Good afternoon. Thank you very much for having me here at the seminar series of the change in Character of War.
Since it's been so nice to introduce me and my talk, I'm not going to go bother reading the title again.
Go straight to the next slide. And I always like starting with a very simple plane, a map of the world of standard political atlas,
as we pretty much are presented with beginning in kindergarten, first grade.
The reason I start with this is because this is, in my view,
the one of the tools that inhibits us the most from understanding the way the world really works.
It depicts this notion of globalised sovereign territoriality, which was a principle derived from the piece of Australia's.
Most of the people engaged in research in this room will know, roughly speaking,
exported by imperialism and colonialism and consolidated in the post-World War Two framework and the subsequent independence movements.
It represents a formal, legal, rational state system in the modern image.
What I always like, always like making the analogy or referring back to paper and his the idea of the iron cage of a star has to go heuser,
which creates this sort of notion of constraint,
territoriality and resistance to changes and adapting to effective changes in political authority, particularly in local territories.
It's, as John Ruggie would say, homonyms.
So it's a genre. I always like quoting John Ruggie here in the beginning.
It's a variant of structuring cultural space in a familiar world of territorially disjoint, mutually exclusive, functionally similar sovereign states.
And the chief characteristic is territorial rule and consolidation of all personalised and personalised authority into one public realm.
Unfortunately, or I don't want to make a value judgement here, it is not effectively consolidated throughout the world.
We see spaces that do not conform to this form of political authority.
And this is where the international order is represented by this political map that I showed in the previous slide is contested in local arenas.
And here I'm not talking about weak, failed or fragile states.
I'm not talking about ungoverned spaces. And I'm not necessarily talking about post-conflict or civil war settings or substate or
transnational phenomena because all of those conceptualisations in one way or another,
then use the standard conceptual political authority represented in this map as a starting point once again.
And this is exactly what with my contribution of the concept of illicit order.
I'm trying to engage with the phenomena directly through theories of social order,
rather than indirectly via theories of the state, and also these in terms of policy.
These spaces continuously have more and more of an impact in an era of globalisation, and we see this through the US national security strategy,
for example, the U.S. security strategy and most recently the EU document on the EU as a global actor,
which all address in some form or another spaces that are not in effective control of
states and where alternative actors have established some form of order or authority.
And what I'm really trying to do here is understand what's going on within these territories and how we got here.
And I'm going to do so by looking particularly in the case of the fellows of rulers.
Now. Now, I usually leave this part of my talk to the end,
but because I wanted to adapt my talk a little bit to my fellows from the change of Character of War Centre.
I'm actually going to put it in the beginning,
and this is essentially the state's response to the constitutional question order in the families of Rio, where.
And this was really interesting that there's a 29 memo written by the US Consul General in Rio at the time.
That was addressed to the State Department, the National Security Council and CIA, among others.
And it had the subject tags like boundary and sovereignty claims external political relations and narcotics.
I'm just going to read an extract from this memo.
So he writes, The favela pacification program marks the first time that state,
municipal or federal authorities are attempting a clear and hold approach,
the success of which is predicated upon pushing criminal elements out of the community,
establishing a permanent police and government presence, then providing basic services and civic privileges to favela residents.
This approach closely resembles U.S. counterinsurgency insurgency doctrine in Afghanistan and Iraq
and highlights the extent to which favelas have been outside state authority like counterinsurgency.
The population is the true centre of gravity,
and the program's success will ultimately depend not only on effective and sustained coordination between the police and state municipal governments,
but on favela residents perceptions of the legitimacy of the state.
In addition to the obvious security factors involved with the pacification program, there are also significant economic economic interests at stake,
with some analysts estimating Rio de Janeiro economy would grow by 38 billion reais or 21 billion U.S. dollars.
Should favelas be reincorporate into mainstream society and markets?
And then he finishes with post will work closely with relevant state authorities to facilitate exchanges,
seminars and institutional partnerships towards this end.
