‘Terreiros’ Under Attack? Criminal Governance in the Name of God and Armed Dominion Disputes over Control in Rio de Janeiro¹

ABSTRACT

In this article we analyze acts of violence inflicted by armed groups on members of Afro-Brazilian religions in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro. Based on a media content survey, it was found that in less than 15 years these conflicts ceased to derive from proximity relations and evolved to confrontations over armed hegemony of popular spaces, controlled by drug traffickers and/or militia, who present themselves as members of Pentecostal churches. The criminal governance operated by “traficrentes” and “milicrentes” combines commercial, theological, and doctrinal imperatives with a political project of nation that directly impacts peoples’ ways of life, especially the followers of Afro-Brazilian religions.

Keywords:
armed dominion; autonomous criminal government; religious violence; Evangelical-Pentecostal profile; Afro-religious people

RESUMO

Analisamos as violências cometidas por grupos armados contra religiosos de matriz africana na Região Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro (RMRJ). A partir de um levantamento realizado na mídia, percebeu-se que, em menos de 15 anos, esses conflitos deixaram de ser um problema das relações de proximidade e passaram a envolver confrontos pela hegemonia armada sobre espaços populares, controlados por traficantes e/ou milicianos, que se apresentam como membros de igrejas pentecostais. Evidencia-se que a governança criminal operada pelos “traficrentes” e “milicrentes” misturam imperativos comerciais, teológicos e doutrinários com um projeto político de nação que impacta diretamente os modos de vida das populações, em especial os afrorreligiosos.

Palavras-chave:
domínio armado; governo autônomo criminoso; violência religiosa; perfil evangélico-pentecostal; afrorreligiosos

Introduction

Violent criminality (MISSE, 2010) directed at terreiros² derived from an African matrixes³ has demanded an analytical effort to reframe the field of public security in terms of how it intermediates power, territory and religion. The phenomenon of assaults (SILVA, 2007) on terreiros emerged in the Brazilian media nationwide in the 2000s. The acts of aggression brought to public knowledge in that period were related to situations of conflict in the private sphere (fights among neighbors, family members etc.) and the public sphere (problems at work, in the use of public space, in the form of media coverage) (ALMEIDA, 2019; MIRANDA, CÔRREA and ALMEIDA, 2019; MIRANDA, 2020). Since 2006⁴, the media began to identify the persecution of the povo de santo (people-of-saint) by “evangelical traffickers”^{5 6}, which characterized another type of conflict, distinct from the discriminations that, to some extent, are perceived by society as a mere effect of historical State persecution of Umbanda and Candomblé terreiros (VELASCO, 2018; MAGGIE, 1992).

The expansion of armed groups composed not only of “evangelical traffickers” (VITAL DA CUNHA, 2008), but also “milicrentes” (MIRANDA, 2020), whose exercise of government has incorporated the expulsion and/or destruction of terreiros in territories under their armed dominion as a demonstration of force and authority inside and outside those territories, became the keynote of the news that highlight the aggressions, and one dimension of the consequences, namely, the process of subjugation through the attempt of forced conversion and the public expression of its acceptance. The violations therefore function as a kind of propaganda, characterized by focusing on the persecution of religious people of African matrixes. These people are once again demonized so that performances of expelling terreiros and humiliating their leaders function as a victory “on stage”, presented as a spectacle to maximize the impact of audiovisual framing, and add prestige and reiterate the symbolic, warlike and material power of the aggressor, thus propagating terror marketing effects with every visualization on social media. However, due to the multidimensional character of the conflicts (MIRANDA, 2021), this persecution cannot only be interpreted as a moral issue over the dispute for the religious market (PIERUCCI, 2004; PRANDI, 2004; ANGELIN, 2011). Nor can one reduce the assaults on terreiros (SILVA, 2007) to the results of proselytism/hate speech that shapes a “holy war” (SANTOS, 2012). As we intend to explore in this article, the development of a political-economic system⁷ (ALMEIDA, 2019) underlying the persecutions of terreiros is associated with the idea of territorial domination and a specific governance that has spread from the favelas and poor outskirts of the big cities.

What has been called “religious intolerance” (MIRANDA, 2018) involving Afro religions needs to be understood as a native category that communicates, simultaneously, a kind of life experience, a form of denunciation and a mode of resistance. The production of its multiple meanings projects moralities, subjectifications and calculations in dispute. Its nature is political and its employment aspires to produce and carry a collective memory of the reported accounts and a public management of its reported records. Thus, the category “religious intolerance” has circumscribed the experiences of victimization by religious prejudice⁸ and expresses, in our times, the growth of conflicts between Afro-Brazilian groups and those of an Evangelical-Pentecostal religious profile.

The exacerbation of these conflicts over the years indicates how the Brazilian State treats the recognition of the rights of Christian groups asymmetrically. These groups usually benefit from legal privileges that do not apply, in practice, to minority groups-in this case, those of African matrixes. One such privilege relates to the introduction of Pentecostal religious services into prisons⁹ (ANDERY, 2012; MARQUES and GONÇALVES, 2013). In recent decades, a Christian-evangelical quasi-monopoly has taken hold of the guidance offered to prisoners and their families inside prison complexes in Rio de Janeiro State, in addition to a veiled restriction of religious support of African origin by the prison management for the sake of maintaining its “good order” and internal security. This intramural prominence in prisons coincides with the substantial increase of evangelical temples in poor urban outskirts and, consequently, with the rooting of the Pentecostal worldview and forms of sociability. Thus we have the simultaneous emergence of drug trafficking workers, “favela offsprings”, and security professionals¹⁰, also rising “from below”, socialized in evangelical moralities through their family members and relatives. Their relations of belonging and identification, as well as their connections between interests and opportunities, come to be mediated by a model of belligerent and utilitarian Christianity, focused on the acquisition of goods and consumption habits (VITAL DA CUNHA, 2009, 2014).

The milestone work of Christina Vital da Cunha (Idem) portrays the emergence of this phenomenon. Her research in Acari favela, in the late 1990s, focuses on the change in religious sensitivities among the public and, in turn, among the bosses and workers in drug trafficking and the ways in which they appropriate language of the sacred in the poor outskirts. According to the author, during its occupation of Acari favela in 1995 the police actively promoted the destruction of Catholic and Umbanda religious symbols1¹¹. At this time the symbol of Terceiro Comando faction (a green triangle) emerged into the visual rhetoric of the area, serving as a demonstration of territorial conquest and demarcation of the borders of their armed dominion, in dispute with the public buildings painted yellow, the color of the governor’s party at the time (Marcello Alencar, PSDB).

In 2006, the altar displaying an image of Saint Jorge on the roof of the Parque Acari Residents’ Association was replaced by a billboard that read “Jesus is the Lord of this place”, funded by local drug traffickers. Graffiti conveying biblical messages became part of the community’s landscape, splashed across walls and façades and serving as governmental marketing of crime, and of the standards of conduct desired by the criminal command.

These publicity tools expanded throughout the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro (RMRJ), as an indication of the political nature of their content, until achieving “official status” in 2018, when a sign was placed at one of Nova Iguaçu’s entrances, in Baixada Fluminense, which read: “This city belongs to the Lord Jesus” (EXTRA, 06/08/2018). In the same year, Jair Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign used the slogan “Brazil above all, God above everyone.”¹² Political maneuvering of Christian symbols of a popular-evangelical hue is observed both among criminal autonomous governments¹³ as in State governments and party representations. The configuration of this meta-narrative of a particularized and local exercise of power, which shifts between the (il)legal and the (in)formal, and whose discursive field is pervaded by the Pentecostal language of salvation, prosperity and its calculated self-management of opportunities, advantages and gains. Some construct a lexicon of power making use of the personological attributes of their rulers. There are political-economic gains in having a “spirit” (be it a public spirit, community spirit, a spirit of brotherhood in crime, etc.) which is necessarily of “Christian” origin, steering and legitimizing the dominance of a naturally sinful and corruptible “political will”, vulnerable to the ploys inherent to a power seen a priori as negative. Allied to all this are the ideas that the ends justify the means and the various tangible identities to which people attach themselves are subject to a quantified effect of generic and unitary abstraction, that is, minorities should submit to the majority, narratives found in the justification of particular wars, local laws and their exclusionary technologies of control and regulation¹⁴.

