[News] The Mothers of May: The Genocidal State in Brazil

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Mothers of May: The Difficult Democratization 
of the Genocidal State in Brazil

Written by Raúl Zibechi
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 20:45

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730

"My son's name was Edison and he was 29 years 
old. He was killed on the streets. He just went 
home for some medicine and to put gas in his 
motorcycle. We lived in Baixada Santista, a 
working-class neighborhood in Sao Paulo. On May 
15, the police followed him and killed him, 500 
yards from the gas station. Even though there are 
contradictions in their statements, the District 
Attorney's Office failed to act and shelved the 
case," said Débora Maria da Silva, a 50-year-old 
woman of mixed-race and mother of two.

Edison had been working at a cleaning company for 
seven years and had a son. He was far from the 
stereotypical delinquent, but his skin was dark 
and he lived in a poor area of Baixada Santista 
on the coast of the state of Sao Paulo. The same 
day on which Edison died, the First Capital 
Command (PCC), a criminal drug-trafficking 
organization, attacked police commissaries and 
burned buses. "The city was paralyzed. It seemed 
like there had been an earthquake," said Débora.

The wave of violence in South America's biggest 
city, with 20 million inhabitants, began on May 
12 after the government of the state of Sao Paulo 
moved 765 prisoners to a maximum security prison 
located 380 miles from the capital. One of the 
transferred prisoners was the leader of the PCC, 
Marcos Williams Herba Camacho, also known as 
Marcola, who directed the criminal organization 
from prison. In three days they carried out 180 
attacks against police forces and prison guards 
in which, according to initial official 
estimates, 39 officers and 38 gang members died. 
They also set fire to more than a hundred buses, 
automobiles, and a dozen bank branches.

At the same time, riots were recorded in 73 of 
the 144 prisons in the entire state, which were 
also declared in a state of rebellion. The 
conservative newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo broke 
the news that the city morgue had received many 
more corpses than the number of deaths the 
government was reporting: 272 compared to the 172 
that were officially reported. That led to the 
suspicion that there were dozens of illegal 
deaths, which the newspaper attributed to 
assassins who would surely have been policemen. 
On May 24, while the repression still had not 
subsided, authorities admitted that of the 300 
recognized victims only 79 were involved with 
organized crime.<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn1>1

That same day, Amnesty International stated that 
death squads composed of policemen were to blame 
for "close to 9,000 murders 
 the majority 
categorized as 'resistance' killings, without 
judicial investigation, registered between 1999 
and 
2004."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn2>2 
Many accused the governor, Claudio Lembo. The 
financial magazine Exame protested that the 
violence generates costs equivalent to 10% of the 
gross domestic product. President Lula was one of 
the first to tell the public a difficult truth: 
"The problem is Brazilian society. We're reaping 
what we've sown in this 
country."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn3>3

Neither Justice nor Law

"Some mothers, who knew that their children were 
murdered by the police and had no connection to 
organized crime, decided to confront the state 
because the state is in charge of security. 
Because it was election season they did not want 
to show weakness and decided to face the public's 
anger over the burnings of buses by killing poor 
young people," says Débora. "When it was clear 
that the young people's deaths were carried out 
in the same manner and they were all workers, I 
began to look for other mothers. The state 
trivialized the deaths because at the top they 
only want to see numbers. I was busy as a bee 
visiting other mothers' houses because many were 
afraid and did not want to talk."

In July of the same year three mothers began to 
meet in order to visit police stations, 
investigate motives behind the deaths, and 
interview authorities. On the one-year 
anniversary of the murders, they led a protest 
and mass with 1,000 people who were carrying 
signs that read: "The ones who kill the innocent 
are the criminals." The majority of the victims 
lived in Baixada Santista. "The state shelved the 
cases and did not prosecute any police officers." 
The numbers speak for themselves: the state 
admitted there were 493 deaths from firearms 
between May 12 and 20, of which 47 were killed by 
the PCC. "Therefore the police killed 446 people," Débora concludes.

