News of UPP entry in Maré, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, comes preceded by great speculation. After all, no one knows when or how it will be implemented. Thus, residents await confirmation with anticipation and apprehension. They understand that this initiative represents the coming, though late, of the right to public security. In fact, the guarantee of this right is an important step to legitimize the citizen status of residents in these areas.
Many challenges must be considered in the expansion of the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP), for being an action in security intended to progressively become a public policy. The complexity of this issue that intrigues and encourages the area leaders, researchers, professionals and all those who live in this state should be considered with nuances that combine common sense and recognition of what has already been done to date. With this in mind, people should not just watch what is about to come, something that comes with an air of spectacle.
In Maré one mustn’t fail to consider the history of struggle and achievements of its residents who, since the formation of each of its 16 existing favelas, have sought to extend and bring about basic rights. As a result, the region has various public facilities, uncommon in most Rio’s favelas. However, this is not enough. Quality of services rendered is still lacking, and many other rights are still denied.
An aspect that also deserves attention is the articulation among Maré Residents’ Associations which, in a unique way were able to secure many achievements and more recently have joined in the movement “A Maré que queremos” (The Maré We Want). This initiative has, since February 2010, brought together on a monthly basis the resident associations and other organizations of all 16 communities that constitute Maré. They have formulated a document with structural demands and together with the different public organs, have been gradually discussing how to guarantee the quality and extension of services and basic rights to the region.
So, there is a long and fruitful work already in place in Maré, but public security remains a right to be pursued. And then we come to a point worth highlighting: what will be the agenda for public safety in Maré with the arrival of the UPP? Will we see initiatives inherent to this field, such as identification and addressing of violence against children, adolescents and women, mediation of conflicts, access to justice? Will residents’ rights to come and go, to privacy and to freedom of expression be protected?
As has been reported, Redes da Maré (Maré Development Network community NGO), Amnesty International, and Observatório de Favelas (Public Interest Civil Society) launched the campaign ‘Somos Maré e Temos Direitos’ (We are from Maré and we have rights), intended to contribute to ensure this set of rights and strengthen public policies in security, by explaining to residents what their rights and duties are at the moment of a police approach: do nothing to render difficult police action, but the State must respect basic principles, like not entering houses without resident permission.
Hence, we won’t passively watch the security forces’ actions. They should represent the effective arrival of the presence of a republican state and not work as an “Army of occupation,” considering that they are in a war zone and looking upon its residents as the “civil population of the enemy army”.
As citizens, the recognition of the right to public security of Maré residents is, among all others, the starting point. And this is our point of view in face of the possible arrival of a new public security strategy being built by the state government.
Eliana Sousa Silva
Director and founder of NGO Redes da Maré, researcher in public security and visiting professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP
