The Brutal Politics of Brazil’s Drug War – The New York Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — In the first quarter of 2019, the police killed an average of seven people a day in this city, the second most populous in Brazil. That’s the highest number in two decades. Even more atrocious is the fact that state security forces are responsible for 38 percent of the violent deaths in the city.

Many of these killings are concentrated in police operations, supposedly aimed at drug traffickers, in the largest of the slums that Rio calls favelas. Carried out with an apparatus that includes armored cars, helicopters and snipers, the campaign has brought about the deaths of many innocent civilians. Among them were six youths, aged 16 to 21, who were killed in just five days in August; one was a professional soccer player; another was a woman carrying her son in her arms. On Sept. 20, 8-year-old Agatha Vitória Sales Félix was struck in the back by a police bullet while riding with her grandfather in a van. She died before she could reach a hospital. Stunned and irate onlookers said military police officers had been shooting at a motorcycle as it passed the van.

It’s hard to remember that in 2016, Rio hosted the Summer Olympics and the city seemed to be on a path to prosperity for years to come. But in just three years, that image of Rio has vanished.

What has happened?

First, a succession of political, economic and security crises in Brazil led its citizens into a deep distrust of traditional politicians. Soon violence, already high during previous years of economic prosperity, worsened. In 2014, the least violent year in two decades, 1,552 homicides were recorded in the city, a rate of 24 per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2017, the total soared to 2,131, and the rate to 32.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. Among the many causes was a decline in a “pacification” policy for the favelas. Under that policy, the government tried to create a community police force. Called the Pacifying Police Units and assigned to resolve conflicts between organized crime gangs, the program ultimately failed because of a lack of resources.

Then as now, there was a great demand to root out corruption rampant among the political class. In the 2018 elections, this led to the victory of outsiders who promised a harsh new renewal of the political system to curb violence. Brazilians elected a former army captain, Jair Bolsonaro, as president, and voters in the state of Rio de Janeiro elected the former judge and ex-marine Wilson Witzel as governor.

Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Witzel are Brazilian versions of a global wave of politicians who rise to power by attacking the established political order and posing as populists on the side of ordinary citizens who have been betrayed by corrupt elites. Brazil has a long history of politicians spouting such rhetoric, especially in matters of security. But never before have they reached the topmost levels of leadership.

Drug policy is at the center of Rio’s problems. There are generally two possible paths in attacking this scourge: The first is to pacify the suppliers and traffickers by offering them entry to the general society — create jobs that will support legitimate commerce and invest in social projects to improve education and infrastructure in the favelas. The second is to hammer the criminals with violence in their lair.

Governor Witzel has opted for the latter. He calls drug traffickers and other criminals terrorists and defends the use of snipers to attack them in the favelas. He shows up in a police uniform and once appeared in a helicopter that fired indiscriminately into a favela, an exercise that has become common in Rio. A group of children from Rio’s favelas wrote letters to the city’s courts asking them to get the police to cease this type of operation around their homes.

Paradoxically, the increase in police violence occurred while Brazil as a whole was seeing a 25 percent drop in homicides, a trend that began in late 2018, before the new administrations took power. Specialists still debate why violence has decreased; one popular theory is that it has more to do with pacts and truces between organized crime factions than with public policies.

So why did the state of Rio de Janeiro vote this year for Mr. Witzel and his draconian rhetoric? One factor is that Brazil is in its worst economic recession in recent history; another is political schisms among political parties that accuse one another of corruption. The political effects of both issues are strikingly evident in Rio de Janeiro, where every governor elected between 1998 and 2018 has been prosecuted for crimes related to theft of public funds.

At the same time, the city of Rio produces almost 70 percent of Brazil’s oil and has suffered not only the impacts of the global decline in demand for petroleum but also losses by Petrobras, the largest company in Latin America, when it was at the center of corruption scandals. The results of the economic crisis are plainly visible in Rio. In 2018, more than 10,000 businesses closed in the city.

In addition to Brazil’s economic travails, the rise of figures like President Bolsonaro and Governor Witzel is a consequence of years of state abandonment of the poor in the favelas, followed by self-defeating policies that try to stop violence with more violence, leaving the rest of society to look on in apathy.

The tragedy in Rio de Janeiro was not inevitable. The city’s calamity is political, as is the way out of it. The solution lies in following public security policies based on data, research and analysis, not in stoking the public’s fear or anger. Brazil should learn from the experiences of the United States, Europe and some Latin American countries and not repeat their mistakes.

Specifically, the new governments could have worked to make life more bearable for the poverty-stricken families in the favelas by funding libraries and schools, and building a transit system so parents could get to and from good jobs.

That method was put to work and became a practical example in Medelín, Colombia, which late in the last century was considered among the most violent cities in the world, but recently has flourished as a destination for tourists. Unfortunately, Brazil’s leaders have chosen to ramp up violence against not just drug carriers but also the innocent favela families themselves. And the new violence has produced only more destruction and sorrow.

Brazil has long been one of the world’s largest cocaine markets, but it should not have insisted on a war strategy that has failed in all the countries that have used it — notably Mexico and Colombia. Brazilians, particularly in Rio, must find other ways to address drug trafficking and insecurity, starting by discussing alternatives for police action that are legal and humane — for example, reinforcing the Pacifying Police Units and other community-centered options.

Rio’s tragedy is political. New, well-thought-out policies could be its salvation.

Mauricio Santoro is a professor of international relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.