She was able to demonstrate that the police had 
lied in the case of her son Edison, by providing 
evidence of contradictions in the police file. 
"They said that the police radio was off but I 
demonstrated that that wasn't true." What hurt 
the most, she explains, was that she ran into a 
dead end because the state closed all the cases. 
Her last resort was to meet with other mothers, 
to try to comprehend an incomprehensible 
situation and to work to make sure it never happened again.

First, they decided to call themselves the 
Mothers of May and they set up the Baixada 
Santista Association of Mothers and Relatives of 
Victims of Violence. Eventually they were even 
approached by people affected by the military 
dictatorship who hadn't had the strength to come 
forward on behalf of their own family members. 
When the Mothers of May appeared, it gave them 
the courage to denounce the events of decades 
prior. "Now we're 17 mothers just in Baixada and 
4 more in Sao Paulo. We already have groups in 13 
states made up of family members affected by the 
military police," she says with pride. Their 
organization collaborates with the Network 
Against Violence in Rio as well as mothers from 
Espiritu Santo, Minas Gerais, Belem, Pará, Acre 
and Pernambuco, and other important states.

When Débora speaks, even when she gets upset, she 
does so with a certain serenity. "Our meetings 
are very painful. We cry. We suffer anguish 
because the impunity is what hurts the most. 
People raise a child and the state kills it. 
Mothers don't symbolize death, but life. During 
the meetings people don't accept what happened. 
They cry when they see a photo of their child. 
I'm being treated for depression. I'm a widow 
because my husband died in a similar way as my 
son did 
 and I have a brother who was 
disappeared." From what one hears in the Bahia 
Social Forum, Débora's reality seems to be shared by many Brazilian families.

  Expendable People

"The state exterminates the poor, black 
inhabitants of favelas because it's easier to 
kill them than give them education and 
healthcare, because to them the poor are 
expendable. Black boys are the most vulnerable. 
The security policy of this country is a policy 
of extermination; they prefer jails to schools. 
When young people are murdered, their deaths are 
deemed 'resistance' killings, or 'acts of 
resistance,' which do not exist in the penal 
code," Débora explains, politicized by her life experience.

Nonetheless, these are not just the opinions of a 
mother in distress. The book Crimes of May 
published six months after the events by the 
CONDEPE (State Council for the Defense of Human 
Rights, of Sao Paulo), an independent commission 
composed of representatives from the Federal 
Attorney General's Office, the Medicine Regional 
Council, the Public Defender's Office (CREMESP), 
and various human rights groups, reached the same conclusions as Débora.

Desiré Carlos Callegari, the president of 
CREMESP, claims that among those killed in May 
the majority were male (96.3%) and young (45% 
between the ages of 21 and 31 years old; 16.5% 
between 31 and 41). On May 15, each victim 
received an average of 5.8 gunshot wounds. Of the 
493 dead, 43 were killed by delinquents (23 
military police, 7 civil policemen, 3 municipal 
policemen, 9 prison guards, and 4 common 
citizens). Seventeen were prisoners who had 
revolted and 109 died in confrontations. However, 
87 were murdered by unidentified killers "bearing 
signs of execution with police 
participation."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn4>4

Criminal expert Ricardo Molina de Figueiredo, a 
member of the independent commission, analyzed 
the cases labeled "resistance" killings, which 
totaled 124 the week of May 12th through the 
20th. The study of all the cases revealed that 
the majority of the victims were shot in a highly 
lethal area, that the shots were fired at close 
range, and that there was a great number who were shot "from head to toe."