One can witness an authoritarian form of command exercised with a profane (il)legal power, which makes utilitarian use of sacred Christian knowledge, inspired by a warlike interpretation of the Old Testament. The effectiveness of the coercion exercised by criminal groups in poor, densely populated areas, whose borders are provisional and in latent dispute (MIRANDA and MUNIZ, 2018), depends primarily on the guaranteed cohesion of its members, the expectations of hegemonic control of the illegal economy and the submissive adherence of the local population. But coercion is always a scarce resource-costly and finite and of limited spatial-temporal impact. Thus, to sustain internal loyalties and external subjections, especially in large territories, their effects must be amplified through indirect and persuasive intimidating devices. To exercise (il)legal government, subjection by arms is not enough. It requires a belief that convinces, regulates and produces obedience, and also the offer of inclusion in the market through access to the illegal and informal market for goods and services. It is useful for the armed sovereign of the time to make use of the clergyman of the moment and the dealers of the protection economy. In other words, it is appropriate to play with the symbols of legitimacy that promote cohesion, acceptance and loyalty to a type of criminal government and its form of governance. The extremist imposition (VITAL DA CUNHA, LOPES and LUI, 2017) of an evangelical-Pentecostal profile enables the sharpened knives of the armed dominion to control from a distance.

This mode of “criminal governance with God” has produced political, religious and criminal careers and narratives in which faith preachers play the role of producing the moral cement to ground collective acceptance of subjection to the warlords and subordination to the protection dealers in the illegal provision of public goods and services. They are the translator-interpreters of the game rules going through the gears of State, market and religion, enabling the constitution of political arrangements expressed in an economic-criminal cartography (MUNIZ and CECCHETTO, 2021). The framing of translator-interpreters dialogues with Machado’s (2013) proposal in the sense of mapping the power games between State, Church, media and public policies. However, unlike the author, who favors the use of religion by the State for the realization of public security policies, we suggest that in this equation the State and its policies are operated from the Christian religious logic in articulation with armed groups¹⁵.

This Christian religiosity of an evangelical-Pentecostal profile has functioned, therefore, as the moral basis on which armed groups (militias and/or traffickers) take charge of enforcing the construction of “armed dominions” (PROENÇA JR. and MUNIZ, 2007; MIRANDA and MUNIZ, 2018), aiming to consolidate a dual territorial monopoly: the “voting stockyard” and the lands of the Lord, which assist in the collection of illegal taxes while dictating moralities and behaviors to the local population, including the banning of manifestations of other religious beliefs.

Figure 1:
Letter attributed to the Terceiro Comando Puro (Third Pure Command - TCP) in 2017, with reference to the restriction of religious manifestations of African roots¹⁶

The open letter to the residents of Cidade Alta does not only fill the official role of a governmental directive, a libertarian manifesto, a public summons and a moral call specific to a particular territory. By stretching beyond the boundaries of the favela, its discursive structure and rhetoric form a document with the principles and values of the new governance, a solemn air to communicate serious warnings and personalized affective overtones. The main theme is a warlike-biblical odyssey that tells of the epic conquest of a territory under the rule of the servants of “strange Gods” and of a population in exile because of “macumbadas”. Our fieldwork in the RMRJ has shown that the modes of control exercised by armed dominions and the police, and the implications of this on the daily lives of residents in territories under intervention and/or dispute, form a model of communication that is not exclusive to a specific criminal group and has been brought up to date with social media. In 2017, the same year that the aforementioned letter was released, two videos were broadcast on the instant messaging app WhatsApp, in which criminals appear in different locations (Nova Iguaçu and Ilha do Governador), forcing afro-religious devotees to destroy their own terreiros and sacred objects, under death threats (ALMEIDA, 2019).

The religious allegories paraded in the official communiqué allude to a liberating victory of the soul, body and pockets achieved by the violent hands of a criminal, warrior authority illuminated by “My GOD” Jesus, which justifies its rule through the praise of Christian designs as references for government and by exhorting conduct that is also Christian as a manifestation of obedience to a new regime of coexistence. The upshot is an air of prophecy that brings the promise of a life of abundance, conditioned by the scarcity of religious plurality.

In addition to the videos, the pamphlets that were handed out and the posters stuck on posts, the modes of operating the “criminal governance with God”, the morals and ethics that inform the exercise of its authority, are also communicated through audio recordings sent via WhatsApp. In April 2021, a series of audio messages determined the prohibition of Saint Jorge’s parties, banned people from wearing white clothes and ordered the closure of several terreiros in Belford Roxo¹⁷, in the Baixada Fluminense area. This has been a widespread means of communication between members of armed groups, and between these and the residents under their armed rule. An example of how this direct, far-reaching economic interaction between ruler and ruled is exercised can be seen below. It consists of a significant fragment illustrating the tactics used to legitimize a mode of governing, by ensuring protection for the population based on the distribution of widespread threat:

Do you think that going around stealing bread bags from old ladies like those guys do is cool? We don’t do things like the Comando Vermelho for anything in this world. Minors aren’t here to be used and killed by us, no. Minors are here to be instructed, to be taught the new doctrine and to go back to where he was raised and make a difference. (...) From now on and forever more, the Cidade Alta belongs to the Terceiro Comando Puro, bonde dos taca bala¹⁸, army of the Living God! From Israel! (Audio recording attributed to Álvaro Malaquias de Santa Rosa, aka Peixão) (MAXX, 17/05/2020).

A policy to reduce crimes against property that does not exploit or else suspends practices of extortion against residents, such as charging fees, is a powerful legitimization tool that produces and strengthens credibility and trust. It represents an important strategy to differentiate types of criminal governance and demarcate identity and belonging. The following announcement is signed by Comando Vermelho (CV) and aimed at Quitungo and Guaporé communities, in Brás de Pina, a neighborhood in the Northern Zone of Rio de Janeiro city. It began circulating on social media after the expulsion, in late September 2021, of militiamen who charged security fees¹⁹. This documental piece shows that the armed retake of territory had as its political mission “to free the residents from oppression” in a community “already long-suffering and abandoned by the State” and that was the “victim of militias” who charged fees for essential services and security. This is a political-libertarian narrative of a criminal group that recognizes itself as a government from within-“as crias (the offsprings)”-and which takes responsibility for security and for guaranteeing what are deemed to be the rights of residents²⁰.

Figure 2:
Image of a letter attributed to Comando Vermelho, circulating on WhatsApp in October 2021.

Statements like these, attributed to the leaders of criminal groups, serve as documents/monuments (LE GOFF, 1996), instituting a collective memory. They also operate as stateness producing instruments (PITA and MIRANDA, 2015). Their narrative brings an intentionally more formal and bureaucratic style to give an official appearance, mixed with an ordinary language, understandable for anyone who has access to the message. This intentional mixture results in a type of political discourse that elucidates meanings in dispute, showing how power relations between the subjects are guided by situations that may seem unusual to outsiders, but which are meaningful for those on the inside and are shown to be linked to political, ideological and class positions, incensed in territories under armed dominion. They constitute a mode of speech in which words are reproduced to demonstrate an association between the religious and political-economic domains, which may be at the service of (il)legal and (in)formal forms of government.

From assaults to attacks: the politics of ‘God above everyone’

In 2007, the drug trafficker Fernandinho Guarabu (Terceiro Comando Puro - TCP)2²¹, who frequented the Assembleia de Deus Ministério Monte Sinai church and controlled the illegal drug trade and “alternative” transport services on Ilha do Governador, ordered the closure of ten terreiros in Morro do Dendê. In 2013, graffiti with biblical sayings began appearing on walls in the area to demonstrate it was “all dominated”, or rather, under the command of the converts, who, despite their wishes, could not be called “brothers” because they followed devotees of crime (LIMA, MOLINA and SILVA, 2019).

The expulsion of terreiros is one of the high-exposure actions with significant normative impact that function as a political demonstration of faith and capacity to exercise government in the eyes of the community. One version of events reports pastors blamed everything bad that happened in the favela on the presence of terreiros. Another version would be that Fernandinho Guarabu himself was disappointed with the performance of terreiro leaders, expelled because their spiritual work had not produced the expected effect. What matters here is not to discover the “true” justification for the assaults, but rather to highlight the effects of these rumors when associated with discrediting terreiros and reinforcing the power of the conversion of “evangelized traffickers” (SILVA, 2016).

It should be stressed here that rumors form a repertoire of discursive tactics fundamental to the construction and management of reputations of people and places and to the instrumentalization of a field of surveillance and correction. They are credible because they present warnings in simple language about the problems and moral dangers that directly affect the subjects involved; they reinforce the moral boundaries of a group, producing a unity of meaning through the disqualification of other groups and, not least, they produce the effect of veracity built on the legitimacy of the source and its chain of trust, which enhance the reach of coercive devices. Some degree of management of shared knowledge and of checked, unverified and false information is a practice of governance, whether criminal or not. Rumor and gossip are a part of the technologies of government and politics and are highly profitable in the redistribution of coercion and reinforcement of social cohesion²².

