{"id":107910,"date":"2018-03-26T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=107910"},"modified":"2018-03-22T12:47:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T12:47:23","slug":"mass-protests-in-brazil-against-death-squad-assassination-of-marielle-franco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/03\/mass-protests-in-brazil-against-death-squad-assassination-of-marielle-franco\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Protests in Brazil against Death Squad Assassination of Marielle Franco"},"content":{"rendered":"

21 Mar 2018 – <\/em>The brutal execution of Rio de Janeiro city counselor Marielle Franco on the night of Wednesday, March 14, by still unknown gunmen came as a shock for most Brazilians, but not as a surprise.<\/p>\n

Mass spontaneous demonstrations erupted on the following night, with those participating blaming the state as the perpetrator, or at least a direct accomplice.<\/p>\n

Franco was killed in a rain of 13 bullets in the context of the unprecedented federal takeover of Rio\u2019s law enforcement, which on February 16 saw President Michel Temer remove the state\u2019s law enforcement secretary and hand the Army\u2019s Eastern Division commander, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, absolute power to overrule security-related decisions by any elected official, up to and including changing internal regulations of law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marielle Franco<\/p><\/div>\n

Rio expresses in a concentrated form all the dilemmas faced by the Brazilian bourgeoisie. Under the rule of the Workers Party (PT), it shifted its economy towards oil extraction, refining and transport, making it the hardest hit by the end of the commodity boom and the stalling of economic activity by companies caught in the Lava-Jato anti-corruption probe. The city underwent a massive \u201csocial cleansing\u201d operation by the security forces against its most impoverished residents in preparation for hosting the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. In 2016, the state of Rio de Janeiro declared bankruptcy<\/p>\n

The military intervention was decreed by Temer after fraudulent, hysterical claims by the corporate media of a supposed crime wave during Rio\u2019s world-famous Carnival. Later findings by major papers, such as Folha de S. Paulo<\/em>, showed that the crime rate during Carnival was actually 35 percent lower than in 2016, at the height of Brazil\u2019s worst economic crisis in a century.<\/p>\n

Marielle Franco, a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), a parliamentary split-off from the PT, was in her first term as a city councilor in Rio\u2019s 51-member Municipal Chamber. She was elected in the 2016 municipal elections, with 46,000 votes, the fifth-largest vote for any candidate. Before that, she had served for 10 years as a parliamentary assistant to the party\u2019s main public figure in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Freixo, who was defeated as a mayoral candidate in the 2016 elections by the Christian chauvinist Marcelo Crivella.<\/p>\n

Freixo\u2019s, Franco\u2019s and ultimately PSOL\u2019s popularity in the city of Rio, where the party holds the second largest caucus in the municipal legislature, contrasts with its marginal role in Brazilian politics and has been cultivated chiefly through a criticism of the barbaric practices of the state\u2019s Military Police. This criticism carries with it significant risks. Freixo was forced into a brief Spanish exile in 2011, after the city\u2019s investigations department admitted having uncovered no less than 27 plots to murder him.<\/p>\n

Freixo\u2019s most prominent activity as state representative had been his heading of a 2008 state parliamentary inquiry commission (CPI) exposing police involvement with vigilante groups\u2014known as mil\u00edcias<\/em>\u2014acting mainly in impoverished working class neighborhoods in Rio\u2019s industrial northern sector. By this point, Franco, who had been born and lived in the northern Complexo da Mar\u00e9 favela<\/em> (shanty-town), was already working with him.<\/p>\n

After being elected in 2016, she was tapped at the end of February to head the city legislature\u2019s commission tasked with overseeing the federal intervention, of which she had been a known critic both as an activist and a close observer, coming home daily to Mar\u00e9, where she was heading on the day of her execution.<\/p>\n

