Violence, Governance and Politics in a Brazilian Favela and an Argentinean Slum

This paper aims to examine the production of violence and order by State and non-State actors in marginalised Latin American urban spaces in two contexts of rising far-right movements and parties. It draws on findings from two ethnographic studies conducted over the past eight years: one in a favela in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2016-2020), and the other in a slum in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2021-2023). In these spaces, I analysed the coexistence of different normative regimes that simultaneously govern these territories. These included the State (in its multiple facets, from social assistance to police repression); ii) the "world of crime" (the moral universe established around certain illegal activities); and iii) religion (including both the Catholic Church and the multiple evangelical strands). My previous works propose that violence and life/death dynamics in many territories of urban poverty in Latin America are shaped by the State’s complex and often ambiguous relationships with criminal and religious actors. Additionally, I argued that violence arising from the conflict between State, crime, and religion produces specific forms of order and predictability (or unpredictability) that guide behaviour within these communities. Although this was never my intention, in carrying out these two fieldworks, I also ended up observing, from the margins, the periods leading up to the rise of far-right leaders to senior executive positions in both countries (Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina). Recognizing that macro-level politics cannot be fully understood in isolation from micro-level aspects of daily life, this paper explores the connections between local realities in these neighbourhoods, how violence is produced and governed (by State and non-State actors), how it generates order, and the broader context of far-right political ascendancy in both Brazil and Argentina.