For a war yet to end: Shootouts and the production of tranquillity in massive Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of reading Rio's gun battles, or tiroteios, as events that produce meaning, order, and opportunities for profit and extraction, rather than as episodes of chaos and disorder. Shootouts in Rio are recurring incidents entwined with the particular historical trajectory of Rio's informal and illicit markets of different sorts – drugs, weapons, infrastructure, and security. I attempt to show how this intertwining, over time, has produced this atmosphere of war that spreads well beyond the sites where shootouts frequently occur. In the concluding section I discuss how ongoing, citizen-based efforts at quantifying shootouts produce accumulated knowledge and maps that show us that this overarching structure allows the milícias to advance their territories over areas of the city that were free of these militarised spatial routines. I conclude by suggesting that this war ‘yet to end’ produces a constellation that fosters the continuity of Rio's shootouts.