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On August 29, 1993, a squad of 36 police officers killed 21 residents of the Vigário Geral favela, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, in order to avenge the death of four colleagues murdered the previous day by drug traffickers. The police fury was carried out against workers in this working-class neighborhood, who had no ties to drug trafficking. At that time, it was the largest massacre in the history of Rio de Janeiro.
The perpetrators of the massacre were called “Running Horses” because they entered the favelas running and shooting to sow panic. That day, Brazil had won against Bolivia in the 1994 World Cup qualifiers. Some workers were celebrating the 6-0 victory in a bar. All the victims were innocent.
The image of the coffins piled up in the middle of the street went around the world and revealed the horror of police violence in Brazil, a phenomenon that persists to this day. Since 2020, at least 200 people have lost their lives in Rio de Janeiro in more than 40 police operations. Furthermore, three of the five deadliest operations occurred during the term of Claudio Castro, the current governor of Rio de Janeiro. These raids mainly persecute a part of the population: 79% of police victims are young and black, according to data from the Brazilian Public Security Forum.
“We have two Brazilian societies: one that believes that state brutality is a legitimate form of political action. This part of society is heir to the colonial slave system that existed in Brazil. But there is another part of society that believes that this colonial slave system has ended, and it must also end in practice, and that this dark past of Brazil needs to be definitively defeated,” says Guilherme Pimentel, a jurist and public defender in Rio de Janeiro.
On the 30th anniversary of the Vigário Geral massacre, our team of correspondents returned to the scene to speak with family and friends of the deceased. This Return Ticket aims to recover the memory of a tragedy that has been repeated regularly over three decades. This report analyzes the most dramatic moments of this escalation of violence, which culminates in the phenomenon of invisible massacres and clandestine cemeteries.
“At that time, killing and exposing the bodies, as happened in Vigário Geral, was the highest level of terror and territorial control known. Today we have invisible massacres, also called forced disappearances, a form of terror that is on a higher level. Today the most terrifying thing is that bodies disappear. Their families have no right to a wake, a funeral, or a memory… They have no right to anything. The person simply ceased to exist,” explains José Cláudio Souza Alves, sociologist and professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro.
In the Rio suburb known as Baixada Fluminense there are nearly 100 clandestine cemeteries. Intellectuals and activists fight against invisibility in a territory that is ignored by politicians and the media. The Grita Baixada Forum, a local NGO, has just carried out an unprecedented study on forced disappearances in order for this crime to be classified in Brazilian legislation.
Between 2016 and 2020, there were 7,709 missing people in this region of Rio de Janeiro. “The fact that many massacres involve the participation of public agents, such as police, is a potential aggravating factor that prevents them from being made visible. “Who is going to have the courage to file a complaint at a police station where the police officer himself may have been one of those responsible for these massacres?” highlights Adriano de Araujo, executive coordinator of the Grita Baixada Forum.
Impunity is usually the rule in the multiple massacres perpetrated in Brazil. Of the 51 police officers charged with the murders of Vigário Geral, only seven were convicted. None of them are in jail. Many have already died. On several occasions, the UN demanded an independent investigation into the mass exterminations. This is a request that to date has not been addressed.
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