Abstract

SPESNY, Sara León. The “ethical” soldier?: How the Military Police in Rio de Janeiro practice human rights morality. Etnográfica [online]. 2020, vol.24, n.1, pp.133-154. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.8299.

The Pacifying Police Unit was created to implement proximity policing strategies in some favelas of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was set to reconfigure the relationship between the Military Police and the residents of these neighborhoods, historically based on violence and fear. Drawing from a yearlong ethnography of the daily work of a Pacifying Police station, I argue that this new perspective of policing has set human rights as a discourse that soldiers acknowledge, but find ambivalent and contradictive ways of enacting as a way of morality and police practice. Ultimately, the widely spread public acceptance in Brazil to humanize violence and criminalize rights further influences violent police practices and disrespect for human rights specifically in favelas. Some of the reconfigurations of meanings and practices are related to the selective entitlements of human rights, depending on social categories that not only define and delimit citizenship but also humanness.

Keywords : human rights; policing; Rio de Janeiro; morality; violence.

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