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.