Based on ethnographic data collected since June 2001 in Rio de Janeiro, this article analyzes newspaper coverage of the political events that led to the installation of gates and cameras around Jacarezinho, the city's second largest favela. It draws on a literature on Brazilian cities, and suggests that closer attention must be given to how urban space and race are imposed, politicized, challenged, and transformed. In the case of Rio, such processes reveal forms of spatial segregation by race not unlike that of South Africa and the United States.
segregation; race; favela; Rio de Janeiro; activism; transnational alliances