This paper discusses the current strategy of Rio de Janeiro's government to occupy the slums former controlled by the drug dealers. The strategy of pacification encompasses a first moment of military occupation, a second moment of installing a permanent police unity in the territory and a third one that aims to establish a dialogue among social actors in the territory and convey their demands to a policy network. The initial objective of creating a new order through police coercion confronts, in several aspects, with the construction of a comprehensive public sphere, by means of expanding the citizenship status of the dwellers of these territories assuring their integration to the city. In a case study in the first occupied slum, Santa Marta, it was possible to identify the tremendous contradictions and tensions inherent to this strategy of enlarging citizens' rights by means of the militarization of the social field.
Social Police Unit for Pacification; Slums; Santa Marta; Coercion; Citizenship