The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.

Protest Against Marielle Franco's Murder in Rio. Source: Thiago Dinz, Favela em Foco. All Rights Reserved

 

Marielle was a child of the slums of Rio de Janeiro. She was black,
beautiful, young and charismatic. She studied sociology and had an MA in public
administration. She was a feminist, LGBT+, Black and human rights activist.
Elected on a progressive agenda, she was an active councilwoman of the city of Rio
de Janeiro since 2016. She was assassinated on the 14th. of March.
Four bullets from a 9-millimeter gun transpierced her body. They also killed
Anderson Pedro Gomes, her driver.

It was a political assassination. Probably
perpetrated by the military police or the paramilitary squads, or both, because
the police officer who intervenes in the slums against the drug lords during
the day can be active as militiaman during the night. The message from the
overlords of the underworld was loud and clear. Don´t mess with us! Whoever
stands up from or for the people from the periphery and the slums to denounce
the violations of human rights will be killed, tortured or “disappeared”.

The
shots backfired, however. The nation was shocked. Overnight Marielle became a
symbol of resistance and an icon of hope. Black lives matter. Every time and
everywhere someone is murdered for being black, gay, female or from the slums,
every time human rights are violated, Marielle is present.

Marielle Franco represented the new generation of politics, over and
against the old, corrupt system of crony capitalism and oligarchic
patrimonialism that is collapsing in real time. In 2016, Dilma Rousseff, the
president elect of the Workers Party (PT), was ousted by impeachment. We call
it a coup or a putsch, because even if
the impeachment occurred in accordance with the letter of the law, the power
grasp by the vice president Michel Temer fatally wounded the spirit of the constitution
of 1988. In retrospect, we can see that the impeachment was only the
opening salvo of an ongoing coup.

Everything
indicates that the removal of the president elect happened to try to stop
judicial and criminal inquiries into systemic corruption at the highest level.
The president himself has been accused of passive corruption, money laundering
and gang formation. If he's not been impeached, it is only because the already
corrupt upper and lower houses were bought off.

What is harder to understand, however, is why the illegitimate
government has abolished the ministry of culture, the ministry of small
farmers, the secretaries of human rights, racial equality and women's affairs.
 

Why has it pushed through the toughest programme of austerity in Latin America
(with cuts inscribed in the Constitution for the next 20 years)? Why have they unrelentingly implemented a strain
of neo-liberal reforms that destroy the welfare state and sold off the assets
of the state through privatization?  Why have
they aligned themselves with the most reactionary forces on the countryside and
systematically defended the interest of the big landowners against small
farmers, indigenous people and free slave communities? Why have they given
voice to fundamentalist Christians, the extreme right, racists and homophobes?

The answer to these questions is probably that with an approval rate
below 5 %, President Temer had nothing to lose. In Brazil, we’ve now reached
the stage of mafia politics. White-collar criminals in Brasília are ruling the
country. Drug lords, paramilitaries, death squads, military police, and now
also the army are terrorizing the population in the slums and the suburbs. The statistics
are appalling. With almost 60.000 assassinations per year, Brazil is a more
violent country than Iraq!

The assassination of Marielle coincides with the creation of a Ministry
of Public Security and a federal intervention of the national army in the state
of Rio de Janeiro. In a posthumously published op-ed, Marielle connected the
dots. There’s a military intervention because 2018 is an election year. As
always, and especially when the extreme right is on the ascendance, security
trumps freedom, democracy and human rights.

In a country that has suffered a brutal dictatorship from 1964 till 1985,
the militarization of politics is rather worrisome. For the first time since
the return of democracy, military men are now in charge of the ministry of
defense, the ministry of the interior, the secret services and the office of
indigenous affairs. Soldiers who commit crimes during their military operations
in Rio de Janeiro will no longer be subject to civil courts; by decree, they
will be judged by military courts.

The “new republic” is still a democracy, but
for how long? Our institutions are collapsing one by one. The separation
between the executive, the legislative and the judicial powers is a sham.
There’s a state within the state. Since last year, the state of Rio de Janeiro is officially
in a “state of calamity”. We’re dangerously
advancing towards a state of emergency.

The execution of Marielle should not be
used as a pretext to further militarization. From now onwards till the full
reestablishment of democracy in Brazil, the question that Marielle asked when
she denounced the killing of one more youngster from the slums by the military police
when he left the Church will also be ours: “How many more
people will have to die to stop this war?”