Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the violent, state-led eviction of more than hundred women from a well-known site of sexual commerce, in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

The globally-recognized sport mega-event has been widely touted as a military-industrial complex trade show - an undeniable appendage to the business of war increasingly needed to "softly" showcase the latest in athleticism and ammunition to the (watching) world. In order to understand the state-led violence reeked on local informal economies, the sport mega-event must first be "imagined" as both a target of "foreign" terrorism (following the work of Atkinson & Young, 2012) as well as a needed tool for urbanization. These imaginaries, popularly associated to the event, rationalize the exorbitant effort (and cost) needed to militarize the host context - even if it is obvious that these globally-determined security strategies prioritize and protect the mobilization of global capital in lieu of the local populace. It is for this reason that locally-constitutive stories are needed. The violent eviction of women from a well-known site of sexual commerce will build the empirical basis for this presentation in which fantasies of futurity (as related to event-led urbanism and foreign trade) are used to legitimatize state violence.