Brazil lived this Sunday, pending their teens. Five million made it the selectivity with the sunset view at the university. It was certainly a momentous day for all of them but, as almost always in this country is so unequal, for some it was vital. For those raised in the slums prepare for the exam, let alone pass with note— supposed to look out to opportunities that others take for supposed. Is to purchase tickets for a future less bleak. “All black favela has felt the impact of the violence. When you get to a certain age you know more people have died violently that people who have entered the university”, explains Arthur, of 22 years.
Young as he was —males, blacks, teenagers or twentysomethings, the poor— are the suspect usual. And the victim type of the growing violence of the brazilian police, the most lethal in the world after Venezuela. The agents are responsible for 11 out of every 100 violent deaths in 2018. The victims in clashes with the security forces increase faster. Tripled between 2015 and 2018, when joined 6.220 people.
types as Arthur, workers of the NGO Redes da Maré, they know they are objective by their color, their gender, and by living in the favela of Maré. Are the meat of the next police operation, he and his companions come to the headquarters of this organization created by the first university on the outskirts of town to tell his story to the visitor. The same da that James, 24, librarian, entered the university at 17 to study computing or Wagner, 28, is a plastic artist who teaches film. The case of the t-shirt fuchsia Felipe, 21 years old, illustrate what a part of Brasil called the genocide black: “Young, black, ALIVE.”
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Although in any corner of Rio de Janeiro can buy marijuana or cocaine, the drug war being waged in the hills, in favelas like this. The criminal groups dealt with the business and the control of the neighborhoods. A hot Tuesday in October, we see a guy sitting in a cafe with a rifle; a young man dressed only in flip-flops and a swimsuit that pokes a gun sells coca to 10 euros a gram, and calls attention to the bracelet electronics on the ankle of another young man in shorts which is cooled under a shower in the street.
The high lethality of police brazilian is earlier than Jair Bolsonaro became president with a speech for war that proclaims that the most effective way to combat crime is with violence. That rhetoric permeated among a citizenry frightened by the crime. What is new is that is on the cusp of power. Every so often, an episode shocks to Brazil. A musician riddled with 80 bullets for the military, a school attained from a helicopter of police, six young people with shots in the nape of the neck, the girl Ágatha eight year old hit by a bullet…
While the deaths at the hands of agents of the State increase, the murders in general decrease. The two phenomena are not linked, warn experts. “In States with more lethality of the police, the crime rate ends up being greater,” says Daniel Cerqueiro, of the Institute public of Applied Economic Research. The impact of the violence is enormous. He has translated into economic losses: “Brazil, with 2% of the world’s population, has 14% of the homicides. That means losing the 6% of GDP”.
The insecurity is, along with the economy, the major concern of any brazilian. That’s why the president Bolsonaro misses no opportunity to underline that in the first half of his mandate, homicides have dropped by 22%. But the academic is categorical: “The federal Government has absolutely nothing to do with that, comes before, is a process. The Government will contribute, in any case, to reversing its policy of the berserker liberalization of guns and harsher sentences our prison system, which is a total chaos”. Prisons, she explains, have lighting, 79 criminal organisations, and are the quarry-perfect for new recruits.
“Rio de Janeiro is the paradigm of what is wrong with the police of Brazil, does not reflect the country in general,” says David Marques, the Brazilian Forum of Public Safety, an NGO established by academics, judges and police officers, that from that collects and systematizes the data placed public safety on the national agenda. In other States, “the rhetoric is one of prevention and respect for human rights”. Espírito Santo is now an excellent student.
The State of Rio de Janeiro is the epicenter of lethality in police with one of every four deaths at the hands of agents in 2018. A phenomenon that alarm even to the UN and emerged even before the former judge, and former marine, Wilson Witzel took possession as governor. Witzel uttered one of those phrases hard to forget: “The right thing is to kill the bandit who carries a rifle. The police will do the right thing: going to aim to the head!… and fire! To not make mistakes.”
The twenty-year-old Arthur is one among the well-known to those he has seen die. His cousin Mateus, three years younger. “I was 14 years old when he was executed” while in police custody, account. He had been arrested accused of stealing necklaces and taken to the police station. The favela of Maré, where he grew up and was formed as an activist council member killed Marielle Franco, is one of those neighborhoods of frequent shootings and police operations. Places where the police do not patrol, only enters with all the force in search of drug traffickers. Little matter to die, but neighbours in the cross-fire or the terror they cause to the school and to the rest of the neighbors. The duration of the police operation, all cooped up.
The favela of Complexo do Alemão, in the north of the River, is even more violent. So far away and so close to the beaches of zip. Some lanes are so marked with bullets that are reminiscent of the middle East. “Here we see the same weapons in Syria, with the difference that here they do not enter tanks,” says Julio César Camilo, 44 years old, president of a neighborhood association. “We do not have the right to go and come. We were promised that there would be social projects in addition to police but only put the armed wing of the State… at any time there is a shooting,” explains next to the skeleton of a huge cable car that was built when the World cup and the Olympic Games. One day, the authorities shut it down without explanation. Until today. It’s Wednesday. The area is tense although he reveals that “since the fatality of the girl Ágatha (killed in September by a stray bullet) is quieter.”
Julius Caesar posing in an alley full of bullets. Alam Lima
When it bursts a gun battle, Roberta, 39, is contained in the bathroom with her seven children. The less insecure of your home. The shots in the room testify that sometimes the violence will be installed within. Note that the agents lay waste to everything. “They steal up what is in the fridge,” he says.
Redes da Maré laid a hand on the ingenuity —and the technical-legal— to claim in the courts their right to the public safety. Presented “legal device to that in the periphery is to apply a law that applies in the rest of the city.” A judge ordered to implement what is already in the law: police operations can’t be night, nor at the time of entry or exit of schools, each patrol car or armored should be equipped with a GPS, and there must be an ambulance and a police chief who responds by the agents. The incursions fell from 41 to 16 in a year. That was before Bolsonaro and the governor Witzel were elected.
Gabriela, a 16-year-old daughter, Roberta, in the living room of his house in the neighborhood of Complexo do Alemão. Alam Lima
When the four young people leave the favela to the rest of the city feel… “exotic”, says James. “Exactly, that is the word,” notes Wagner. “Look at you all the time,” says the artist. “The police I have downloaded several times the bus or I have been registered. I have dealt with coming to work, wondering what to do. Or that my house was invaded while he slept and ask me what I do in my home at eight in the morning.” Most painful thing for these men is that kids they also saw the traffickers as heroes, grew up with neighbors who today follow in their footsteps towards the easy money with the only difference being that somewhere along the way something happened. Out the course for the selectivity or some other thing, their paths diverged.
