Brazil’s War on Drugs
In 2019, on-duty Brazilian police killed almost 17 people every day, while off-duty police killed even more. In Rio de Janeiro, security forces were behind 38% of violent deaths. What started as an attempt to crack down on gangs, thieves, and drug dealers has become a trademark of the Brazilian police state under President Jair Bolsonaro, where such officers regularly kill civilians and rarely face charges. That is not to say this crisis is surprising: Bolsonaro once said the Brazilian government should “kill at least 30,000 people. If some innocent people die, that’s fine.”
Emblematic of the crisis was an incident at Wanda’s Bar in Belem City, where masked police opened fire on the establishment known to be a drug hangout. None of the eleven fatally shot customers were interrogated or charged that afternoon.
Brazil’s war on drugs is an important starting point when discussing the fatal flaws of the traditional “tough-on-crime” method that swept the U.S. and other nations throughout the twentieth century and continues today. Notably, Bolsonaro’s administration exhibits a trait that political scientists worry is increasingly common in modern societies—penal populism.
Characteristic of contemporary punishment, penal populism is when politicians compete to be more aggressive in confronting crime. Often this takes the form of what Sutart Hall calls “authoritarian populism,” in which the government exploits popular anxiety about crime and instability for political gain. More concerning, argues political scientist John Pratt, is how penal populism attacks the link between reason and punishment, targeting people haphazardly, as was seen at Wanda’s Bar.
Though some credit the term to a 1995 article by Sir Anthony Bottoms, the term “populist authoritarianism,” was first seen in a 1986 article by Fiona Atkins. In the text, Atkins describes the “Thatcher regime” as authoritarian-populist, calling it a radically conservative government, which emphasized right-wing values, a technocratic approach to economics, and rejected all discussions of class politics. More importantly, Atkins argued Thatcher put obedience on a pedestal and held “scorn for inferiors,” both common traits in dictatorships, and not uncommon in the Bolsonaro administration.
An advocate for obedience, Bolsonaro once blamed environmental activists for the fires that tore through the Amazon in 2019, claiming NGOs burned the forests because “they lost money” and wanted to “bring problems to Brazil.”
As someone who believes he is superior to others for his gender and sexuality, Bolsonaro describes having a female child as a “weakness,” does not believe in paying or treating women equally to men in the workplace, and once told a lawmaker that he “would not rape [her] because [she was] not worthy of it.” He has also openly stated he would lead a coup if the second “[Congress] doesn’t work,” and claims that same-sex couples devalue real estate and should consequently not live near him.
The attitudes of Bolsonaro seem counter to winning popularity, so how is it the authoritarian president came to be elected? For one, by the time of the election, Brazilians were fed up with the “status quo,” as the country faced a series of economic crises, government corruption, and waves of violent crime; problems that Bolsonaro promised to fix. Second, many believed that the President’s slew of violent, racist, and misogynistic video clips, which circled news outlets at the time, were indicative of his honesty, rather than his unique distain for those he attacked. Lastly, his main opponent in the election, Fernando Haddad, proposed media censorship, taking control of Brazil’s Judiciary and prosecutors, and opposed widely supported impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. Together, these factors built an image for Bolsonaro as a king fit to establish law and order - someone who could efficiently crack down on crime.
While drug cartels have reigned terror over Brazil, Bolsonaro’s administration uses the same tactics and offers no real solution.