Theopolitical police: BOPE, Christianity and popular culture in Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT

This article centres on contemporary mergers between state security practices, popular media and religion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It discusses the actions and the representations of BOPE – Batalhão de Operações Especiais da Polícia Militar do Rio de Janeiro – the special operations battalion of the military police of Rio de Janeiro, to show how this unit frequently employs Christian symbols and practices to legitimate violence at the border between the legal and the illegal. BOPE’s religious iconography is amplified by movies, memes, toys and popular clothing. BOPE’s military pop-culture can best be regarded as theopolitical because such a perspective underscores the fact that different Christian symbols and practices, derived from Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism, produce incoherent political theologies that are fuelled by bottom-up innovations and institutional legacies.

KEYWORDS:

• Policing
• Christianity
• theopolitical anthropology
• Brazil

Introduction

On 17 May 2022, BOPE (Batalhão de Operações Especiais), Rio de Janeiro’s special operations police battalion, posted a photo on its Facebook page that showed four heavily armed BOPE officers standing in front of the world-famous statue of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) in Rio de Janeiro.¹ The caption above the photo stated: ‘Give us the wisdom of your mind. The courage of your heart. The strength of your arms and the protection of your hands – fragment of the special forces’ prayer. Strength and honour’.²

BOPE is widely known in and beyond Rio de Janeiro as a police force that performs heavily armed violence in the city’s favelas³ and peripheral areas. In many favelas, so called facções – networks of drugs-trading gangs – or milícias – mafia-like organisations that include police officers (Cano and Duarte 2012; Mesquita 2008; Zaluar and Conceição 2007) attempt to control the local territory and economy by means of force. Police and military forces regularly perform so called operações (operations) to take on these armed groups. Such operations generally involve open combat in densely populated areas. Whereas there are other police units involved in operations, BOPE is frequently called to take part and BOPE’s death toll is notorious.⁴

Created in 1978 (under a different name), the special forces unit BOPE was initially composed of voluntary police officers with proven ‘moral integrity’ and military combat skills. The aim was to create a police team that was more effective and precise in their actions. In 2000, BOPE moved to a new headquarters on top of a hill in the city centre and a year later, the image of a skull pierced by a dagger and crossed by two guns became BOPE’s formal emblem. This emblem features prominently in BOPE’s public appearances. It stands at the centre of BOPE’s formal insignia and appears on BOPE flags, vehicles and buildings. In 2001, a heavily armoured vehicle baptised ‘O Caveirão’ (The Big Skull), regularly became part of its violent police operations in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. Moreover, BOPE officers refer to themselves as ‘caveiras’ (skulls).

Strikingly, BOPE practices and representations are riddled with religious references. The caption of the photo described above derives from BOPE’s ‘Special Forces Prayer’, amongst others visible at the entrance of BOPE’s headquarters in the neighbourhood Laranjeiras in Rio de Janeiro.⁵ There, a mural circumscribed by a series of skulls exhibits the following text:

Oh Dear Lord, Author of Liberty and Champion of the oppressed, Please listen to our prayer: We, The men of the Special Forces, recognize our dependency upon you Lord in the preservation of human liberty. Please, stay with us, when we struggle to defend the weak and free the enslaved. In order that we will always remember that our nation, whose motto is: ORDER AND PROGRESS expects us to do our duty, for Ourselves, with HONOR, and that we should never embarrass our faith, our families or our fellows. Give us the wisdom of your mind. The courage of your heart. The strength of your arms and the protection of your hands It’s for the LORD that we fight and to you belong the laurels of our victory. Because yours is the reign, the power and glory, Forever Amen.

Not necessarily excluding other religious interpretations, this prayer employs routinised Christian confirmations of God’s reign, while connecting these firmly to a modernist nationalist language of belonging and utopian responsibility (Order and Progress are the words that stand at the centre of the Brazilian flag).

What to make of this assemblage of spectacularized state violence, Christian references, and political ideology in the context of Rio de Janeiro, a city that suffers from immense socio-economic disparity and armed violence?

As we argue in this article, BOPE’s Christian references, symbols, and practices form part of its authoritarian theological framework aimed at the public acceptance and political support of BOPE’s lethal operations. This framework exhibits different Christian canons, Afro-centric imaginations, and cultic traditions and is relatively incoherent. As we show, BOPE’s religious faces display continuations with a Roman Catholic political theology at the heart of the Brazilian state, but BOPE’s recent incorporations of Pentecostal practices and theology also show ruptures with this Roman Catholic political theology. To capture and analyse the incoherent character of this political theological formation, we employ the concept of the theopolitical, as put forth by McAllister and Napolitano (2020, 2021). More than political theology – a concept advanced by Carl Schmitt ([1922] 2005) – the concept of the theopolitical brings forth a critical stance vis-à-vis totalising and authoritarian aspirations of state institutions and a critical stance vis-à-vis scholarly approaches that willingly or unwillingly tend to support such ambitions. Nevertheless, following McAllister and Napolitano (2020, 2021), we highlight that theopolitical formations may support counterhegemonic liberatory politics but can also support reactionary forces that seek to maintain hegemonic constellations. With our work, we aim to elucidate in more detail how this plays out in Brazil and in Rio de Janeiro in particular. We propose the term theopolitical police to describe BOPE because the police battalion exhibits a variety of prominent religious practices that are part of different socio-political currents in Brazil’s recent history. The concept theopolitcal police adds to police studies a new approach of contemporary religious practices that are entangled with police operations, and it adds to theopolitcal anthropology an analysis of the mergers of different religio-political strands in a state institution fashioned to exercise lethal violence. Particularly, BOPE’s incorporation of Pentecostal rituals and practices calls our attention. The spectacular rise of Pentecostalism in Brazil in the 80s and 90s was partly fuelled by its counterhegemonic promises (Birman and Lehmann 1999) that resonated with the needs, anxieties, and desires of disenfranchised urban populations. Over the past decades, Pentecostalism has transformed and diversified, and it has become part of the authoritarian conservative politics in Brazil. Nevertheless, Pentecostalism has also retained some of its liberatory practices. Beyond its obvious authoritarian faces grounded in armed violence, BOPE’s rituals and performances display traces of the liberatory forces visible in Brazilian Pentecostalism. Focusing on BOPE thus shows how liberatory religious promises can be partially integrated in the authoritarian and violent practices of Brazilian state institutions and elucidate how different political currents merge in such institutions. In line with authors who have taken up a theopolitical approach (Lambelet 2020), we argue that media and popular culture play key roles in the theopolitical formations in Rio de Janeiro and in BOPE’s practices and representations. Movies, music, clothing, and television series that refer to BOPE play crucial roles in the reproduction of BOPE’s tentative authority, yet they are never fully captured by BOPE’s theopolitical framework, not in the least because this framework exhibits different Christian and Afro-Brazilian traditions that together form a pastiche of heterogenous practices.