And so what we're really talking about here is this sense that the international order represented in that initial map that I showed,
really trying to reimpose its form of governance that it normatively espouses is superior and its
economic structures over these territories that have fallen into the hands of criminal gangs.
The program essentially had four different and I'm speaking in the past tense here,
because the program has pretty much failed and drug gangs have become resurgent in this area.
So it's yet another case of showing how difficult states,
how difficult of a job it is for states to actually reassert state authority within these territorial domains.
And the program in four phases. The first one, trying to recover the territory.
The second was a stabilisation phase which sought to secure territorial gains by removing trafficker fortifications,
confiscation, confiscating weapons. The third was an implementation phase where they establish community based policing structures.
And finally, a post implementation phase where they created complementary social programs that address that legitimacy aspect.
That was such a big part of that memo that I just read an extract from this.
Here is a map showing depicting what was going on during that first phase where
they're essentially trying to recover the territory from these territorial gains.
And as you'll see,
not only were this looks pretty much like a military invasion and this shouldn't surprise you because that's essentially what it is.
We're operating in a context of de facto urban warfare.
And you have special units from the police as well as as well as naval.
Uh, well, essentially Brazilian Marines and other members of the armed forces that are usually an external function
and a military function meant to protect the sovereign state from external enemies operating internally.
And these are some examples of them, the fortifications that were used by drug trafficking gangs in order to protect their territories and
and essentially rule through violence over their territories while they're still in their hands.
And finally, because I thought this would be very interesting for some of you in the room and
you probably know what weapons and and gear they apprehended here better than me.
But you have a very large range of rifles, assault rifles.
And as you know, there's a famous case in 2009, just after Rio was awarded the Olympics, where they actually shot down a police helicopter.
With a grenade launcher. So that's just to give you sort of an idea of the type of level of violence that we're working with here.
And this map pretty much shows within the municipality of rioters narrow the red or yellow territories controlled by gangs.
The blue was where the where the favelas.
And that were then taken over by state government through this program.
And the purple were areas where they were just beginning these operational phases.
Now, after the Olympics, unfortunately,
the program is now essentially defunct due to lack of funding and the resurgence of criminal gangs in a lot of these favelas.
But this is just to show you the impact that these illicit orders can have.
This I'm essentially beginning with the end here.
What I'm really trying to understand is how these illicit orders that exist within these territories
that the state is so keen on disbanding actually arose in the first place and to do so first,
offering in fact a concept that can adequately grasp the phenomena and then explaining the process through a trust process, terracing approach.
And the reason that those two aspects are involved is because that's what my talk today is going to focus on.
There's a third dimension to my work which tries to understand these local illicit or as part of a global society.
I'm not going to go into that in detail today, but just keep it in the back of your mind.
So conceptualising essentially what I'm trying to do is get away from this negative conceptualisation of
territorial control by or this idea of weak states and failed states and moving towards a more conceptual,
more positive conceptualisation in terms of understanding what is actually going on
in these territories and who who has authority and who is able to establish order.
So rather than focusing on state weakness, I'm focusing on gang strength.
And this is an attempt to essentially jettison the state centric lens that most analytical approaches take to this type of problem.
Often it's presented in a context of civil war,
of post-conflict settings or substate governance that often reimpose oppressive preconceived categories.
And what I'm also trying to do is get away from this idea of a transnational lens,
which often also presuppose the existence of a sovereign territorial state system that I began with in the first slide.
And what I'm really trying to transmit as well is this idea that these actors don't arise below the state,
but apart from the state and the fact that we're essentially seeing what is a contestation between state authority,
getting authority play out in these urban contexts as a form of urban warfare really shows that to a certain extent
they're operating on the same territorial plain in order to assert these different forms of authority and order.
What do I mean by order? Order is, according to my definition, the establishment of norms, rules and institutions that offer governance.
In this case, by an actor that's non-state.
But I'm also trying to get away from the idea of a non-state actor, because what again,
going back to this positive conceptualisation and what I'm looking at is the process of structural action within these territories.
