Urban circuits of state terror: An anti-racist and intersectional approach to militarization

Abstract

In this article, we analyze situations and cases of police violence using a theoretical-methodological framework that combines the "mobilities turn" with urban and intersectional studies. This is an analytical approach to reflecting on forced micro-displacements and different types of checkpoints that mark militarized daily life in favela and peripheral territories in Rio de Janeiro and Palestine. In the first part of this article, we turn our attention to different ethnographic situations in Rio's favelas, considering the social markers of race, gender, sexuality, and class/territory in all the situations addressed. Through these situations it is possible to understand what we are seeing as "circuits of state terror". In the second part, the closer look gives way to lenses capable of flying over this circuit in a more distanced way, capturing elements to reflect on the internationalization of forms of control and the militarization of life and territory. It is in this part that the perspective of contrast between the government technologies used in the Brazilian favelas and peripheries and those used in the Gaza Strip in Palestine is solidified.