Brazil: The cost of being Black and poor

Studying Latin American politics in the early 90’s at Middlesex University was perhaps the trigger that urged me to political activism here in the UK.

Our Chilean teacher, Salvador Dominguez informed us about the American backed military coups in almost every Latin American country which dared to unshackle themselves from the US imperialism during many decades. The most gut-wrenching stories though - and there were many- were those that came from right-wing Governments in countries such as Brazil in which local business men would collude with Right wing Paramilitary groups to clear homeless kids off the street. Their clearance method was about as barbaric as is humanly possible: cold blooded murder.

Many of these deaths squads, Esquadrão da Morte, were off duty policemen paid to keep the business community happy. According to Human Rights monitor America’s Watch, most of the murdered were poor and Black children. Between 1988 and 1990, four children a day would be executed. In 1991 in Rio De Janeiro alone, some 365 children were murdered. In the capital San Paulo in the same year, 664 minors were slain.

I thought those dark bloody days that viewed poor Black homeless children like vermin had gone. Until that is, a BBC world news item warned viewers that what they where about to see was distressing in the extreme: Late at night on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, host of the next World cup, and close to the Olympic games, a motor cyclist with a pillion driver stops as he sees three young boys sitting on a step. He calmly gets off his motorcycle points a gun and orders the boys to stand and raise their hands. There, the film footage thankfully stops, too gruesome for the BBC show. The man executes two of the three boys, whilst the third boy runs away and manages to escape. Less than twenty seconds later a police car, which was less than 50 yards away drives by and does nothing. The whole gruesome scene is captured on CCTV.

The death squads of the 80’s and 90’s are back, and once again with the collusion of the authorities. The difference this time is that our CCTV world has captured the gruesome spectacle. Without this being captured on film, the boy’s execution would have been added to the long list of unsolved crimes, but now Brazil, the host of the two biggest sporting events on the planet are forced to act. Since the video went viral, 8 police officers have been arrested in connection with the murders.

One hopes that the global attention on Brazil right now will force this nation to engage in some serious soul searching backed with action that tackles corruption, convicts its murderous cops, and begins to treat its poorest with greater dignity.

Simon Woolley