{"id":38297,"date":"2017-08-24T10:50:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T13:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=38297"},"modified":"2019-01-29T12:08:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T15:08:43","slug":"3-reasons-charlottesville-could-happen-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=38297","title":{"rendered":"Three Reasons Charlottesville Could Happen in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Ove<\/span>r the weekend of August 12, the US city of Charlottesville, Virginia, played host to violent clashes between white supremacists attending a \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally and anti-racist counter-demonstrators. Provoked by city officials\u2019 plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee<\/a> from Emancipation Park, a coalition of far-right groups held a torch-lit rally on Friday night. There, they chanted slogans like \u201cwhite lives matter\u201d and \u201cblood and soil,\u201d a key Nazi slogan promoting white racial purity and anti-Semitism. Lee was the top general in the Confederacy of southern states\u2019 fight against the abolition of slavery during the US Civil War. White nationalists have rallied around his figure, despite his history as a slave owner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The next day, on Saturday, crowds of <\/span>anti-fascist<\/span><\/a> counter-demonstrators gathered alongside <\/span>alt-right <\/span><\/a>groups armed with shields, clubs, and rifles. <\/span>Violence<\/span><\/a> erupted between the two sides. Demonstrators swung clubs, punched, and sprayed chemicals at each other. As police intervened and crowds dispersed, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd and <\/span>killed one counter-protestor<\/span><\/a>, Heather D. Heyer. Elsewhere, white nationalists\u00a0<\/span>beat black protestor DeAndre Harris<\/span><\/a> with metal poles, severely injuring hi<\/span>m. Despite these acts of terrorism, President Trump spoke of violence on \u201c<\/span>both sides<\/span><\/a>.\u201d He refused in multiple statements to condemn the white supremacist and Neo-Nazi demonstrators.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The events in Charlottesville have provoked a national conversation in the US on monuments of Confederate figures in public spaces and the rise of groups using explicitly racist and hate-based speech. While neither of these topics are making national news in Brazil, they speak to a parallel history and existing reality of <\/span>racism<\/span><\/a> and intolerance. Like the US,\u00a0<\/span>Brazil was a slaveholding society<\/span><\/a> during its foundational years. The institution of slavery lasted 246 years in the US and 358 years in Brazil. The Portuguese brought almost\u00a0<\/span>2 million enslaved Africans<\/span><\/a> to Rio de Janeiro alone (4 million in the entire nation), in contrast to the estimated 400,000 brought to the United States. These legacies influence present racial realities in each country, even as the form this racism takes can differ between contexts<\/a>. <\/span>Could something like the Charlottesville demonstrations take place in Brazil today? Below are three important factors to consider:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Statues, Public Space, and Contested History<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Just two days after the Charlottesville protests, a student activist named Takiyah Thompson\u00a0<\/span>was arrested for her role in toppling the Confederate Soldiers Monument<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in Durham, North Carolina. Thompson climbed the statue and looped a rope around its neck, and a crowd used it to pull the statue to the ground. Historian Eric Foner explains that such statues represent an \u201c<\/span>image of America as a white society<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Activists argue they honor the institutions of <\/span>slavery<\/span><\/a>, the segregationist <\/span>Jim Crow laws<\/span><\/a>, and continued <\/span>institutional discrimination<\/span><\/a> against African Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly in Brazil, Indigenous activists <\/span>have contested<\/span><\/a> S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Monumento \u00e0s Bandeiras because of its glorification of racist and colonial symbols. In the century and a half after its founding in 1554, the city was the point of departure for the <\/span>bandeiras<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>Portuguese expeditions into the hinterland of the continent<\/span><\/a>. These <\/span>bandeirantes<\/span><\/i> captured and enslaved Indigenous peoples and fought against settlements of former slaves known as <\/span>quilombos<\/span><\/i><\/a>. As S\u00e3o Paulo modernized, popular representations of the <\/span>bandeirantes <\/span><\/i>as heroic white explorers, weaponless but bold, proliferated. In 2016, the Monumento \u00e0s Bandeiras was covered in red paint alongside\u00a0<\/span>protests for Indigenous rights<\/span><\/a>. A statue of the <\/span>bandeirante<\/span><\/i> Borba Gato was also convicted in a mock \u201c<\/span>people\u2019s trial<\/span><\/a>\u201d and covered in graffiti.