The Fantastic Work of Peace: The Teleférico do Alemão Gondola cable car system and the Production of Urban Infrastructure in Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT

This article sketches an ethnography of the trajectory of the gondola cable car system known as the Teleférico built in the Complexo do Alemão, in Rio de Janeiro’s north zone, between 2007 and 2016. In order to elaborate its construction, deactivation and abandonment, we analyze the different temporalities of the cable car system that made its construction as a mass public transportation system possible. Drawing on theoretical insights of recent anthropological scholarship on infrastructures, we consider the social life of the Teleférico as the result of multi scalar processes and conflicts. We suggest that the Teleférico constitutes an exemplary case think through the provision of urban infrastructures in the run up to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and thus the material ruins of the Teleférico shed light on the ruins of the various projected futures of Rio’s recent past.

Urban infrastructures; Teleférico (Complexo do Alemão); Favelas; Public Security; Urbanism