Acari and Morro do Dendê became reference territories for the conflicts because they were identified by the media in relation to high profile disputes over the control of illicit trade between criminal groups. These areas, called “unstable territories” by government and Third Sector actors, have also been the scene of many police operations as they are considered “key” locations for the organization of illegal consortia and the translocal expansion of their networks. Like the so-called complexes of Maré and Alemão, these spaces were treated as “marginal communities”, model places of social deprivation and source of violent crime problems (MACHADO DA SILVA, 2011), as “Big Brother favelas” under the surveillance of society and the mainstream media, and also as “political favelas”, because they drew the attention of politicians and demanded a repressive, albeit one-off and unfocused, State intervention.

From 2017 onwards, with the circulation of videos on social media showing terreiros’ destruction scenes, the dissemination of hortatory speeches by traffickers ordering or heading closures, depredations and expulsions, another scenario of conflict and public expression develops. Although religious actors still call acts of aggression “assaults” (SILVA, 2007), the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) started to call them “attacks” (atentados in Portuguese). This change in the State’s narrative regarding violations against terreiros indicates that what had previously been circumscribed to the management of latent and diffuse threats had become more tangible-fulfilling an exemplary and propagandist function of supposed total surveillance and immediate sanctions. These actions range from the expulsion of terreiros to the murder of its members (ALMEIDA, 2019).

The normative-moral classification “assault”, despite evoking the idea of an offence of some gravity, could indicate a one-off or systematic act of aggression with diverse motivations and likely to be perpetrated by agents who are also diverse. The category “assault” was already part of the language of persecution learned by the povo de santo in dealing with prejudices and discriminations of certain State, social and religious actors. However, it did not imply an explicit and structured project of power. The normative-legal classification of “attack”, as proposed by the MPF, points to a violent and criminal act executed by specific agents, motivated by political and/or religious issues. This change of categorization indicates orchestration in accordance with political projects. In the territories under armed control, the attacks constitute tactics that can be employed with available logistical and symbolic resources to assert the political-economic project of criminal groups that “clear the land”, eliminating terreiros, for the hegemonic imposition of a system of evangelical-Pentecostal values that best serves their styles of governance and their forms of negotiation with the State. What is established is not a “parallel State” of crime in communities that lack God, king, Law and order, but rather an autonomous criminal and itinerant government, that is strategically intolerant and belligerent against Afro-Brazilian religious practices. This government exploits people, goods and services under a negotiated tolerance, convenient for segments of the State.

It should be noted that Brazil is a secular State which institutionalizes a civil religion under a Catholic-Christian umbrella. The symbolic language of the objects that adorn government facilities, public offices, courts, police agencies and prison units communicate the meanings of authority and how that power is exercised. These are accompanied by portraits of managers, decalogues alongside Christian symbols, such as the crucifix on the walls and images of patron saints. Similarly, criminal governments also exploit and benefit from faith to ensure their armed rule through the utilitarian regulation of religious expressions, the aspiration to control customs and behaviors by pragmatically exploiting the sacred. In poor urban outskirts, machinations of faith also go hand in hand with the functions of government, even if they are illegal and informal. Here, once again, management of religiosity is found to be a profitable way of constructing the official character for the production of subjections and controls over territory and population.

Fragments and clues about violations against terreiros and their use

The data on which this work is based are part of a broader project that aims to explore how the Brazilian State has dealt with cases of “religious intolerance/religious racism”, the victims of which are the followers of religions of African matrix in Rio de Janeiro, Sergipe and Alagoas States, in Brazil. The work, conducted to follow up research coordinated by Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda (2020) since 2008, is a multi-method analysis (qualitative and quantitative) taking different data sources as its basis (MIRANDA, MUNIZ and CÔRREA, 2019). The cases of violence against terreiros, taken here as one of the sources developed, were selected based on a survey and systematization of media occurrences of violent crime (MISSE, 2008) involving terreiros nationwide, published on online media available between January 2008 and July 2019 (ALMEIDA, 2019). The media’s exploration of the practices of destruction and physical aggression directed at the povo do santo often conceals other violence that cuts across this process. However, the media coverage reveals a narrative field that addresses the practices of religious intolerance, exposing a politics of meaning which harbors disputes for the very act of naming the phenomenon and its categories in use, the selective production of its public visibility, the ways in which the ethnic-racial-religious issue is articulated, the distribution of militant, victimized and State protection standpoints, and the attributions of authorship and their implications.

We call the analyzed material media occurrences because we observed a basic difference between what can be considered a police record, news and reporting about a fact. It is a type of media product that may or may not be created in the communication environment of the internet, but is reproduced on the internet. The main consequence is that its reproduction in other circumstances and with different characteristics, dispensing of the traditional method of constructing a journalistic fact, is directly related to the impact on cultural identities and subjectivities (Ibid.). The set of media occurrences, when applied to the geographical and temporal frames, compiled a raw material base of 149 cases, considering the following markers: “religious intolerance”, “religious racism”, “terreiro destroyed”, “terreiro stoned”, “terreiro set on fire”, “breaking and entry of terreiro”, “pai de santo expelled”, “mãe de santo expelled” and “evangelical trafficker”.

For the production of the map and tables presented in this article, we considered only the media occurrences that deal with “attacks” and “assaults” against Afro-Religious people narrated by the media. As the objective is to represent what kind of cases came to the attention of the public, we disregarded the occurrences that address the theme of religious intolerance/religious racism in an opinionated manner, classified as “Editorial”. We also disregarded the degree of repercussion of the cases²³ and, therefore, the occurrences that represented developments about the same event were excluded, for the purpose of surveying the types of crimes reported. Thus, of the 150 media occurrences catalogued, we acquired a sample of 81 related to victimization suffered by terreiro communities, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:
Types of crimes committed against terreiros in Rio de Janeiro State (from January 2011 to April 2021)

TYPOLOGY OF THE CRIMES	TOTAL
Against property	35
Against public property (images and public monuments)	4
Against private property (terreiros, homes)	31
Against people	34
Threat, expulsion, verbal aggression	16
Against life (homicide)	6
Other crimes against people	12
Attacks and assaults	81
Total media occurrences	150

• Source: Data developed by the authors.

For the scope of this article, we have taken a geographical (Rio de Janeiro State) and historical (from January 2011 to April 2021) slice of the media occurrences. We have also tried to analyze the reports registered by the Disque Denúncia (Crime Stoppers Hotline - DD)²⁴ in the same period. From this sample, 51 cases were selected and catalogued in the database, from the index terms “religious intolerance”, “religious discrimination” or “racism”, because they were related to violence targeting terreiros, as shown in Table 2:

Table 2:
Reports of violence against terreiros by municipality (from January 2011 to April 2021)

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	Total	Total (%)
Rio de Janeiro	5	2	4	1	4	2	3	3	3	1	-	28	54.90%
Belford Roxo	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	1	-	7	10	19.61%
Duque de Caxias	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	1	-	3	5.88%
Macaé	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	1.96%
Maricá	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1.96%
Mesquita	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	1	1.96%
Niterói	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	1.96%
Nova Friburgo	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	1.96%
Nova Iguaçu	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	--	-	1	-	2	3.92%
São Gonçalo	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	2	3.92%
Teresópolis	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	1.96%
Total	5	2	6	1	5	2	4	8	5	4	9	51	100.00%

• Source: Disque Denúncia, data developed by the research team.

The DD records show that the largest number of cases originates in Rio de Janeiro city. However, seven reports were registered between January and April 2021 alone from the municipality of Belford Roxo, regarding death threats to pais de santo and mães de santo (priest / priestess of Afro-Brazilian religions) and the expulsion of terreiros by traffickers in Água Branca, Jardim Gláucia, São Leopoldo, Vila Pauline and Vilar Novo. According to the DD records, it is not common for the complainant to give any information in their reports as to which armed group is carrying out the actions and threats, but in some cases, it was possible to identify this relationship (Table 3).

Table 3:
Number of reports of ‘religious discrimination’ allegedly committed by traffickers, broken down by drug faction denomination and location (January 2011 to April 2021)

Municipality	Terceiro Comando (TC)	Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP)	Total (TC and TCP)
Belford Roxo	-	6	6
Duque de Caxias	1	-	1
Nova Iguaçu	-	2	2
Rio de Janeiro	-	2	2
Total	1	10	11

• Source: Disque Denúncia.

It is interesting to note that in the small set of reports that identify some authorship, 11 out of 51 reports, there is only one armed group and its internal division, the TCP/TC, which appears in media reports as the main armed command responsible for attacks/assaults on terreiros and Afro-religious people, commanded by “evangelical traffickers” and the creator of the “Bonde de Jesus”. There is a significant absence of information governance by militias and the CV and the way their rule is enforced locally in terms of practices of religious intolerance and procedures for regulating the provision of religious services in their territories.

