Evangélicos em ação nas favelas cariocas: um estudo sócio-antropológico sobre redes de proteção, tráfico de drogas e religião no Complexo de Acari

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to discuss how inhabitants of slums in Rio de Janeiro experiment security amid their quotidian which is permeated by insecurities, violence and social vulnerability. My central hypothesis is that the inhabitants of these localities envision in primordial loyalties (GEERZT, 2008 [1973]), in neighborhood relationships and in networks formed from the sense of belonging to religious institutions, specially the Pentecostals and Neopentecostals, the basis of the necessary security that enables the organization of their lives, their quotidian activities. I aimed to answer the questions that stimulated me from an ethnographic investment in two carioca slums: Santa Marta, located in Botafogo, South Zone and mainly Acari, located between neighborhoods in the North Zone of the city. Throughout the ethnography I carried out semi-structured interviews with evangelical inhabitants, drug traffickers, men, women, youngsters, elders and political and cultural leaderships. Parting from these interviews, as well as the informal conversations whit the other inhabitants of these slums, I could observe that they have great difficulty in experiencing constant security and trust, even in the cases of those who enjoy dense solidarity and protection networks based on kinship and/or sharing Pentecostal religious identities. The paranoia, the fear of gossip and of the enemy on de lookout takeover the lives of these people (and also of the traffickers) on the field. The course of the ethnography enabled a reflection about the importance of analytical articulation of two thematic axis for the study of the slum as an urban/social phenomenon today: religion and violence. That evaluation is fruit of the observation towards the approximation between traffickers who, in these localities, experienced new forms of expression of faith. If in the 1980-1990 decades the traffickers of Acari would expose on their bodies, in their houses and on the slum walls images and prayers the remitted to the afro-brazilian religious universe, currently, they put forward a Pentecostal grammar and paint psalms and other biblical parts on the walls of the slum. If they used to ask protection to the mother-of-saint, now they ask protection to evangelical leaders and the brotherhood community , as well as celebrate their birthdays in thanksgiving cults. The interface between traffickers and evangelicals in the studied communities, with emphasis to Acari, have been producing a livelihood and re-balancing of power in the local and even supra local political and religious field.