Brazil, What Now? A Thread in the Labyrinth

Brazil, What Now? A Thread in the Labyrinth

APRIL 12, 2024

BY JEAN WYLLYS – JULIE WARK

The thread of justice that might reweave the fabric of democracy through truth appeared in Brazil on 24 March (Day of the Right to Truth). The whole truth is far from known yet. And justice still hasn’t been done. But at least Brazil’s democratic forces have, like Theseus, started to follow the thread into the labyrinth hiding the secrets of the political murders of Rio de Janeiro councillor Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes on 14 March 2018. One crime leads to another: motive to crime to more motive to more crime. One thread leads to more threads and they knot together in the labyrinth that guards the secrets, in the form of the hideous minotaur that guaranteed the electoral victory of Jair Bolsonaro and the far right that year. We know what happened, when, where, how, and mostly why. Now the question is who? Who are the individuals constituting the monster that demanded the crime and its horrible consequences?

Ten days after the sixth anniversary of these murders, which changed the country’s history, and just over a year into the Lula mandate, the Federal Police arrested three main suspects of the murders, the brothers Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão—member of parliament and adviser to the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Auditors respectively—and Rivaldo Barbosa, head of Rio de Janeiro Civil Police, who was appointed to this position the day before the killings. Barbosa’s arrest for the political crime that he himself is supposed to investigate, is big news. The Brazão family, friends, and political allies of the Bolsonaro family, had already been mentioned independently by the press as being involved in the carefully plotted murders of the left-wing, black, gay, single-mother, grassroots organiser, human rights activist councillor from the Maré favela, Marielle Franco, and her driver, Anderson Gomes.

First bend in the labyrinth: alleged motives

According to the new Justice Minister in the Lula government, Ricardo Lewandowski, who is responsible for the Federal Police (PF), land speculation was one of the motives of the killings. The PF report notes that Marielle Franco and the Brazão brothers clashed over land use in Rio de Janeiro. Before occupying his seat in the Federal Chamber in 2022, Chiquinho Brasão, of the right-wing party União Brasil (Brazil Union) had been a Rio de Janeiro city councillor, re-elected to the same administration (2017-2020) as that to which Marielle Franco was elected for the first and only (because she was murdered) time.

The PF report describes Chiquinho Brazão’s “uncontrolled reaction” to Marielle Franco’s response in the city council to Bill 174 of 2016 on land use and the right to housing: “It was precisely this group that she opposed in the Rio de Janeiro City Council because they wanted to regulate the land for commercial use and Franco’s group wanted to use it for social purposes, in particular for housing”. Unlike his brother Domingos, who was suspected of being one of the masterminds of the crime since 2019, Chiquinho Brazão hadn’t been a person of interest in the police investigation. So, how come Domingos Brazão enjoyed impunity and freedom until Sunday 24th? The short answer is because of his relationship with the Bolsonaro family, the paramilitary, and neo-Pentecostal mafia groups that control the state of Rio de Janeiro, and the fact of his being part of the far right which was in power from the 2018 elections until the attempted military coup of 8 January 2023 just after the inauguration of Lula da Silva as president of the Republic.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/12/brazil-what-now-a-thread-in-the-labyrinth/