In the following sections, we first elucidate our methodology, we situate our contribution in scholarly debates, and we describe the context of Rio de Janeiro. After that, we explain the rise of BOPE’s prominence in relation to the immensely popular movie Elite Squad and in relation to the so-called ‘pacification’ period that coincided with the city’s sports mega events. In the last sections of the article, we describe and analyse the performances of BOPE’s Pentecostal music ensemble Praise Squad and we highlight BOPE’s appearances in popular cultural practices and media.

Methodology

The material for this article is derived from popular cultural expressions in Rio de Janeiro – ranging from film to music, and new media – and from ethnographic research with evangelical BOPE members done in 2012. The work that the authors bring together here draws on their previous projects and their ongoing ethnographic projects on religious and political transformations in the city of Rio de Janeiro (Machado 2016, 2017; Oosterbaan 2017, 2023). The researchers accompanied these transformations throughout the so-called ‘pacification’ era when the city was preparing for and hosting consecutive sports mega events (FIFA World Cup 2013, Olympics 2016) and state and municipal institutions produced a plethora of security propaganda materials. The authors documented BOPE self-representations on its social media, and archived the references to BOPE in popular culture. Carly Machado followed the practices and performances of BOPE’s evangelical band of musicians Tropa de Louvor (the Praise Squad) intensively for 2 years (2010–2012), while she also did ethnographic fieldwork among Pentecostal adherents of the denomination Assembléia de Deus dos Últimos Dias in the Baixada Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro (2010–2013). Martijn Oosterbaan did ethnographic fieldwork on Pentecostalism and popular culture in Rio de Janeiro in 2011, 2014, 2016 and 2018.

Context and scholarly relevance

The theoretical contribution of this article emerges from a contextual analysis of Rio de Janeiro at the crossroads of four (related) scholarly fields of debate, which we summarise here as discussions on: 1) Religion and Police Forces; 2) Urban sovereignty and BOPE; 3) Political Theology and Theopolitical Anthropology; 4) State Violence and Popular Culture.

Religion and police forces

The appearance of Christian icons and texts in BOPE representations begs the question of how state and religious institutions relate. Rather than assuming that constitutional secularity means that religion is relegated to the private sphere and does not influence public life, we follow scholars who have theorised the public presence of religion in relation to modern nation-state building. In line with the groundbreaking work of Talal Asad (1993, 2003) these scholars understand secularisation not as the end of religious politics but as a normative governmental project that attempts to define and regulate religion, a process that had and has profoundly different dynamics and outcomes throughout the world (Bubandt and Van Beek 2012; Burchardt and Wohlrab-Sahr 2013; Calhoun, Juergensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen 2011; Cannell 2010; Giumbelli 2002).

In many cases, modern secular constitutions curtailed the power of religious institutions but privileged particular religions and religious institutions at the expense of others. As Zavala-Pelayo and Góngora-Mera (2016, 66) for instance write: ‘Latin American Constitutions of the early nineteenth century declared their unrestricted, and in some cases perpetual, devotion to Catholicism as the state religion; in some cases, even private worship in other faiths was banned’.

Following this insight means that we cannot assume that the Brazilian state is secular in the simplified sense that religion did not and does not operate publicly and/or in close harmony with the state. Whereas the Brazilian constitution of 1891 constitutionally separated state and church, Roman Catholicism remained a privileged partner of the nation-state. During its republican (1889–1930), dictatorial (1930–1946 and 1964–1985) and democratic periods (1946–1964 and 1985-present), Roman Catholicism was (and is) closely connected to state institutions and national projects (Birman 2003; Burity and Andrade 2011; Montero 2015) and Catholic icons and statues are clearly still present in many of Rio de Janeiro’s public spaces (Giumbelli 2014).

The embrace between the Brazilian state institutions and religion also concerns Brazil’s police forces. Since the constitution of 1946, Brazilian law dictates that the state appoints chaplains to provide ‘religious assistance’ for the country’s armed forces. Because Brazilian police forces are formally part of the Brazilian army, police forces in Rio de Janeiro also have chaplains (M. C. Almeida 2007). The majority of these identify as Roman Catholics and are ordained priests, but state police forces also contract Protestant and Afro-Brazilian chaplains, for example (Jácomo 2016). Beyond these institutional connections, Roman Catholic icons, chapels, and images remain firmly embedded in the infrastructure of the Rio de Janeiro state police force.

In 2016, for example, a Roman Catholic Bishop inaugurated a Catholic chapel (dedicated to Saint George) in a large police compound in Mesquita, a municipality in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro.⁶ Saint George is the patron saint of the police cavalry of Rio de Janeiro and venerated among many other police officers and firefighters in the city (Medeiros 2012).⁷ On 7 May 2019, former governor Witzel declared Saint George, the official patron saint of the state of Rio de Janeiro, by law.⁸ Strikingly, Saint George is also considered to be the syncretic other half of the Afro-Brazilian orixá (deity) Ogum, who is comprehended as a warrior deity in Afro-Brazilian religious circles.

BOPE’s religious manifestations remain thoroughly under-analysed. For example, in a recent monograph, Storani (2022) describes the collective exclamation of the Special Forces Prayer during a BOPE recruitment training, and he narrates how the ceremonial character of the collective prayer produces a strong collective ethos that clearly displays religious traces. Nevertheless, he describes the ritual process as the ‘sacralization of the secular’ (Storani 2022, 126). While we do not contest the fact that the prayer ritual may sacralise BOPE missions and personnel, describing BOPE as secular – in the sense that BOPE is at heart a-religious or religiously neutral – produces a misleading picture of BOPE’s theopolitical character and that of the Brazilian nation-state.

BOPE’s continuing association with Roman Catholicism – visible in representations, such as BOPE’s photo of Cristo Redentor and audible in recitals, such as BOPE’s Special Forces Prayer – displays continuities with existing theopolitical formations in Brazil. Nevertheless, BOPE’s public outreach also signals profound transformations, such as the presence of evangelical messages and styles in BOPE representations and practices (which we will describe in more detail below).

In the past decades, Brazilian evangelical churches (Pentecostal and Born-again Christian) have grown quickly and have left their marks on the cultural, political, and economic domains of society (R. D. Almeida 2019; Lehmann 2021; Mafra 2001; Sant’ana 2014). Brazilian born-again Christian/Pentecostal groups have sought to break with the Roman Catholic hegemony since the late 1980s offering a message of personal salvation and a host of bodily/spiritual experiences that seek to invoke the blessings of the Holy Spirit (Birman and Lehmann 1999; Birman and Leite 2000).

