Shaping violences: state formation, symbolic violence and the link between public and private interests in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article examines the relationship between state formation, symbolic violence, and the blurring of public and private interests in Brazil. Drawing on a variety of sources – including academic literature, government reports, and media accounts – we use a historical approach to analyse how these factors have contributed to violence in Brazil, focusing on the case of the Northeast region. We argue that both symbolic violence and the problematisation regarding the separation between public and private interests have been overlooked in statebuilding literature. The blurring of public and private interests, grounded in symbolic violence (through the naturalisation of racism and aporophobia), contributes to sustained historical patterns of violence in Brazil. These patterns were introduced during the colonial period and have persisted to this day.

KEYWORDS:

• Northeast of Brazil
• extermination groups
• symbolic violence
• state formation
• Statebuilding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Edward Newman, ‘The Violence of Statebuilding in Historical Perspective: Implications for Peacebuilding’, Peacebuilding 1, no. 1 (2013): 141–57; and Oliver P. Richmond, Failed Statebuilding: Intervention, the State, and the Dynamics of Peace Formation (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014).

² Christopher Cramer, Civil War is not a Stupid Thing. Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (London: Hurst and Company, 2006).

³ Astri Suhrke and Matts Berdal, eds., The Peace in Between. Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding (London and New York: Routledge, 2012).

⁴ Charles T. Call, ‘Building States to Build Peace? A Critical Analysis’, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 4, no. 2 (2008): 60–74.

⁵ e.g. World Bank, World Bank Group Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence 2020–2025 (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2020), http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/844591582815510521/World-Bank-Group-Strategy-for-Fragility-Conflict-and-Violence-2020–2025; and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, ed., Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2019).

⁶ Andreas Wimmer and Nina G. Schiller, ‘Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences’, Global Networks 2, no. 4 (2002): 301–34; and Oliver P. Richmond, ‘Interventionary Order and its Methodologies: The Relationship Between Peace and Intervention’, Third World Quarterly 41, no. 2 (2020): 207–27.

⁷ John McGovern, ‘The Emergence of the Modern State’, in The Modern State. Theories and Ideologies, ed. Erika Cudworth, Timothy Hall and John McGovern (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 20–36; and Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, ‘Introduction to the Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding’, in Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding, ed. Nicolas Lemay-Hébert (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2019), 1–10.

⁸ Marcos A. S. V. Ferreira, ‘Peace and Conflict in Brazil’, in The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, ed. Oliver Richmond and Gezim Visoka (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_66–1; and Celso Amorim, ‘A política de defesa de um país pacífico’, Naval War College Journal 18, no. 1 (2012).

⁹ Veronica F. Azzi and Kai M. Kenkel, ‘Contemporary Patterns of Violence and the Inside/Outside Problématique: The Case of Brazil’, in Peace and Violence in Brazil, ed. Marcos A. Ferreira (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 61–85; and Marcos A. S. V. Ferreira, ‘Peace and Violence in South America: From Security to a Peace Studies Approach’, in Peace and Violence in Brazil: Reflections on the Roles of State, Organized Crime and Civil Society, ed. Marcos A. S. V. Ferreira (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 3–28.

¹⁰ Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública is a report published by Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública – FBSP (Brazilian Forum on Public Security), a think-tank founded in 2006. Currently they publish the most reliable data on violence in Brazil, triangulating information from official sources, interviews and statistics collected by their consultants. FBSP is funded by international donors like Ford Foundation, Open Society, Tinker Foundation, among others. See the full version of the report: https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/anuario-2023.pdf (accessed July 31, 2023)

¹¹ Data based on the latest score, from 2023. Available on the Global Peace Index website: https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/ (accessed August 14, 2023).

¹² Brazil’s five macroregions are North, Northeast, Central-West, South, and Southeast. These regions have been defined by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

¹³ E.g. Maria R. H. Alves and Philip Evanston, Vivendo no Fogo Cruzado: moradores de favela, traficantes de droga e violência policial no Rio de Janeiro (São Paulo: UNESP, 2012); Gema Kloppe-Santamaría and David Carey, Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics (Norman, OK : Oklahoma University Press, 2017); and Gabriel Feltran, The Entangled City: Crime as Urban Fabric in São Paulo (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).

