The old city centre of Rio de Janeiro is undergoing a reurbanization policy that aims to attenuate, or even eliminate, the popular character of its housing, commerce and employment, all of which confered upon this region great vitality. The present ethnographic description of this process of dismantling social life in the region focuses mainly on the hardships of the residents of a self-governing occupation, which has existed since the start of the 2000's. We analyse this process through the forms of governamentality put in practice, which requires that we include the group of dominant drug trade in the region as a relevant actor. The consequences produced by this mega enterprise, directed by a group of big contractors and by the government of Rio de Janeiro State, will be analysed through the ethnography of the "Nelson Mandela" Occupation.
Popular housing/Occupation; Drug trade; Violence; Illegalisms; Precarity; State