The Maré lives:

from censorship to the reinvention of community communication in favelas

Abstract

This article aims to shed some light on the censorship suffered by community communicators in Maré during 2014. This year, 2024, marks ten years since the army first settled in Maré, where they remained for one year and five months (2014 to 2015). At that time, a group of community communicators created a Facebook page called Maré Vive. In less than a week, this page had a great impact, reaching almost one million views. Due to the great impact, the communicators were censored, others were expelled from the favela, and their pages were also cloned. During these years, after having suffered so much persecution, the communicators sought other ways to continue their work within Maré. Ten years later, in the midst of another major attack on democracy and a health emergency, the same communicators reinvented themselves and challenged themselves once again by putting themselves on the front lines and organizing a major movement to combat fake news and distribute food amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The two movements (in different years) show that communicators are an important part of mobilization, denunciation, and seeking community self-protection in territories that suffer constant militarization and rights violations, and this is independent of historical milestones.