¹⁴ Azzi and Kenkel, ‘Contemporary Patterns of Violence’; Ferreira, ‘Peace and Conflict in Brazil’; Ferreira, ed., Peace and Violence in Brazil; and Fiona Macaulay, ‘Competition and Collusion Among Criminal Justice and Non-State Actors in Brazil’s Prison System’, in Carceral Communities in Latin America, ed. S. Darke, C. Garces, L. Duno-Gottberg and A. Antillano (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 247–67.

¹⁵ Ítalo Barbosa Lima Siqueira, Francisco Elionardo de Melo Nascimento, and Suiany Silva de Moraes, ’Dinâmicas inter-regionais de mercados e governança criminal em perspectiva comparada entre Fortaleza e Manaus‘, Dilemas 15 (2022): 441–68; and Ricardo Caldas Cavalcanti Filho, ‘Os mecanismos de governança não estatal da violência em uma comunidade pobre do Recife/PE’, Cadernos Metrópole 25 (2023): 537–62.

¹⁶ A bias that privileges the South and Southeast regions is seen in various cultural and social elements. For example, the famous Brazilian soap operas predominantly deal with problems and social contexts of these regions. Academically, there is a notable concentration of financing and events in the South and Southeast, as well as the growth in number of universities in these regions.

¹⁷ Manso, A República das Milícias; F. R. F. Nobre and D. do Nascimento Ferreira, ‘Atores não estatais violentos e instituições informais no Brasil (2008–2018)’, Revista Brasileira de Estudos de Defesa 8, no. 2 (2021).

¹⁸ Sudhir Kumar mentions that ‘Western political thought concentrates […] on the history of the West and different issues confronting it’, naturalising the Western model of the state as universal and the ultima ratio for political organisation (see Sudhir Kumar, Western Political Thought (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 2015)). In this sense, within Western political thought, there is a particular emphasis on the state as a rational-bureaucratic entity capable of pacifying society through the legitimate and rational monopoly of violence (see Modesto Florenzano, ‘On the Origins and Development of the Modern State in the West’, Lua Nova: Revista De Cultura E Política no. 71 (2007): 11–39, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102–64452007000200002). This model, as we will see throughout the manuscript, cannot be generalised. Rationality and pacification do not necessarily reflect in cases such as Brazil, where state violence is a central element precisely in perpetuating a normalisation of both symbolic and direct violence.

¹⁹ Cramer, Civil War; Newmann, ‘The Violence of Statebuilding’; and Richmond, Failed Statebuilding.

²⁰ e.g. Roland Paris, At War’s End. Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Francis Fukuyama, State-building. Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004); and David Chandler and Timothy D. Sisk, eds., The Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).

²¹ McGovern, ‘The Emergence of the Modern State’.

²² Weber, cited in Andreas Anter, ‘The Modern State and Its Monopoly on Violence’, in The Oxford Handbook of Max Weber, ed. Edith Hanke, Lawrence Scaff, and Sam Whimster, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford Academic, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190679545.013.13.

²³ McGovern, ‘The Emergence of the Modern State’, 32.

²⁴ Anter, ‘The Modern State’.

²⁵ Marcos A. Ferreira and Oliver P. Richmond, ‘Blockages to Peace Formation in Latin America: The Role of Criminal Governance’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15, no. 2 (2021): 161–80; and Manso, A república das milícias.

²⁶ Fukuyama, State-Building; Paris, At War’s End; and Call, ‘Building States’.

²⁷ See discussion: Richmond, Failed Statebuilding; Meera Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017); and Pol Bargués, María Martín de Almagro and Katrin Travouillon, ‘New Visions, Critiques, and Hope in the Post-Liberal Age? A Call for Rethinking Intervention and Statebuilding’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 17, no. 1 (2023): 1–15.

²⁸ Bargués et al., ‘New Visions’.

