The Militarization of the World's Urban Peripheries

Worldpress ^ | February 17, 2008 | Raúl Zibechi

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Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated from "normal" society.

"Army sources confirmed that techniques employed in the occupation of the Morro da Providéncia favela [slum] are the ones Brazilian soldiers use in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti" (Dantas 2007).

This admission by Brazilian armed forces largely explains the interest of Lula da Silva's government in keeping that country's troops on the Caribbean island: to test, in the poor neighborhoods of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, containment strategies designed for application in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and other large cities.

But the news published by the daily Estadão de São Paulo goes farther in revealing the military's modus operandi. The commander of the 9th Motorized Infantry Brigade in Haiti, William Soares, directed the occupation of Morro da Providéncia by 200 soldiers, who installed machineguns on "the community's only plaza, transformed into a military base," which were later withdrawn in order to facilitate a dialogue with the population. In the meeting with the Residents Association (Asociación de Pobladores), General Soares "promised projects, a Christmas party with gifts for the children, a vacation camp, film screenings, medical, and sanitation assistance."

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I note the absence of Cuba and North Korea—the most socially stratified societies in the world—from this article.

[JerseyHighlander]

Sci-Fi writers, Philip K. Dick in particular had been writing about this future going back decades.

While private, public, NGO, government, institutional, civilian and military planners write the playbook to contain peripheral slums throughout the Western Hemisphere, the US Government STILL won’t defend our borders.