BRAZIL: Death Squads

Return of the vigilantes

The victims are often found lying in roadside ditches on the outskirts of teeming favelas, the makeshift slums surrounding Rio de Janeiro or industrial São Paulo. Their hands are usually tied behind their backs with nylon cord. The bodies often show signs of torture: cigarette burns, bruises, broken teeth, occasionally even castration. Almost all are riddled with gunshot wounds. Sometimes the corpses have been drenched in gasoline and then set ablaze, making identification impossible.

Those grisly scenes of execution are becoming alarmingly commonplace in Brazil’s major cities. Hundreds of such deaths have been reported so far this year, over 150 of them in Rio’s northern slum of Baixada Fluminense. On one typical day this month, Rio police discovered seven scarred and bullet-torn bodies. The victims included a suspected prostitute, a transvestite, a photographer and his girlfriend.

Who is responsible for the executions? The most frequent claimants are gangs of self-styled vigilantes who boast that they are fighting an underground war against the crime that infests the underpoliced favelas. Since 1965, the number of slum dwellers in Rio has risen from 450,000 to a staggering 1.7 million. Lacking adequate sanitation, schooling and jobs, the ramshackle favelas have become breeding grounds for crime and violence, out of which have come the countercrime and violence of the vigilantes. Explains Eduardo Fagundes, who is the present head of the Brazilian bar, “Ten years ago the death squads received open support from higher authorities. Now they act on the belief that the legal system is completely inert.”

In Rio, the vigilantes usually identify themselves as the Mão Branco, the White Hand, and their counterparts in São Paulo go by the name the Black Hand. Typically, a gang member will telephone local police and newspapers, announcing in mocking terms where the latest “meat” will be dropped; almost invariably, a corpse is found there.

Many slum dwellers applaud the vigilantes, especially since the majority of victims have been suspected criminals. The police, for their part, attribute the many killings to gangland drug wars. Yet perhaps the most frightening theory is that the police themselves may be moonlighting as “protection teams” hired by fearful merchants to clean up their neighborhoods.

The last possibility has a disturbing ring. During the harshest years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, between 1968 and 1976, lawless police “death squads” administered justice with violent and often arbitrary force. Some of the latest executions do point to police participation. Numerous corpses have been found clad only in shorts, similar to those worn by prisoners in Brazilian jails. Gunshot wounds have obviously been inflicted by heavy-gauge shotguns and other weapons used by the military police. There have also been reports of victims being dragged from their homes by men wearing police uniforms. Most witnesses, including relatives of the victims, are, understandably, afraid to speak up, and investigations have been delayed by official foot dragging. Yet the implications are clear. Says Raymundo Faoro, past president of the Brazilian bar association: “There is undoubtedly police involvement in some killings, or else the killers are parapolice groups acting with police protection.”