Disappearances and Police Killings in Contemporary Brazil
The book offers an interdisciplinary qualitative study of the history of policing in Brazil and its colonial underpinnings, providing theoretical accounts of the relationship between biopolitics, space, and race, and post-colonial/decolonial work on the state, violence, and the production of disposable political subjects.
Focused empirically on contemporary (19852015) police killings and disappearances in favelas, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, the books argues that the invisibility of this phenomenon is the product of a colonial mindset one that has persisted throughout Brazils experience of both dictatorship and re-democratisation and is traceable to the legacies of the Portuguese empire and the plantation system implemented. Analysing the development of the police as a colonial mechanism of social control, Villenave shows how the war on drugs reproduces similar colonial logic and renders some, overwhelmingly black, lives disposable and thus vulnerable to unchecked police brutality and death.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars of international politics and also contributes to critical security studies, postcolonial and de-colonial thought, global politics, the politics of Latin America, and political geography.
Sabrina Villenave is affiliated at the University of Manchester, at the Department of Politics. Her research interest focuses on critical security studies and its late critique on race and racialisation. She is interested in postcolonial and decolonial critiques of international relations, and in the legacies of African slave trade organised by the Portuguese empire. Currently she is working with the themes of War on Drugs in Brazil as a legitimiser of police violence against favela dwellers, under the frame of exceptionality, security apparatus and the de-politicisation of disappearances after the dictatorship in the country under the theoretical frame of necropolitics.
Interventions
The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global politics. In our first five years, we have published 60 volumes.
We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics.
We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted directly to the Series Editors:
- Jenny Edkins () and
- Nick Vaughan-Williams ().
As Michel Foucault has famously stated, knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting. In this spirit The EdkinsVaughan-Williams Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge mainstream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to contribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and affirm the world recycled in IRs traditional geopolitical imaginary.
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA
Edited by Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and Nick Vaughan-Williams, University of Warwick
Disappearances and Police Killings in Contemporary Brazil
The Politics of Life and Death
Sabrina Villenave
Information Classification: General
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/series/INT
Disappearances and Police Killings in Contemporary Brazil The Politics of Life and Death
Sabrina Villenave
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2022 Sabrina Villenave
The right of Sabrina Villenave to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-46983-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18717-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03251-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003032519
Typeset in Times New Roman
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
To my ancestors.
They started a life journey and marked out the path I now walk.
Acronyms
AIAmnesty InternationalAI-1Institutional Act Number One (
Ato Institucional Numero 1)AI-5Institutional Act Number Five (
Ato Institucional Numero 5)ARENANational Renewal AllianceBOPESpecial Police Operations Battalion (
Batalho de Operaes Policiais Especiais)CEV-RioTruth Commission of the state of Rio de Janeiro (
Comisso Estadual da Verdade do Rio de Janeiro)CCTVClosed-circuit television or video surveillanceCV-SPTruth Commission of So Paulo (
Comisso da Verdade do Estado de So Paulo)DINANational Intelligence Directorate (
Direccin de Inteligencia Nacional)DOI-CODIDepartment of Information Operations and the Centre for Internal Defence OperationsDOPSCentral Police for Social and Political Control (
Departamento de Ordem Poltica e Social)FUNAIThe National Indian Foundation (
Fundao Nacional do ndio)HRWThe Human Rights WatchIBGEThe Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatisticas)IpeaInstitute for Applied Economic Research (
Instituto de Pesquisa Economica Aplicadas)ISP/SSP-RJPublic Security Institute at Rio de Janeiro (
Instituto de Segurana Pblica do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)LAV UERJViolence Analysis Lab at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (
Laboratrio de Anlises da Violncia)LASALatin American Studies AssociationMDBBrazilian Democratic MovementNecvu-UFRJCitizenship, Conflict and Urban Violence at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (
Ncleo de Estudos da Cidadania, Conflito e Violncia Urbana)NEV-USPViolence Studies Research Centre at the University of So Paulo (
Nucleo de Estudos da Violncia)NGONon-Governmental OrganizationNSDDNational Security Directive AdministrationNTCNational Truth Commission (
CNV Comisso Nacional da Verdade)NTCRNational Truth Commission ReportOASOrganization of American StatesPCCThe First Command of the Capital (
Primeiro Comando da Capital)PC do BBrazilian Communist Party (