Known as a participant in black nationalist and feminist politics\u2014she had left a black feminist meeting in downtown Rio on the night she was killed\u2014she had also won support among workers in the northern sector, above all for exposing police violence. Just four days before her execution, she shared on social media reports of the police killing and dumping of the bodies of two youth in the Acari favela<\/em>, which was made famous last year by the death of a 13-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet while drinking water in her schoolyard.<\/p>\n

Franco\u2019s last social media posts replicated workers\u2019 accounts of the reign of terror in Acari by the city\u2019s 41st Police Battalion, which was replicating, ostensibly on its own without orders from superior officers, the individual profiling of the neighborhood\u2019s inhabitants carried out by troops intervening in other favelas<\/em>. Soldiers there have been ordered to lay siege to communities and photograph and write down information from workers\u2019 IDs as they leave for their jobs in the morning. The 41st Battalion is the deadliest in the city, responsible for an average of 100 killings a year, and was referred to by Franco as \u201cthe death battalion.\u201d<\/p>\n

While law enforcement, including Brazil\u2019s far-right intelligence chief, Sergio Westphalen Etchegoyen, have been unanimous in declaring that Franco was executed, state agents have tried to pin the blame on drug lords or mil\u00edcia<\/em> members, which are widely portrayed by the government and the press as rogue elements from law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

The shell casings found from the bullets that killed Franco have been traced to a cache that was produced for Brazil\u2019s Military Police.<\/p>\n

The president of Rio\u2019s chapter of Brazil\u2019s Bar Association (OAB), Felipe Santa Cruz, echoed the law enforcement view after leaving a meeting with General Braga Netto, declaring to Folha de S. Paulo<\/em> on March 15: \u201cIt is clear that when you shake up the structures of law enforcement you may have a reaction. Why not accept that the sector affected by these changes, the corrupt, are trying to demoralize the Brazilian state?\u201d<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to compare Franco\u2019s execution to the so-called Riocentro Bombing, a botched attack on a May Day event by far-right elements in the army during the decline of Brazil\u2019s 1964-1981 US-backed military dictatorship. The bombing was supposed to be blamed on left-wing guerrillas and offset the decline of military rule\u2014a plot that went awry when the bomb exploded in the hands of the soldier responsible for planting it.<\/p>\n

A far more obvious analogy would be to the death squads that operated under the dictatorship, kidnapping, torturing and murdering opponents of the military regime. The political repression carried out by the military was accompanied by a parallel activity\u2014backed by the government and funded by businesses\u2014by off-duty police and others to exterminate the so-called marginalized and allegedly criminal elements of the population. This latter activity has never ceased.<\/p>\n

The line toed by Santa Cruz, generally considered by human rights activists as an \u201cally,\u201d is the most convenient for the Brazilian ruling elites, which are moving rightward at an alarming pace, portraying the military intervention in Rio as the only possible defense of democracy.<\/p>\n

While President Temer only went so far as to say, coldly, that the execution is \u201can attack on democracy,\u201d intelligence chief Etchegoyen declared to the capital\u2019s main daily, Correio Braziliense<\/em>, that \u201cour intelligence would be very stupid if it allowed an attack that weakened the intervention … it would make no sense to kill a critic of the intervention in order to weaken it.\u201d Etchegoyen\u2019s line is clear: the military is not willing to allow the investigation into Franco\u2019s death to expose state agents as responsible as this would weaken the military intervention in Rio.<\/p>\n

Whatever the findings of the investigation into Franco\u2019s execution\u2014and there is no reason to believe that there will be any credible ones\u2014the political establishment will be pushed further rightward, in opposition to the fundamental social and democratic rights of the working class, and closer to dictatorship.<\/p>\n

The commander of the Brazilian Army, General Eduardo Villas B\u00f4as, declared to the press on February 19, three days after the beginning of the intervention, that the military would need \u201cguarantees to act without the risk of being subjected to a truth commission in the future,\u201d referring to the toothless commission that, during the administration of Workers Party President Dilma Rousseff, was tasked with trying to uncover crimes carried out under the US-backed military dictatorship.<\/p>\n

