I ended the first column of this series with the idea of “narrating insurgent citizenship” and its twofold perspective that is discursive and spatial at the same time. I invite you to see this double gaze through my experience researching with Redes da Maré members. In English, Redes da Maré translates to networks of Maré and the name given to organisation members, tecedores, means weavers. Narrating is a constitutive action in the work of tecedores. It is a process of weaving a network of solidarity using narratives to raise the residents’ self-esteem and support them to use their voice in the fight for rights in Maré. Narratives, in that sense, draw from the everyday social and spatial relations emerging amidst the interactions between tecedores, residents and the spatialities that configure Maré.

As one walks in Rua Principal, a lively street that is the dorsal spine of Maré crossing 6 out of the 16 favelas, these spatialities emerge: young boys play ping pong on an improvised table, kids run around playing on the ground, elderly women sit in their doorstep chatting with the ones passing, skaters ride in the Nova Holanda square, shops of different kinds are open, armed groups supervise those passing by and moto-taxi drivers wait for guests. Along the street, from North to South, life unfolds according to the dynamics of the flat favelas of Parque União (1961), Rubens Vaz (1954), Nova Holanda (1962), Parque Maré (1953), Nova Maré (1996), and Baixa do Sapateiro (1947). Each favela carries particular stories that go back to their origins of spontaneous occupation, private land subdivisions, temporary housing for displaced residents and dismantled stilt houses turned into undermaintained affordable units by the Federal and Municipal governments.

A similar discussion on narratives has been previously posed by Suzanne Hall. The researcher studied South London’s Walworth street exploring spatial narratives as a point of exploration in the threshold between official and unofficial accounts of history.¹ Observing the streets’ multicultural features and the multiple languages spoken there, she pointed out the possibility of narratives to reveal “the relationship of space and society through representations of power, knowledge and experience.”² In her ethnographic research, one crucial spatial narrative observed was the historical separation between North and South London. The way the South has been portrayed in official accounts, as she mentioned, sheds light on a narrative of obscurity, or “how accounts from ordinary or ‘un-noteworth’ people fall through the cracks of the selective process of constructing history.”³

One example of how spatial narratives revealed discrimination in my fieldwork was the sudden change of the landscape in days of police operations. Albeit lethal for both policemen and residents, this form of law enforcement changes abruptly the spatial relations in place. In one meeting with the tecedores that are working on the right to public security and access to justice, tecedor Arthur Viana mentioned “if the streets in the favela are silent it means something is wrong.”⁴ Based on narratives of residents’ lived experiences, tecedora and researcher Shyrlei Rosendo observed that favelas under higher conditions of precariousness suffered more human rights violations during police incursions.⁵

This ability to visualise and gather oral and spatial narratives foment insurgent citizenship engendering community engagement in a variety of events. Insurgent citizenship as a strategy to halt the ongoing military apparatus hence entangles formal and informal connections to change the logic of public security in place. As such, it refuses the perception of Maré residents as passive victims of oppression against a villainised negligent state.⁶ Rather it is context-driven and attuned to intergenerational knowledge to reimagine favelas as a legitimate part of the city beyond the categories of informal or illegal.⁷ I was present to this form of exchanging narratives in the project MaréAção in late 2019. The project sought to mobilise residents of their rights after a violent incident during a police operation in Conjunto Esperança, a favela from 1982 composed of affordable housing and large streets.

Tecedores organised an event in memory of this incident in a street facing an open sewage canal that carried the stigma of violence and invited graffiti artists to paint a large mural with residents. Throughout the process tecedores cared for residents’ traumas and losses sharing pamphlets from the campaign “Somos da Maré e Temos Direitos” (we are from Maré and we have rights).⁸ The pamphlets informed residents’ rights in operation days explaining what policemen could and could not do, the main channels for denounces and what they needed to know about the authorities working on their behalf. In the meantime, a garden was built with plants brought by staff of the Rio de Janeiro's cleaning company, Comlurb. As residents joined these collective processes, the purpose of the street was slowly gaining other meanings; from empty and grey to populated and colourful.

After two years I had the opportunity to follow the third edition of the campaign in 2021 and revisit the street. Plants from the garden grew covering one's eyesight, and there was people sitting nearby chatting. The issue of public security is still under scrutiny as it is still heavily affecting the right to citizenship in Maré. From another angle, care and self-entitlement during MaréAção remained present in the built environment and in the embodied experience of space. Care, in the work of tecedores, is a practice to build the perception of Maré as a homeplace in the same terms bell hooks posed – as a site of resistance.⁹ Narrating insurgent citizenship entails a decolonisation of the mind from the narratives of obscurity to the narratives self-determination portraying favelas for what they really are: its residents and their feeling of belonging.


Read the whole column "Narrating Insurgent Citizenship" by Bruna Montuori.

Bio

Bruna Montuori is a designer and urban researcher based in London and Rio de Janeiro. She is currently a PhD Candidate at the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art in London. Her work investigates the intersection between insurgent citizenship, space and narratives through an on going collaboration with the local organisation Redes da Maré in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Bruna is an Associate Lecturer at the London College of Communication and Central Saint Martins at the University of the Arts London. She is anda PGR Representative of the Participatory Geographies Research Group from the RGS/IBG. Through her research and practice, she has been weaving participatory methods with graphic design, ethics of care, insurgent citizenship and decolonial and gender theories.

Notes

1 Suzanne Hall, “Narrating the city: diverse spaces of urban change, South London,” Open House International 33, no. 2 (June 2008): 10-17.
2 Hall, “Narrating the city,” 11.
3 Hall, “Narrating the city,” 16.
4 Arthur Viana, in person conversation, October 16, 2019.
5 Shyrlei Rosendo (coordinator at Redes da Maré), interview by Bruna Montuori, February 19, 2021.
6 Eliana Sousa Silva, Maré testimonies, trans. Sofia Soter (Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, 2016), 90.
7 Paula Meth, “Unsettling Insurgency,” Planning Theory & Practice 11, no. 2 (June 2010): 249.
8 “We are from Maré. We have rights!,” The Right to Public Security and Access to Justice Campaign, Redes da Maré, last modified February 17, 2022, [link]
9 bell hooks, Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics (New York: Routledge, 2015), 48

Bibliography

Hall, Suzanne M. “Narrating the city: diverse spaces of urban change, South London.” Open House International 33, no. 2 (2008): 10–17. [link]

hooks, bell. Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Meth, Paula. “Unsettling Insurgency: Reflections on Women's Insurgent Practices in South Africa.” Planning Theory & Practice 11, no. 2 (2010): 241–63. [link]

Redes da Maré. “We are from Maré. We have rights!” The Right to Public Security and Access to Justice Campaign. Last modifiedFebruary 17, 2022. [link]

Silva, Eliana Sousa. Maré testimonies. Translated by Sofia Soter. Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, 2016.