remarkably similar to contexts of rebel governance (Arjona, 2016).
6. In this regard, it is useful to recall Kalyvas’ (2006) conceptualization of territorial
control in the midst of civil war. He distinguishes between fragmented, two or
more groups exercising limited control over the same territory, and segmented,
two or more groups exercising full control over distinct territories.
7. These three neighborhoods are Nova Holanda, Parque Maré, and Parque Rubens
Vaz but residents often refer to the entire area as Nova Holanda. The gang itself
uses the acronym “CVNH” on the packets of drugs it sells.
8. Coelho, 2014b (see Supplementary appendix for journalistic sources).
9. All meetings have been given a number. Further information about these
meetings can be found in the Supplementary appendix.
10. See appendix for a complete list of interviews. I have provided all interviewees
pseudonyms and removed all references to specific NGOs and RAs for further
anonymity.
11. All quotations included in this article were transcribed from these notes.
12. For the sake of space, I have noted the journalistic citations in the endnotes and
included the full references in the Supplementary appendix.
13. A third gang faction, Amigos dos Amigos, would emerge in the 1990s as a result
of a schism within Comando Vermelho. Terceiro Comando would later be re-
named Terceiro Comando Puro. Every favela-based gang in the city of Rio de
Janeiro is affiliated with one of these three prison factions.
14. Bruno 10/6/2014; 10/27/2014
15. Comprised of retired or off-duty public security personnel, milı́cias are seldom
involved in drug trafficking directly but often run protection rackets and mo-
nopolize certain illicit or informal markets within these neighborhoods. Although
research was also conducted in this area of Maré, gaining access to milı́cia
members was not possible for security reasons. Therefore, I have left the analysis
of the impact of occupation on this area of Maré out of this article.
16. The various roles, locations, and activities of the gangs became known to me
through dozens of interviews with members and hundreds of hours observing the
activities at bocas de fumo. For a more in-depth discussion of the structure of
Rio’s gang factions, see Dowdney (2003, pp. 39–51)
17. Bruno 10/6/2014; Severino 10/2/2013
Barnes 825

18. I attended several dozen baile funk parties across all three gang territories where I
observed gang activities and drug sales.
19. See Arias and Rodriguez (2006) for a discussion of these dynamics.
20. See Arjona (2017) on the importance of obedience.
21. Bruno 10/27/2014; Fulton 7/3/2014; Naldo 12/17/2014
22. Medo deixa, 2009; PM reforça, 2009; Sete morrem, 2009
23. Fulton 7/3/2014; Breno 12/16/2014; Valdemir 1/9/2015; Thiago 1/9/2015;
Megaoperação, 2013; Vieira, 2011
24. Josué 7/22/2015; Luiz 7/30/2014. This estimate is likely high but according to
reports, a similarly sized favela, Rocinha, allegedly sold R$10 million worth of
drugs per month even after the installation of a Police Pacification Unit, so the
estimate is plausible (Comandante da UPP, 2013).
25. Luiz 7/29/2014
26. Daniel 8/21/2014
27. Valdemir 1/9/2015
28. Josué 7/22/2014
29. This dynamic is reminiscent of civil war contexts (see Kalyvas, 2006, Chapter 7).
30. Fulton 7/3/2014; Josué 7/22/2014. Again, these estimates are likely high. Ac-
cording to interviews with former gang leaders across the city, most arrego
arrangements amount to about 10–15% of drug sales.
31. Josué 7/22/2014
32. Leitão, 2015; Sete morrem, 2009
33. Villela, 2014
34. Coelho, 2014a; de Andrade and Coelho, 2014; Platinow, 2014
35. At least once a week according to my field notes.
36. See Larkins (2013) for a description of the performative nature of these
operations.
37. One exception to this occurred in June of 2013 when a BOPE Sargent was shot
and killed during a surprise operation, which led to the 24-hour occupation of the
entire CVNH area by hundreds of BOPE police. Police went from house to house
hunting for gang members, eventually killing nine residents, eight of whom were
alleged gang members (Polı́cia Civil divulga, 2013).
38. Severino 10/2/2013; Marcos 11/3/2014
39. Timo 7/15/2014; Everton 4/17/2014; Marcio 4/17/2014
40. Marcos 11/3/2014
41. Severino 5/15/2014; Bruno 10/6/2014; Breno 3/6/2014
42. Vinicius 11/9/2014; Evaristo 12/23/2014; Gustavo 11/19/2014
43. Many residents and gang members referred to the territorial presence and control
of the CVNH gang prior to occupation as the “heaviest” (o mais pesado) of the
three.
44. Costa, 2014a
45. I followed one such group of soldiers over the course of the morning. They
searched several homes in Nova Holanda but did not apprehend any individuals
826 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