²⁹ Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention; and Bargués et al., ‘New Visions’.

³⁰ Sebastian Mazzuca, Latecomer State Formation. Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America (Yale University Press, 2021), 14.

³¹ Mazzuca, Latecomer State Formation, 14

³² Wimmer and Schiller, ‘Methodological Nationalism’; and Richmond, ‘Interventionary Order’.

³³ Johan Galtung, ‘Violence, Peace and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–91; and Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Violence’, Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 291–305.

³⁴ e.g. Paul Farmer, ‘On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below’, Daedalus 125, no. 1 (1996): 261–83; Jennifer Turpin and Lester Kurtz, eds., The Web of Violence. From Interpersonal to Global (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 1–27; and Vena Das, et al., eds., Violence and Subjectivity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2000), 226–41.

³⁵ e.g. John P. Lederach, Building Peace. Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997); Dennis J. D. Sandole, Peacebuilding. Preventing Conflict in a Complex World. War and Conflict in the Modern World (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2010); Oliver P. Richmond, ‘A Genealogy of Peace and Conflict Studies’, in Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding. Critical Developments and Approaches, ed. Oliver P. Richmond (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 14–40; and Barash and Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies.

³⁶ e.g. Cramer, Civil War; and Maria Schuld, ‘The Prevalence of Violence in Post-Conflict Societies: A Case Study of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa’, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 8, no. 1 (2013): 60–73.

³⁷ David Roberts, Human Insecurity. Global Structures of Violence (London, New York: Zed Books, 2008); David Roberts, ‘Beyond the Metropolis? Popular Peace and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies 37, no. 5 (2011): 2535–56; Oliver P. Richmond, A Post-Liberal Peace (New York: Routledge, 2011); and Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond, ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 5 (2013): 763–83.

³⁸ Barbara Unger, et al., eds., Undeclared Wars – Exploring a Peacebuilding Approach to Armed Social Violence, Bergh of Handbook Dialogue Series No. 12 (Berlin: Berghof Foundation, 2016); Jeremy Lind and Robin Luckham, eds., Special Issue: Security in the Vernacular, Peacebuilding 5, no. 2 (2017); Roque, Pós-Guerra?; and Pearce, Politics without Violence?

³⁹ Ferreira and Richmond, ‘Blockages to Peace’; Rafael D. Villa, Camila de M. Braga, and Marcos A. Ferreira, ‘Violent Nonstate Actors and the Emergence of Hybrid Governance in South America’, Latin American Research Review 56, no. 1 (2021): 36–49; Marília Pimenta, M. A. G. Suarez, and Marcos A. Ferreira, ‘Hybrid Governance as a Dynamic Hub for Violent Non-State Actors: Examining the Case of Rio de Janeiro’, Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 64 (2021); and Marcos A. Ferreira, ‘Criminal Organizations and Hybrid Governance in South America: The COVID-19 Scenario’, Revista Relaciones Internacionales 95, no. 2 (2022): 106–27.

⁴⁰ e.g. Cynthia Cockburn, ‘The Continuum of Violence. A Gender Perspective on War and Peace’, in States of violence. Gender and Conflict Zones, ed. W. Giles and J. Hyndman (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2004), 24–44, 43; J. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics. Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold-War Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); see also collection of chapters in Swati Parashar, J. Ann Tickner, and Jacqui True, eds., Revisiting Gendered States. Feminist Imagining of the State in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

⁴¹ Cockburn, ‘The Continuum of Violence’.

⁴² Jacqui True, ‘Bringing Back Gendered States. Feminist Second Image Theorizing of International Relations’, in Revisiting Gendered States. Feminist Imagining of the State in International Relations, ed. S. Parashar, J. Ann Tickner, J. True (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 33–50; Riane Eisler, ‘Human Rights and Violence: Integrating the Private and Public Spheres’, in The Web of Violence. From Interpersonal to Global, ed. Jennifer Turpin and Lester Kurtz (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 161–85.

