Between slaps and kicks

an anthropological study of ‘baculejo’ as a ritual of police power in the everyday life

Abstract

This paper discusses the practice of physical aggression by military police against youth in the slums, plazas and streets of the city of Fortaleza in the perspective of an anthropology of violence and social conflict. Based on ethnographic materials research with military police, with young users of psychoactive substances in the squares and streets and also with young slum dwellers, we seek to develop an analytical reading from our ethnographic access, focusing on the ritual of power known as “baculejo “where, in addition to traditional military and police search for drugs, weapons or fugitives from justice, sets up a field of power fueled by recurrent practices of violence such as slaps, kicks, beatings and in some cases, more torture severe, with a focus on physical punishment of persons considered socially undesirable by the military police, whose optical involves the idea of “breaking the morale” of the “bums” or “soften the bum” under the aegis of excuses that revolve around the notion police military “act with energy” or “strong action” to enforce respect and order.