We share an unofficial translation of a call by Alvorada do Povo (AP), Revolutionary People’s Student Movement (MEPR) and Red Unity – Revolutionary Youth League (UV – LJR)

“A paz tá morta, desfigurada no IML
Plá, plá, bum
A marcha fúnebre prossegue…”
A Marcha Fúnebre Prossegue – Facção Central

The Reactionary War Against the People Has a New Chapter With the Biggest Police Massacre of the 21^st Century

On Tuesday, October 28th in the Penha and Alemão complexes in the city of Rio de Janeiro, under the direct command of the criminal governor Cláudio Castro (PL), the military police and civil police, along with their respective “elite” forces, wrote another macabre chapter in the history books of the reactionary war against the poor and black people in the country. Under the false pretext of a “war on drugs” and “combating crime”, they left a trail of blood, with over 130 dead, hundreds injured, homes and cars destroyed, and body parts scattered everywhere.

The great “positive balance” so celebrated by the bandit Cláudio Castro, the far-right, and the press monopoly (with Globo Network at the forefront) is the seizure of 93 rifles (an imprecise number, given the shameful initial announcement in the face of so much bloodshed, which increases daily), a paltry quantity compared to the 117 rifles found in 2019 at the house of a friend of Ronnie Lessa in Méier, with no shots fired, a practically footnote-worthy news item in the press monopoly at the time, and total silence from the carnivorous politicians who fill their mouths to celebrate the massacre of the poor in favelas and in the Brazilian countryside.

The reactionaries use the so-called “war on drugs” and groups, incorrectly called “gangs”, to justify a war against the poor people, whose policy of mass incarceration of black and poor youth and atrocious repression only makes these groups grow, which is used to justify more repression. What happens is that the youth of the favelas, mainly the most impoverished and oppressed sectors, permanently aggressed by the state of war imposed by the fascist repression justified as a “war on trafficking”, end up swelling the ranks of these groups, first because young people from the poorest popular masses see in them an armed resistance to the greater oppression they feel coming from the police forces and what they perceive as political power, and are also attracted by the illusion that they will ascend individually through crime, instead of fighting against the system and for the Revolution, which is more difficult and requires a revolutionary organization.

The discourse that such a state of war is necessary to combat crime is nothing but manipulation. Everyone knows that the true leaders of the drug trade, for example, are in luxurious mansions, far from the favelas, and in the arms trade, its main promoters being foreign manufacturers, magnates who profit, and the so-called “war on trafficking” is just a shock policy to contain the growing revolt of young people with poverty.

The actions called by the reactionary press “retaliation of trafficking against the police operation” are, in fact, acts of revolt by young people against such a state of reactionary civil war, youth from the deepest and broadest masses recruited and directed by such groups, because the most oppressed youth of the favelas are deceived by the idea of personal power and still has no revolutionary perspective.

Along with the history of genocide against the poor and black people in Brazil, a low-intensity war against the poorest layers of the people, highly concentrated in favelas and peripheries of metropolises, is ongoing. Governments say they “combat crime” without any transformation of living conditions in favelas. The far-right seeks to impose populist discourses of “combating crime” to gain votes in the next electoral farce. The opportunistic tactic adopted by politicians from the far-right to the false left, to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the old State, are all accomplices of oppression against the working masses.

The data confirms an increase in police violence in Brazil: in 2024 alone, there were over 6,243 deaths caused by police agents, a number that maintains the alarming average of recent years. Over the past decade, police lethality has nearly tripled, with a 188.9% increase nationwide. Despite the increase in police operations over the past decade and the policy of mass incarceration, the number of armed confrontations and violent deaths in cities has not decreased. According to the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, Rio de Janeiro is among the states with the most deaths in police actions, yet crime continues to rise.

The images of bodies removed from the forest by the people themselves, mostly dismembered and with clear signs of torture and summary execution, is just more proof that the “democratic state of law” in Brazil is nothing more than a hollow phrase. Faced with this, the first measure announced by the criminal government of Cláudio Castro (PL) was to open an investigation into who participated in the removal of the bodies from the forest. Shortly after, came the speech that it was all a setup by “narco-activists” (?), and seeing that there was no escape, in collusion with the reactionary press, they began to say that everyone there was carrying rifles and therefore were killed in a confrontation (the marks on the bodies exposed to the whole world contradict this version).