Pentecostal converts primarily arose from the lower classes (Fernandes et al. 1998), and many Pentecostal churches sprouted in the favelas of Brazil’s megacities. Whereas nowadays political commentators regularly refer to the conservative elements in Brazilian Pentecostalism, it is important to remember that many adherents turn(ed) to Pentecostalism because it offers them socio-spiritual trajectories in the face of ‘wide vistas of possible lives, inciting desire and fantasy, but also anxiety, frustration, downward mobility and insecurity’ (Corten and Ruth 2001, 3). By and large, evangelical churches in the peripheral neighbourhoods of Brazil’s urban centres promise spiritual, emotional, and material support in situations of structural violence (Farmer 2004).

While the emphasis on peace, spiritual protection and salvation plays an important part in Pentecostalism’s appeal – especially to people who suffer from state and criminal violence – this does not obstruct its appeal to state (and criminal agents) who regularly perform violence. As Elizabete Albernaz (2010) has shown, a portion of the police offers in Rio de Janeiro finds solace in Pentecostalism because it explains evil and violence in Brazilian society as manifestations of the spiritual battle between God and the devil and because it offers them an ethical framework to legitimate their use of force. Following the expansion of Pentecostalism across socio-cultural groups that employ armed violence (and are victims of it), BOPE officers created the Congregação Evangélica do BOPE (BOPE’s Evangelical Congregation) in 1995. In 2007, the congregation gained its own church space (templo) within BOPE’s headquarters.⁹

As Martijn Oosterbaan and Tessa Diphoorn also highlight (see introduction of this issue), entanglements between state police forces and religious movements in constitutionally secular societies regularly support the appearance of religious representations and practices in police practices. Key questions that emerge from such entanglements are: in what socio-political contexts do such religions appear and what does it mean for the (de)legitimation of state violence?

Urban sovereignty and BOPE

BOPE’s visibility and popularity in Brazil – and in Rio de Janeiro in particular – can hardly be analysed without considering contemporary debates on sovereignty and state violence in Brazil’s cityscapes. In the past decades, a host of scholars have argued that to understand the everyday production of order (and in/security) in contemporary cities, it is not enough to look only at the formal (de jure) delegation of rule. Following the work of Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005), amongst others, such scholars have argued that a focus on sovereignty – the power to decide on the exception, establishing differences between those subjects that are to be protected and those that can be killed with impunity – is at the heart of the production of order (see also Mbembe 2003). Moreover, as many have shown, states and informal organisations regularly compete and/or collaborate for such sovereign positions (Das and Poole 2004; Hansen and Stepputat 2006).

Taking such a perspective when looking at cities allows us to see that power cannot be comprehended ‘as a monolithic and singular regime of rule, but rather as a fragmented domain of multiple and competing sovereignties’ (AlSayyad and Roy 2006, 12) and it allows us to understand Brazilian mega-cities as urban terrains where state and non-state actors compete and/or co-produce rule and order (Willis 2015; Feltran 2020). Brazilian state institutions frequently play dubious roles in such fragmented governmental arenas, at once posing as the sovereign rulers that uphold and protect the law and as the rulers that may break it when they deem it necessary. Especially in the ‘margins of the state’ (Das and Poole 2004), state actors regularly transgress the formal boundaries of the law to (re)produce state sovereignty (Birman et al. 2015).

Rio de Janeiro is known for the territorial disputes between drugs-trading gangs – so called facções – that operate in and govern many of the city’s favelas. Since the turn of the century, the city has also witnessed the growth of so called milícias: armed organisations made up of (former) police officers, firemen and other state-agents. These milícias amongst other things attempt to control and ‘tax’ the distribution of gas, and they run semi-public transport routes (Cano and Duarte 2012; Mesquita 2008; Zaluar and Conceição 2007). The rise of the milícias has exacerbated the governmental fragmentation as there are now territorial disputes between different milícias, between facções and between milícias and facções.

BOPE is especially known for its armed combat in favelas. BOPE officers are trained for urban warfare and frequently take on armed members of the facções in densely populated favelas. News reports in Rio de Janeiro regularly highlight ‘successful police operations’ lead by BOPE, but critics underline the fact that BOPE officers shoot before they ask questions, and they emphasise that many of these lethal performances of state violence are unlawful and contrast fundamentally with the state’s prime task to protect the human rights of Brazilian citizens.

Strikingly, a large portion of the state’s agents, politicians, and the urban public applaud BOPE’s lethal invasions rather than condemning them, which prompts the questions why and how audiences come to understand BOPE practices as licit? Excellent scholars have laid bare the socio-cultural mechanisms that sustain the belief that BOPE violence is legitimate (Esperança 2016; Leite 2012; Misse et al. 2013), pointing out how urban segregation reproduces stigmatising notions of favela residents that are supposedly prone to crime and violence. They also show how the mediatised trope of war produces a consensus that police forces need to commit extreme violence to produce urban peace.

Whereas people in Rio de Janeiro generally perceive the police as unreliable and dangerous, many also believe that only police mercilessness can eradicate evil in the city. Such beliefs are often supported by the popular phrase ‘bandido bom é bandido morto’ (‘a good bandit is a dead bandit’). Unfortunately, the legal context of police operations in the city leaves ample room for police officers to kill alleged bandits during so-called police operations and argue that such casualties were the result of their armed resistance against their arrest. By means of the legal category auto de resistência (resistance followed by death) police officers can be excused from investigations that inquire into the legality of their actions (Misse et al. 2013).

In line with a general analysis of the legitimation of police violence in Rio de Janeiro, scholars who have focused on BOPE emphasise how the performative display of BOPE’s moral, technical, and professional superiority over other police forces in Rio de Janeiro reproduces the impression that only this police battalion can succeed in bringing peace (Araújo 2015; Pacheco 2014; Salem and Larkins 2021; Storani 2022). As Pacheco (2014) describes, BOPE officers also cultivate the widespread idea that they are better than ‘ordinary’ corruptible police officers.

Though the works cited here elucidate several mechanisms and categories that support the glorification of BOPE, the roles of religion and media remain undertheorized. Pacheco (2014, 10), for instance, highlights that BOPE’s heroic image was consolidated after the blockbusters ‘Elite Squad’ and ‘Elite Squad 2’, but he does not reflect on the role that media and popular culture play in the production of urban sovereignty.

