Racialized Popular Feminism: A Decolonial Analysis of Women’s Struggle with Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015324
• Author: Anne-Marie Veillette
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211015324

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 239, Vol. 48 No. 4, July 2021, 87–104

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211015324

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

87

Racialized Popular Feminism

A Decolonial Analysis of Women’s Struggle with Police

Violence in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas

by

Anne-Marie Veillette

The action of the women of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to avoid, prevent, counter, and

denounce police violence, both infrapolitically and in the public transcript, are associated

with the rise of a political consciousness that is gendered and racialized in the context of

the genocide of Brazil’s black population. Their resistance, rooted in “Amefricanidade”

and the lingering coloniality of gender, is best described as characterized by an intersec-

tional consciousness of injustice.

A ação das mulheres das favelas do Rio de Janeiro para impedir, prevenir, combater e

denunciar a violência policial, tanto na infrapolítica quanto na esfera pública, está relacio-

nada ao surgimento de uma consciência política de gênero e também a racialização em um

contexto de genocídio da população negra no Brasil. Sua resistência, arraigada na

“Amefricanidade” e na persistente colonialidade de gênero, é mais bem descrita e catego-

rizada como consciência interseccional de injustiça.

Keywords: Favelas, Women, Political resistance, Police violence, Decolonial feminism

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, official statistics report that more than a fifth of the

population lives in a favela (slum). Since drug trafficking factions emerged in

the late 1970s, many of them have been competing for territory in urban spaces,

particularly in the favelas, which offer strategic locations for drug sales. Thus,

several of these favelas are subject to repeated and aggressive police and mili-

tary operations as part of the war on drugs and the long-standing criminaliza-

tion of black populations, contributing to the militarization of these spaces

(Vargas, 2013). Although favelas have always had stereotypes attributed to

Anne-Marie Veillette is a Ph.D. candidate in urban studies at the Institut National de la Recherche

Scientifique (Canada). Her researches focus on women’s daily experiences of violence and politi-

cal agency in urban contexts. Her publications include “Femmes et violence policière” (Lien Social

et Politiques 84 [2020]: 284–301), (with Nilza Rogéria de Andrade Nunes) “As mulheres e os efeitos

da pacificação das favelas no Rio de Janeiro” (O Social em Questão 20 (38)[2017]: 171–190), and

(with Priscyll Anctil Avoine) “Women’s Resistance in Violent Settings,” in Re-writing Women as

Victims, edited by M. J. Gámez Fuentes, S. Núñez Puente, and E. Gómez Nicolau (London:

Routledge, 2019). She is currently pursuing her studies thanks to a Joseph-Armand Bombardier

doctoral scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She

thanks Geneviève Pagé for her revision of the final version and the issue editors for their construc-

tive and valuable suggestions. She also thanks Julie-Anne Boudreau, Ana Junqueira, Rebecca

Vedavathy, and Nicolas Geoffroy for their help at different stages of the publishing process.

1015324LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211015324LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESVeillette / WOMEN AND POLICE VIOLENCE IN RIO DE JANEIRO

research-article2021

88 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

them, today the dominant image in the collective imaginary is one of violence

and danger. As a result, for most residents of Rio, favelas constitute a proverbial

no-man’s land where it is better not to venture.

In this context, my main interest has been to understand police violence and

its role in reproducing intersecting power relations based on gender, race, class,

and spatiality (Veillette and Nunes, 2017). More specifically, my research has

focused on women and police violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. During

my field research, I met with 21 faveladas (women living in favelas)1 in order to

document and analyze their experiences with police violence, its impacts, and

the means used to resist it. The favela residents that I met—all Afro-descendant

women2—identified various ways in which they fight police vio1ence, whether

in their everyday actions or in community or partisan involvements. The wide

range of tactics used to counter police violence on a daily basis combined with

strategies for denouncing it in public spaces can be understood as existing on

a continuum between what James Scott (1990) calls the hidden and the public

transcripts—between forms of resistance that undermine power without being

detected and forms that openly challenge and subvert the established order. In

this article, I argue that the specific realities they have to negotiate and the types

of resistances they use are best described as an intersectional variant of popular

feminism that I call “racialized popular feminism.”

To support this argument, I will first look at the concepts of popular femi-

nism and of motherhood and develop an epistemological framework that links

Afro-feminism, decolonial feminism, and the concept of “Amefricanidade.” I

will then elaborate on what I mean by racialized popular feminism, explaining

the various forms it takes in the hidden transcript, the public transcript, and the

gendered breach that allows passage from one to the other.

PoPular Feminism and the mobilization oF motherhood

as a Political identity

During Brazil’s dictatorship (1964–1985), organizations proliferated and

grew in the urban periphery (not merely the geographic periphery of the city

but its political “margins”). The repressive attitude of the state toward resi-

dents of the urban periphery and its limited involvement in the provision of

basic public services led them to formulate demands of the state to ensure their

survival. These demands addressed the various deficiencies observed in their

communities. According to the political scientist Sonia Alvarez (1990: 43),

women represented the majority of their members, and their demands were

first articulated in terms of their class location.

In the 1980s and 1990s, left-wing feminists took this opportunity to reach out

to women struggling in the working-class and poor neighborhoods to create a

“gender-consciousness solidarity” in order to broaden the growing feminist

movement (Maier, 2010: 35). Some observers and researchers have referred to

this contextual alliance as “popular feminism.” More recently, others, such as

Nathalie Lebon (2014), have instead identified popular feminism as the result

of the organization of women from the working and marginalized classes