Creating the Complexo de Israel: Religion, Urban Orders, and Aesthetics in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article centers on the relation between religion, criminal(ized) economies, and the production of urban space in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Our empirical focus lies on the Israel Complex, a cluster of favelas located in the city's northern periphery. The contested formation of the complex hinges on visual and discursive repertoires of city-making in which hybrid religious references derived from Catholicism, Pentecostal Christianity, and Judaism are combined with the aesthetics and territorial politics related to the drug trafficking industry. These hybrid religious references appear on murals near entrance/exit points of the complex, on landmarks, and in online and printed communications issued by members of the local drug trafficking gang. The combination of religious references and criminal(ized) aesthetics supports an emerging and tentative urban order that could best be seen as a theopolitical project consisting of different socio-economic entanglements.