On October 28th, Governor Claudio Castro authorized a massive police operation involving over 2,000 military police and 500 civil police officers in the favelas of Complexo do Alemão and Complexo da Penha. The operation was officially justified as an effort to combat the Comando Vermelho drug cartel, but instead, it resulted in the deaths of more than 130 people, including women and children. this “operation” was the biggest massacre in Rio de Janeiro’s history.
This is not an isolated event. Since their creation, the favelas, built by Afro-Brazilians excluded from formal housing after abolition of slavery, have been constant targets of state violence. Despite housing being a right guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution, millions are forced to live in precarious conditions without reliable access to water, electricity, healthcare, or education.
The state claims to be fighting organized crime, yet the real leaders and financiers of Brazil’s major cartels are among the bourgeoisie. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the PCC, one of South America’s largest cartels, held major stock investments in Faria Lima, São Paulo’s financial center.
These operations are not meant to end crime. They are designed to divide the working class, to make one section of the people celebrate the murder of another. While a child is gunned down in the favela, a misled middle-class worker applauds, convinced by the state’s propaganda that this is a “fight against crime.”
Brazil faces staggering inequality: nearly 10 million people remain illiterate, 3 million live with food insecurity, and 360,000 lack access to healthcare. Instead of confronting these realities or dismantling corruption at its roots, the state wages war on the poor, on the Black population, and on the working class.
The imperialists and their collaborators are the ones guilty of, and facilitators of, crime — either by forcing people into poverty and desperation, or by committing these crimes themselves. Numerous times in the history of South and Central America have we seen how the CIA was involved in the drug trade. Their concern is not crime itself; their concern is to gain legitimacy to use violence against the oppressed. The governor of Rio de Janeiro is using the same U.S. imperialist rhetoric to justify his crimes.
We must say clearly: these massacres are crimes against the people.
All attacks by the state against the working class must be utterly condemned.
All solidarity with the victims, with the families who mourn, and with the people of the favelas.
Viva o povo!
Anti-Imperialist Front
