Pandemics, Policing, and Public Health: Informal Pandemic Responses in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, public health risks were just one of many threats to everyday life faced by favela communities in Rio de Janeiro. In conjunction with what is considered by many to be a negligent and incapacitated national public health response, favela residents experienced the state most directly at the local level through a policy of routinized police violence which exacerbated the effects of the pandemic. In response, favelas adopted varied strategies of civil society mobilization in coordinating pandemic responses informally. In this paper, I articulate a theory of why and how civil society actors in favela communities have engaged in pandemic mitigation towards and around the state to gain access to critical public goods and services. I argue that experiences of police violence in favela communities affect the strategies adopted by grassroots organizing efforts to combat the effects of the pandemic. Drawing upon three months of preliminary dissertation fieldwork in 2022, this project evaluates the conditions under which favela residents mobilize towards the state in acts of claim-making, or alternatively work around the state in acts of nonstate public service provision through localized networks of coordinated mutual aid. I analyze the strategies employed by favela community actors to obtain access to pandemic aid, as well as the practices of policing intervention in these communities. From this, I identify what underlies the distinctive mobilization of civil society in producing informal pandemic responses in Rio de Janeiro and how this is juxtaposed with perceptions of state engagement by the urban poor.