⁴³ See, for example, Vivienne Jabri, ‘Post-Colonialism: A Post-Colonial Perspective on Peacebuilding’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace, ed. Oliver P. Richmond, Sandra Pogodda and Jasmin Ramović (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 154–67; Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention; Philipp Lottholz, ‘Decolonial “Interventions”? Potentials and Challenges of Decolonial Perspectives’, in Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding, ed. Nicolas Lemay-Hébert (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2019), 82–92; and Juan Daniel Cruz, ‘Colonial Power and Decolonial Peace’, Peacebuilding 9, no. 3 (2021): 274–88.

⁴⁴ Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Features, Decolonial Options (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 2.

⁴⁵ Mignolo, The Darker Side, 9.

⁴⁶ For an overview of this discussion applied to the case of Brazil see: Ananda Vilela, Natali Hoff, and Ramon Blanco, ‘Amefricanizando a paz: elementos para se pensar a paz a partir do Brasil’, in Estudos para a Paz: Perspectivas Brasileiras, ed. R. H. Maschietto, and M. A. Ferreira (Editora Blimunda, forthcoming).

⁴⁷ Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 1–2.

⁴⁸ Bourdieu (1994) cited in David L. Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals. The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 89.

⁴⁹ Swartz, Symbolic Power, Politics and Intellectuals.

⁵⁰ Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 43–4.

⁵¹ An important Brazilian contribution on this discussion is: Lélia Gonzalez, Por um feminismo afro-latino-americano (Editora Schwarcz-Companhia das Letras, 2020).

⁵² Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI) – National Indigenous Foundation, an official agency of Brazilian government, https://www.gov.br/funai/pt-br/atuacao/povos-indigenas/quem-sao (accessed July 31, 2023).

⁵³ Lilia M. Schwarz and Heloisa M. Starling, Brasil: uma Biografia (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015), 65.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 82.

⁵⁵ Jaime Pinsky, Escravidão no Brasil (Editora Contexto, 1992); and Lilia M. Schwarcz, Raízes do autoritarismo brasileiro (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019).

⁵⁶ Schwarcz, Raízes do autoritarismo, 43.

⁵⁷ Pinsky, Escravidão no Brasil; and Schwarz and Starling, Brasil: uma Biografia.

⁵⁸ Schwarz and Starling, Brasil: uma Biografia, 94.

⁵⁹ Brazil became independent in 1822 and slavery was abolished in 1888.

⁶⁰ Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

⁶¹ Florestan Fernandes, O negro no mundo dos brancos (São Paulo: Global, 2007).

⁶² A. Nascimento, O genocídio do negro brasileiro: processo de um racismo mascarado (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1978).

⁶³ Sabrina Villenave, Disappearances and Police Killings in Contemporary Brazil. The Politics of Life and Death (London and New York: Routledge, 2022).

⁶⁴ Faoro, Os Donos do Poder; and Sérgio B. de Holanda, Raízes do brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006), 81.

⁶⁵ Peter Singelmann, ‘Political Structure and Social Banditry in Northeast Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Studies 7, no. 1 (1975): 59–83, 65.

⁶⁶ Marco L. Bretas and André Rosemberg, ‘A história da polícia no Brasil: balanço e perspectivas’, Topoi 14, no. 26 (2013): 162–73, 168, trans. the authors. See also Faoro, Os Donos do Poder.

⁶⁷ Faoro, Os Donos do Poder, 207.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 866.

⁶⁹ The quilombos were settlements created by free-born and slaves that survived escaping from engenhos during the colonial period. Even today there are rural villages of quilombolas (descendants of slaves that founded quilombos).

⁷⁰ Raymond K. Kent, ‘Palmares: an African state in Brazil’, The Journal of African History 6, no. 2 (1965): 161–75.

⁷¹ November 20 is currently the Day of Afro-Brazilian Consciouness, and also a holiday in some states and cities in Brazil.

⁷² Frederico P. de Mello, Guerreiros do sol. Violência e banditismo no Nordeste do Brasil, 5ª edição (São Paulo: A Girafa, 2013), 28.