On the other hand, in the fieldwork, interlocutors reported that in late 2018, in the Abacatão favela in São Gonçalo, the CV banned terreiros from opening after the manager’s niece consulted with a pomba-gira who declared the girl was pregnant. However, after the baby shower, it was discovered that the girl in question actually had a myoma. Consequently, the favela boss ordered the closure of all the terreiros. In early 2019, at the request of the mãe de santo who has been at the site for over 40 years, he allowed them to operate only on Mondays, maintaining the ban on any new terreiros being installed in the area. However, the oldest terreiro in the favela could continue its practices freely, without hindrance.

These gaps cannot be properly explained by the quality of the reports, since mapping the armed dominions and their forms of engagement has been a strategic priority of the DD since its creation in 1995, which has implied continued improvement in the processing and flow of the reports. Since there is a severe lack of information on the relationship between criminal groups and attacks/assaults against terreiros and religious leaders, it is important to find ways to understand these gaps and the emphasis on the TCP, which are a constitutive part of the rhetoric of religious intolerance.

The first point to be highlighted concerns the marketing of crime. The theatricalized performance of the attacks/assaults committed by TCP members allows for the production of a subservient local public and audiences threatened remotely through smart phone screens. This is part of the TCP’s publicity game, which has created its own “repercussion cases” about its style of government making use of the Evangelical-Pentecostal profile. According to Muniz and Borges (2017), the leaderships of criminal factions do not have causes to defend, but rather calculations to perform in the political and economic dispute for illegal markets and for armed territorial control. They use terror against certain social groups, which serves as a message to the competitors of the moment and occasional partners. They thus seek tacit accommodations inside or outside prisons, and even in fund-raising for local politicians. They may use violence against certain individuals and social groups without any prospect of obtaining direct advantages, but only to amplify their reputation and influence. They terrorize to show they are stronger than they actually are. They terrorize to assert their existence and identity in the search of supporters. Also according to Muniz and Borges, it is not possible to produce terror without an audience, in silence and invisible. After all, it is necessary to exacerbate the uncertainty and unpredictability the effects of terror practices produce on their direct targets (religious groups, for example) and indirect targets (residents, rival gangs, politicians, etc.). “Wreaking terror” is the aim of those who intend to communicate the effects-demonstration of the costs of “breaking deals”, the collection of payments to buy the operation of criminal “firms” and the guaranteed safeguards for their managers (MUNIZ, PROENÇA JR. and BORGES, 2021). Terror is used as a technology of government by those who, deprived of a social and economic support base, lack the means to confront the State, disputing sovereignty through civil war or promoting governmental instability through guerrilla warfare (Ibid.). “Wreaking terror” is firstly marketing for the criminal government that needs to promote spectacles, showing ostentatious criminal acts, to achieve immediate and unlimited dissemination.

The second point refers to the media coverage and its selective production of exposure and conversion of religious intolerance from a social issue into a public problem. The differentiated construction of the relevance of the news expressed in the cases of attacks/assaults on terreiros and Afro-religious people chosen to cause external repercussions serves to promote fame and reputation within the “world of crime” and in the territories under armed rule. The attacks/assaults by the TCP bring a sensationalist component and a central ingredient of interest in the business disputes of the mass media: the relationship between drug trafficking and Evangelical-Pentecostal religion. Spotlights on “evangelical drug traffickers” serve the political-economic clashes between the media conglomerates of the commercial groups and those owned by evangelical churches for the dispute of monopolies, audiences, sponsorship and political influence.

The third point on the absence of reference to other armed groups as the authors of attacks/assaults and the focus on the TCP results from the effects of repercussion in the media on the construction of the social memory of these events and the reputation of their authors. Media coverage contributes both to redefining and directing what is understood as a situation of major public concern and importance, and to realigning social expectations of repressive action by criminal governments that regulate behavior, inhibiting undesirable behavior. Many of the gaps may denote silence negotiated with residents, potential whistleblowers, which point to specially developed strategies to ensure control by the criminal governances of God, which correspond to the last point mentioned here.

In the book Mapas de percepção de risco: Metodologia multimétodo para análise de territorialidades afetadas pelo domínio armado (MIRANDA, MUNIZ and CORREA, 2019), the result of research into the corporate and illegal management of electricity theft in São Gonçalo and Duque de Caxias, the authors portray the specific ways in which armed dominions engage in regulating the illegal market of “gatos” (illegal connections to the power supply) and controlling access by electricity company employees. They observed that in the “militia-controlled area” the militiamen themselves approach the company’s technicians. Meanwhile, in the “trafficker-controlled area”, in addition to intimidation by the trafficker, the “resident” approaches the technicians and uses his belonging to a “risk area” to threaten them with retaliation. In the latter case, the threats are more widespread. Something analogous seems to occur with the control of the terreiros and their operation. The field of surveillance in armed commands is not only vertical, executed by its members, but also horizontal, composed of the residents themselves, who, against a backdrop of amplified suspicion, internalize distrust as a form of reciprocity, collaborating for the control exercised by their criminal government with the production of a type of self-policing.

A specific reality which is exposed neither publicly nor privately is instilled in these poor territories, where numerous eyes and ears are tuned into everything that is happening in and around the place. To a certain extent, everyone is part of a preventive warning network and a community of information, rumors and gossip that must promptly serve the “perimeters”, the militias’ collection agents, and the “chegados”, residents who act as go-betweens for the traffickers. One can thus imagine that the threats and intimidation faced by Afro-religious people are to some extent widespread-directed at individuals by interlocutors of the armed groups who might also be residents, next door neighbors, acquaintances, relatives etc. This may partly explain the silences and the concealment of cases of intolerance exercised through the coercive logic of good neighborliness, i.e., “he who warns is a friend”.

Analysis of the reports allows us to identify not only the actions of traffickers when committing the violations and damage to property (breaking and entering, vandalism), but also other actors who generate conflict with the terreiros. As we can see in Table 4, there is a balance between reports involving acquaintances²⁵ (family members, neighbors etc.) and reports referring to traffickers, and then a smaller number of reports involving aggression started by religious people, which do not fit into the other categories.

Table 4:
Cross-referencing between matters reported in the report and alleged authorship of the event (from January 2011 to April 2021)

Report/author	Partner or boyfriend (ex)	Family	Neighbor	Teacher	Administrative manager	Catholic churchgoer	Evangelist churchgoer	Trafficker	Others	Not identified	Total	Total (%)
Religious discrimination	3	2	7	2	5	1	7	17	6	3	51	37.23%
Drug trafficking	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	17	-	-	19	13.87%
Threat	-	-	3	-	1	-	3	7	1	--	16	11.68%
Racial discrimination	-	-	2	1	3	-	-	-	4	-	10	7.30%
Sexual discrimination	-	-	-	1	2	-	2	-	3	-	7	5.11%
Violence against women	3	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	5	3.65%
Breaking and entering	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	-	1	3	2.19%
Illicit possession of a firearm	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	3	2.19%
Vandalism	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	3	2.19%
Noise	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	-	2	1.46%
Non-compliance with labor rights	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	-	-	-	2	1.46%
Locating a fugitive from justice	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	2	1.46%
Obstruction of public roads	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	2	-	-	2	1.46%
Abandonment of a child or adolescent	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Abuse of authority	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Sexual harassment	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Drug consumption	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Irregular tree felling	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Bodily injury	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	1	0.73%
Poor service from public and private bodies	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Animal abuse	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	1	0.73%
Complaint about private and public schools	-	-	-	1	-	-	--	-	1	-	1	0.73%
Complaint about defective products or services	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	1	0.73%
Kidnapping and false imprisonment	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	1	0.73%
Vagrancy	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	0.73%
Total	6	4	16	5	15	1	17	53	17	5	137	100%

• Source: Disque Denúncia, data developed by the research team.

There is a known relationship between what the media focuses on and the construction of the public security agenda, especially the policy of occasional police operations, which turned a one-off police action into routine, generating a shortage of ostensible policing that instills control over territory and population (MUNIZ and CECCHETTO, 2021). Therefore, whatever has been shown on the local RJTV news or been reported by a newspaper and caused substantial repercussion tends to guide the political decision on how police actions are deployed, especially in poor territories. A construction of the (in)security realities in Rio de Janeiro, their described truths and the political priorities prescribed by journalistic authorities, in accordance with the electoral ambitions of government officials, have for decades worked to circumscribe what public problems should be and what their interventions might look like.

The case of violence aimed at terreiros represents a challenge to this modus operandi of steering public security management, since, as we shall see, this relation does not take place. Cases are brought to the fore by pressure from the religious followers themselves, who engage through social media to push the issue. It is noteworthy to consider that the media’s method is to report cases that have been formally reported to the police or to agencies of the justice system. Thus, we emphasize that the amount of incidents carried by the media fall far short of representing the overall reality of religious discrimination, since these cases usually involve the victims dealing with such conflicts informally (ALMEIDA, 2017), which is reflected by the significant underreporting of such crimes (MIRANDA, MOTA and PINTO, 2010). Even when cases do reach the Judiciary, the way in which they are handled extinguishes the religious, as well as the ethno-racial, dimension of the conflict, resulting in another form of invisibility (MIRANDA, CÔRREA and PINTO, 2017).

