Pichação in São Paulo

An articlein the New York Times about graffiti in São Paulo offers an interesting twist to Kelling and Wilson's broken windows theory of crime. 

Laid out in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article, and later in a book by Kelling and Coles (1998), the broken windows theory is, simply, that disorder and crime are inherently linked. That is, vandalism and anti-social behavior will lead to further vandalism, which will most likely lead to an escalation in crime. A building with one broken window will inevitably end up with all its windows broken--as Kelling and Wilson explain, "one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing." Areas with abandoned buildings, graffiti, broken windows, homeless sleeping on the streets, beggars, etc. are more like to attract crime due to disorder--crime rises where people aren't confident that informal controls will maintain public order. Though widely criticized by criminologists for confusing correlation with causation, the broken windows theory was a cornerstone of William Bratton's various zero-tolerance crime control policies, including Rudy Giuliani's reforms in New York other projects across Latin America. 

The article describes how gangs of angry Paulistas (citizens of São Paulo) are using a specific kind of graffiti, called pichação (from the verb "pichar," to cover with tar), to protest social and economic inequality in Brazil. Well, something like that. In the article, Djan Ivson Silva, a leader of a pichação gang, claims their work is meant "'to remind society that this city is a visual aggression to begin with, and hostile to anyone who is not rich.'" Here, vandals explicitly target areas outside the normal realm of "broken windows" for their vandalism, emerging from the marginal neighborhoods where graffiti is (presumably) already a set practice to paint politically charged symbols on skyscrapers and public monuments (I use the term marginal in English in the sociological sense of exclusion rather than the more loaded term "marginal" in Portuguese that carries with it racist and elitist connotations). The vandalism is overtly political rather than insidiously political, proclaiming its disorder in orderly places rather than, as Kelling and Wilson describe, becoming political by gradually attracting more vandalism and crime. (note: I'm sure that a quick google search would turn up quite a few articles on how pichação breeds crime.)

The photo on the left, taken from a Brazilian newspaper article on pichação, is an example of the rune-like graffiti. The words underneath says, roughly, "In a country full corruption, who has the right to criticize pinchação!"

The article also makes it seem like these gangs are not only in it for the political statement, but also for the pure competition of it. Gangs fight for the most coveted canvases for their art (that is, the tallest buildings, the most prominent public spaces), even to the point of death. It seems, in some sense, like the work of Project Mayhem--angry young men desecrating public property to prove themselves to each other and to prove that they are in on the joke, that they know what's happening and it doesn't matter what we think. It's not a perfect metaphorical fit. The men of Project Mayhem do come from the same lives as the pichação gangs, from the streets of the favelas and the poorest neighborhoods, for one (although they think they have as much grievance against society). But the parallel is there, and for me, its an interesting one.