nor find any weapons or drugs (Field notes 4/5/2014). In a subsequent meeting,
Mariano Beltrame, the public security secretary, described these warrants as
issued for “micro-regions” or 3-4 houses because they were unable to identify the
specific houses of gang members (Meeting #9).
46. Costa, 2014b
47. According to one military official during Meeting #20, this was because young
and poor men were most likely to be involved with the gangs.
48. Fulton 7/3/2014; Timo 7/15/2014; Naldo 12/17/2014
49. Fulton 7/15/2014. Even though I passed through their checkpoints nearly every
day for 9 months, the military only stopped and searched me twice.
50. Costa, 2014b; Ghali, 2017
51. According to military officials, the hotline received 1495 calls in the first
7 months of occupation (Valdevino and Antunes, 2014), though the number of
denunciations reportedly diminished significantly after the first few months
(Meeting #26).
52. Junior and Magalhães, 2015
53. See online appendix for a list.
54. Patrı́cio 6/28/2014; Vitor 8/22/2015; Meeting #26
55. Luiza 10/2/2014
56. Field notes 7/22/2014
57. Severino 5/15/2014
58. Many of the youngest gang members are colloquially referred to as bucha de
canhão (cannon fodder) because of their expendability.
59. Artur 1/11/2017; Bernardo 1/16/2017; Severino 5/15/2014; Fulton 7/3/2014
60. Inácio 3/26/2014; Marcio 4/17/2014; Everton 4/17/2014; Josué 7/22/2014
61. Inácio 3/26/2014
62. Josué 7/23/2014; Luiz 7/31/2014; Bruno 10/27/2014; Severino 5/15/2014
63. G. Brito, 2014; Exército intensifica, 2014
64. Meeting #13; Meeting #17
65. Olı́via 9/26/2014; Valdemir 1/9/2015
66. Beltrame Anuncia, 2014
67. Most residents work or go to school outside of Maré. Meeting #17
68. Valdemir 1/9/2015; Meeting #9; Meeting #13; Homem morre, 2014; Brito, 2014
69. Valdemir 1/9/2015
70. The program involved a series of interventions, including primary and
secondary-level classes and tutoring, individual and group counseling sessions, a
monthly stipend, and opportunities for legal employment in the service sector.
See pages 28–30 in appendix for more details.
71. Josué 7/15/2014
72. Timo 7/15/2014; Fulton 7/15/2014
73. Valdemir 12/1/2014; Manoel 9/15/2014
74. Constancio, 2014; Heringer, 2014
75. Olı́via 9/26/2014
Barnes 827

76. Costa, 2014c


77. Em 1 ano, 2015
78. Costa, 2014c
79. Field notes 10/6/2014
80. Baleado na cabeça, 2014; Militar é baleado, 2014; Força de Pacificação, 2015
81. Valdemir 1/9/2014
82. Meeting #33; Costa, 2014c
83. Baleado na cabeça, 2014; Tropas federais, 2015
84. Valdemir 1/9/2014
85. Meeting #33
86. Força de Pacificação, 2015
87. Meeting #33; Antunes, 2014; D. Brito, 2014; Cadu, 2015
88. Bom dia Brasil, 2015; Bacelar, 2015
89. Em 1 ano, 2015
90. Viana, 2018
91. Field notes 6/15/2014
92. Complexo da Maré tem tiroteio, 2014; Tiroteio no Complexo da Maré, 2014
93. Meeting #20
94. Data from entry interviews provided by NGO.
95. Bruno 10/27/2014. Severino 5/15/2014
96. Inácio 3/26/2014
97. Severino 5/15/2014
98. Manoel 9/15/2014; Valdemir 12/1/2014
99. Field notes 4/29/2014; Inácio 4/24/2014
100. Inácio 4/24/2014
101. Inácio 3/26/2014; Severino 5/15/2014; Bruno 10/27/2014
102. Meeting #33; Antunes, 2014; D. Brito, 2014
103. Field notes 7/22/2014; 9/7/2014. For further discussion of racial dynamics within
Maré, see p. 20 of Supplementary appendix.
104. Felı́cia 7/1/2014; Complexo da Maré tem tiroteio, 2014
105. Field notes 7/22/2014; Meeting #29
106. Severino 5/15/2014
107. Tropas federais, 2015
108. Sergio 12/17/2014; Evaristo 12/23/2014
109. Data provided by NGO.
110. Data provided by NGO. Timo 7/15/2014; Fulton 7/15/2014; Josué 7/15/2014
111. Josué 7/10/2014; Fulton 7/3/2014; Bruno 10/6/2014; Daniel 8/21/2014
112. Araujo, 2014; Coelho, 2014b
113. Vinicius 11/9/2014; Evaristo 12/23/2014
114. Vı́deo da PF, 2014
115. Meeting #17
116. Bacelar, 2015
117. Meeting #4
828 Comparative Political Studies 55(5)

118. Vinicius 11/9/2014


119. Tropas federais, 2015
120. Bacelar, 2015
121. Ghali, 2017
122. Antunes, 2014; D. Brito, 2014
123. Força de Pacificação, 2015; Werneck, 2014
124. Meeting #33

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