FROM THE FAVELA TO THE SERTÃO:
YOUTH, NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING AND INSTITUTIONALISM
Paulo Cesar Fraga
-ABSTRACT-
The carioca favelas are
largely made up by peoples from the Northeast, particularly from the Sertão. During the 1990s a new tie arises between
these two scenarios: the young people
living in these favelas become involved in the
illicit drug business and the youth from Sertão
enter into marihuana crop growing, and subsequent delinquent activities;
homicide rates noticeably increase in both cases. This however involves only a minority of the
youth in both sectors.
In Rio de Janeiro, cannabis sales start off as a
minor illicit activity and not as large networks, only to go on to become a
larger business upon their penalization when the Penal Code is passed. Towards
the end of the 1960s, trafficking is subjected to more intense police
persecution since the military dictatorship considers this activity as a
"national security" problem and also incriminates consumers. Between 1968 and 1988, period which
encompasses the transition from authoritarianism to political liberalization,
left-wing militants, previously considered the terrorists by the military
dictatorship, cease to be considered an "internal enemy" as traffickers
of illicit drugs take their place when cocaine becomes
part of the national and international market.
Police, who associate youth, poverty and illicit traffic, now persecute young people living in peripheral urban zones.
During the 1970s, increased cannabis and cocaine use make this a more
profitable business than robbing banks. Its impact on urban violence is felt
with even greater impact as of the 1980s when the narcotics traffic network
structure acquires the form of an oligopoly accompanied by bribing of the
authorities and a symbiosis between police corruption and criminal violence.
Capitals thus amassed are then transferred to licit activities such as taxis,
housing, hotels and commerce, among others.
The period following 1986 is the most violent and a greater number of
young people join the narcotics trafficking networks.
Likewise, during the 1990s both violence and
homicide rates rise among youth from the Sertão
pernambecano. This is an area marked by enormous
social inequalities and historical conflicts where the resurgence of violence
ties in with activities related to cannabis crop growing, that which includes
police repression as in the case of forced crop eradication without the benefit
of alternative economic and social means of subsistence. In other cases, it is
related to the bands formed as of the narcotics business networks, tied not
only to cannabis planting but particularly to assassinations and assaults
against trucks. Furthermore traditional feuds between important families over power
now extend to exercising control over cannabis plantings and salaried
employees.
Some of the causes that tie these young people from
the favelas to the narcotics trafficking networks
are: the desire to reduce the gap between their consuming power and the social
pressure to consume; the need to make their social mark; their early entry into
the work market; and the call for even very young children to contribute to
family earnings. Many of these young
people previously participated in diverse working activities with low salaries,
under unhealthy conditions, suffering humiliation, and an absence of legal
protection. There they discovered that the work assigned to them is not an
element which dignifies human condition and that it does not allow them to
access the consumer goods they covet. Furthermore, they also consider that the
school they attended, seen as something quite distant, did not prepare them to
compete in the difficult work market in a globalized
world.
Nonetheless, as opposed to those young people tied
up with the narcotics trafficking networks, the majority of the favelas’ young people continue to believe in existing
social institutions. Thus, subjecting themselves to undignified but honest
labor −just like working in a dishonest job, which is dangerous but
profitable− seem like the two sides of one same reality. Fraga, however,
does want to trace a profile of the adolescent who enters into trafficking. We
do not believe, he says, in the existence of personal characteristics which
make one young person more susceptible than another to go into the drug
business nor in invariably defining social elements. Working at an early age
does not necessarily mean that this young person will become a delinquent since
a delinquent is formed by a social relationship and it is not an a priori
characteristic but the fruit of a process of "subjectivation".
Illicit traffic is also presented as a component which produces subjectivity by
submitting these young people to its rules and hierarchies and compounding the
elements already present in the life of these young people such as social
promotion as of consumption.
In the rural areas, young people live a situation
which is similar yet different from that of the young people of carioca favelas, full of external inequalities. One often sees that these young people are
disillusioned with the possibility of living off of the land or as salaried
workers. Migrating to other regions of
the country is almost the only option they have. They see that their father's
lifelong dedication to the land did not improve their quality of live but more
likely led to degraded life standards, as is currently the case of many small
farmers and salaried rural workers. Official policies never come true, adding
to their feeling of abandonment.
In such a scenario of extreme inequality and
poverty, narcotics’ trafficking finds the perfect terrain to incorporate young
people into its ranks, reproducing the same conditions of exploitation,
violence and concentration of riches inherent to agrarian relations in Brazil,
in particular, and to the Brazilian society in general. In such an atmosphere
of poverty where life is extremely difficult, turning to the growing of these
crops can come as a lifeline to subsistence.
Translated form Spanish by MM Moreno,
Mama Coca
www.mamacoca.org