Like vultures, the reactionary press constantly says that the dead had some type of criminal record, as if that alone justified all the barbarity. Paraphrasing Racionais MC’s: “They will always call you an ex-convict. I don’t trust the police.” And when it is proven that there was no criminal record, they simply say “if you were there, you must have been a bad guy.” Let’s not forget that this beaten argument is the same one used in all massacres, just like in the Jacarezinho massacre in 2021, where after the identification of the bodies confirmed that they were workers who were assassinated, no politician or reactionary press made any kind of retraction.

These same opportunistic and major criminals who remained silent and complicit when, in 2022, the corrupt and lunatic Roberto Jefferson (PTB) received the Federal Police with bombs and rifle fire, and was eventually “detained” with police smiling beside him under a completely friendly atmosphere. Why, in this case that occurred in Rio de Janeiro, was there no press conference by the criminal Cláudio Castro (PL) to defend the execution of those carrying rifles against the police? Why isn’t this corrupt individual, with robust evidence, questioned about their criminal record? Or does that not apply when the crime is committed by veteran figures of the old State?

Part of the horror show of this crime committed against the people is the speech of reactionaries and “experts” from the press monopoly that one cannot “make political” this “mega-operation”, in clear reference to those who have denounced the crimes committed by the old State. When the first news of the massacre comes out, the term “narcoterrorism” spontaneously appears everywhere, even from the mouth of the governor himself. Coincidentally, this is the same term used by the reactionary Donald Trump to justify the invasion by US military troops in Venezuela and Central American countries. Isn’t that “making it political”? Clearly, they use this term to justify the expansion of the rotten “anti-terrorism law” (created during Dilma’s government as a response to the June/July 2013 protests), with the goal of increasing the war against the people, including direct intervention by Yankee troops in our country, they are tier one boot-lickers. These are the terrorists, the politicians of this rotten old State who commit all sorts of crimes against the people day and night.

We cannot let the electoral farce pass unnoticed amidst this new chapter of the reactionary war against the people. For the far-right, it’s a way to boost their populist discourse on the corpses, trying to deceive the people into believing it’s a “victory against crime”. The false left, on the other hand, has partially “condemned” the operation, mostly saying it was done to undermine the “growing popularity of Luiz Inácio”, while another part has reinforced the reactionary discourse to supposedly “not lose votes”, like Ricardo Cappelli (PSB) and Quaquá (PT president in Rio de Janeiro).

The yellow union leader Luiz Inácio (PT) has emphasized his law projects that supposedly aim to “combat crime” in his social media statements. All this reactionary, anti-people legal framework, covered in opportunistic rhetoric against delinquency, has been denounced by the newspaper A Nova Democracia.

The reactionary Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), who never misses an opportunity to use police massacres for electoral gain, decided not to attend the meeting of right-wing and far-right governors in Rio de Janeiro, seeing the negative repercussions of this crime on public opinion. This only shows that politicians of this rotten old State think of nothing but electoral machinations, with commitments only to the big landlords, big bourgeoisie, and imperialists, mainly Yankees.

This crime against the people cannot go unpunished. Cláudio Castro and all those who planned, ordered, and executed this crime must be punished exemplarily. The entire press monopoly and politicians of the old State, who say that the deaths are an “effect of collateral damage” or a “necessary evil” in this farce that is the “war on drugs”, are accomplices to the generalized violence against the poor and black people that has been dragging on for centuries in our country.

We, young and revolutionary students, have actively denounced these crimes committed against the people and will continue to campaign for an end to massacres against the poor and black people throughout Brazil, raising high the flag that it is right to rebel. We call on all youth and students of the people to join this campaign, and, along with the necessary denunciation and active mobilization alongside the poor people of the countryside and city, we reaffirm that every form of self-defense by the people to protect themselves from the repressive forces of the old State is just and legitimate.

Only by following the path of the New Democratic Revolution – whose Agrarian Revolution is the first phase – after a long and arduous struggle, defeating our enemies one by one, overcoming difficulties, and achieving great victories, will all injustices and misfortunes that afflict our people and country finally come to an end.

CLÁUDIO CASTRO TERRORIST AND MURDERER!

IMMEDIATE PUNISHMENT FOR THE MURDERERS AND TORTURERS OF THE PEOPLE!

DOWN WITH FASCIST POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST THE POOR, BLACK, AND WORKING PEOPLE IN THE PERIPHERIES, FAVELAS, AND COUNTRYSIDE ALL OVER BRAZIL!

FORWARD, YOUTH, THE STRUGGLE IS WHAT MAKES THE CHANGE, THE REST ONLY DECEIVES!

IT IS JUST TO REBEL!