The massacre of more than 100 people in Rio’s favelas is an attempt by right-wing governor Claudio Castro to court popularity and revive the fortunes of the far right as they look for a successor to Jair Bolsonaro. It is at once a nod to Trump’s military interventionism and a challenge to Lula.
‘A success!’ declared Rio governor Claudio Castro, as the media showed images of over 100 bodies laid out on the road, the result of a mega police operation to smash the CV, the Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, one of Brazil’s most powerful criminal organizations.
The fact that the main target, CV leader Doca, had escaped, that four police agents had been killed and that many of the dead had no police records and one was alleged to be only 14 years old, did not seem to bother Castro. Nor did the fact that even gun-toting men with criminal records, as many had, have a right to be tried, and not summarily executed. As to smashing the hold of the CV over the slums of Alemão and Penha, within a few days, armed men were back patrolling the accesses to the favelas. As many commentators pointed out, ‘Drug bosses don’t live in favelas’.
But none of this has stopped the Rio governor from cashing in on his sudden fame as a politician tough on crime, and launching the question of public security as a major campaign issue for the 2026 general elections. Surprise, surprise – he will run for senator in Rio, and the rightwing parties, who have been floundering as they search for a replacement for Jair Bolsonaro, facing a prison sentence for his role in the attempted coup of 2022, now believe they have found the issue that will bring them electoral success. Basically bandido bom é bandido morto – a good bandit is a dead bandit.
The Rio operation seems to have been politically timed to dent Lula’s rising popularity after his meeting with Donald Trump in Malaysia to talk about reducing American tariffs on Brazilian exports.
Immediately after it, the right-wing parties in Congress tried to rush through a bill equating criminal organizations with terrorist organizations. While this explicit link may now have been dropped from the bill, the draft is still under discussion.
Equating drug gangs with terrorist organisations would allow would allow the Trump government to justify intervention in their pursuit of drug cartels. The US has assembled a large fleet of warships in the Caribbean, led by its largest aircraft carrier, and has so far killed over 80 alleged drug traffickers in small boats. One of Jair Bolsonaro’s sons, senator Flavio Bolsonaro, has already called for similar action to be taken against alleged drug running boats in the Bay of Guanabara, on whose western shore lies Rio de Janeiro.
The total failure of such operations to eliminate drug trafficking is glossed over. Instead Claudio Castro says he is planning 10 more such operations in different favelas. He and other rightwing governors prefer to ignore the success of a federal government operation carried out 2 months ago without a shot being fired which, instead, used intelligence to target the financial structure of another of Brazil’s major criminal gangs, the PCC, closing down a huge network of illicit activities, including petrol posts and fintechs, and detaining top gang members.
The 117 alleged minor members of the CV who were shot dead in the massacre were immediately replaced, leaving behind the human cost of over 100 families deprived of sons, husbands, fathers.
The dominion of criminal gangs over many of Rio’s poor communities means that vast areas of the city are virtually no man’s land where public services, including the police, do not enter. The criminal organizations, who are much more akin to the mafia than to terrorist groups, not only control the drug trade but also internet and TV provision, transport, and other facilities. Schools and hospitals are forced to close whenever there is a shootout. Buses are used as roadblocks and often set on fire. The state is absent.
However, if you live in Copacabana or Ipanema, you can be blissfully unaware of the situation in the favelas. Prince William has just spent several days in Rio, while over 100 were being gunned down in the same city.
Bom bandido é um bandido morto
There is still a mystery about how exactly so many were killed. Autopsies were performed hurriedly and the bodies were given back to the families for burial, preventing independent forensic experts sent by the federal government from examining them.
Were they gunned down as they were trapped between groups of police advancing from both sides of the hill behind the favelas of Alemão and Penha? Were they trying to surrender? Rigor mortis showed many of them with their arms raised. The bodies were left where they fell among the bushes, and it was the families who went in search of them and carried them down to the street where they laid them out.
Brazil’s biggest ever massacre in recent times has still not been fully explained. Instead it has become the bandwagon of the right, the answer to the very real problems of public security that they hope will carry them to triumph in the 2026 elections. Instead of justice, equality, jobs, health, education, the environment, Um bom bandido é um bandido morto will be their campaign slogan.