This allowed him to purport that "the combination 
of these factors indicate a situation similar to 
execution and not a shoot-out where the shooters 
are moving around. In an incident of 
confrontation it would be very improbable that 
these three components coincide, which allows us 
to conclude that 60 to 70% of the analyzed cases 
were executions."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn5>5

The Public Defender's Office in Sao Paulo says 
more or less the same. Pedro Gilberti, assistant 
general public defender, reports that there was 
faulty conduct and abuse of authority. The worst 
thing is that those elements, "until now did not 
lead to accusations, having been buried in the 
common grave of the archives, where impunity 
rests."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn6>6

Thanks to this commission and the work of the 
Mothers of May, the belief that there were many 
summary executions stuck in the public's mind. 
The second conclusion was put forth by the state: 
once again, it received impunity. The situation 
is dire because in Sao Paulo the murder rate 
began to rise again after 10 years of decline. In 
2009, although violent crime continued to decline 
in the state capital, in the peripheral, inland, 
and coastal cities violence is climbing. In a 
single year in Baixada Santista the homicides 
grew by 37%.<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn7>7

A Genocidal State

To understand how all of this can be occurring in 
a country which aspires to be a global player, a 
country where democracy has reigned for 20 years, 
one that benefits from a progressive government 
like that of Lula's, and which will host the 
Olympic Games and the World Cup, one must 
investigate from a variety of perspectives.

Rafael Dias, from the NGO Global Justice, 
believes that Brazil exists as a genocidal state 
because "there was never a rupture between the 
slave-state and the modern state, and we have now 
an elitist state that operates through violence 
to marginalize the indigenous, the black, and the 
poor, who were all considered threats or 
dangerous 
classes."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn8>8 
In his opinion, "It's a question of state, not 
government." That's why there were no significant 
changes with the installation of the left-wing 
government in 2003. "Now we have the model of 
militarization of the favelas because the poor 
continue to be considered a permanent enemy, and 
that is the logic of public security."

The Left continues to treat inhabitants of 
favelas like lumpen, people marginalized in 
society, explains Rafael Dias. "The Left does not 
understand the situation of poor people. Because 
they aren't organized in unions or parties, they 
don't form part of the leftist political agenda. 
The leftists think they can resolve the problem 
applying compensation policies like the Bolsa 
Familia, or "Family Allowance" Program. We're 
repeating the three principles that existed 
during slavery, the triple P: pao, pau y pano (bread, wood, and cloth)."

Mauricio Campos is an engineer and he works in 
the Network against Violence of Rio de Janeiro, 
which was born in 2003 when favelas mobilized 
against police violence. "Our work consists in 
judicial service to the people who suffer from 
violence. The main difficulty of working in the 
favela is state violence, the fear, the 
massacres, because the people who have permanent 
jobs are exposed to the same threats that 
terrorize the poor 
population."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn9>9 
Campos believes that the Acari massacre, in 1990 
in Rio, where 11 youths were killed, provoked a 
change in society because "it was the first time 
there was an immense collective reaction from the families of victims."

Campos maintains that one cannot avoid the issue 
of "economic links between organized crime and 
the police. The delinquents don't want any 
charges to be brought against the police because 
they always solve problems with bribes. According 
to social activists, the police are the main 
problem because they always attack social 
organizations." He adds that, "Violence against 
those living in the favelas has been on the rise 
because the Brazilian elite have been world 
pioneers in attacking the poor before they can 
organize. In other countries elitist violence is 
reactionary, but here it is preemptive because we 
have a very capable bourgeoisie, the most lucid 
in Latin America, which possesses an apparatus of 
domination like the TV network Red Globo that you 
don't see in other countries."

The serious problem with drug-trafficking, in his 
opinion, is that "it is the backbone of all 
criminal activity, and a big umbrella for all 
illegal activities." On the other hand, the 
increase in struggles of the 70s and 80s "was 
resolved by repression under the dictatorship, 
but when democracy returned the direct repression 
stopped and the criminalization of the poor 
began. It is an uncontrollable process, because 
the police complex has an incredible autonomy to 
the point that no government dares confront it."