Political theology and theopolitical anthropology

Mergers between BOPE’s representations, on the one hand, and Christian ideology, practice and symbolism on the other can be considered as contemporary political theological formations, which Hent de Vries (2006, 25) – following Jan Assman – defined as the ‘ever-changing relationships between political community and religious order, in short, between power [or authority: Herrschaft] and salvation [Heil]’. The photo of BOPE officers in front of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, which we described in the introduction, leaves little doubt that Roman Catholic imagery intersects with Brazilian nation-state building and with the state’s projection of its means of violence to protect this national community. Nevertheless, several of our descriptions already indicate that Roman Catholicism is not the only religious tradition that takes centre stage in BOPE representations: Pentecostal and – to a minor extent – Afro-centric traditions also play important roles. This raises questions about how to describe and analyse Brazilian political theologies.

Recently, Carlota McAllister and Valentina Napolitano (2020, 2021) have argued that writings on political theology have been profoundly influenced by the works of Carl Schmitt ([1922] 2005) and Giorgio Agamben (1998), which, according to them, has left a particular mark on the rendering of political theology in anthropological discussions. Historicising and particularising Schmitt’s intervention in political philosophy, McAllister and Napolitano argue against an uncritical adoption of Schmitt’s understanding of political theology:

His political theology is authoritarian, privileging stability and the maintenance of state power at a moment when the Weimar Republic seemed to augur its collapse. Hence, the sovereign decision is imagined as reinstating the order of the general – the law, the norm, the concept – against and over that which resists generalization. Yet if the relationship between the moment of the decision and the moment of the establishment of the state of exception is indeed like the one between God and the miracle, there is more room for equivocation and maneuver in the time between them than an authoritarian might wish. (McAllister and Napolitano 2020, 4)

According to McAllister and Napolitano, adopting Schmitt’s rendering of political theology as the ground from which to analyse political formations, carries with it the risk of being captured by its totalising gesture. Following Benjamin’s understanding of Messianic and profane forces at work in socio-political life (in combination with the writings of Martin Buber (1967)), McAllister and Napolitano propose an alternative understanding of religio-political formations:

Clarifying junctures and projects may emerge from the tensions between these forces [Messianic and profane], but they do not take the form of final ruptures or decisive exceptions. A theopolitical anthropology recognizes this dynamic by approaching sovereignty not as a Leviathan, but rather as a practice in and of movement, governed less by concepts and ideologies than by rhythms and aesthetics, and always in provisional form (Benjamin [1996] 2009). (McAllister and Napolitano 2020, 6)

McAllister and Napolitano (2020, 2021) point to the permanence of other religious traditions in the Americas that were occluded by the forceful presence of strands of Roman Catholicism that highlighted God’s universal manifestation (in her cataphatic dimensions). Also, they argue that the (re)emergence of other traditions may contribute to counterhegemonic liberatory politics but can also support reactionary forces (McAllister and Napolitano 2021, 119).

This alternative perspective on religio-political formations leaves room for the presence and perception of different religious traditions that operate differently vis-à-vis power, and it pictures such formations as kaleidoscopic and impermanent. This perspective gives us a better starting point to describe and analyse BOPE practices and its resonances with Brazilian society than a model that wholeheartedly takes on board the totalising gesture of Schmitt’s conceptualisation of political theology.¹⁰ Focusing on BOPE’s religious representations gives us an opportunity to analyse if and how ‘competing sovereignties collide but also provisionally resonate with one another’ (McAllister and Napolitano’s 2020, 11) and it gives us a chance to analyse how and in what conditions totalitarian and liberatory gestures relate in violent state organisations such as BOPE.

State violence and popular culture

McAllister and Napolitano (2020, 7) highlight that rhythm and aesthetics are crucial to theopolitical anthropology, which ‘asks not only how theological categories permeate everyday life beyond the Schmittian framework of secularization, but also how these categories participate in long histories of the body, affects, and material religion, and how these histories are lived in the constitution of peoples and commons’. We have argued in the past – and argue here – that we can only understand everyday life in Rio de Janeiro when we consider the ubiquity of mass media and popular culture that permeate Rio’s urban spheres (Oosterbaan 2017). In such spheres, popular conceptions of justice and security are enmeshed with religious narratives and representations that are transmitted and shared in novelas, music, films, visual imagery, carnival parades, etcetera.

As we will describe in more detail below, BOPE imagery has become part of a wider domain of commercial media and pop culture industries that largely operate beyond the control of the police organisation itself – yet influence their public appearance and their actions. By and large, these industries spectacularize BOPE actions and glorify BOPE officers. This resonance between BOPE and Brazilian entertainment industries can be analysed with the help of scholarly work that focuses on the rise of militainment (Stahl 2010) and securitainment (Andrejevic 2011). In the aftermath of 9/11 several scholars have noted an alarming rapprochement between the militarisation and securitisation of public life, on the one hand, and popular culture on the other (Andrejevic 2011; Der Derian 2009; Stahl 2010). Ranging from Hollywood movies and television series to video games, audiences of popular films and television series are encouraged to identify with soldiers in international militarised conflicts and with domestic security forces on the lookout for terrorists. Telespectators are persuaded to adopt state-framed security threats and accept state violence as the best mode of response to them.

While the cited scholarly frameworks help to understand the appeal and meaning of the popular culture of BOPE, the works cited say little to nothing about religion. Transferring such frameworks to Rio de Janeiro without analysing the role of religious traditions in nation-state projects, shared notions of justice, and state violence, increases the risk of obfuscating the role that religion plays at the intersections of entertainment and state violence, and, consequently, hinders our attempt to grasp how and why publics perceive and condone extra-legal state-violence.

We propose the term ‘theopolitical police’ to affirm the connections between nation-state institutions, popular media, and religion and to connect and advance the scholarly fields of debate we have outlined here. Ideally, the concept theopolitcal police not only helps us to grasp BOPE and the dynamics at play in Rio de Janeiro but also adds to police studies and the anthropology of the state.

BOPE in – and beyond – the movies

Elite Squad is the English title of the immensely popular Brazilian movie Tropa de Elite, which centres on BOPE’s training- and selection programme and its operations in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The movie, directed by José Padilha, was launched in Brazil in 2007. Its plot deals with public security in Rio de Janeiro and narrates the life of protagonist captain Nascimento, commander of a BOPE unit. Nascimento and his BOPE colleagues firmly believe that they are among the few upright police officers in Rio de Janeiro and think that only they can protect urbanites from criminal actors that live and operate in the city’s favelas. In several movie scenes, captain Nascimento and other BOPE officers perform extremely violent and illegal procedures, arguing that extra-legal measures are needed to preserve the safety of Brazilian citizens and ward off the threat of Rio’s armed criminals.

