The Congested Common: The Brazilian Military and the Contest for the Utilities of Rio de Janeiro’s Public Streets

Rio de Janeiro entered the automotive age about the same time as the developed world, albeit at a comparatively modest pace. Still, city boosters looked to the car and its numbers as among the documentable evidences of a city on the rise, and they welcomed motorists to drive and store their multiplying machines on the already heavily used commons. By mid-century, many agreed the city had more cars than it could manage, and automobile congestion, which had reduced or replaced many of the street’s traditional uses, became the city’s most urgent civic problem, according to the press. By the time the military came to power in 1964, the streets were described as non-functional gridlock: Traffic jams were thrice-daily affairs (including the commute home for lunch), motorists broke laws with impunity, and car storage commandeered public squares and even sidewalks. Automotive legislation had not been updated since 1941, and fines for traffic offenses, due to decades of inflation, literally amounted to pennies.

            Among the military’s justifications for a coup were claims they could bring order, efficiency, and justice to the nation, and the capital’s streets would prove a most visible arena in which they might show their competency. In addition to legislation and policies to ameliorate traffic and parking, they also asked what constituted equitable use of and access to the public commons. Using some of the most radical enforcement measures ever imposed on urban traffic, many hotly unpopular, they also reclaimed a portion of the public domain outright for non-traffic uses: sidewalks and some public squares were cleared of cars, and by 1975, the city had created more than 18 square blocks of downtown streets as exclusive pedestrian spaces. This presentation examines the debates, influences, and reactions to the military’s urban and traffic policies in Rio through the late 1970s.