Where where I'll get back to this in a moment,
but where essentially the authority and institutions are constituted in a recursive and cyclical process.
A key element of the critique of the structure of an illicit order then is authority.
And here we're not talking about the type of legal, rational authority that we are familiar with in the Vivier and context of of bureaucracy.
But we're mostly in a framework of charismatic authority.
Where one individual or a group of a group of individuals is able to create a process
of brutalisation by getting followers to essentially re-enact or act on their behalf.
So it's a form it's a principle agent problem and a process by which first internally within the gang structure,
you start seeing the transmission of certain norms and rules,
and then finally that and then also that gang being able to assert those over the territory as a whole, including the broader population.
And we're also what I'm also looking at as a form of plenary authority.
So they have these gangs essentially have authority over their entire territory
and all in all different domains rather than just issue specific authority.
Because a lot of times when we're looking at non-state governance, in particular in the global governance literature,
these are the alternative types of non-state authority are treated in terms of functional lines rather than territorial domains.
And ultimately, the question that we have to ask, is this a form of public or private authority?
Well, it's certainly non-state, but because these illicit orders enact their rule over a territory with a broader population,
it's very much akin to a public authority in in that sense.
Finally, one thing that I also want to clarify, and this is often a problem in the literature where people talk past each other.
Is this informal? Is it illegal or is it illicit?
I chose I specifically chose the term illicit because as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, illicit is a third way of looking at the problem,
because this tends to come up as things that are forbidden or disapproved of by custom or society.
So they're not necessarily illicit from a legal purview because these gangs or these illicit
authorities are able to establish their own form of authority that determine the rules.
And if we're looking at them apart from the state rather than below the state, then we can't conceptualise them as being subject to the laws.
And therefore it's difficult to say that they're illegal borders.
On the other hand, informality is also a function of institutions created by the state that determine what is form and what is informal.
And so I ultimately went with Illicit precisely because I'm also looking at this from the perspective of a global society.
And there you can see a certain you have a sort of going back to the idea of international order.
There is a certain international order that's still conceived of as normatively superior
and it would be then considered licit in in respect to that notion of global society,
territories, of contested sovereignty, how did they emerge?
So what one of my court clients and I'll go to this in the in the specific context
of the fellows of Rio de Janeiro is that crises of globalisation and lead to.
So we're talking about economic processes, political processes and social processes essentially penetrate local arenas and create territorial domains
where state institutions claim nominal jurisdiction but no longer or do not have effective authority over them.
Within these territories, we can then outline three domains where state authority and non-state authority compete.
And this is the core of the theoretical framework which looks at three three domains of social legitimacy,
social, economic, security and organised violence that any type of actor,
whether state or non-state, public or private, has to assert legitimacy, has to assert primacy within in order to establish authority within.
Once the authority has been established within these territories,
you then have this recursive structure creation process between authority institutions that ultimately.
Are able to whereby order is ultimately established.
So how did this happen in the context of real? Looking at the forces of modernity, globalisation.
We start with the colonialism and the slave trade. Here we have the as you know,
the trans like Portugal colonisers of the territory and the transatlantic slave
trade are responsible for bringing a lot of slaves from Africa into Brazil,
primarily for agricultural production. Then in 1888, with the abolishment of slavery,
a lot of these slaves escaped the plantations and create what are called colonials in the hinterlands of Brazil.
That is where they essentially create the target communities.
Then in 1889, they the Brazil established as a republic, essentially through a military led coup.
And this republic is founded on principles of common positivism and modernity,
which espouses theological notions of of dying and progressive, which means order and progress.
Pairs of Rio is also considered a Paris of the South.
And increasingly you have this transition from agriculture as the primary as as
the primary source of economic productivity towards industrial development.
And you also see a lot of internal migration and displacement as a result of this process,
because the the plantations were where you employed most of where most of the slaves
were employed beforehand were also being being changed due to technological progress,
and which meant that you had high amounts of urbanisation and which transformed the traditional social fabric.
