by Camila Barros Moraes and Joelma de Sousa dos Santos
Around 12:00, a 21-year-old boy was executed in Morro do Timbau. He was reportedly hit in the leg with a warning shot, turned himself in and asked to be taken to the police station, however, public security agents executed him with several shots in front of local residents. (...) Two homicides with evidence of summary execution by public security agents were reported in this operation. Two young men entered a house in Morro do Timbau, when they were surprised by police officers. The boys were tortured and stabbed to death by police officers in a house, then their bodies were carried in sheets of residents (...) Two men were killed during the operation: a 27 and a 29-years-old. One of them was killed in a store by a group of police officers. The family alleges that the young man was at home and thought the police operation was over. Just as he was out on the street, he was shot in the leg and entered a store for shelter when police fired four more shots and executed him. The other young man was spotted by police hiding on the roof of a house, he was shot in the neck, even though he was unarmed. All the deaths are of young people between 15 and 29 years old, black, accused by the police of involvement with armed groups, sentenced and executed in a single month. Residents' accounts show that the youths who died were unarmed or surrendered, and yet they were executed by police officers operating in the territory.
Source: Redes da Maré
TERRITORY: PRODUCTION OF CRIMINALIZED SPACES IN RIO DE JANEIRO
We find in the city different spaces, which aim to define the place of each person and each group based on a movement of separation that assigns a function to each location. Brazilian cities are today the urban expression of a social formation that never managed to overcome its colonial heritage to build a society that distributes its wealth less unequally. Its construction was marked by the concentration of land, income and power, politics of favor and the arbitrary application of the law. With the intensity of urbanization, differentiated spaces are produced, identifying their residents in a different way, being divided between elite and popular neighborhoods.
The emergence of favelas in Brazil is the result of an urban development that is characterized by the inequality of public investment in different regions of the city. Urban or socio-spatial separation is the geographic reproduction of social segregation, which is directly related to the division between social classes and distinct ethnic-racial groups. Favelas and popular territories are the main target of reproduction of the various forms of oppression, exploitation and domination, producing spaces of extreme inequality, where physical and symbolic violence and violations of fundamental human rights practiced by the State are the rule. These spaces are historically stigmatized as needy, precarious, violent and without order, a fact that, for the social ideology, justifies the repressive actions of the public security policy.
THE RACIAL DIMENSION: PUBLIC SECURITY AND NECROPOLITICS
The dynamics observed in the police operations that took place in the Maré’s favelas illustrate the concept of “necropolitics” coined by the Cameroonian philosopher and political scientist Achille Mbembe, who questions the limits of sovereignty when the control of life is in the hands of the State. Mbembe (2018) establishes a correlation between power and death when political power appropriates death as an object of public management, defining who dies, how they die and under what conditions they die. “Necropolitics” creates a State of exception that is characterized by sociopolitical configurations in which some of the fundamental rights of citizens are suspended in certain regions of the city. The death policy established by public security, therefore, is not an episode, it is not a phenomenon that escapes a rule. It is the rule. It is established on the margins of legislation and although it is not within the jurisprudence, its routine practice makes it institute as a way of existence, where the State does not prioritize the life of the population that lives in the favelas and popular territories, but its extermination.
This administered policy of death, reproduced mainly by public security, is a hallmark of racism in Brazil. Mbembe (2018) highlights the racial component as the main element of killable bodies. The black population, above all, young people and favela residents, are historically deprived of value, placed as subordinates. And not even when they die, they generate social commotion. The Brazilian social formation, when viewed from a historical perspective, demonstrates that the racial issue has always been, and will continue to be a fundamental dilemma in the formation and transformation of this society. According to Silvio Luiz de Almeida, in the book “What is structural racism?”, racism is structural in Brazil, thus, it constitutes politics, economy and institutions. "Racism provides the meaning, logic and technology for the forms of inequality and violence that shape contemporary social life" (ALMEIDA, 2018)
Based on the Federal Constitution of 1988, we are all equal. This configures that the State has a constitutional duty to guarantee to citizens a broad structure of protection, regardless of age, gender, social class or race. But in practice this is not the case. By observing the data on the impact of public security policy, it is possible to identify that racial inequality is present in all aspects, especially in incarceration and lethality. According to the Public Security Yearbook (2020), published in October, the number of black people in prisons has grown by 14% in the last 15 years, while that of white people has fallen by 19%. In addition, the black population suffers the most from police violence and violent deaths. Regarding the homicide rate, in Brazil there was an increase of 11.5% for blacks, while for whites there was a reduction of 12.9%, according to the Atlas of Violence 2020.