The procedural characteristic of the data: mapping the (de)territorialization of terreiros and producing fleeting territorialities

As it was necessary to understand how institutions handle the processing of information on these events, we endeavored to seek other sources related to the cases, in addition to the accounts given by victims and militants, which we have already explored in other publications (ALMEIDA, 2021; ALMEIDA and BOAZ, 2021; CECCHETTO, MUNIZ and MONTEIRO, 2018; MIRANDA, 2015; MIRANDA, 2019; MIRANDA, CÔRREA and ALMEIDA, 2019). It should be emphasized that the approach adopted is not guided by a collectivist research methodology, since the data are not considered to be external factors in relation to the phenomenon they attempt to describe. On the contrary, we intend to explain how this phenomenon is constituted in direct relation to the ways in which the different forms of recording it express a procedural characteristic. Thus, we find clues and fragments that allow us to delineate contexts in which subjects express their forces and rhythms in which these disputes are expressed locally, in spite of generalized narratives about the conflicts.

The cross-referencing of the 81 media occurrences with the 51 reports forms filed by the DD was based on the construction of a database indexed with category variables. The systematization of the information supported the quantification and analysis of cases in the time frame and location, identifying other types of practices associated with “religious discrimination”. Next, the addresses of the reports were geo-referenced to map out the points. As the address is not always identified when the report is made, the number of points (32) is lower than the total number of report forms (51). These points were superimposed on a base map produced by the Fogo Cruzado website (2020), based on the classification of RMRJ neighborhoods by the presence of armed dominion, considering 2019 data, also from the DD.

The Civil Police arrest of eight drug traffickers, members of the group called Bonde de Jesus, accused of carrying out attacks on umbanda and candomblé terreiros in Baixada Fluminense, resulted in media coverage that emphasized that the mastermind behind these actions was Álvaro Malaquias Santa Rosa, known as Peixão and leader of the TCP. Thus, the media began to suggest that this faction was the main protagonist in the conflicts involving terreiros in Rio de Janeiro. The information found shows that the reality is far more complex, as there is no exclusive relationship of persecution of the terreiros by a single criminal group, as can be seen in Map 1. There are occurrences in disputed territories, in locations attributed to the CV, TCP and the militias. There is also variation in the style of command between territories under the control of the same armed group that bears location-specific characteristics, even in the case of the CV, which has a centralized governmental structure. No records were found in the areas of the Amigos dos Amigos (ADA) faction, which should not be interpreted as an absence of conflict, but merely of any records. It should also be noted the majority of reports are made in areas where armed dominions are active, but the authorship of crimes may be related to other issues, as shown in Table 4.

Map 1:
Cross-referencing reports of breaking and entry of terreiros with the mapping of armed dominions (RJ)

Another important variable is related to the ways in which territoriality is established by evangelical groups, which is similar to that of drug traffickers on account of a certain space-time relationship, which Rocha (2019), inspired by Machado (1997), calls “fleeting territoriality”²⁶, and which contrasts greatly with the mode of terreiro geo-location. The dynamic and widespread model of clustering of Pentecostal churches (Ibid.), which speeds up the creation and closure of new temples to serve local populations, is the inverse of what is observed in terreiros.

Temples and prayer houses may be set up in commercial premises rented with funds raised from tithes and, sometimes, there is only a banner showing the weekly schedule and a sign with the name of the church on the façade to inform that it is a religious space. The so-called “saint houses” serve as homes for their leaders and followers; they also host services provided to people who live elsewhere. The popular saying that “good macumba is always far away” reveals that the public who attend terreiros is usually based outside the places where they are installed. And, perhaps most importantly: for a terreiro to operate, the site must be prepared based on the configuration of geo-symbols²⁷ (BONNEMAISON, 1981; CORRÊA, 2004) ranging from the “quebra-nkizila” placed at the entrance gate to those buried in the various spaces (ari-axé, in the hall where the public rites are performed) and the plantation of atinsás, trees and/or sacred herbs.

Contrary to the clustering strategy of Evangelical-Pentecostal churches, characterized by the individualization of the sacred, since to establish a new place of worship for biblical reading and interpretation only some followers or curious people are required, at the terreiros the sacredness lies in the land that needs to be prepared for the sacred to occur. A sacred territoriality is constituted by “settlements” of orixás, for example, whose chosen places are fixed, just as their habitats are sedentary. This characteristic makes the mobility of terreiros infinitely more limited than that of churches. Another relevant difference is that the ritual dynamics of terreiros presuppose the circulation of people in flows and quantities that are quite different to those of churches, since it is common for services to be predominantly individualized and to take place without fixed timetables, as is the case in churches. On festive days, it is common for the terreiros to receive a significant influx of “outsiders”, strangers to the local government, unnerving the people of the “movement” when they judge that this footfall could hinder business. Outsiders can be said to have a connection as “guests”, “clients” or “filhos de santo” (the initiates, iawo in ritual language) of the sacred-territory-nation, but might be seen as “foreigners” in the territory under armed control. There are reports of informal agreements between the terreiros’ religious leaders and the “owners” of the place for the festivities to end by a certain time, as well as for the guests to use local Uber drivers to avoid the entry of cars from outside. These “negotiated” rules always represent limitations on the ways of life of the terreiros, and never restrictions on the functioning of the criminal activities. This is an important fact because it reveals another degree of asymmetry to which the followers of Afro-Brazilian religions are subjected. On one occasion, we witnessed a public authority asking a female religious woman why she did not try to discuss the opening of her terreiro with the “movement”, to which she replied it was very difficult to talk to someone holding an assault rifle in their hand...

Silva (2007), in analyzing assaults on terreiros, had already proposed the location of Pentecostal churches in the poor outskirts and favelas was based not only on the dispute for believers in the religious market, but also on where they can offer services (not) provided by the State, which guaranteed them control of these territories. This idea is in line with what Machado (1997) proposes and allows us to engage the concept of fleeting territoriality (ROCHA, 2019)-for its volatility and dynamism-of the churches as a point of convergence with the concept of armed dominion.

Final considerations

In less than 15 years, conflicts between followers of Afro-Brazilian religions and evangelical Christians have ceased to be a problem of proximity and have come to involve predatory confrontations for the armed hegemony of popular spaces by traffickers and/or militiamen, who present themselves as members of Pentecostal churches and creators of religious “armies” to build a nation of followers of Jesus (ALESSI, 23/03/2021). This context can no longer be interpreted only in terms of the conversion of “crooks” to Christianity as a way out of the life of crime (TEIXEIRA, 2009). To reframe the discussions regarding public security, in the sense of analyzing the phenomenon of violent criminality aimed at terreiros, one must consider the “particular history of knowledge and power” (ASAD, 2016, p. 278) in relation to the development of this phenomenon, perceiving to what extent the modes of (il)legal and (il)legitimate exercise of power in their particular forms of appropriation shape religious symbols and experiences in favelas and poor outskirts.

Disputes for the armed management of territories to enable economic and political-electoral monopolies make (symbolic and material) use of expressions of religiosity with an evangelical-Pentecostal profile as a strategic element in the production of a project of power and the assertion of a type of authority. The criminal governance operated by the “traffickers” and “milicrentes” (MIRANDA, 2020) in favelas of Rio de Janeiro and Baixada Fluminense mixes theological and doctrinal imperatives with a political project of nation, which directly impacts the ways of life of population groups, especially those who follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. This is not only a mode of government that allies crime to religion, guided by a militia’s logic and founded on the “spiritual battle” (MARIZ, 1999; SILVA, 2007). The phenomenon has favored the consolidation of an agenda of customs (VITAL DA CUNHA and LOPES, 2013) and increased attacks on gender, religious and racial minorities in the country. Similarly, it has influenced the construction of political-electoral careers of an extremist nature (VITAL DA CUNHA, LOPES and LUI, 2013), marked by expansionist proposals founded on mythical-political narratives that may correspond either to the denial or to the glorification of a certain project of nationhood.

As noted in the beginning of this article, ‘criminal governance with God’ allows careers-whether political, religious or criminal-and narratives to be produced. These careers make use of some churches as a key source of money extorted from the public by the drug trafficking/militia in their agreements with police groups. While politicians sponsored by this operation come to act as partners of the State (MIRANDA, 2016), their churches enjoy the authorization to exclusively shepherd and control this electoral “herd”. This excludes religions of African matrixes, especially candomblés, based on a belief structure, as well as rituals and daily management, that do not operate according to the logic of pastoral power of offering salvation, law and truth (FOUCAULT, 2008).