Franco, in her capacity of heading a committee overseeing the military intervention, would conceivably have been able to provide material for such a future truth commission into the crimes by the military against the workers and poor of Rio.<\/p>\n

While clearly serving to intimidate any opposition to the intervention and bolster the barbaric sentiments within the military, Franco\u2019s execution is being exploited by the security forces as a justification for even greater repression. Arguing that the only possible suspects in her killing are criminals\u2014either drug lords or corrupt state officials in the mil\u00edcias<\/em> trying to undermine the state, they insist that the military intervention needs to be deepened. The \u201cwar on drugs\u201d\u2014Latin America\u2019s counterpart to the \u201cwar on terror\u201d\u2014demands even greater emergency powers for the state.<\/p>\n

Etchegoyen had already declared as early as August 2017 that he feared \u201corganized crime intervention in the elections,\u201d telling G1.com that the end of corporate financing of elections\u2014ruled upon by the Supreme Court that year\u2014would \u201copen the way for the organized crime to sponsor candidates,\u201d which would mean \u201ca clear threat to institutional security.\u201d Their interest, according to a January 11 BBC interview with Brazil\u2019s former drug control secretary Walter Maierovitch, would be backing candidates who would \u201ccut deals to reduce police repression in some areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, military violence will be accompanied by a massive state propaganda campaign associating political opposition with the most venal interests\u2014the standard accusation leveled against Franco by Brazil\u2019s far-right. This was clearly shown with the allegations made by MBL\u2014the main organizers of the right-wing demonstrations in favor of former Workers Party president Dilma Rousseff\u2019s 2016 impeachment\u2014claiming that Franco was a friend of Marcinho VP, a drug lord, and her execution had been part of a gang war.<\/p>\n

The sharp turn to the right by the Brazilian bourgeoisie is also reflected in what had hitherto been its preferred party of rule, the Workers Party (PT). The PT-controlled trade unions had already demobilized, calling off a February 19 nationwide demonstration against President Temer\u2019s reactionary pension reform after it was withdrawn due to the military intervention in Rio. Under the Brazilian constitution, the suspension of civil rights in part of the country precluded the vote on the reform, which requires a constitutional amendment. The PT saw no need to demonstrate against the military intervention in February, as it sees no need now.<\/p>\n

The Workers Party\u2019s opposition to the military takeover of the country\u2019s second-largest city is entirely tactical. It fears that the deployment of troops to police the favelas<\/em> will undermine the authority of the military.<\/p>\n

The PT-aligned media is moving from \u201cfriendly\u201d criticisms of the intervention, centered on the \u201cdiscomfort felt by the military\u201d during security operations and their \u201cunpreparedness\u201d (Celso Amorim interviewed by CartaCapital<\/em>, February 16), to claims that the intervention helps imperialism by demoralizing the armed forces. This was the warning sounded by Saturnino Braga in his article reposted by ConversaAfiada<\/em>, \u201cIntervention disaster is USA at play.\u201d There have also been calls for the use of Rousseff\u2019s draconian anti-terrorism law in the face of Franco\u2019s execution (Alex Solnik, Brasil247<\/em>: \u201cMarielle was targeted by a terrorist attack\u201d).<\/p>\n

Under the weight of the decline of bourgeois democracy, PSOL\u2019s stated reformist positions are also morphing into a support for repression that is essentially no different from that of the PT. When the intervention began, the party asked for \u201cmore integration between the security agencies\u201d and \u201cthe fulfillment by the federal government of its obligations in curbing the international drugs and arms traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 wsws.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

21 Mar 2018 – The brutal execution of Rio de Janeiro city counselor Marielle Franco on March 14 came as a shock for Brazilians but not as a surprise. Known as a participant in black nationalist and feminist politics, she had left a black feminist meeting in downtown Rio on the night she was killed; she had also won support among workers in the northern sector, above all for exposing police violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":107707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}