The movie Elite Squad was an instant success when it was released in 2007. Millions of people went to the cinemas to watch the movie and an illegal copy circulated widely in informal circuits before the movie was officially launched. While hardly anyone was indifferent to the movie’s content, opposing moral-political opinions surfaced. The narrative structure of the movie did not make clear if the brutal, extra-legal violence of BOPE captain Nascimento and his fellows had to be condemned or condoned and there were as many people who read it as a profound critique of the police routines in Brazil as there were people who cheered for captain Nascimento. In fact, in a number of circles, captain Nascimento was glorified as a national hero.

One of the reasons why the movie struck a chord with so many people, we argue, is that the movie and its sequel profoundly straddled the boundaries between fact and fiction from the outset. Elite Squad’s plot is based upon a non-fictional book about BOPE, co-authored by the renowned Brazilian anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares, published in 2006. Another co-author, a former BOPE captain named Rodrigo Pimentel, stood as model for the fictional captain Nascimento. Pimentel left BOPE in 2000 and started to work as a commentator for Globo Television, the largest television network in Brazil, and one of the biggest in the world. During his TV Globo years, he upheld the conviction that the police aim to protect the population within the bounds of the law but also voiced his opinion that illegal transgressions are inevitable because police officers are underpaid, receive poor training and are up against heavily armed criminal factions.

When the movie Elite Squad 1 was launched, BOPE was at the height of its appeal as an extra-ordinary police force. The film re-narrates the actual socio-political context that spurred BOPE’s expansion: the visit of Pope John Paul II to Rio de Janeiro in 1997. In the movie – and in reality – the Pope was planning to lodge in a neighbourhood of the city (Tijuca) that is surrounded by favelas dominated by facções. BOPE was set to work to occupy one particular favela near the place where the Pope intended to stay to eliminate all risks related to the presence of drug trading gangs. The success of this operation paved the way for BOPE’s strategic role in improving Rio de Janeiro’s public security before and during a series of mega-events in the city. Rio de Janeiro is unique in the sense that no other city in the world has experienced that many sports mega-events in one decade, starting with the Pan-American Games in 2007 and ending with the Olympic Games and the Paralympics in 2016.

The interplay between fact and fiction was extended when Elite Squad 2 was launched in 2010. This sequel, also directed by Padilha, followed the career of captain Nascimento and picked up the narrative where the first film had ended, recounting transformations in Rio de Janeiro’s crimescape that took place not long before the movie appeared. In the sequel, Nascimento uncovers the perverse effects of police operations set up to rid favelas of the facções. While these operations allegedly took place to end favela crime, they effectively paved the way for the milícias (that contain many corrupt police officers) to take hold of favela territories, substituting one type of criminal actor for another.

In the years after the launch of Elite Squad 2, BOPE’s fame grew as its operations became tied up with the massive security programme linked to the city’s mega-events and throughout these years captain Nascimento’s heroic stature was consolidated. Moreover, Nascimento’s image and movie lines and BOPE’s aesthetics became part of a wider domain of popular culture that involves clothing, music, video games, slang, etcetera (we come back to these popular cultural artefacts below).

Analysing the cross-fertilisations between BOPE’s (self)representations and the Elite Squad movies helps us to understand how and why BOPE’s violent practices are legitimised. By and large, the heroisation of the movie characters echoed the popular depiction of BOPE officers as incorruptible men (women hardly enter the force) whose moral and professional excellence supposedly legitimates their extremely lethal actions.

Skulls and Christianity

The cultic references to skulls stand at the centre of many of BOPE’s public appearances. Since the early 2000s, BOPE officers are popular known as os Caveiras (the Skulls). Their headquarters, called o Palácio da Caveira (Palace of the Skull) is situated on top of one of Rio de Janeiro’s hills. The headquarters is formally called the ‘Garrison of the Valley of the Dry Bones (Quartel do Vale dos Ossos Secos)’.¹¹ As a huge painting inside the headquarters confirms, the name of the garrison is a reference to Chapter 37 of the book of Ezekiel in the Bible, which recounts the power of the Lord to bring flesh and life to the dried bones of men.¹² The headquarters (a former casino and hotel) is located between a large middle-class neighbourhood and a favela, and it offers a panoramic view on Rio de Janeiro.

The prominence of BOPE’s logo (a skull pierced by a dagger) on clothes, buildings and vehicles leaves room for different (religious and non-religious) interpretations, but in general the symbol indexes the thresholds of human life and death. Historically, the skull has appeared on many military insignias. One of the most prominent examples of the use of the symbol in the context of state violence is the so-called Totenkopf used by the Schutzstaffel (SS) that was part of the Nazi regime in Germany.

Strikingly, Rodrigo Pimentel traces the meaning of the skull and dagger to the Nazi regime also. According to Pimentel, commandos of the allied forces at one point entered a Nazi concentration camp and found macabre trophies such as human skulls and bones. ‘At that moment, one of the soldiers, in outrage drew his dagger and jammed it into one of the skulls, shouting out that, now, life had defeated death’.¹³ This reading of the meaning of the skulls and dagger also appears in other BOPE representations. In a BBC documentary (2014), BOPE commander Gripp explains that the emblem signifies ‘Victory over Death’.¹⁴ Reflecting on his own life as a BOPE officer in the documentary, he recounts having been shot multiple times in combat, adding that his survival demonstrates that he truly defeated death in those instances.¹⁵ As BOPE officers run the risk of being killed during operations, skulls also index the sacrificial nature of BOPE’s missions.

Despite their readings of the skull and dagger as a symbol of life-giving and life-protecting forces, BOPE officers also purposefully reproduce the ghastly connotations that references to skulls bring along and that highlight the necropolitical (Mbembe 2003) faces of the state. As Lia de Mattos Rocha (2008, 201), recounts, loudspeakers attached to the black plated BOPE combat vehicle known as the caveirão, loudly amplify the phrases: ‘The caveirão is here to get your soul’ and ‘what God has built, the caveirão will destroy’, whenever it enters one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to engage in combat. In the movie Elite Squad, BOPE officers proudly chant the following battle cry during exercise: ‘Hey, man dressed in black, what’s your mission? To enter the favela and leave dead bodies on the floor. Hey, man dressed in black, what do you do? I do things that scares the devil (Homens de preto, qual é sua missão? Entrar pela favela e deixar corpos no chão. Homens de preto, que é que você faz? Eu faço coisas que assusta o satanás).’ Representations of such practices appear to be based on actual training practices in which similar chants are sung. In a news report, published in 2013, Globo shared a video that showed BOPE officers singing during one of their exercises in a public park in the city. They chanted the following song: ‘BOPE is preparing an invasion/and during the invasion/there will be no negotiation/the bullet will be in the head/and the aggressor on the ground/and a return to the base/to commemorate (É o Bope preparando a incursão/E na incursão/Não tem negociação/O tiro é na cabeça/E o agressor no chão./E volta pro quartel/pra comemoração)’.¹⁶

As the songs and paintings demonstrate, BOPE skulls regularly intersect with Christian references, highlighting the Roman Catholic theopolitical continuities in Brazilian state institutions. Nevertheless, BOPE practices and representations of the past decade also demonstrate theopolitical innovations brough forth by the popularity of Pentecostalism and the BOPE movies.