What is at stake is, in fact, an aesthetic-political project that articulates religious values with other attributes of power, mainly the warlike theatricalization of a virile masculinity, and at the same time vulnerable in the face of alleged assaults coming from the woke element of modern society that recognizes gender and sexual diversity (MUNIZ and CECCHETTO, 2021). One can observe an ordinary and predatory dramatization of Clausewitz’s (1996) aphorism that, in its exceptionality, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. This sentence can be read in reverse, as Foucault (2005) suggests. The routinization of armed territorial disputes between traffickers, militias and police in Rio de Janeiro shows that, above all, “politics is the continuation of war by other means” in order to produce armistices, governmental rearrangements and legitimizations of the imposed armed dominions and, consequently, of the market monopolies conquered (MUNIZ and CECCHETTO, 2021). The ritualization of a war staged as holy is transformed into a strategic act of the economic and itinerant politics of crime. In these terms, proselytism becomes a tactical way of sustaining a trade war for monopolies of illicit markets.

Politics and religion as overlapping, bonded and mixed forms of power-knowing-acting and their expedients of distributing coercion are not exactly a novelty. What can be considered as a contemporary manifestation is the (re)configuration of the boundaries between the sacred and the profane in the production of beliefs and processes of conceived and lived subordination (DURKHEIM, 1996[1912]; LÉVI-STRAUSS, 1976) and which produce arrangements of government situated below and beyond the State, in its institutional and rational characters, respectively. Slogans that refer to Jesus, Christ or God, engaged by distinct legal and illegal configurations of authority, serve as ideological translators that prescribe a type of government and describe its imposing order. Together with biblical graffiti, factional symbols, sometimes also carrying a religious denotation, digital pamphlets and cards, maxims of Christian worship, are part of the visuals-indispensable to the exercise of a kind of informal, unstable and mobile power. Especially for direct illegal authorities, with no intermediation through a bureaucratic structure, which need both to regulate their market and control the population closely and to sustain day-to-day surveillance of the porous and moving borders, only feasible if exercised from a distance. They must command in order to communicate and communicate to continue commanding. They must coerce with simple visual resources-a banner, a poster, a sign similar to those put up by local politicians for inaugurations and messages of thanks-that are of high impact and allude to the omnipotence and omnipresence of the manifestation of a power that can do anything and is everywhere. They must convey to their subjects, heterogeneous and geographically dispersed, that in that territory there is no room for reflection, that communication is automatic, with no margin for speculating about the limits of the desirable and the undesirable. Earthly power was conquered with the intermediation of the sacred. As it is on Earth, under armed control, as it is in Heaven, under agreed political allotment, we have observed the vivification of political-religious (neo)crusades against religions of African origin supported by a racial-economic moral that allows the negotiation of beliefs, lives, votes, goods and public services in poor areas.

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• MIRANDA, Ana Paula Mendes de; CÔRREA, Roberta de Mello; ALMEIDA, Rosiane Rodrigues. “O ‘renascimento’ da intolerância religiosa e as formas de administração institucional de conflitos no Brasil”. In: PERLINGEIRO, Ricardo (org). Liberdade religiosa e direitos humanos. Niterói: Nupej; TRF2, 2019, pp. 111-146.
• MIRANDA, Ana Paula Mendes de; CÔRREA, Roberta de M; PINTO, Vinicius C. “Conciliação no papel: o tratamento dado aos casos de intolerância religiosa em juizados especiais criminais no Rio de Janeiro”. Confluências: Revista Interdisciplinar de Sociologia e Direito, n. 18, pp. 21-43, 2017.
• MIRANDA, Ana Paula Mendes de; MOTA, Fabio Reis; PINTO, Paulo Gabriel Hilu (coords). Relatório sobre a Comissão de Combate à Intolerância Religiosa: alanço de dois anos de atividade. Rio de Janeiro: UFF, 2010.
• MIRANDA, Ana Paula Mendes de; MUNIZ, Jacqueline de O.; CÔRREA, Roberta de Mello (orgs). Mapas de percepção de riscos: Análise multimétodo de territorialidades afetadas pelo domínio armado. Rio de Janeiro: Autografia, 2019.
• MIRANDA, Ana Paula Mendes de; MUNIZ, Jacqueline de O. “Dominio armado: el poder territorial de las facciones, los comandos y las milicias en Río de Janeiro”. Revista Voces en el Fenix, n. 68, p. 44-49, 2018.
• MISSE, Michel. “Sobre a acumulação social da violência no Rio de Janeiro”. Civitas, vol. 8, n. 3, pp. 371-385, 2008.
• MUNIZ, Jacqueline; CECCHETTO, Fátima. “Ingovernabilidade policial: Pandemia das operações policiais e o pandemônio de sua rotinização”. In: BRANDÃO, Cristiane; DORNELLES, João Ricardo; DULTRA, Rogério; FILHO, Wilson Ramos (orgs). Pandemônio e Pandemias: Novas Direitas e Genocídio no Brasil. São Paulo: Tirant lo Blach, 2021, pp, 250-272.
• PIERUCCI, Antônio Flávio. “Secularização e declínio do catolicismo”. In: SOUZA, Beatriz Muniz de; MARTINO, Luís Mauro Sá (orgs). Sociologia da religião e mudança social: Católicos, protestantes e novos movimentos religiosos no Brasil. São Paulo: Paulus, 2004, pp. 13-21.
• PITA, María Victoria; MIRANDA, Ana Paula M. “Alcance y limitaciones de las consultorías en materia de seguridad pública y derechos humanos: ¿es posible resistir a las generalizaciones y a los productos estandarizados? Relato de una experiencia”. Civitas, vol. 15, n. 1, pp. 128-154, 2015.
• PONTES-RIBEIRO, Dulce Helena. “Estudo semiótico do slogan da campanha Bolsonarista: Brasil acima de tudo, Deus acima de todos”. Revista Ibero-Americana de Humanidades, Ciências e Educação, São Paulo, vol. 7, n. 6, pp. 843-872, 2021.
• PRANDI, Reginaldo. “O Brasil com axé: candomblé e umbanda no mercado religioso”. Estudos Avançados, vol. 18, n. 52, pp. 223-236, 2004.
• PROENÇA JR., Domicio; MUNIZ, Jacqueline. “Muita politicagem, pouca política os problemas da polícia são”. Estudos Avançados, vol. 21, n. 61, pp. 159-172, 2007.
• QUIROGA, Ana Maria. “Religiões e prisões no Rio de Janeiro: presença e significados”. Comunicações do Iser, n. 61, pp. 13-21, 2012.
• RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. Estrutura e função na sociedade primitiva. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1973.
• RESENDE, Erica Simone. “A direita cristã e a política externa norte-americana: a construção discursiva da aliança entre Estados Unidos e Israel com base na ideologia evangélico-protestante”. Carta Internacional, vol. 5, n. 1, pp. 3-20, 2010.
• ROCHA, André Santos da. “Espaço urbano e religião: sobre a espacialidade Evangélica e a dinâmica pentecostal na Baixada Fluminense”. Anais do XVI Simpósio Nacional de Geografia Urbana - XVI SIMPURB, vol. 1, 2019.
• ROSENDAHL, Zeny. “Território e territorialidade: uma perspectiva geográfica para o estudo da religião”. Anais do X Encontro de Geógrafos da América Latina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2005.
• SANTOS, Milene Cristina. O proselitismo religioso entre a liberdade de expressão e o discurso de ódio: A “guerra santa” do neopentecostalismo contra as religiões afro-brasileiras. Dissertação (Mestrado em Direito) - Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 2012.
• SILVA, Carolina Rocha. “‘A culpa é do Diabo’: as múltiplas formas de conflito e negociação entre (neo) pentecostais, traficantes evangelizados e adeptos das religiões afro-brasileiras em três favelas cariocas”. Anais do 40º Encontro Anual da Anpocs, Caxambu, 2016.
• SILVA, Vagner Gonçalves da (org). Intolerância Religiosa: Impactos do neopentecostalismo no campo-religioso brasileiro. São Paulo: Edusp, 2007.
• TEIXEIRA, Cesar Pinheiro. A construção social do ex-bandido: Um estudo sobre sujeição criminal e pentecostalismo. Dissertação (Mestrado em Sociologia e Antropologia) -Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2009.
• VELASCO, Valquíria Cristina R. Geografias da repressão: Experiências, processos e religiosidades no Rio de Janeiro (1890-1929). Dissertação (Mestrado em História Comparada) - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2018.
• VITAL DA CUNHA, Christina. “‘Traficantes evangélicos’: novas formas de experimentação do sagrado em favelas cariocas”. Plural: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia da USP, São Paulo, vol. 15, pp. 23-46, 2008.
• VITAL DA CUNHA, Christina. Evangélicos em ação nas favelas cariocas: Um estudo sócio-antropológico sobre redes de proteção, tráfico de drogas e religião no complexo de Acari. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências Sociais) - Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2009.
• VITAL DA CUNHA, Christina. “Religião e criminalidade: traficantes e evangélicos entre os anos 1980 e 2000 nas favelas cariocas”. Religião e Sociedade, Rio de Janeiro, vol. 34, n. 1, pp. 61-93, 2014.
• VITAL DA CUNHA, Christina; LOPES, Paulo Victor Leite. Religião e política: Uma análise da atuação de parlamentares evangélicos sobre direitos das mulheres e de LGBTs no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Heinrich Böll Stiftung; Iser, 2013.
• VITAL DA CUNHA, Christina; LOPES, Paulo Victor Leite; LUI, Janayna. Religião e política: Medos sociais, extremismo religioso e as eleições 2014. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Heinrich Böll; Iser, 2017.