⁷³ Singelmann, ‘Political Structure and Social Banditry’, 61. These movements ended under the government of Getúlio Vargas, who adopted a harsh policy leading to the killing of all cangaceiros that did not surrender to the authorities. Lampião was captured and killed with his companions and wife in 1938.

⁷⁴ Singelmann, ‘Political Structure and Social Banditry’, 60.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ See discussion in Nascimento, O genocídio.

⁷⁷ Faoro, Os Donos do Poder; and de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil.

⁷⁸ Denis de M. Bernardes, ‘Notas sobre a formação social do Nordeste’, Lua Nova 71 (2007): 47–79, 56.

⁷⁹ Mary Lorena Kenny, ‘Drought, Clientalism, Fatalism and Fear in Northeast Brazil’, Ethics, Place & Environment: A Journal of Philosophy & Geography 5, no. 2 (2002): 123–34.

⁸⁰ Thiago Lima, ‘The Concentration Camps for Famine Victims in Brazil and the Struggle for their Public Memorialisation’, Third World Quarterly (2023): 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2190506.

⁸¹ Kênia Sousa Rios, Isolamento e Poder. Fortaleza e os Campos de Concentração na Seca de 1932 (Fortaleza: Imprensa Universitária da Universidade Federal do Ceará, 2014).

⁸² Judith Butler, Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London, New York: Verso, 2004).

⁸³ Azzi and Kenkel, ‘Contemporary Patterns of Violence’; and Ferreira, ‘Peace and Conflict in Brazil’.

⁸⁴ Government of Brazil, Relatório Final da Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito do Extermínio no Nordeste (Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados, 2005).

⁸⁵ Ibid., 23.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 24.

⁸⁷ Diana Anunciação, Leny Alves Bonfim Trad, and Tiago Ferreira. ‘“Mão na Cabeça!”: Abordagem Policial, Racismo E Violência Estrutural Entre Jovens Negros De Três Capitais Do Nordeste’, Saúde e Sociedade 29, no. 1 (2020): e190271, 11, https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104–12902020190271.

⁸⁸ Government of Brazil, ‘Relatório Final da Comissão’, 22.

⁸⁹ Marcos Alan Ferreira and Anna Beatriz Ramalho Gonçalves, ‘Faces of a Perverse State Mano Dura Policies in Brazil from a Historical Perspective’, in Mano Dura Policies in Latin America, ed. Jonathan Rosen and Sebastian Cutrona (Routledge, 2023), 129–51.

⁹⁰ Targets also include human rights advocates, rural workers, union trade leaders, students, lawyers, traders, and politicians, that is, anyone who opposes the status quo maintained by the extermination groups. Government of Brazil, ‘Relatório Final da Comissão’, 31.

⁹¹ Roberta Holanda Maschietto, Marcos Alan Ferreira, and Juliano da Silva Cortinhas, ‘Exploring Subjectivities of Peace, Violence, and Power among the Youth in Brazil’, Peace & Change 47, no. 3 (2022): 233–53.

⁹² Anunciação, Trad, and Ferreira, ‘“Mão na Cabeça!”’, 7.

⁹³ Nancy Scheper-Hughes, ‘Death squads and vigilante politics in democratic Northeast Brazil’, in Javier Auyero, Philippe Bourgois, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes (eds.), Violence at the urban margins (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 266–304..

⁹⁴ Ibid., 280.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 285.

⁹⁶ Schmidt, ‘Delegada expõe ações de grupo de extermínio’.

⁹⁷ Government of Brazil, ‘Relatório Final da Comissão’, 34.

⁹⁸ Ibid., 36.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ This border region was known for the frequent disposal of murdered bodies across states to bureaucratically hamper investigations in each state.

¹⁰¹ Daniela Firchino, ‘Dez anos do assassinato de Manoel Mattos: uma história de enfrentamento aos grupos de extermínio no Nordeste’, Justiça Global, January 24, 2019, http://www.global.org.br/blog/dez-anos-do-assassinato-de-manoel-mattos-uma-historia-de-enfrentamento-aos-grupos-de-exterminio-no-nordeste/ (accessed February 24, 2022).