So then essentially in Brazil you see this process whereby the rural population becomes increasingly smaller and the urban,
the urban population becomes a mix of not exponentially, but essentially linear has linear growth,
which so the percentage of the rural to urban population becomes very small.
And with this large population growth in in Rio and other urban centres of Brazil,
you start to see the emergence of favelas because of the failure to integrate these migration processes within the broader society.
And this is particularly due to resistance from the upper middle classes,
as well as a longstanding racial tension, discrimination and neglect by state institutions.
So ultimately this results in spaces with a note of absence of state imposed hierarchy,
authority and social order that then become contested by non-state actors.
During this time, particularly in the 1960s, seventies and eighties, when the dictatorship,
when it was a dictatorship, came to power, the income distribution within Brazil also changed dramatically.
So you saw a large rise of top earners earning a larger share of the pie and the lower income brackets also being reduced.
And this ultimately led to the large scale expansion of territories that were now considered favela territories in the urban centres,
and particularly Rio de Janeiro. So let's give you an idea of the global context through which these favelas emerged in the first place.
And then now let's talk about this. The three domains that I mentioned earlier,
which show how the particular actors so the drug gangs were able to then take advantage
of this situation in order to impose alternative forms of authority and order.
This begins with the Organisation of Violence.
And what's really interesting and this comes back to this notion of urban warfare between 24 and 27,
Rio's homicide rate was 49 per 100,000 inhabitants.
This is nearly double the mean of combat related deaths in the three deadliest conflict zones.
Well, as of 1211, which were Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq.
And this violence also probably derived from inter gang and gang police violence.
The. And the gangs originally were a combination of the gangs originally arose from the Candido Mendez prison.
So during the military dictatorship, a lot of normal street criminals as well as Marxist rebels, were in prison together.
And it was during this time that a lot of them were able to escape and they found the favela territories
as the as hiding places where they could then establish niches and begin imposing imposing their rules,
essentially through violence. The first gang was the command of Emilio, which then also resulted in due to trafficking.
So the first gang was Commander Emilio, and they increasingly had infighting.
And then through this process, two other gangs emerged, which were called the Terceiro Commando, a portal that emerged from the North Zone.
And the Amigos Dos Amigos, which formed in a prison later and challenged the CV in the South Zone.
And through the process of the Organisation of Violence,
these gangs were able to create internal hierarchies where gang members often joined as young children between the ages of eight and 13,
and then also went through essentially what is the equivalent of a normal chain of command, beginning with a fusilier.
Then Trafficante slowed down to acquire the coast and shipped Marconi cocaine and finally the leader.
And this one corresponds to a normal infantrymen and what they're often young children who are then placed at the outer rims of envelop.
And whenever they see police officers or any type of external threat,
then they're supposed to launch this fuse to alert the the rest of the chain of command that they're that there's a threat coming.
The then you have the traffickers and the soldiers who also who are also responsible for different functions,
the trafficker being essentially an economic agent who is responsible for selling drugs
and the soldier being a someone who's responsible for the and the military function.
La Guardia Costa is a bodyguard to the leader usually.
And you have different the chef with my cognac or you know, for example, they're responsible for different aspects of the drug trade.
My cognac being a marijuana cocaine because cocaine, which is obvious and all the other drugs, they each have a different boss.
And the problem of succession within this chain of command is overcome through what they would call the process of humanisation.
So basically by creating this structure, then if one of the leader dies, which was actually a common which is a common phenomenon,
there's already a structure in place that would then determine who's the next in line.
So another very important aspect of the Organisation of violence as a key aspect in the creation of authority is transactional,
small arms procurement. And interestingly, all the weapons or most of the weapons come from our cities, states and especially the United States.
And they're mostly military grade semi-automatic assault rifles.
And some smaller calibres are manufactured in Brazil, but most weapons are imported either illegally or through legal channels,
but then resold within Brazil, which also makes them illegal.