Fontes da imprensa

• ALESSI, Gil. “A ascensão do ‘narcopentecostalismo’ no Rio de Janeiro: Parte da cúpula da facção Terceiro Comando Puro se converteu a igrejas evangélicas neopentecostais. Peixão, chefe do crime no conjunto de favelas chamado Complexo de Israel, se refere aos seus soldados como Exército do Deus Vivo”. El País, Brasil, 23 mar. 2021. Disponível em: https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2021-03-27/a-ascensao-do-narcopentecostalismo-no-rio-de-janeiro.html
  » https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2021-03-27/a-ascensao-do-narcopentecostalismo-no-rio-de-janeiro.html
• BRASIL 247. “Pastor recebe arsenal de armas em igreja e faz ritual de unção dos objetos: ‘me proteja do homem mau, Jesus’ (vídeo): Episódio da unção das armas viralizou nas redes”. Brasil 247, Geral, 15 mar. 2022. Disponível em: https://www.brasil247.com/geral/pastor-recebe-arsenal-de-armas-em-igreja-e-faz-ritual-de-uncao-dos-objetos-me-proteja-do-homem-mau-jesus-video
  » https://www.brasil247.com/geral/pastor-recebe-arsenal-de-armas-em-igreja-e-faz-ritual-de-uncao-dos-objetos-me-proteja-do-homem-mau-jesus-video
• EU, RIO!. “Traficantes e milicianos disputam espaço nas comunidades do Quitungo e Guaporé: Traficantes do CV teriam invadido e expulsado milicianos que estariam cobrando taxa de segurança”. Portal Eu, Rio!, Notícia, 25 set. 2021. Disponível em: https://eurio.com.br/noticia/25447/traficantes-e-milicianos-disputam-espaco-nas-comunidades-do-quitungo-e-guapore.html
  » https://eurio.com.br/noticia/25447/traficantes-e-milicianos-disputam-espaco-nas-comunidades-do-quitungo-e-guapore.html
• EXTRA. “Quem era Fernandinho Guarabu, o traficante que comandou por 15 anos a venda de drogas em uma favela no Rio”. Extra, Casos de Polícia, 27 jun. 2019. Disponível em: https://extra.globo.com/casos-de-policia/quem-era-fernandinho-guarabu-traficante-que-comandou-por-15-anos-venda-de-drogas-em-uma-favela-no-rio-23767558.html
  » https://extra.globo.com/casos-de-policia/quem-era-fernandinho-guarabu-traficante-que-comandou-por-15-anos-venda-de-drogas-em-uma-favela-no-rio-23767558.html
• EXTRA. “Placa na Baixada diz que cidade ‘pertence ao Senhor Jesus’ e vira alvo de críticas”. Extra, Notícias, Rio, 6 jun. 2018. Disponível em: https://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/placa-na-baixada-diz-que-cidade-pertence-ao-senhor-jesus-vira-alvo-de-criticas-22951395.html
  » https://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/placa-na-baixada-diz-que-cidade-pertence-ao-senhor-jesus-vira-alvo-de-criticas-22951395.html
• MAXX, Matias. “Nação de Jesus: Fuzis ungidos e grafite gospel em muros da comunidade: para facção do Rio, a lei do tráfico é a lei de Deus”. TAB UOL, 27 maio 2020. Disponível em https://tab.uol.com.br/edicao/nacao-de-jesus/#page1
  » https://tab.uol.com.br/edicao/nacao-de-jesus/#page1
• MONKEN, Mario Hugo. “Tráfico é acusado de vetar umbanda no Rio”. Folha de S. Paulo, Cotidiano, 4 fev. 2006. Disponível em: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u117968.shtml?origin=folha
  » https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u117968.shtml?origin=folha
• MONKEN, Mario Hugo. “Em comunicado, CV diz que acabou cobrança de taxas de segurança no Quitungo e Guaporé”. Informe Agora, Casos de Polícia, 18 set. 2021. Disponível em https://informeagora.com/casos-de-policia/em-comunicado-cv-diz-que-acabou-cobranca-de-taxas-de-seguranca-no-quitungo-e-guapore/
  » https://informeagora.com/casos-de-policia/em-comunicado-cv-diz-que-acabou-cobranca-de-taxas-de-seguranca-no-quitungo-e-guapore
• MUNIZ, Jacqueline; PROENÇA JR., Domício; BORGES, Zeca. “O nome disso é terrorismo, sim”. Portal Resistentes, 10 jun. 2021. Disponível em: https://resistentes.org/o-nome-disso-e-terrorismo-sim
  » https://resistentes.org/o-nome-disso-e-terrorismo-sim
• MUNIZ, Jacqueline; BORGES, Zeca. “O marketing do crime: Aceitar a lógica do terror é aceitar o temor como conselheiro, entregando-se ao oportunismo de quem se apresenta como o mais forte do momento”. O Globo, Opinião, 12 fev. 2017. Disponível em: https://oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/o-marketing-do-crime-20910759
  » https://oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/o-marketing-do-crime-20910759