The Praise Squad and BOPE gospel

BOPE’s Evangelical Congregation that was born in 1995 gained public prominence by means of the Tropa de Louvor (the Praise Squad) – the congregation’s band of musicians. This band consists of BOPE officers who also take part in police operations. Louvor (praise/worship) is a common term to denote parts of an evangelical church service in which participants play or make music, but the name of the band is obviously also a reference to the movie Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite). Música Gospel is a common term in Brazil to denote the new religious music genre, which has become extremely popular in Brazil, comprising around 20% of the phonographic market in 2018.¹⁷ Beyond music alone, gospel performances may include evangelical practices (sharing testimonies or prayers), and gospel artists have also become important religious personae in Brazilian public life. Several gospel artists straddle the boundaries between entertainment and politics, for example (Machado 2020).

Praise Squad performances fuse music, evangelical tropes of spiritual warfare and BOPE references in an unprecedented manner. Evangelical Christianity regularly employs war talk as many evangelical believers understand reality in terms of a spiritual battle between God and Satan, a war between absolute good and absolute evil. Concretely, such language is embedded in urban geographies that describe criminal factions as manifestations of spiritual evil against which believers must mobilise both earthly and spiritual power (Oosterbaan 2017). The motto of the Praise Squad is: ‘se queres a paz, prepara-te para a guerra (if you want peace, prepare for war)’. This saying is a translation of the age-old Roman dictum: ‘si vis pacem para bellum’, yet the Praise Squad connects this saying to Psalm 127 (1–2), which states: ‘Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain’ and couches it in real and highly lethal combat practices.

The Praise Squad gained fame during Rio’s so-called ‘pacification’ years. As part of what later became known as the ‘Pacification policy’, Rio’s government started to install Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacification Police Units, UPPs) in favelas near World Cup locations, Olympic sites and tourist areas (Livingstone 2014). From 2008 onwards, a routine tactic was developed to install UPP structures and officers in the favelas: First, take hold of the favela territory by means of a BOPE operation. Second, establish territorial control; Third, create a UPP base; Fourth, commence permanent policing in the neighbourhood (Misse 2014; World Bank 2012). News reports and state propaganda frequently publicised this routine that involved BOPE operations and co-produced its public appearance as a ‘pacifying’ battalion. During these pacification years, the Praise Squad was commonly presented as one of the ‘social projects’ of the police of Rio de Janeiro and in that guise, it performed in several of Rio’s favelas, some of which were governed by UPPs at the time. It was said that, in some cases the Praise Squad performed in favelas right after they were invaded and occupied by a constellation of state forces, including BOPE and segments of the Brazilian army.

Despite its outreach, it was not easy to witness a Praise Squad performance live as their shows were not announced publicly beforehand. Just as other BOPE operations, a Praise Squad performance is marked as an ‘operação especial (special operation)’ and the performances are generally clouded in secrecy to protect band members against possible retributions. Tellingly, the band was also regularly called: ‘Tropa de Louvor – Heróis Anônimos (Praise Squad – Anonymous Heroes)’, highlighting the secret identity of the BOPE officers. Despite this secrecy, one of us, Carly Machado, had the opportunity to observe a show on two occasions: One during a Christmas celebration at the Palácio da Caveira in 2012, and another during a church service of an evangelical church in the neighbourhood of Botafogo in 2012. Both times, Carly Machado was notified by an acquaintance when and where the show would take place.

In December 2012, family members and guests of the BOPE officers were invited at the headquarters to participate in a Christmas celebration. The celebration did not take place in the church temple, but in the central hall, decorated with Christmas trees and other ornaments. Nevertheless, the celebration was set up as a typical evangelical church service. After the louvores, band members shared testimonies (personal, transformative accounts of their encounters with Jesus). Several people preached, including a non-military pastor who wore a (BOPE style) black beret and a black T-shirt with the words Tropa de Cristo (Christ’s Squad). Several participants thanked the Lord for protecting them during battle and granting them victories during the year that was now ending. They also commemorated the companions they had lost in the battle. At some point, BOPE’s commander (who did not identify himself as evangelical), also took the stage and thanked God for their lives and their safety and prayed that He would protect and guide them in the year to come.

The second performance was in a middle-class evangelical church in the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro, in the neighbourhood Botafogo. The band was received by a group of teenagers who performed a short play, while dressed as BOPE officers and performing as God’s police officers and as God’s elite squad. During the play, they employed well known phrases and expressions from the Elite Squad movie, blurring the boundaries between religious practices, popular culture, and police work. At the start of the service, all doors except one were closed, and the only one that remained open had an armed BOPE officer in front of it. During the event, members of the band talked about themselves in relation to the movie. They compared their actions to what happened with captain Nascimento, and they confirmed that the band’s name is a reference to the movie Elite Squad. The officers seemed proud of the way their squad was represented in the movie. Strikingly, in their talk, they continuously fused BOPE’s identity as state special force with its status as special divine force, referring to themselves as soldiers who are serving in two ways simultaneously, supporting a single cause – the divine and earthly protection of the nation.

BOPE’s evangelical outreach was not only aided by the performances of the Praise Squad. In 2012, the immensely popular gospel singer Fernanda Brum produced two videos of her visit to the Palácio da Caveira and uploaded these to her YouTube channel Espaço Curiosidades (Curiosity Space). Both episodes are titled: Crentes no BOPE (believers at BOPE).¹⁸ Fernanda Brum is among the best-selling gospel singers of Brazil since the turn of the century. In December 2023, her song Espírito Santo (Holy Spirit), launched in 2002, had been played over 74 million times on YouTube¹⁹ and in 2018, she won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Christian Album (in Portuguese) for her album Som da Minha Vida (The Sound of my Life).

