Another Case of Extreme Military Violence in Brazil

Long-time readers to the blog know that I often have harped on the fact that torture and police repression in Brazil did not go away with the military dictatorship. This weekend offered a particularly gruesome reminder of this fact, as in Rio a youth in the military barracks who was caught smoking marijuana was set on fire (story in Portuguese, but the picture says enough). While the youth's condition is "stable," the burns were severe enough to cause him to be heavily wrapped, and his eyes were apparently affected.

Of course, some councilpersons in Rio have already taken a stand and demanded this issue be dealt with, but nothing will come of this - it never does. Until the Brazilian governmental systems at all levels begin to thoroughly and completely crack down on these types of military and police violence, until not one single state agent, from the lowest-ranking policeman to the highest-ranking general, retains impunity for these actions. And neither governmental leaders nor civil rights groups nor the police themselves have shown any sustained interest in making these changes. Maybe things will change some in the next 20 years, but quite honestly, I doubt it.

Political Violence in Guatemala

Despite the Guatemalan civil war (which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead indigenous peoples in a state-led campaign of genocide, among other things) having ended more than 10 years ago, there are signs that things may actually be getting worse in many ways. While the murder campaigns against indigenous peoples have subsided (though the poverty and racism has not), political violence is at an all-time high since 1996. Clara Luz López, a candidate for city council in Casillas, was shot and killed on her way home, bringing the total of political deaths to 40 up to now, with another 11 days before the election (September 9). Things are so bad that Álvaro Colom, one of the top presidential candidates, has a doctor who specializes in bullet wounds with him at all times, and travels only by helicopter.

Much of the violence comes from the rising involvement of drug lords in politics. Eager to see their influence spread to the political realm, many involved in the higher levels of the drug trade have resorted to violence to intimidate or remove opposition. The fact that the drug lords have managed to gain so much power in the post-civil war period is just one more way in which the U.S. drug policies have failed. Drug producers and transporters have continued to remain steps ahead of the law, and combatting the production instead of the consumption has neither slowed down consumption nor production, instead creating even greater violence in Latin America and elsewhere, including Afghanistan, where heroin production is growing astronomically again. Yet we continue to ignore the problem, while Guatemala once again is descending into a climate of terror and fear. There's no telling how the election will go, or if this violence will abate, but things are definitely bad in Guatemala, and there's no proof they are going to get better anytime soon.