Cidade maravilha, purgatório da beleza e do caos: pureza, desejo e perigo na representação de favelas cariocas

Abstract

The understanding of Rio de Janeiro's favelas as a problem is not recent. The representations of poverty territories and violent territories have guided the type of interaction that is established with these territories and their populations. However, more recently, tourism in favelas, which was only punctual and with little relevance, is consolidated as a practice, bringing with it other representations and relationships. Based on Urban Sociology epistemology, this research aimed to identify and analyze Rio de Janeiro's favelas as a representation of a microssocial dimension to understand more structural aspects that influence the relationship established with these territories and the place they occupy in the city. For this purpose, the multisituated ethnography was developed, which included field research in some pacified favelas in Rio de Janeiro and analysis of websites regarding agencies that work with tourism in favelas. The time frame of this research lies in the duration of the largest scale program in Rio de Janeiro's favelas contemporaneously: the Pacifying Police Units - PPU. This Public Safety program was elaborated in the face of the state's confirmation of the need for urban restructuring, especially to contain urban violence - even though recent events point to its permanent suspension. In this context, some pacified favelas consolidate themselves as tourist points of the city without, however, breaking the popular imaginary that they are territories of poverty and the main source of the urban violence in Rio de Janeiro's capital. The sustained hypothesis is that, nowadays, the favela representation crosses elements starting from the understanding that they are territories of poverty and crime, tourist point and war zone, resulting in the polarized perspectives of being a population at risk and of risk and triggering, at the same time, the feelings of repulsion and desire. Given this scenario, this thesis presents the portrait of a moment in which representations around purity, desire, danger and, in the limit, war coexist and, contextually, cross spaces and bodies of those who live there.