Last November 27, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro were the scene, once again, of a violent raid by the military and civil police. A twelve-year-old boy who was in a school courtyard was injured by a bullet fired by officers and three people were killed, including a street vendor.
The incident occurred in the Maré favela. The blitz started from the campus of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, used as a landing pad by a civil police helicopter.
Now, for the Bolsonarist governor of Rio Cláudio Castro, security in the favelas has turned into a pretext for their militarization. It is not drug traffickers who pay the price for these incursions, but rather workers, students and above all the poorest social groups, especially those of black skin. In 2024, 37 days of school were lost by students of the Maré favela due to police operations justified, once again, by the presence of members of the Vermelho Command and the Terceiro Comando Puro at war with each other to take command of the territory.
In reality, according to the complaints of the inhabitants collected by Monica Benicio (municipal councilor of the Partido Socialismo e Liberdade and widow of Marielle Franco, born in Maré, in turn councilor of the same party and killed in an attack on 14 March 2018 precisely because of her positions in favor of the favelados against police brutality), people don’t die in the favelas every day, but only when the police decide to raid them violently. Not only that. The Socialism and Freedom Party also denounces that every time Castro, whose hands are stained with blood, speaks of a successful police operation, it means that carnage has taken place.
The police interventions do not take place to arrest members of organized crime, but for one sole purpose, that of shooting wildly and, consequently, killing. The Vermelho Command, like the Primeiro Comando da Capital and other criminal groups, ended up replacing the State, in Rio de Janeiro as in the other megacities of the country, managing access and distribution of water, energy, food, transport and many others.
The State not only fails to effectively oppose it, but suffers a delay in dealing with crime due to the complacency of the institutions themselves, including some governors.
The solely repressive response, like that of the Bolsonarist governor Castro who, without any mercy, celebrated the massacre of 130 people in the incursion of 28 October last in the favelas of Penha and Alemão and did the same following the last episode which occurred just over two weeks ago (some deputies of his own party hoped for at least two hundred deaths in the next police operations), represents an excellent expedient for the far right to profit on safety. It is no coincidence that the protests promoted by popular organizations against these methods of managing public order were immediately classified as demonstrations of support for organized crime.
Unfortunately, the crusade against drug trafficking, at least in Latin America, has turned into a pretext to intervene within countries not aligned with the White House to replace political forces unwelcome to the system with those vassals of Trump with the support of the continental far-right parties. The criminal organizations dedicated to drug trafficking have been included in the list of terrorist groups by the USA for the sole purpose of facilitating the growing interference of the United States in what they consider as their backyard, just think of the constant growth of pressure on Venezuela in search of the casus belli useful for overthrowing the Bolivarian government.
This context also includes racism and contempt towards blacks and Afro-Brazilians, no longer even disguised, under the banner of a very specific electoral strategy, that according to which the rights recognized to citizens cannot be applied in any way in the favelas where, according to the dominant narrative, drug trafficking predominates. The security policies of the far right aim at the restoration of an authoritarian political project, favored by the weakening of democratic institutions and the artful creation of repeated situations of chaos and destabilization following which the fundamental rights and guarantees of the rule of law can no longer be applied to the advantage of a totalitarian and violent order.
Consequently, those supporting drug trafficking are not the left and social movements who are outraged by the massacres committed by the police on the orders of governors who use security as an electoral weapon, but rather sectors linked to neo-fascism which, despite Bolsonaro currently not doing too well following his arrest a few weeks ago, aim to create an order that passes through the political management of the massacres in the favelas.
The so-called “narco-military capitalism” that holds Rio de Janeiro hostage and has not only served to kill many young people, mostly poor and, in some cases, affiliated with organized crime, but whose lives are worth nothing, it is no coincidence that police operations like the one at the end of October were broadcast by all televisions with the sole purpose of convincing the average citizen that governor Cláudio Castro was doing something. At the same time, police violence has not dismantled the drug trafficking network, nor has justice prosecuted those who worked, even at the highest institutional levels, to launder dirty money due to drug trafficking.
The massacres and bloodshed remain in Brazil and throughout Latin America, where it is often the poor involved in this infernal machine who die, while the police shoot, organized crime continues to spread and the institutions and banks continue with money laundering, the sale of weapons and the drug trade.
