In Brazil, 1,228 people were victims, between the beginning of 2003 and 2023, of lethal policies, including murder, attempted murder and serious death threats, according to a study by USP (University of São Paulo) and Cebrap (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning).
The survey assessed violence between politicians — including incumbents, candidates and those who left office or candidacy within five years before the crime — and activists. Of the 1,228 victims, 760 were killed, 358 suffered assassination attempts and 110 received serious death threats.
“This means an annual average of 61.4 cases, or around 5.1 per month, an extraordinarily high number for an established democracy”, points out the survey.
The study was based on the collection of data extracted from news on the topic on the G1 portal (from 2010 to 2023) and the newspaper O Globo (from 2003 to 2013), explains Angela Alonso, professor at USP in charge of the project.
Reports compatible with the three types of violence defined by the research group, from the Cebrap Center for Political Institutions and Social Movements, were selected.
The automated collection was done with programming, associated with open source news scrapers. Keywords such as “political assassination” and “political homicide” were tested and more than 100,000 news stories relevant to the research were found, which were then purified by the researchers.
The consistency of the patterns found, in line with other research, “suggests that measurement errors do not substantially bias the main findings”, but that the total occurrence may be underrepresented, which for scholars makes the scenario even more worrying.
The majority of attacks (63%) fell on politicians, contrary to the common sense that they would be more protected than activists (36% of victims) due to the institutionality of the position. The study considered activists to be those who work in unions, social movements, organizations and civil associations.
People without a position or candidacy are the most vulnerable. They correspond to 60% of cases of violence, compared to 31% of those with mandates and 8% of candidates.
In the political class, violence against those who work at the municipal level accounts for 88% of cases. Although the proportion is based on the fact that there are more city halls and city councils than positions at state and federal levels, for scholars the percentage indicates the tendency, identified in other studies, that “local politics is particularly violent” in Brazil.
By state, more crimes against politicians occurred in Alagoas, with 20.1 cases per 1 million voters, in Acre (16.2), (11.4) and Mato Grosso (11.1).
According to scholars, the result may result, in the case of Alagoas, from “dynamics rooted in local political competition, such as disputes over resources and municipal contracts”. In Rio, researchers cite the actions of militias and organized crime.
In total violence against politicians, 47% of threats, assassination attempts and murders resulted from disputes over positions, power and public resources.
The group has more deaths in cities (83%) and in municipal periods. Activists registered more deaths in rural or forest areas (72%), in addition to vulnerability in national elections.
What most impacts the safety of activists are conflicts over land (72%). The number of deaths, attempted murders and serious threats is higher in Roraima (30.7 cases per 1 million voters) and in Mato Grosso do Sul (19.8).
The increase in Roraima may be related to conflicts over Yanomami territory, according to the study. “[Além dos conflitos internos entre os yanomamis]there are also cases in which they are killed by non-indigenous people. These are land conflicts or conflicts over natural resources and factional conflicts”, explains Alonso.
Of the total murders, 88% were committed with firearms, followed by bladed weapons (6%). For scholars, deaths without direct physical contact with the victims indicate that the motivation is not revenge or hatred.
“Political assassinations are generally systematically planned and professionally executed. Two factors help explain this pattern: the availability and normalization of firearms and an established market for hired killers,” the research points out.
The number of deaths reached the lowest levels in governments 1 (average of 21.5 per year) and Lula 2 (15.8), increased at the end of the Dilma 2 government, before impeachment, and continued at high levels in the Temer governments, including the interim period, and Bolsonaro, despite a drop in relation to the previous period, potentially related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For Alonso, the increase in Dilma’s government is associated with the moment of political crisis that led to impeachment. In the transition to the right, she understands that there has been an intensification of an arms-based discourse in favor of resolving conflicts without state aid. “This means society resolving its conflicts with bullets too”, he says.