In the videos, Brum interviews various BOPE officers and visits several areas of the garrison, dressed in a green robe with camouflage design. In several of her conversations with the officers, Brum highlights the entanglements and similarities between the urban combat of BOPE officers and the spiritual battle that she and other crentes (believers) engage in daily. In the first video, for example, corporal Gláucio explains to Brum that BOPE officers regularly use camouflage paint to remain undetected by bandidos, adding, ‘I think the greatest camouflage we have here at BOPE is the hand of the Lord’. When Brum recounts corporal Gláucio’s remarks in a later conversation with Sergeant Carlos, pastor of the Congregação Evangélica do BOPE, Sergeant Carlos confirms: ‘Military life and church life have the same model … during an armed confrontation [in combat], I have to do what is necessary, but I always tell the church [members], you should not cease to prepare yourself spiritually in case the enemy assaults you’.²⁰ In the second video Brum interviews a BOPE combat instructor. After showing her how to position herself physically during a fight, Brum responds: ‘everything that you are teaching me is related to the spiritual battle … and the word of God. The way that we need to position ourselves in the presence of God … using the element of surprise facing the enemy, this is marvelous’.

These videos on Brum’s YouTube channel did not mark the end of her collaboration with BOPE, as in 2020 she recorded the videoclip for the song ‘Deus Me Fez Vencer (Knock Down)’ at BOPE’s headquarters.²¹ The clip shows how Brum receives Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) training in preparation for a match and how she wins the match at the end. In an interview about the making of the clip, Brum stated: ‘the idea is that the clip represents the spiritual battle’.²²

The performances and videos that fuse gospel culture and BOPE practices reproduce elements of the historical entanglements between Roman Catholicism, state violence and the nation, yet they also produce theopolitical innovations that foreground individual salvation, spiritual protection and a belief in the omnipresent urban risks resulting from the spiritual and earthly battles that characterise Rio de Janeiro. As the examples show, affective Pentecostal music styles that include typical Christian texts are connected to representations of urban warfare in which BOPE officers can emerge as victors and martyrs. Whereas Pentecostal audio-visual culture clearly gives shape to new ‘rhythms and aesthetics’ (McAllister and Napolitano 2020, 6) that sustain BOPE’s theopolitical framework, it is not the only audio-visual innovation identifiable, and it would also be erroneous to assume that Pentecostalism has taken over the leading role.

BOPE pop and religion

Beyond Facebook posts, Praise Squad performances, or blockbuster movies, BOPE representations also emerge in public culture via other avenues. In 2008, a reproduction of the BOPE uniform was the best-selling children’s carnival outfit of the year.²³ And in 2011, the percussion section (bateria) of the carnival parade of the famous Rio de Janeiro samba school Salgueiro consisted entirely of people dressed in BOPE uniforms.²⁴ Also, in the wake of the Elite Squad movies, a host of funk carioca music tracks that applaud BOPE actions were uploaded to YouTube. Funk carioca – played at so-called bailes (dances) in the peripheries and favelas of Rio de Janeiro – is extremely popular among the youth of the city. One of the most popular BOPE funk songs – the track BOPE Vai te Pegar (BOPE is going to get you) – had been played approximately 5.6 million times at the time of writing this article.²⁵

Since the appearance of the first movie, various Tropa de Elite modifications of the EA game Grand Theft Auto (GTA) for the Sony PlayStation 2 appeared that allowed players to act as BOPE officers and a multiplayer PC version of the game Tropa de Elite – based on the popular game Counter Strike (CS) – is also available online.²⁶ The modified Tropa de Elite games picture players as BOPE officers. The imagined battlefields are located exclusively in Brazilian cities, and the perceived enemies are inner-city criminals. Beyond these videogames, miniature replicas of the infamous caveirão appeared in toyshops and online venues.²⁷

The appearance and circulation of BOPE figures in videogames, music and memes help to produce militainment (Stahl 2010) and a genre that Andrejevic (2011) calls securitainment, which, according to him, tends to serve ‘the state’s priorities not as state “propaganda” but as popular entertainment in the form of commercial nationalism’ (2011, 173). Nevertheless, in the context of Rio de Janeiro's everyday state violence and its spectacular representation and consumption are embedded in dystopic narratives of urban warfare and in stigmatising topographies that designate favelas as ‘extra-territorial spaces’ (Agier 2012) where threats are imminent (see also Oosterbaan 2023).²⁸

Moreover, as our focus on BOPE shows, securitainment is not necessarily seculartainment. A BOPE Facebook post on 21 April 2018, for example, features a videoclip, produced by a media company called Quartel Design. The clip starts with a drone videorecording of BOPE’s headquarters and then zooms on BOPE officers who are loudly reciting the Special Forces Prayer.²⁹ While the voices recede, heavy metal music swells up to accompany spectacular combat footage, much like the kind one observes in contemporary action movies. This clip and other BOPE representations demonstrate that fusions of security discourses and popular culture that include globally circulating entertainment genres and music styles lend themselves well for theopolitical frameworks.

The recent launch of a new television series provides another example. In 2020, Globo Television, Brazil’s largest network, launched a new miniseries titled Arcanjo Renegado (Renegade Archangel) on its streaming service Globoplay. The series recounts the life of a BOPE officer named Mikhael, a member of a BOPE team known as Archangel. According to Globo:

In accordance with the angelical hierarchy, Mikhael is the prince of archangels. His name represents courage, resistance and divine protection. Not for nothing, Mikhael is also the name of the first sergeant of the Batalhão de Operações Especiais (BOPE) … The Archangel team is the best trained and most respected unit, feared by bandits (bandidos) and powerful people that do not respect the law.³⁰

The series was very well received with very high audience ratings in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.³¹

Globo’s television series Arcanjo Renegado exemplifies well how state violence in Rio de Janeiro intersects with entertainment industries and with religious narratives and symbols that enforce Christian notions of sacrifice, redemption, and justice. It is tempting to picture Arcanjo Renegado as a confirmation that BOPE’s theopolitics is at heart Roman Catholic, but one must consider that the television series are produced by Globo, a commercial media company, and not by the state. Actual BOPE materials display eclectic fusions of Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and cultic references.

Conclusions

The Christian references in BOPE pop culture and in BOPE’s own representations display continuations with Brazilian theopolitical formations based on Roman Catholic theologies, but they also signal profound transformations, most clearly visible in the establishment of a Pentecostal congregation at BOPE’s base and the formation of the evangelical band Tropa de Louvor. Pentecostalism’s emphasis on personal salvation and a focus on the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit display stark differences with Roman Catholic theology and practice. Moreover, Pentecostalism in Brazil largely grew bottom-up and in tensions with Roman Catholicism and with the Brazilian state. Pentecostalism was and is attractive for many disenfranchised Brazilians, not in the least due to its emphasis on peace, spiritual protection, and salvation.

