Shattered trust: Police violence and survival at the margins of the state in São Paulo's ‘Crackland’

This article explores the dynamics of trust, mistrust, distrust and hope among homeless individuals in ‘Crackland’, São Paulo's largest open drug-use scene, where state interventions have systematically targeted marginalised populations through violence and displacement. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, we examine how persistent police violence influences marginalised individuals’ perceptions of and trust in state institutions. We argue that trust – and its intricate relationship with mistrust and distrust – emerges as a critical analytical lens for understanding how individuals at the margins, facing different forms of state violence, still maintain hope for a better state. By centring the experiences of those who recount encounters with physical and structural violence from state power, we demonstrate how violent interactions profoundly impact trust, generating a constrained yet resilient form of hope for an ideal state. This study contributes to anthropological understandings of state–citizen relations and illuminates the intimate ways marginalised populations navigate, resist, and reimagine institutional power.