Urban militias show the “Mexicanization” of Rio de Janeiro

It was a bright Wednesday morning in Rio de Janeiro when two City Hall bulldozers helped demolish 21 residential buildings in the city. They had been illegally constructed in an environmental protection area. However, these were not the typical shacks in the favelas that have become world-famous through films and music videos. 

The buildings in the Gardênia Azul neighborhood were five stories high. Some of the 200 apartments had balconies. 

Taking them down took two days and over 100 workers. There were families already living there; they had brought in washing machines and left clothes on the clothesline.

This mass eviction happened in July 2020, but the demolition of irregular buildings, most of them on Rio de Janeiro’s West Side, became a routine for City Hall officials. 

One year later, they took down a gated community under construction in the Campo Grande neighborhood. A security gatehouse had been built, and a poster on a street pole advertised land for sale. In December 2021, officials took down 171 illegal kiosks in Gardênia Azul. In 2022, another operation took down illegally built luxury houses in the Vargem Grande neighborhood; the 12,000 square meters area was also under environmental protection.

All the cases have one thing in common: the illegal buildings are attributed to the paramilitary urban mafias which came to be known in Brazil as militias. Their business is defined by territorial control, where criminals charge extortion fees and dominate services such as public utilities and cable TV. 

Militias have always been adaptable. In the 1960s, they acted as death squads to avenge slain police officers. Active-duty police officers were later joined by retired ones as well as firefighters, prison workers, and even drug traffickers, forming militias in a way that more closely resembles their current iteration.

These groups started to take over territorial control in the 1980s and gained that name in a 2005 headline in O Globo, Rio’s leading newspaper. The term quickly gained popularity nationwide.

A 2022 report by the Fogo...