Youth and Social Control: Rio de Janeiro's Operacao Verao through the Eyes of Security Agents

The beaches of Rio de Janeiro are considered to be amongst the city's most democratic areas, as they are frequented by people who represent a wide range of economic and social classes. Despite this fact, Rio's Guarda Municipal and the Brazilian Military Police put in place the beach security policy entitled Operacdo Verao (Operation Summer), which serves to limit this democracy. Amongst the operation's aims is the prevention of the so-called arrastaes, aggressive acts supposedly committed by groups of young people from the suburbs. The purpose of the article is to analyze how these disadvantaged youths were monitored during the beach patrols, as seen through the eyes of the law enforcement officers who implemented this policy. To achieve this goal, an ethnographic study of OperacdoVerdo will be presented, examining the observations of the law enforcement officers' work on the beaches and the interviews conducted. The analysis of the data shows how this strategy, which aims to control public space, both limits and hinders access to the beach for a certain segment of the population already historically criminalized in Rio de Janeiro: the youth from the suburs.