Major favelas

Rio das Pedras

A low-lying favela in Jacarepaguá, in Rio's West Zone, built largely by migrants from the Northeast — the second most populous favela in Rio, and the place most associated with the rise of the city's militias.

Geography and setting

Unlike Rio's famous hillside favelas, Rio das Pedras is mostly flat, built on low, once-swampy land along the river that gives it its name, which drains toward the lagoons of Jacarepaguá. It sits on the route between the older North and South Zones and Barra da Tijuca, the West Zone district of condominiums and shopping malls that grew rapidly from the 1970s — and whose construction sites, homes, and services provided much of the employment that drew residents to Rio das Pedras in the first place.

History

Occupation began in the 1960s and accelerated through the 1970s and 1980s, as the expansion of Barra da Tijuca created demand for labor and as migrants from the Northeast — particularly from Paraíba, Ceará, and Pernambuco — settled in the area. Northeastern culture remains prominent: forró music, Northeastern food, and regional associations are part of everyday life. Land was filled and drained incrementally by residents, and the community expanded outward into the wetlands.

Militias

Rio das Pedras is the place most often cited as the origin of Rio's militias. From the 1980s and 1990s, groups including off-duty and retired police officers and firefighters, operating through and around the residents' association, presented themselves as protecting the community from drug traffickers. They kept the drug factions out, but in doing so established their own armed control, charging residents for "security" and controlling businesses such as gas-cylinder distribution, alternative transport, and pirated cable TV.

The Rio de Janeiro state legislature's 2008 parliamentary inquiry into militias (the CPI das Milícias, led by state deputy Marcelo Freixo) documented this model and its spread to dozens of other communities in the West Zone. Later investigations, including those following the 2018 murder of city councillor Marielle Franco, linked a group of contract killers known as the Escritório do Crime ("crime office") to the militia based in Rio das Pedras.

Vertical construction and the Muzema collapse

Since the 2000s, Rio das Pedras and the neighboring Muzema area have seen rapid construction of multi-story apartment buildings, often without permits and on unstable ground. Investigators and journalists have described real-estate development as one of the militias' main sources of income: land is occupied, built on, and units sold or rented without regulation. In April 2019 two irregular residential buildings collapsed in Muzema, killing 24 people, and focusing national attention on the link between militias, illegal construction, and the lack of state oversight.

Population and economy

With 55,653 residents in the 2022 census, Rio das Pedras is one of the five most populous favelas in Brazil. Its economy is dense and commercial: shops, street markets, construction trades, and services aimed both at residents and at the neighboring districts of Barra da Tijuca and Jacarepaguá, where many residents work. Rents are high relative to other West Zone favelas, reflecting the location and the controlled supply of new housing.

Why it matters

Rio das Pedras complicates the common picture of favelas as places dominated by drug factions. It shows how a model sold as protection against trafficking produced another form of armed territorial control — one with closer ties to the state's own security forces and to electoral politics. For the wider picture, see Militias, Public security history, and Favelas in Rio de Janeiro.