¹⁰² Firchino, ‘Dez anos do assassinato de Manoel Mattos’. This was the second IDC request since the institute was incorporated into the Brazilian constitutional order, in 2004. The first request was related to the case of the assassination of Missionary Dorothy Stang, in 2005, in Pará, but it was not accepted by Justice.

¹⁰³ Firchino, ‘Dez anos do assassinato de Manoel Mattos’.

¹⁰⁴ Diário do Nordeste, ‘Estados nordestinos são os que mais formam milícias’, January 24, 2011, https://diariodonordeste.verdesmares.com.br/seguranca/estados-nordestinos-sao-os-que-mais-formam-milicias-1.760073 (accessed November 19, 2021).

¹⁰⁵ Diário do Nordeste, ‘Estados nordestinos são os que mais formam milícias’.

¹⁰⁶ TNH1, ‘MP investiga se PMs estão envolvidos em grupo de extermínio responsável por 9 homicídios’, June 17, 2018, https://www.tnh1.com.br/noticia/nid/mp-investiga-se-pms-estao-envolvidos-em-grupo-de-exterminio-responsavel-por-9-homicidios/ (accessed February 24, 2022).

¹⁰⁷ Similar cases were recounted during informal discussions with social activists as part of a study conducted in 2022 within the metropolitan area of Aracaju, Sergipe state. In this setting, juvenile offenders, subsequent to serving their socio-educational sentences, are summarily executed by extrajudicial groups. In the majority of instances, following their period of incarceration, the sole recourse perceived by the families of these young individuals is to swiftly depart from the metropolitan area of Aracaju, thereby seeking to avert death at the hands of such extermination groups.

¹⁰⁸ Lena Azevedo, ‘Jovens negros na mira de grupos de extermínio na Bahia’, Pública (July 11, 2013), https://apublica.org/2013/07/jovens-negros-na-mira-de-grupos-de-exterminio-na-bahia/ (accessed February 1, 2022).

¹⁰⁹ Bruno Wendel, ‘Força-tarefa já prendeu 58 policiais por extorsão e envolvimento em grupos de extermínio na Bahia’, Jornal Correio (February 19, 2020), https://www.correio24horas.com.br/noticia/nid/forca-tarefa-ja-prendeu-58-policiais-por-extorsao-e-envolvimento-em-grupos-de-exterminio-na-bahia/ (accessed February 24, 2022).

¹¹⁰ Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, ‘Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2023’, https://forumseguranca.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/anuario-2023.pdf (accessed July 31, 2023).

¹¹¹ Jessica Sisnando, ‘Operação da PF contra grupo de extermínio é deflagrada no Ceará, Paraíba e Pernambuco’, O Povo, April 13, 2023, https://www.opovo.com.br/noticias/ceara/2023/04/12/operacao-da-pf-contra-grupo-de-exterminio-e-deflagrada-no-ceara-paraiba-e-pernambuco.html.

¹¹² e.g. Cramer, Civil War is not a Stupid Thing; Roque, Pós-Guerra?; and Sabine Kurtenbach, ‘The Limits of Peace in Latin America’, Peacebuilding 7, no. 3 (2017): 283–96.

Additional information

Funding

Marcos Alan Ferreira is being funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq – Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), Grant Bolsa Produtividade [#303638/2022-2], and Grant Pro-Humanidades, [#408989/2022-0]. While conducting the research leading to this article, Roberta Holanda Maschietto was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia , FCT) from Portugal, grant reference [SFRH/BPD/124190/2016].

Notes on contributors

Marcos Alan Ferreira

Marcos Alan Ferreira holds a PhD in Political Science from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Paraíba. His current research interests include: criminal and state violence; violent conflict in Amazon basin; peace in South America.

Roberta Holanda Maschietto

Roberta Holanda Maschietto holds a PhD in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford and is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Institute of Public Policies and International Relations (IPPRI) of the Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). When this article was submitted she was a post-doctoral researcher at Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra.