"Eu nunca tinha escutado falar sobre favela no Benfica": conflitos sociais e mercados ilícitos em um bairro universitário

Abstract

This work is about daily scenes of the Benfica neighborhood, in Fortaleza, Ceará. It aims to understand the dynamics of conflicts and disputes over symbolic points for the drug trade in retail. Benfica, located 3 km from the center of Fortaleza, is a neighborhood that presents a great flow of social actors that make use of the diversity of the spaces of the neighborhood. Featuring the neighborhood as a middle class and peripheral, presenting their communities and daily life marked by the adversities of the "rush". Even the neighborhood not being among the most violent in the city of Fortaleza, narratives of disputes, conflicts and various violence spread throughout the territory. We are interested to understand how these phenomena are constituted, are articulated and expressed in this space. Social conflicts were analyzed for their dangerous connections in the context of disputes over illicit drug markets, seeking to analyze how this impacts on the daily life of those who experience the spaces. It seeks to understand the transformations of urban spaces and crime over the last years and, mainly, with the phenomenon of factionalization of crime. The results come from the research carried out in the Benfica neighborhood, in their communities and in their spaces of symbolic uses. This work was done in cooperation with the "involved" and with the local community. The methodological approach adopted was the monitoring and experience of the practices of the "involved" and the residents studied.