This is one of the key points: social change is 
denied to the poor, black, and young majority. 
"If there was a strong social movement, many of 
the youth would stop empathizing with the 
criminals and start relating to the social 
struggle. Young people are swallowed up by a 
process. They don't choose a crime, they're just 
bystanders, and sometimes they want to seek 
revenge against the police because there is no 
justice, social organization, nor guerrilla 
warfare. The only way out is by joining drug-trafficking," Campos concludes.

Social activists aren't the only ones with this 
type of analysis. It's worth listening to one of 
the most important conservative voices of the 
political spectrum, speaking from one of the 
highest offices that had to confront organized 
crime in Sao Paulo, Governor Claudio Lembo.

The day Lembo stepped down from his position, on 
December 31, 2006, he gave an interview to Folha 
de Sao Paulo in which he spoke about the 
tumultuous days of May. "During the crisis of the 
PCC, figures from the white minority wanted 'eye 
for an eye' justice. They wanted to kill everyone 
to save themselves and the white minority. That 
was what irritated me the most. We were in an 
extremely difficult situation and we had to show 
that the state could win within the law. They 
called me on the phone, and a few individuals 
came to see me."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn10>10

Lembo is a conservative who now belongs to the 
Democratic Party (DEM) and who held departmental 
positions in Sao Paulo during the military 
dictatorship. The journalist from Folha inquired 
about what the white minority asked for, to which 
Lembo responded very clearly: "For the police to 
go to the streets, at night, and carry out 
executions." He never said who these people were 
who wanted vengeance even though they were never 
directly affected by the violence. However it is 
clear that they belong to the minority of the 
rich who utilize the state for their own benefit.

During the conflict, Lembo said that the violence 
will only end when the white minority changes 
their mentality. "We have a very bad bourgeoisie, 
a very perverse white minority. The bourgeoisie 
is going to have to reach into their pockets to 
help sustain the social misery of Brazil in the 
sense of creating jobs, expanding education, 
increasing solidarity, and opening up more 
dialogue and correspondence about situations."

"In what ways are they responsible?" asks the 
journalist. "During the historical formation of 
Brazil, when slaves were liberated, the ones who 
received restitution were the slave owners, not 
the free slaves as it happened in the United 
States. Brazil is a cynical 
country."<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6730#_ftn11>11

If this is what a conservative man thinks and 
feels, a near 80-year-old lawyer and university 
professor, a governor in charge of repressing 
delinquents and to some extent a member of the 
elite he critiques, "What might the poor, black, 
unemployed, continually persecuted young people 
between 15 and 18 years old feel?"

Débora explains it in her own way: "The poor 
don't have the right to reach positions of power. 
Those are reserved for children of the elite."

Notes:

1. "Extermination Groups under Investigation in 
Sao Paulo," AFP and DPA, May 24, Sao Paulo.
2. Idem.
3. Reuters, Sao Paulo, May 19, 2006.
4. Carta Mayor Agency, Sao Paulo, Feb. 17, 2007.
5. Idem.
6. Idem.
7. Maes de Maio, 
<http://maesdemaio.blogspot.com/>http://maesdemaio.blogspot.com/.
8. Rafael Dias interview.
9. Mauricio Campos interview.
10. Folha de Sao Paulo, Dec. 31, 2006, Mónica Bergamo interview.
11. Folha de Sao Paulo, May 18, 2006, Mónica Bergamo interview.

Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for 
Brecha of Montevideo, Uruguay, lecturer and 
researcher on social movements at the 
Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and 
adviser to several social groups. He writes the 
monthly "Zibechi Report" for the Americas Program 
(<http://www.americasprogram.org/>www.americasprogram.org).Brecha 
of Montevideo, Uruguay, lecturer and researcher 
on social movements at the Multiversidad 
Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to 
several social groups. He writes the monthly 
"Zibechi Report" for the Americas Program 
(<http://www.americasprogram.org/>www.americasprogram.org).

Translated for the Americas Program by Brandon Brewer.




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