Countering Persistent Alterity: Fostering Advocacy and Agency

This article explores Redes da Maré, a hybrid non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 2007 to support residents of Complexo da Maré, a neighbourhood of 16 favelas (informal settlements) in northeastern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil housing 140,000 people. Amidst systemic discrimination and limited access to public services, citizens have continually contested that reality and Redes seeks to advocate for their human rights and to improve their living conditions. While Redes combines service provision and advocacy, we argue that its hybridity is not merely functional or sectoral, but expressive of the constrained agency of a frequently stigmatized and dispossessed population. Redes operates at the intersection of formal NGO structures and grassroots legitimacy, negotiating simultaneously with the state, violent non-state actors, and hostile public perceptions. The organization deliberately uses discourses and tactics deemed ‘legitimate’ both to survive and to counter the dominant narrative that casts favela residents as internal enemies. In practice, hybridity means constantly shifting strategies: providing urgent services and cultural programs to meet local needs, while also challenging police violence through rights-claims and data-driven campaigns. We conclude that while Redes, like many of its counterparts, seeks to foster deliberative capacity, knowledge generation, and advocacy among the citizens it serves, it demonstrates a specific form of grounded hybridity that emerges not from neoliberal structuring alone, but from conscious navigation of multiple, overlapping regimes of structural violence, absence, and coercion in an especially fractious, fractionated and oppressive environment.