Urban Conflict and Informal Trade: Frames from the Repression and the Tolerance Towards the Camelôs in the City of Rio de Janeiro (1983-2009)

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the social frames which explained and justified the expansion, the tolerance and the repression towards the informal trade in downtown Rio de Janeiro between 1983 and 2009. Based on a "cartography" of news assembled from the Brazilian newspaper O Globo between these years, the article intends to identify the arenas, conjunctures, actors and repertoires employed and recognize, in the press, durable terms and frameworks from the conflict between traders and street vendors, seeking to identify those who predominate in defining the situation and its change. The analysis, which was arranged chronologically, identifies the outbreak of the issue (1983), its stabilization through the incitation of "camelódromos"(1984), and its routinisation (1994). This article addresses the subject of informal trade's association to "piracy" (1999), to urban disorder and to illegality (2009).