Residents of a Rio de Janeiro favela spent the night loading bodies onto trucks and laying them out in a central square. By early Wednesday morning, at least 50 bodies, mostly of young men with their shirts off, lay on the ground in Penha. Hundreds of residents and relatives gathered around them. An Associated Press journalist there saw some people cry while others screamed “massacre” and later chanted “justice.”
Penha was one of two sites hit in what is now the deadliest police operation in Rio’s history. About 2,500 police and soldiers took part, moving in on foot and in helicopters and armored vehicles. Officials say 132 people died, among them 60 suspected gang members and four police officers.
A toll that doubled
The figure comes from the Rio public defender’s office. On Tuesday, state authorities had reported at least 64 dead, including four police officers. Governor Claudio Castro said that count included only the bodies processed at the public morgue. Many more were found on a wooded ridge near the community. Local activist Raull Santiago said his team found about 15 bodies there before dawn.
“We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up,” Santiago said. “This level of brutality, the hatred spread – there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre.”
The state government says the dead had resisted police action. Castro said Rio was at war against “narco-terrorism”, a phrase that echoes the Trump administration’s campaign against drug smuggling in Latin America.
What police say they achieved
The stated aim was to capture leaders of the Red Command gang and limit its territorial expansion, since it has extended its hold on favelas in recent years. The state government reported 81 arrests and the seizure of 93 rifles and more than half a ton of drugs.
The raid brought gunfire and retaliation from gang members, and chaos across the city. Schools in affected areas closed, a local university cancelled classes, and buses were used as barricades to block roads. Gang members allegedly attacked police with at least one drone. The state government posted a video on X that appeared to show a drone firing a projectile.
Lethal raids are nothing new in Rio. In March 2005, some 29 people died in the Baixada Fluminense region, and in May 2021, 28 were killed in the Jacarezinho favela. The scale of this one has no precedent. Non-governmental organizations and the U.N. human rights body quickly raised concerns about the number of deaths and called for investigations.
Rio and Brasília trade blame
Castro, of the conservative opposition Liberal Party, said Rio was “alone in this war” and that the federal government should provide more support, a swipe at leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration. The Justice Ministry pushed back, saying it had answered Rio’s requests to deploy national forces and had renewed their presence 11 times. Gleisi Hoffmann, the administration’s liaison with the parliament, agreed that more coordinated action was needed, pointing to a recent crackdown on money laundering. Lula’s chief of staff, Rui Costa, asked for an emergency meeting in Rio on Wednesday with local authorities and Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski.
Filipe dos Anjos, secretary general of the favela rights organization FAFERJ, doubted the operation would change anything, since those killed are easily replaced. “In about thirty days, organized crime will already be reorganized in the territory, doing what it always does: selling drugs, stealing cargo, collecting payments and fees,” he said. “In terms of concrete results for the population, for society, this kind of operation achieves practically nothing.”
Sources
Sources
- Google News – News about Rio • Brazil – Overview
- Deadliest police raid in Rio’s history leaves 132 dead in favela
