"Pacification" in the peripheries: discourses on violence and the daily life of youths in Fortaleza

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the discourses of youths and social workers on the phenomenon of there-establishment of criminal groups in Fortaleza between the end of 2015 and the middle of 2016, popularly known as "pacification", emphasizing the implications of the transformations of urban violence dynamics in the daily life of youths inserted in contexts stigmatized and more affected by the lethal violence in the city. Methodologically, the study was based on an intervention research in two regions of the city with the high esthomicide rates in 2015 and 2017, but which experienced significant declines in these rates in 2016, the period of validity of the pact between rival factions in the local context. Young men aged between 15 and 29 participated in the intervention research, and professionals of both sexes who work with young people through semi-structured interviews and discussion groups. Based on the analysis of there search subjects' discourses, their results address the daily lives of young people before, during and after the "pacification", highlighting the different meanings attributed to this event and how, under the rhetoric of peace, logics of warand violence were perpetuated by other means, affecting mainly juvenile segments with rights historically violated and whose lives are considered disposable.