The peace and quiet that residents deserved had become impossible to find.
In the weeks before São Paulo's municipal election, PSL candidate Joice Hasselmann offered voters a vision of order restored: an armed Municipal Guard, partnered with police, empowered to confront the drug trafficking she says has taken root inside the city's informal street parties known as pancadões. Her proposal arrives at the intersection of two enduring tensions in urban life — the desire for public safety and the right to gather freely — and asks whether a city can surgically separate crime from culture without wounding both. The answer, as with most questions of governance and belonging, will depend less on the policy itself than on whose hands carry it out.
- Residents across São Paulo's neighborhoods have grown exhausted by the noise, disorder, and alleged drug operations that have made the pancadões a source of fear as much as festivity.
- Hasselmann's proposal to arm the Municipal Guard represents a significant escalation — transforming a force historically limited to property protection into an active security instrument on city streets.
- The candidate is walking a deliberate political tightrope, insisting her target is organized trafficking, not the cultural practice itself, aware that enforcement in working-class and Black communities carries a long and fraught history.
- By raising this issue weeks before the vote, Hasselmann is betting that street-level crime anxiety outweighs concerns about over-policing — a calculation that reveals just how contested São Paulo's public spaces have become.
- The proposal signals that whoever wins the election, the city's approach to informal gatherings and drug-related activity is likely to grow more confrontational, not less.
Standing before reporters on a Thursday in October, Joice Hasselmann made her position plain: as mayor, she would arm São Paulo's Municipal Guard and send it into the streets alongside police to confront the drug trafficking she believes has taken hold inside the city's pancadões — the loud, sprawling street parties that have become both a cultural institution and a source of neighborhood conflict.
Her critique of the current guard was direct. It protects buildings. It does not engage with the kind of disorder that residents, she said, described to her constantly while campaigning — the noise that never stops, the sense that organized crime had claimed these spaces and that no authority was willing to push back.
Hasselmann was careful, however, to draw a line. The parties themselves, the music, the gathering — these were not her target. Cultural expression, she insisted, should remain free. What she objected to was the criminal infrastructure she argued had attached itself to these events, exploiting them as cover for trafficking operations that left surrounding communities exhausted and afraid.
The distinction mattered politically as much as practically. The pancadões are rooted in working-class and Black communities, and any enforcement campaign risks being read as an attack on those communities themselves. Hasselmann acknowledged the sensitivity and framed her proposal as a defense of residents — all residents — rather than a suppression of culture.
With the election weeks away, the proposal was also a signal: that she would act where others had hesitated, deploying new tools and formal partnerships between municipal and police forces to target what she called the criminal element within these gatherings. Whether voters would accept her distinction between culture and crime — and whether such a distinction could survive contact with enforcement on the ground — remained the open and consequential question.
Joice Hasselmann, the PSL's candidate for São Paulo's mayor, stood before reporters on Thursday and made a straightforward promise: if elected, she would transform the city's Municipal Guard into an armed force capable of confronting the drug-fueled street parties known as pancadões that have become a flashpoint in neighborhoods across the city.
The current Municipal Guard, Hasselmann argued, operates within too narrow a mandate. They protect buildings and property. They do not engage in the kind of active security work that the city needs. Under her administration, that would change. The guard would be armed, trained, and deployed alongside police to disrupt the gatherings where, she contended, drug traffickers have established a foothold and orchestrated operations that terrorize residents.
Hasselmann was careful to frame her position as a matter of public order rather than cultural suppression. The pancadões themselves—the street parties, the music, the gathering of young people—were not her target. Cultural expression, she said, should remain free. What she objected to was the presence of organized drug trafficking within these spaces, the noise that never stops, the disorder that residents reported to her constantly as she campaigned through the city's communities. The peace and quiet that residents deserved, she suggested, had become impossible to find.
The distinction she drew was deliberate. Hasselmann acknowledged that any enforcement action could be perceived as an attack on a cultural practice, particularly one rooted in working-class and Black communities. She wanted to be clear that was not her intent. The problem, in her telling, was not the culture but the crime that had attached itself to it. The drug trade had colonized these spaces, and residents—across all neighborhoods, she emphasized—were exhausted by the consequences.
Her proposal reflected a broader security debate unfolding in São Paulo. The pancadões had grown more visible and more contentious in recent years, drawing complaints from residents in affected areas while also raising questions about policing, inequality, and the city's approach to informal public gatherings. Hasselmann's answer was to expand the armed capacity of municipal authorities and create formal partnerships between the guard and police forces to target what she identified as the criminal element within these events.
The timing of her statement—just weeks before the election—suggested that public safety, and specifically the problem of drug-related disorder in neighborhoods, had become a central campaign issue. By positioning herself as someone willing to deploy new tools and resources against trafficking, Hasselmann was signaling to voters concerned about street-level crime that she would act decisively. At the same time, her insistence that she was not targeting culture itself was an attempt to navigate the political sensitivity of the issue, particularly in a city where such gatherings held real meaning for many residents.
Citações Notáveis
My Municipal Guard will be an armed guard that will help provide security and will not be a guard just watching over property.— Joice Hasselmann, PSL mayoral candidate
This is not repression of cultural expression. Cultural manifestations are free and welcome. I am speaking about drug trafficking operations, which is a complaint from residents in every community I visit.— Joice Hasselmann
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
When she says the Municipal Guard would be "armed," what does that actually mean in practice? Are they not armed now?
The current guard is largely unarmed or lightly armed—they're designed for property protection and traffic control. Arming them means giving them the kind of weapons and authority that police have, which is a significant escalation.
And the pancadões themselves—what are we talking about? Are these organized events or spontaneous gatherings?
They're informal street parties, usually in working-class neighborhoods, with loud music and crowds. Some are spontaneous, some recurring. The drug trade has moved into these spaces because they're crowded, visible, and hard for police to control.
So her distinction between "culture" and "crime"—is that actually meaningful, or is it just political cover?
It's both. The distinction is real in her mind, but it's also true that enforcement against these gatherings will inevitably affect the cultural practice itself, regardless of intent. That's the tension she's trying to manage.
Why would residents complain about noise and disorder if these are cultural events they value?
Because not everyone in these neighborhoods participates or wants to participate. Many residents are older, working early shifts, or simply don't want all-night parties outside their homes. The drug trade's presence also brings violence and instability that goes beyond the party itself.
Does arming the Municipal Guard actually solve the drug trafficking problem, or does it just move it elsewhere?
That's the real question no one answers. It might disrupt specific locations, but trafficking networks are mobile and adaptive. What it does do is give the city a more militarized approach to a problem that might need different solutions entirely.