• 1
  The research material was compiled collectively with the cooperation of Vinícius Cruz Pinto (PPGA/UFF), Andréia Soares Pinto (PPGA/UFF), Dandara Augusto dos Santos (PPGA/UFF), Maria Dolores de Lima e Silva (PPGJS/UFF), Mariana Maiara Soares Silva (PPGA/UFF), Mauricio Dantas de Almeida (DSP/UFF) and Zeca Borges (Disque Denúncia), with whom we have maintained dialogue in the analysis of the relation between the expansion of violence directed toward the povo de santo and the territorial disputes between drug traffickers and militias in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro (RMRJ).
• 2
  TN - terreiros are the sacred ritual sites for Afro-Brazilian religions like Umbanda and Candomblé.
• 3
  The use of the expression “African matrix” is intended to emphasize the hundreds of African peoples who gave rise to Afro-Brazilian traditions, practices, memories and religious expressions, beyond the hegemonic idea of representing them in terms of the Bantu, Jeje and Yoruba/Nagô categories (ALMEIDA, 2019).
• 4
  In 2006, the Folha de S. Paulo published the first report stating that drug traffickers were closing off terreiros in Rio de Janeiro favelas (MONKEN, 04/02/2006).
• 5
  The rejection of this expression in religious circles allied to Ronaldo Almeida’s criticism (2017) regarding the need for an empirical perspective on the diversity of contemporary Brazilian religious manifestations led us to opt for the expression “people with an evangelical-Pentecostal profile” when referring to a collective identification (ALMEIDA, 2019; MIRANDA, 2020). The terms “evangelical trafficker”, “trafficker”, “milicrente” and “traficrente” will be used here as native categories. These categories of naturalized and current usage appear primarily on social media and are used both in a derogatory, accusatory manner and with a sense of belonging and recognition. In terms of order of discourse, these symbolic maneuvers are presented as synthetic and functional descriptors that condense relations between State agents, criminals and religious actors, and thus indicate illegal forms of territorial control, population management and regulation of illicit markets in public spaces.
• 6
  NT - The option for the term "drug traffickers" instead of "drug dealers" is not a simple matter of formality and does not indicate the difference between a less dangerous criminal and a powerful one. The concept of armed dominance, as it will be developed in the article, interlinks all the traffickers involved in the commerce of drugs, kitchen gas, internet, transportation and other services, encompassing all the members under the same authority network.
• 7
  Referring to the reach of the media, political and business power of “faith holdings” (ALMEIDA, 2019).
• 8
  In another article, Miranda (2020) analyses how the emergence of the category “religious racism” attempts to describe violence directed only at Afro-religions as a specific feature of ethnic-racial discrimination, identified as a result of social movements. Since this is a controversial issue in the field, we chose to use the term “religious intolerance” only because it is more widespread among religious people.
• 9
  The right to religious support in penal policies was for a long time offered only by agents of the Catholic Church. Only in the 1990s did this service begin to be regulated by the state bodies responsible for prison policy in Rio de Janeiro, counting on implicit approval based on the belief that “a converted inmate is a calmer inmate” (QUIROGA, 2012). From the 2000s onwards most services were offered by evangelical and Pentecostal groups. The classification of prisoners by factions is a previous practice that began in the 1980s.
• 10
  Albernaz (2010) analyses how evangelical military policemen - active members of congregations installed in Rio de Janeiro State Military Police (PMERJ) bases - when transposing the Manichaeistic rhetoric of the “spiritual battle” into the military police environment, construct evangelical ethical standards for police action. Thus, everyday conflicts are portrayed as visible expressions of the evil influence of the devil, responsible for crimes and socially reprehensible behaviour. In the late 1990s, the expression “PMs de Cristo” (Officers of Christ) emerged within the PMERJ to refer to a growing group of converts. Note that going to “war against drug trafficking” under the protection of Jesus denoted a sacred licence that strengthened a missionary sense of authority and legitimised armed confrontation as a modus operandi. It also served to animate the provocative and belligerent masculinity of the evangelist preacher-warrior - an obstinate and wilful masculinity instilled with a civilization mission, quite distinct from the role of a combat soldier, professional and obedient to a mission arising from political ends.
• 11
  On 28 November 2020 the “occupation” operation of the Favelas do Alemão Complex was symbolized by the raising of the Civil Police flag, followed by the raising of the Brazilian flag. One of the three police officers from the Special Resources Coordination (CORE) who carried out the “mission” was military police sergeant and then director of the Portela samba school, Marcos Vieira Souza, known as Falcon, who was attached to the Civil Police. In 2011, Falcon was arrested on suspicion of links with militias and the gaming mafia, and was cleared by the courts in the same year. In 2016, he was murdered near the committee of his election campaign as a Rio de Janeiro city council candidate. There are reports linking the crime to Escritório do Crime militia, but the case remains unsolved, as do other deaths of “crooks” in Rio.
• 12
  This motto appropriates an Army Paratrooper Brigade slogan - “Brazil above all” - created by a group that called itself Centelha Nativista (Nativist Spark) in the late 1970s (PONTES-RIBEIRO, 2021).
• 13
  The criminal groups active in Rio de Janeiro, called “commandos”, “factions” and “militias”, are set up as armed commands that use armed coercion to exercise control over territory and the population. Thus they regulate and/or manage illicit markets with a measure of coexistence, convenience and connivance of the so-called “public authority”. Relations with segments of the state structure - the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary powers - are fundamental to ensure their domination and a degree of regularity in the unstable and provisional exercise of their power, disputed by political-commercial rivals. The armed commands correspond to a form of government that creates norms for local life, provides extrajudicial justice and policing services, and regulates illegal and informal markets. This is an autonomous authority of criminal governance which constitutes a “parallel”, rather than independent, State, maintaining a relationship of interdependence with the actual State.
• 14
  We refer here to the example of messages frequently posted on social media announcing bans imposed by the traffickers or militias on public behavior (including restrictions on Afro-cults), acts of crime in the region or even fees to be charged for residents. Signed by several different groups in direct opposition to the others, these messages announce the law of the place and their enforcement through substantive justice and policing practices.
• 15
  The blessing of rifles and weapons has become common practice in evangelical-Pentecostal churches (BRASIL 247, 15/02/2022).
• 16
  Transcript of the letter:
  “Important Notice!!!
  Dear residents and traders, I would like to inform you that our war is not with you but against these guys who should be here to help you and be a reference for all residents but have not been... They have had years of opportunity and have not taken advantage of it, now in their act of desperation they are bothering the good residents with their orders to riot and their intolerance if residents don’t do what they want... So “I” hereby communicate to all of you, good people, most of you workers, not to let yourselves be taken in by the nastiness of Baratão, do not raise your expectations of their possibly returning here, because who put us here was the “GENERAL OF THE ARMIES, THE LIVING GOD WHO NEVER FAILS AND HAS NEVER LOST A BATTLE”... So I humbly inform you that the time of slavery to which the (CIDADE ALTA) had been subject under the command of Baratão and his rats has come to an end and you may not understand it now but in the future you will understand that we are trying our best, we are putting ourselves out there, we are leaving our families, wives, sons and daughters at home to fight for you and we would like to ask you residents that before judging us, let us really show you who we are, do not think that we came here to do worse than these rats had been doing for you, residents of good, we would never fight a war to do worse by you than what was already being done, we are only fighting because it was the Lord Jesus’ order that the Community of the (CIDADE ALTA) to be freed of this evil and enjoy better and happier days because the last few days have been arduous but always remember that after the storm comes the bonanza!!!! We are with you, the People, we are here to fight against tyranny, do not ally yourselves with them in demonstrations or intrigues on social media because if you do that many of you will lose the right to live in your community that I believe you love as much as “I” do. So let’s do it like this, if we love the (CIDADE ALTA) we take care of the (CIDADE ALTA), then don’t disrespect it, filthy it up or do such Macumbadas, serving strange Gods, because you will never be able to forget that we only reap the fruit that we plant, “WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER”, may GOD be with you and know that the doors of LUCAS and VIGÁRIO are open for you because here we love you and we were counting down the hours to tear down this wall of impediments that Satan has created between our communities that always liked and respected each other until the these criminals of the (CIDADE ALTA) repressed them... So let’s stop talking about how Mineiro died and took (CIDADE ALTA) with him, because Today My “GOD” raises the (CIDADE ALTA) from the valley of dry bones and will give it Life, and Life with abundance!!!
  WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER ALL 3 END TO END!!!
  PL.PG.CDA."
• 17
  The ongoing ethnographic study by Maria Dolores de Lima e Silva has looked at this specific material, considering the uses of social media. The order to close the terreiros was given in the areas of Areia Branca, Barro Vermelho, Santa Maria, Monte Horeb, and others.
• 18
  TN - bonde dos taca bala can be loosely translated as gang of bullet-sprayers
• 19
  On the CV invasion and the expulsion of the militia, see the article published on the portal Eu, Rio! (25 September 2021).
• 20
  Thayssa Rios identified in her ongoing fieldwork in the CV-controlled favelas of Engenhoca, in Niterói, that the announcements, cards, advertisements, etc. are developed by the so-called “medias”, young “better read” residents who have mastered social media technologies and are paid for occasional jobs. They are not within the boca de fumo [drugs den] structure and do not identify themselves as belonging to the “criminal world”.
• 21
  About the trafficker, see Extra (27/06/2019).
• 22
  On rumors and gossip see Elias (2000), Gluckman (1963) and Radcliffe-Brown (1973).
• 23
  The degree of repercussion is an important piece of data for analyzing another dimension of the phenomenon, which is to identify which cases have become more visible in society; this will form the scope of analysis in another article.
• 24
  The Disque Denúncia, under the direction of Zeca Borges, has the main and longest-running database of events and dynamics of public insecurity, calls from the public, and the ways in which the police and armed groups act in the State. This database combines qualitative and quantitative information on acts of disorder, civil disobedience, violence and crimes identified by the public voluntarily and anonymously through telephone reports and their following-up. Since its creation in 1995, more than 2.5 million reports have been registered. See (online): https://www.disquedenuncia.org.br/
• 25
  For an analysis of this conflict, see Miranda (2010).
• 26
  Zeny Rosendahl (2005) analyses how the religious phenomenon is expressed in territory on the basis of the relationship between the sacred and the profane, the delimitation of which is constituted by locations and flows, allowing us to perceive how social agents make explicit the economic and political dimensions entwined in this process. Thus, the territory represented as religious is not only marked by ritual and symbolic characteristics; it is the site of contemporary practices through which identities are affirmed and lived. It is in this sense that the idea of “fleeting territorialities” presents itself as a characteristic associated with evangelical groups, on account of their strategy to occupy space and establish a territorial network of action. This differs from the mode of occupation employed by Catholics, as well as Afro-Brazilian religions, which have a more restricted and defined territoriality in relation to the sacred space. Evangelical territorial fleetingness means an adaptability to space, but also a plasticity of religious practices that are compatible with the mobile and transitory nature of contemporary daily life and, above all, with the mobility of the spatial boundaries of their religious practices.
• 27
  Geo-symbol “may be a place, an itinerary, an extension, which for religious, political or cultural reasons, in the eyes of certain people and ethnic groups, takes on a symbolic dimension that strengthens them in their identity” (BONNEMAISON, 1981, p. 292). Corrêa (2004) appropriates this idea, understanding the physical elements of the territory-terreiro in its association not only with the deities, but with the components of an imaginary African space.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 Sept 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  11 Oct 2021
• Accepted
  22 Mar 2022