So through this organisation of violence, the drug gangs are able to create an endogenous monopoly,
which which is violence essentially used against residents and the enforcement of labour model.
Labour model is the law of the Hill and the severity of penalties depend on what type of offences committed and some offences.
For example, if you murder someone within a favela, which may sound a little paradoxical,
but if you murder someone of the within the villa, you're put into what's called the microRNA, which is the microwave.
And it's essentially a gas barrel that someone someone's put into gas put on the person and a match with.
And then you have what's called a microwave.
So a very brutal tactic that's also symbolically akin to what may have been in the medieval well may in medieval times have been a public hanging.
So it's essentially to send a message.
And then you also have a protection against exogenous forces, which is police and military, as well as the militia,
which is a more recent phenomenon of corrupt state forces,
is creating also these gang like structures that have started taking over territory and other gangs.
Then there's the socio economic security dimension, which is also a fundamental aspect of the creation of authority.
Here we again go back to this context of poverty and inequality that I mentioned as as a result of the broader socioeconomic context that began,
particularly under the dictatorship, where you have the Gini coefficient that's very high,
denoting very high levels of inequality, the poverty headcount ratio between 30.8 and 21.4% also being relatively high,
with over 40 million still living at or below the national poverty line.
Very restricted access to social services, land scarcity and property rights being not very clearly defined,
and also a context of market dominant leads that limit access to markets due to high pre-existing capsid capacity differentials,
particularly in terms of education.
And if you have family ties, it's much easier to obviously get jobs and progress within the economy than if you do not.
And this creates a very and this really creates a problem for people in the favelas
because of their restricted access to employment opportunities and markets.
They look for other social, economic coping mechanisms,
which are mainly the illicit markets and arms and drugs that they are able to exploit due to their control of territory.
That creates an institutional parameter within which transaction costs can be significantly lowered for these trades.
And that, again, goes back to this notion that the the authorities within those rounds are creating and an alternative
institutional framework that's apart from the state and not necessarily below the state.
There's also transnational links, particularly to Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru, where most of the production is done.
So what's interesting about the favelas is that there's no real internal production of drugs like in Colombia, for example.
It's essentially further down to the these activities are further down the supply chain
through the creation of these economic niches and through the extension of social,
economic security by the gang leaders towards the other members of the gang.
And then also in the next in the next step,
the wider community through co-optation and patronage networks that are then able to reinforce the authorities,
they've already gained through the monopolisation of violence. And in this context of social, economic security,
that would create what North and Wallsend north Wall Street one guest termed
the double down political economic double balance in the creation of border.
This just illustrates the, uh, the drug trafficking trends,
particularly in this case the cocaine route where you see cocaine being produced in Colombia, Ecuador,
Peru and Bolivia being exported down to the south of Brazil, which includes both Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo,
and then being further transported to, uh, to Africa and through particularly West Africa, into Europe.
And so what these favelas are offering is not just an.
For local markets and drugs in southern Brazil, but also as transhipment nodes for further afield in Africa and Europe.
This is also some pictures from my fieldwork that illustrate the informal economy within the favelas.
A lot of goods are actually coming from coming externally from either China or other Asian production hubs into the into these communities,
then being sold locally. And the protection for these markets is offered not by the state, but as offered by the drug gangs.
So then this is the main thoroughfare in Pristina, which is the largest Vela in all of Brazil and sometime in South America.
And this is a very important street, because they used to they used to organise these funk parties and, uh, on the street where.
Which was a major outlet for drugs, particularly to the urban population.
Um, young people from the virus, which are the communities, the rich people's communities under,
which are essentially are situated side by side to with the favela.
And so people would come in and buy their drugs there and move out again through the organisation of these these punk parties.
So thirdly, getting to the social legitimacy aspect of the creation of the constitution of authority.
What's really important is to understand also the state's approach and mentality,
which is very, very well represented in this hymn of the military police, the Special Forces.
So just to read a few lines, it goes, for example, to invaded a favela and dropped bodies to the ground.