In the slums of Maré, according to the axis Right to Public Security and Access to Justice, from 2016 to 2019 there were 129 police operations in Maré and, as a result, 92 people were injured by firearms, 90 people were murdered, schools had 89 days without classes and the health units had their activities interrupted for 92 days. Brazilian structural racism makes the lethality of young blacks and slum dwellers banal. Violence has historically interrupted the lives of these young people year after year. This reality is reproduced in Maré both in police operations and in clashes between armed groups. In 2017, 88% of those killed as a result of armed violence in Maré were black or brown. In 2018, that number rose to 92%. As early as 2019, 95% of the dead were black or brown. It is important to highlight that in this last year all those killed in a police operation belonged to this racial ethnic group.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The Brazilian State tends to perpetuate its genocide, based on a policy of death, especially of black and peripheral youth. Police operations in Maré have used force as the main and practically the only instrument of intervention. These interventions are characterized by disqualification, inconsequence and illegality of the action, which negatively impact the lives of residents and do not guarantee the right to public security, on the contrary, appear as the main instrument of violation of rights. The intersection between race, social class, territorial belonging and age profile has been decisive in the production of suspicion criteria in the practice of Brazilian public security policy. Young black people, poor people and slum dwellers make up the portion of society that suffers from violations of fundamental rights, especially the violation of the right to life.
Racism is structural, intrinsic to Brazilian social formation and reproduced by institutions. In this way, it will only be overcome with a transformation that is also structural. However, given the data on violence, it is necessary and urgent to strengthen the mechanisms that expand forms of access to justice, democratic spaces and social participation, even within the limits of bourgeois democracy. Interrupting the tragedy of crimes against life is a necessary condition for building a democratic society with equity.
References:
ALMEIDA. Silvio Luiz de. O que é racismo estrutural? Belo Horizonte (MG): Letramento, 2018.
FÓRUM BRASILEIRO DE SEGURANÇA PÚBLICA. Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2015. São Paulo, 2020. Disponível em:< https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/anuario-14-2020-v1-interativo.pdf> Acesso em: 18 nov. 2020.
CERQUEIRA, D. et al. Atlas da Violência – 2020. Rio de Janeiro: Ipea/FBSP. Disponível em: <https://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/stories/PDFs/relatorio_institucional/200826_ri_atlas_da_violencia.pdf> Acesso em: 18 nov. 2020.
BRASIL. Constituição (1988). Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil. Brasília, DF: Senado Federal: Centro Gráfico, 1988. Disponível em: <http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao.htm: Acesso em: 17 nov. 20202.
LEFEBVRE, Henri. A produção do espaço. Trad. Grupo “As (im) possibilidades do urbano na metrópole contemporânea”, do Núcleo de geografia urbana da UFMG (do original: La producion de l’espace. 4ºed. Páris. Primeira versão, 2006.
MARÉ, Redes da. Boletim Direito à Segurança Pública na Maré, 2016
______________ Boletim Direito à Segurança Pública na Maré, 2017
______________ Boletim Direito à Segurança Pública na Maré, 2018
______________ Boletim Direito à Segurança Pública na Maré, 2019
MBEMBE, Achille. Necropolítica: biopoder, soberania, estado de exceção, política da morte. n-1,edições, 2018
