São Paulo's Crackland as Urban Impasse: An Ethnographic Account of Mobility, Territory and Viracao as Form of Nomadism

Abstract

Drugs feature in the geography of crime as an economy and as a threat to social order and public health. Spatial and social strategies of crime reduction ascribe agency to the state and to regulated residents of marginalised urban areas. Geographers also discussed anti‐drug policy have a revanchist neoliberal governance. Through the lens of urban territory and urban nomads in the crack‐cocaine‐dominated area Crackland in the centre of São Paulo, we argue that instead of a fixity of homelessness, drug markets and drug users in the geography of crime, one could pay more attention to nomadism, which can be found ethnographically in the journeys of three agents which we discuss. For over 20 years, city authorities have tried to ‘end’ Crackland with social programmes and police actions, or codifying attempts of territorialisation. An urban impasse emerged as these programmes failed to recognise Crackland as mobile territory of viracao. Crackland remains a zone reserved for the city's ‘human waste’ while perfectly integrated in the urban fabric.