Therefore, the majority of Paulistanos live with very little mobility. In greater São Paulo not everyone moves around (Dennis and Urry 2009; Freire-Medeiros 2009; Urry 2004). It is still common, in field research, to encounter residents of the peripheries who have never, or only very rarely, left their neighborhoods. In any event, for those who don’t live in the city center and need to get around, the private car and more recently Uber and analogous applications are almost always the fastest, most practical, and safest alternatives. For this reason, the traffic in São Paulo is hellish: a 100-kilometer-long traffic jam on a weekday is nothing out of the ordinary.
In addition to practicality, there are other conditions that give the car immense symbolic power. Unlike other countries in North and South America, cars are extremely expensive in Brazil. A 2018 Toyota Corolla costs an average of USD 18,000 in the United States, or 13.8 US MW. In Brazil, the same car costs an average of USD 23,000 or 92.5 Brazilian MW. In relative terms, the Brazilian car is almost seven times more expensive. The middle classes and elites were, until the 2000s, the only ones capable of moving around the city by car.3 Therefore, cars have become potent signs of social differentiation and autonomy in Brazil, as in other North and South American contexts (Miller 2001).
To this day, São Paulo elites get around almost exclusively by car and almost never go to the peripheries – except when they live in gated communities, some of which lie some distance from the city center. The southwestern quadrant of the city of São Paulo, where these elites live, is the most affluent in the country, and it is there that the “official city” moves around, for the most part, by car. In Brazil, the richest 1 percent holds nearly 30 percent of the national wealth.4 There are two million super-rich Brazilians, many of them living in São Paulo. The city, therefore, has entire neighborhoods in which high-end markets (cars, boats, aircraft, jewelry, restaurants, etc.) are involved in active trade. The scale of these neighborhoods in São Paulo is unique in Brazil and, to a large extent, in Latin America. Much of our research was carried out from trips made in our own or rented cars, but we also traveled by bus, subway, and train. These trips almost always crossed extremely unequal locations.
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In 2015, the 3G signal was never the best in the peripheries, but we could see from the map that we were approaching Vila Cisper and that we should soon turn right, leaving the main avenue. There were many narrow streets in that direction, and down each one we could see a favela. Yes, we were close. We turned. We went up a narrow, asphalted street, which became increasingly potholed, and could see ever more precarious houses through the windscreen.
The entire Vila Cisper region is self-built, with the exception of the huge glass factory of the same name and the social-housing buildings built in the 1990s (Bonduki 1994, 2009; Rolnik 2001). Many of the residents of the periphery, in spite of having lived in neighborhoods for more than 40 years, still do not have deeds to the houses in which they live. Favelas are almost always built on illegally occupied land. We should arrive at our destination in three minutes.
Wilson, a contact of many years’ acquaintance and the son of one of the thousands of migrants from the northeast who moved into the neighborhood, was waiting for us at the headquarters of one of the capital’s amateur football clubs.5 As we parked the car we could already hear the sound of samba music and found ourselves smiling involuntarily. We were in a good mood. Wilson also greeted us with a smile; we shook hands and hugged. He told us that the group gathered at the samba party was celebrating a victory on the part of the neighborhood team in one of the amateur championship games that year. A moment of joy.
During the samba, while the musicians took turns playing and many people talked, flirted, danced and drank beer, we were introduced to Aron, who went on to become a valuable contact for years to come.
A Phone Call
Two years later, we met with Aron at the same bar, but at night this time, while a meeting of the residents’ association was going on next door. Aron is white with black eyes and light, short hair, shaved at the sides. He’s short and athletic with a shy smile. He greeted us with his right hand outstretched, while his left held the key of his new Ford Focus, which he had parked seconds ago. After a few minutes of conversation, he told us that he had actually wanted to be a football player. He said that in 2004, while still very young, he had held high hopes for his career and nearly went to live and play in Switzerland. Even though he was a top scorer in several youth amateur championships, it didn’t work out in the end. Without the support he needed, his career hadn’t taken off.
In 2017, at the age of 34, with his playing days behind him, Aron dedicated himself to “entrepreneurship.” A career, he claims, that led him out of the favela where he was born, also in the East Zone of São Paulo. His entrepreneurship had two distinct branches. On the one hand, sports, but now as an agent for promising young talent from small soccer teams; on the other, drug trafficking, which, thus far, has met all of his material needs.
Wearing a blue t-shirt and a green cap, jeans and sports shoes, Aron proudly showed us pictures on the phone of some of his soccer players, boys of 14 or 15 years old. One of them in particular was worth keeping an eye on; he felt sure that the boy would have a promising sports career. He never once made reference to the other boys of the same age, with the same skin color and the same social background as his soccer pupils, who worked in the drug dens that he runs in the East Zone. Individuals stand out in some trades more than others – and not all trades are best talked about in public.
In a reflective moment during the conversation, Aron asked us if it would be possible to get him a job at the university because he wanted to turn his life around. We told him a little about how the career of an academic works, the study it demands, and the average salary. Aron changed the subject immediately. He then told us that he runs 16 marijuana, cocaine, and crack outlets in the East Zone; he has been involved in drug trafficking since the age of 17, and nowadays a turnover equivalent to some 1,500 MW passes through his bank account on a monthly basis. The monthly salary of a Brazilian university professor at the peak of his career is 15 MW per month. A master’s scholarship is worth 1.5 MW. Aron, born in a favela and involved in the life of the community, earned an income worth no less than 1000 times more than a master’s student, and 100 times more than a university professor.
It’s a lot of money, we say. It’s not an easy job, he says. Trafficking sent him to prison a few years ago, but he escaped, handcuffed, through the front door of the police station. The policeman with him had let his guard down for a moment and Aron ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, ignoring the sound of gunshots behind him. He threw himself down a bank and hid in a swamp. Two years after our conversation, in 2019, Aron was arrested again, now as part of a Civil Police investigation. Thanks to the good lawyers he hired, he got out in two weeks. In 2020, Aron was still up to his neck in crime and was still trying to get out of it.
One event in Aron’s rich life story is of special interest to us: a phone call he made on October 1, 2016. It was to a certain Rosildo, an old partner from the same São Paulo favela, now based in Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso state. Rosildo answered after the first ring. The conversation was friendly, but not free of tension thanks to their shared fears of something not being left clear or coming out on the wrong side of the deal – or being tapped by the police. Experienced thieves and dealers change cell phones practically