We, who live, work and dream of a safe Brazil, cannot ignore the reality of our favelas and our territories dominated by armed crime.
The mega-operation in the Penha and Alemão complexes in Rio, which left 122 dead, including 5 police officers, was the deadliest action in recent history. However, Atlas Intel research shows that the majority of the population approves of these operations: 55.2% of Brazilians, 62.2% of Rio residents and 87.6% of favela residents.
This is not an insensitivity to the lives lost, but an exhaustion of those who live under tolls, threats against their children and curfews imposed by criminals. Organized crime has abandoned the romantic image of the “criminal who protects the community” and is today an armed power that oppresses, exploits and kills, occupying the symbolic place of “victor” where the state does not reach. We know this because we live in or come from these favelas.
Public security is a tripod, with three axes which are not ideological options, but rather elements of the same strategy.
The first axis is the strength of the democratic rule of law in the territory. In many places, the monopoly on force does not belong to the state, but to drug trafficking or militias. Simply put, the police, municipal guards and security officers should be the guardians of law and life, guaranteeing the freedom of residents, not the occupying army. Anyone who uses weapons of war to confront the police is not a peripheral hero, he is an enemy of society, including poor young people used as human shields.
The second axis is the social, cultural and economic occupation of the territory. Safety isn’t just about vehicles. In Maricá (RJ), we have built a solid network of social policies, with free mobility, municipal basic income and productive inclusion; Tarifa Zero has transformed transportation into law and the municipality is the only one in Brazil to comply with Law 10,835, with a basic citizenship income paid in the social currency Mumbuca. It is also a competition for references to success: if in many communities the “model of success” is the gunman on the stolen luxury motorcycle, in Maricá it is the students of the University Passport, a program that allows young people from the periphery to train for different professions — many of them are now doctors serving their own community.
The third axis is what President Lula and Finance Minister Fernando Haddad are showing how to do: intelligence and technology to access organized crime money. Criminal organizations are present in the formal market, buying gas stations, logistics companies, retail chains, farms and investment funds; If the state continues to trade shots at the top, it will continue to dry out the ice.
Operations such as Carbono Oculto and Poço de Lobato, coordinated by the IRS and Federal Police, targeted billion-dollar tax evasion and laundering schemes linked to criminal organizations and blocked tens of billions of reais in resources without firing a single shot. As Haddad said, if the state does not financially stifle organized crime, there will be an infinite replacement of cheap labor at the top; the shotgun is paid for with money that circulates in seemingly clean operations.
There is no contradiction between defending human rights and defending the firm presence of the State on these fronts.
It now remains to take the step that completes the tripod: assuming that the State must guarantee control of the territory, with professionalized security forces, respectful of the law and rights, but capable of confronting the leaders of the favelas through armed terror. This is not a comfortable choice; is to start from the analysis of the concrete situation, and not from abstract desires.
We want to hold this debate without hypocrisy within society and within our party, the PT, to consolidate a new progressive vision of public security policy.
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