Do you know who I am? I'm the damned dog of war. I'm trained to kill, even if it cost me my life.
The mission will be accomplished wherever it may be dispersed in violence, death and terror.
So what you see is this state bureaucratic apparatus that has a very militarised approach to to the problem of gangs in in the favelas.
But it also shows how true to certain extent or reinforces this notion of a real
war existing between competing factions that over the control of territory.
And what's interesting is the very reciprocal notions being entertained on the other side.
So this is an extract from a funk song by local rappers who are also members of drug gangs.
And they say, for example, ten day Hill is impossible to invade us in the Alamo.
In the Alamo being German or Alamo, meaning German, but being used as a coffin because they're considered white and taller.
And having the features of European men are going to have some fun because.
And then they hear and then they. I will tell you how things are here.
It isn't easy, not even for the drug repression unit to ascend the hill even, but the which are the special forces trembles.
It isn't easy for the civil army nor the military police.
So again, you see all these very this very martial rhetoric and the creation of these two competing sides over.
And and what's also very featured in these discourses are the idea of controlling territory and invading territory.
Then you also have discourse on authority.
And here, for example, we have a different funk artist from the favela saying We're okay, that's us commanding.
The first you call is us who are in command of a reference being to the command of your brother by brother were multiplied.
To be respected is just to begin respecting the gang and it's order.
There will always be a Gaza Strip on the next corner.
And that's a really interesting reference to, again, this idea of being in in conflict with a much stronger opponent, much stronger adversary.
And this this idea of a consolidated order, existing and over a particular territory, and then defending it from outsiders and others.
And this gets me to a very important point,
which is the perception of self and other and making of identity constructs that reinforce authority of the gangs.
And here you have a and an interesting depiction by popular media who's in who's a local Bella artist who kind
of shows this siege mentality of the gangs within the favela relative to police forces from the outside,
as well as military forces, and how they're essentially trying to defend themselves and protect their community from these external threats.
They also use markings to demarcate territorial control.
So Ada is Amigo Dos amigos.
And you essentially see how this these discourses of control and territory are are visually featured throughout these throughout the streets.
And it gives people a constant reminder of who's in charge.
It's a little bit like hanging up your flag or.
Playing your flag when you're taking over another country and and hoisting your colours.
It has a similar effect. And here you have a particularly interesting one, which is essentially someone wrote a name,
which is the name of the local drug boss who was very famous in my senior year.
And writing over it up is the man which you keep being the pacification program that I showed you in the beginning.
So these you see these discourses as being very publicly being very publicly displayed on on the walls of the favelas.
So to to conclude the section on how identity reinforces the legitimacy of these gangs and therefore also the reinforces the authority of the gangs.
You have three competing identity constructs which are territorial,
ethno racial and socioeconomic that lead to this very fragmented notion of collective identity that again splits
the territory from the broader notion of national collective identity that the international order would be,
but that the international order espouses the idea of the nation state.
So through this establishment of authority,
you have essentially two spiralling processes which where you have the individual
and the group within the gang creating these gang structures in authority,
then being able to through the threat by asserting their dominance within these three domains that I just outlined,
then being able within the territory to to create the institutional framework that
the established governance establishes governance and ultimately social order.
And, and in practice, that looks a little bit like this.
This is an example of rules posted by the command of Emilio that says Attention, respect, residence.
This is the communication from the Commander Familia that from today onwards you're not you will be punished severely if you kill innocent people.
And finally, this creates a distinction between effective boundary making,
which I call social sociological boundary making, where ultimately, through the establishment of authority,
you you end up in a process where despite having a legal a legal framework for for the creation of boundaries, social, sociologically,
these boundaries do not conform to the notion of institutional or sort of the effective boundary zone,
correspond to the legal imposition of state borders.
And therefore,
you get a very different picture when you look at the effective authority over particular realm as opposed to the nominal assertion of authority.
And if you have any more questions, I can go into more detail about all these elements.