The politics of criminal violence in Brazil: State violence, gang and the plebs

Abstract

The argument of this article is that state violence and the criminalization of human rights in post-authoritarian Brazil (1985–) have stifled traditional political activism in poor urban communities and, in turn, have opened up a new space for political expression by the poor through the “politicization of crime.” As a “pacted transition” between elites, the transfer from an authoritarian to a democratic regime in the 1980s ensured the impunity of illegal state violence and the subversion of democratic principles, including the defense of human rights. The transition, taking place in the context of a war on drugs and on the poor, established a well-documented “securitized democracy.” In this article, I show how the securitization discourse came to frame human rights defenders as the “allies of criminals” and made them targets of illegal police violence. This reign of terror laid the ground for a violent militarized political space that came to be occupied by one of Brazil’s major criminal gangs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). In this article, I examine these new territorializations of power and violence and the consequences for democratic politics. I draw on political philosophy to introduce the concept of the “plebs” in this politicization of crime as a form of expression by the poor. I argue that the PCC, in addition to its criminal activities, is sustained by the appropriation of a plebeian imaginary of equality, freedom and quest for the “right to have rights.”