Brazilian Death Squads

1. Brazilian Death Squads

2. Definition • “Clandestine and usually irregular organizations…which carry out extrajudicial executions and other violent acts against clearly defined individuals or groups of people…” (Brenner, Arthur 2000) • State sponsored and maintained, and in some cases, states openly promote or partake in death squad activities

3. Types • Military- trained by state security to take the lives of political opposition • Example? • Vigilante- Someone who tries to punish another person without legal authority by taking the law into his/her own hands • Example?

4. Police- off-duty and on-duty police officers, usually military trained, who partake in extrajudicial executions, torture, forced confessions, and other terror tactics • Example? • Other types?

5. Brazil • Population: 174 million (2002) • GNP per capita: $2,580 (lower middle income bracket) • 22% live below the poverty line; 64% of ownership and consumption concentrated within the top 20% • External Debt: $214.9 billion US Dollars (2003)

6. Government: Federal (Federative) - a form of government in which sovereign power is formally divided - usually by means of a constitution - between a central authority and a number of constituent regions (states, colonies, or provinces) so that each region retains some management of its internal affairs (CIA World Fact Book)

7. “On the night of July 23, 1993…downtown Rio de Janeiro, two cars stopped…where more than 40 homeless boys and girls were sleeping…hooded men stepped from the cars, approached the children, and opened fire with pistols. Four boys died as they slept. Another was shot and killed as he ran…” (1998)

8. History • 1958: Chief of police, Amury Kruel chose willing policemen to “die in pursuit of bandits”. These police officers were known as Esquadrao Motorizada (E.M.) and had an “explicit mandate to kill ‘dangerous criminals’ on their own initiative” (Huggins, 1997, pg 212). • 1969: Kreul’s police had killed an average of one person a week

9. “In Rio slums, ditches, and fields, dead bodies began turning up showing signs of torture; they were carved with the death squad’s imprint, a skull and crossbones. Notes were pinned to the victims’ bodies: ‘I was a thief’, ‘I sold drugs’, ‘I was a criminal’ and signed ‘E.M.’(Huggins pg. 212).

10. According to local newspapers, in the early 1960’s, police from San Paulo (Brazil’s largest city) came to Rio to “learn methods of eliminating [bandits] without a police inquiry” (Huggins pg. 214).

11. Death Squad Continuum • Relatively spontaneous, less formalized, less state-linked forms, such as mob lynchings • Systematic murder by justice seeking individuals • Informal death squads usually composed of off-duty police officers • Formal, extra-legal violence, on-duty police officers

12. Victims include street children, drug dealers, petty criminals, political opponents, union organizers, and other activists. • Rio de Janeiro: approx. 5 street children killed a day, 800+ civilians died in police shootings (2003) • Since 1995, police killings have gone from 16 a month to 32 a month. At the same time approx. 4000 police have received promotions or pay raises for “acts of bravery”.

13. San Paulo: (2001) Of 365 civilians shot, 236 died; 51% were shot in the back, 36% in the head; 56% had no criminal record; 11% were younger than 18; 46% were between 18 and 25; 54% of the victims were black (blacks account for 5% of the population);18% of the weapons in the cases were collected (Caldeira, 2002)

14. What do the Numbers in San Paulo Tell Us? • Police shoot more to kill than to subdue • “The absence of witnesses and the fact of the weapons were never officially inspected indicate that the explanation ‘resistance followed by death’ is usually accepted” (Caldeira, pg 246) • Most of the victims are young, black, poor, and have no criminal record

15. Theories as to Why Death Squads Continue to Operate

16. Economic Modernization • McNamara: “The poorest countries, with substantial social and political tensions created by economic scarcity, would be the most unstable and thus most apt to use repression in order to maintain control” (Mitchell, 1988, pg. 478).

17. Samuel Huntington • Argues: “it is not the poorest countries that will be the most unstable ‘because people who are really poor for politics and too poor for protest’” (Mitchell, pg 478). • The countries most likely have levels of human rights violations are neither the very rich nor the very poor, but those countries that are in the process of modernization (middle income countries)

18. Marx, Chomsky, and Herman • “ ‘The balance of terror [in human rights violations] appears to have shifted to the West and its clients, with the United States setting the pace as sponsors and suppliers’” (Mitchell, pg 479) • In other words, “the greater the economic association with the United States or other advanced capitalist countries, the greater the degree of human rights violations” (pg 479).

19. Political • “Politics in countries that achieved independence relatively recently…may be more unsettled than in those that have had a considerable time to unify their states…Human rights violations may be particularly pronounced in the newest states as they attempt to ‘build’ a new nation” (Mitchell, pg 480).

20. Brazil • Population: 174 million (2002) • GNP per capita: $2,580 (lower middle income bracket) • 22% live below the poverty line; 64% of ownership and consumption concentrated within the top 20% • External Debt: $214.9 billion US Dollars (2003)