Poverty, Justice, and Violence in Sao Paolo State,
                 Brazil (by Daniel Ross)

In the week leading up to May 16th, at least 115 people were killed in Brazil's Sao Paolo State, in what some observers have called open war between gangs and the police. Armed with machetes, clubs, guns and molotov cocktails, a small army thought to be controlled by the prison gang First Command of the Capital (PCC) have burnt more than 60 buses and laid siege to police stations and banks across the state. The police response has been just as violent: out of the total number dead, at least 71 were ‘suspected gangsters' killed by police. The Brazilian authorities have placed the blame for this wave of violence squarely on the PCC, ignoring the deep social and institutional problems that are at its root.

According to the most recent estimates of the World Bank, nearly one in four Brazilians – some 40 million people – live in poverty. The same group accounts for only a 2.2 percent share of the national income, making Brazil one of the worst offenders worldwide in terms of income inequalityi. The majority of this marginalized group is urban, inhabiting the ubiquitous favelas (slums) that surround nearly all of Brazil's cities. These areas, which account for a third of the population of larger cities like Sao Paolo, are plagued by unemployment, crime, drugs and illiteracy; because of this they are hotbeds of dissatisfaction with the largely absentee government and its most visible representatives, the police.

It is the favelas that supply Brazil's overcrowded and dysfunctional prison system – the largest by far in Latin America – with most of its inmates. Murder and incarceration rates have climbed steadily since the 1990s, doubling the prison population to 284 000 in 2005ii. More than half of these inmates are being held without a sentence, in prisons that operate at nearly double their capacityiii. Human rights groups worldwide have condemned conditions in the Brazilian penal system as inhumane, citing overcrowding, lack of sanitation or medical care, violence among inmates and extrajudicial torture and murder with impunity by guardsiv.

Tensions between prisoners and prison staff have frequently escalated into violent confrontations in which the guards, better-armed and supplied, have almost invariably triumphed. Most famously, in 1992 at least 111 inmates were killed in the suppression of a riot at Sao Paolo's Carandiru prison; it was in the aftermath of this violence that the PCC was formed as a sort of ‘inmates' union' to rally for better conditionsv. Since that time it has become deeply involved in organised crime and often-violent protest against the government and penal system. In the days prior to the recent wave of attacks on the streets of Sao Paolo, the PCC orchestrated riots in 18 prisons, taking hundreds of hostages and leaving 30 dead. There is considerable sympathy and support for the PCC among poor Sao Paolans, who, according to interviews conducted by the BBC, seem to frequently blame the reactionary government for the escalating violencevi .

The violence which engulfed Sao Paolo state this May is thus nothing new to Brazilians, except perhaps in its scope; nor is its bloody suppression anything but a temporary solution. In order to prevent social disorder on this scale from continuing, the Brazilian government must address the profound social and economic inequalities that have engendered it. This means working to clean up and reform the slums and the overcrowded and inhumane prison system. If prosperous Brazilians and the state do not come to the favelas, the favelas will continue to come to them, and the result will be more bloodshed and instability.

Sources

"Brazil at a Glance". The World Bank Group http://devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/bra_aag.pdf.

Lande, Brian. "Violence and Legality in Latin America".
Centre for Latin American Studies, University of California, Berkeley. 2005.
http://www.clas.berkeley.edu:7001/Events/spring2005/
04-15-05-violenceintheamericas/panel1.html.

"In Figures: Latin America's Prisons". BBC. Nov. 16. 2005. BBC. Jun. 2. 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3768145.stm.

"Behind Bars in Brazil". Human Rights Watch. 1998. BBC. May. 15. 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4770097.stm.

"Sao Paolo Residents Under Siege" BBC. May. 15. 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4774185.stm.

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