BOPE practices and representations can best be understood by means of the theopolitical anthropology proposed by McAllister and Napolitano (2020). Our description of BOPE as theopolitical police signals the tentative nature of BOPE’s authority and its heterogenous religious character. BOPE is a police force that attempts to reinstate the order of ‘the law and the norm’ embedded in a Roman Catholic theology but, as we have shown, Pentecostal practices and ideologies have also become embedded in BOPE’s theopolitical framework, forming a relatively incoherent theology that is connected to different political currents in Brazilian society. This does not imply that BOPE officers act less violently or that authoritarian projects have withered. The liberational elements of Brazilian Pentecostalism regularly give way to conservative characteristics and, as we have shown, the affective rendering of the world in terms of a spiritual battle creates ample space to legitimise state violence that supposedly overcomes earthly and spiritual evil.

Our description of BOPE as theopolitical police also aims to highlight the aesthetic expressions that circulate between state forces, media entrepreneurs and religious actors and that help to legitimise BOPE’s lethal violence in the name of justice and security. As such, our analysis resonates with the work of Stahl (2010) who coined the concept of militainment and the work of Mark Andrejevic (2011) who proposed the concept of securitainment, yet our analysis also brings to the forefront the Christian and cultic references at the heart of BOPE’s own representations and those that circulate in popular cultural expressions. These religious elements tell us that emerging connections between state forces, media entrepreneurs and popular culture go hand in hand with popular religious ideologies and practices, producing novel theopolitical formations in Brazil and possibly also beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Part of the research for this article was funded by the European Union (ERC, SACRASEC, 818707). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Many thanks to the reviewers who provided precious feedback that helped me to improve this article.

2. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=377111891122013&set=a.348714620628407, accessed 2 June, 2022.

3. Following the detailed description of Perlman (2010), the word favela has negative connotations, but the alternatives suggested (in English and Portuguese) pose similar problems and, in many cases, fail to describe accurately the urban, material, and political characteristics of these neighbourhoods. Residents who I interviewed often used the term morro (hill) but did not object to the use of the term favela when used in a respectful manner. They also regularly used the term comunidade (community), but such terminology also has its drawbacks (see Birman 2008).

4. In 2019, the number of people killed by police officers per year rose tremendously, returning to the high number of killings by the hands of the police in 2007 and 2008: https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/06/22/rj-tem-maior-numero-de-mortes-por-policiais-em-22-anos-e-o-2o-menor-indice-de-homicidios-ja-registrado-pelo-isp.ghtml.

5. https://www.facebook.com/bopeoficial.pmerj/photos/a.508090999213516/3848929395129643/?type=3, accessed 6 June, 2022.

6. http://site-antigo.cbpmrj.com.br/inaugurada-capela-de-sao-jorge-no-batalhao-de-mesquita/.

7. http://www.cbmerj.rj.gov.br/institucional/item/2159-corpo-de-bombeiros-rj-homenageia-sao-jorge.

8. https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/post/2019/05/08/witzel-sanciona-lei-que-proclama-sao-jorge-e-sao-sebastiao-como-padroeiros-do-rj.ghtml.

9. According to a journal article, to build the church, BOPE received donations from private donors – including members of evangelical churches – but it also received public funding. See: https://vejario.abril.com.b/cidade/bope-ganha-templo-evangelico-com-dinheiro-doado/.

10. We thus follow Maria José de Abreu (2020, 44) whose ‘use of theopolitics is not meant as a substitute for established political theology, but as a way of naming political theology’s own critical function: its criticizability. Theopolitics names the reflective work by which historical conditions of the politico-theological are themselves made apparent’.

11. A plaquette at the headquarters reads: ‘with eternal gratitude to God, and thus was born the garrison of the Valley of the Dry Bones, BOPE December 28, 2000’ see: (https://www.facebook.com/453907404631876/posts/3770049026351014/.

12. https://www.facebook.com/AndreMonteiroRJ/photos/a.510259583158355/889497351901241/?type=3.

13. https://www.palestraspimentel.com/blog/significado-faca-caveira-bope/.

14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CIhhfhMCjI, accessed 10 February, 2022.

15. Commander Gripp died in combat not long after the documentary material was filmed. https://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/policial-do-bope-morre-baleado-por-traficantes-em-favela/.

16. https://g1.globo.com/globo-news/noticia/2013/05/tropa-do-bope-canta-grito-de-guerra-que-faz-apologia-violencia.html.

17. https://www.metroworldnews.com.br/entretenimento/2021/12/26/musica-gospel-cresce-na-pandemia-e-fura-bolha-evangelica/.

18. Crentes is the common term in Brazil to denote evangelical/born-again Christians. See the first video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP8Ch7eJAmo and the second video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFHelqL35wQ.

19. Fernanda Brum – Espírito Santo (Com Legenda): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-7PnL8dUc.

20. In 2021, Fernanda Brum interviewed corporal Gláucio again (by then a sergeant) for her program Sobrevivi (I survived): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n8I1ldtf7I.

21. https://youtu.be/XTDAOK0nRe0.

22. https://pleno.news/entretenimento/musica/fernanda-brum-grava-clipe-no-quartel-do-bope-veja-fotos.html.

23. https://g1.globo.com/Carnaval2008/0,MUL259019–9772,00-FANTASIA+INFANTIL+DO+BOPE+E+A+MAIS+PROCURADA+PARA+O+CARNAVAL.html.

24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxSqJJrH3hY.

25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQjm3P7DJg, accessed 9 December, 2023.

26. Both games invite players to commit violence by means of different weapons. The original game-play of GTA invites players to act as inner-city criminals, while the original game-play of CS allows players to act as member of a team of terrorist or as member of a governmental counter-terrorist unit.

27. The original toy vehicle, the Roma Tático Blindado already looked strikingly similar to the caveirão but some people have added BOPE stickers to make it even more similar. See the O Globo article ‘Dia das Crianças tem “caveirão” de brinquedo no Rio’ of 7 October, 2010: http://g1.globo.com/especiais/dia-das-criancas/noticia/2010/10/dia-das-criancas-tem-caveirao-de-brinquedo-no-rio.html.

28. Elsewhere, Martijn Oosterbaan (2015) has described the mediatisation of urban conflict in terms of the popular culture of sovereignty.

29. https://fb.watch/oSD1b8XcOD/: accessed 11 December, 2023.

30. https://gshow.globo.com/series/noticia/arcanjo-renegado-serie-estreia-na-tv-globo-no-dia-4-de-fevereiro.ghtml.

31. https://www.tvabordo.com.br/2021/03/serie-arcanjo-renegado-bate-recorde-de-audiencia-em-sao-paulo-e-no-rio-de-janeiro-confira-os-numeros-consolidados-desta-quinta-feira-4-de-marco-de-2021.html.