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Some US critics have argued that Confederate statues should be <\/span>contextualized, rather than removed<\/span><\/a>. In Rio de Janeiro\u2019s <\/span>Port Zone<\/span><\/a>, one way activists have found to contextualize and even deepen historical understanding in the absence of political recognition is to create an App anyone visiting the Port can use to explore the true nature of the history of the area<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Afro-Brazilian activists are currently fighting to maintain their history in the Port.\u00a0The <\/span>Marvelous Port<\/span><\/a> revitalization project launched prior to the 2016 Olympics poured money into new museums and transit systems, making the region a tourist attraction while obscuring its black history. The Port is home to the <\/span>Cais do Valongo<\/span><\/a>, where slave ships arrived in Rio, and the <\/span>Pedra do Sal Quilombo<\/span><\/a>. In a recent <\/span>city council hearing<\/span><\/a> about the planned \u2018Slavery and Freedom Museum\u2019 in the Port, <\/span>Unifed Black Movement<\/span><\/a> member Marcelo Dias said, \u201cthe debate we are having here is the debate of historical reparations for the black people. And historical reparations for black people also means the occupation of our spaces.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Brazil as in the southern United States, activists fighting ongoing struggles for the liberation of marginalized groups have turned toward the physical markers of hate and violence in public space to send a message, whether to remember or to move forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Hate Crimes and Afro-Brazilian Religions<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Alt-Right groups in Charlottesville displayed a range of hate-based ideologies: Anti-Semitism, anti-government militancy, white supremacy, Nazism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. The Southern Poverty Law Center hate monitoring organization has reported\u00a0<\/span>a rise in the number of hate groups operating the US<\/span><\/a>. In 2016, the number grew to\u00a0<\/span>917 from 892<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>Hate crimes<\/span><\/a> spiked just after the election of Donald Trump, whose\u00a0<\/span>shocking tolerance<\/span><\/a> of white nationalist groups after Charlottesville was also a theme of his campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Brazil, the rhetoric of leaders in the\u00a0<\/span>rapidly expanding<\/span><\/a> Neo-Pentecostal denomination of Christianity has resulted in the\u00a0<\/span>similar legitimization of hate-based crimes<\/span><\/a>. The target of this persecution is\u00a0<\/span>followers of the syncretic Afro-Brazilian religions<\/span><\/a> of Candombl\u00e9 and Umbanda, among others. Statistics put members of these religions as\u00a0<\/span>under 5% of the population<\/span><\/a>, but the 2010 census found that 13% of the Brazilian population claims to have more than one religion, often including some involvement with Afro-Brazilian spirituality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Practitioners of these religions have faced persecution throughout the course of Brazilian history, historically labelled as cults by the Catholic majority. Between 2012 and 2015, statistics from the Rio de Janeiro Commission for Combating Religious Intolerance (CCIR) showed that\u00a0<\/span>70% of the 1,104 offenses<\/span><\/a> recorded were directed at practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions. Following US hate crime trends, the number of these incidents in Brazil increased\u00a0<\/span>119% between 2015 and 2016<\/span><\/a>. These have included\u00a0<\/span>death threats, arson, vandalism of property, and physical attacks<\/span><\/a>. Most recently north of Rio in Nova Igua\u00e7u, 65 year old Maria da Concei\u00e7\u00e3o da Silva was\u00a0<\/span>attacked with stones<\/span><\/a> by her neighbor for being a Candombl\u00e9 practitioner.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil, styled after evangelical megachurches in the US and associated with the <\/span>Universal Church of the Kingdom of God<\/span><\/a> (IURD), advocates spiritual warfare against the so-called evil and satanic forces of Afro-Brazilian religions. IURD even went so far as to form the \u2018<\/span>Gladiators of the Altar<\/span><\/a>\u2019 militia, which provoked <\/span>official complaints<\/span><\/a> by Afro-Brazilian religious leaders. Promising and promoting material prosperity, Neo-Pentecostals have built a network of 7000 churches with millions of followers and great influence in Brazilian politics. Jo\u00e3o Luiz Carneiro, a professor of religious studies at PUC-SP, says that racism and Neo-Pentecostal discourse, \u201creinforce in the public the image [of Afro-Brazilian religion] as voodoo, dirty, and that which does bad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While this combination of religious intolerance and racism may not work exactly as white supremacy does in the US, it speaks to the common presence of explicit, hate-based rhetoric in both countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Extremism and Normality: Police Violence <\/strong><\/h3>\n

In the wake of Charlottesville, some criticized the <\/span>Charlottesville Police\u2019s slow intervention<\/span><\/a> to stop the violence of the protests, which left one dead and 35 injured. In comparison, the 2014 protests by the black residents of <\/span>Ferguson<\/span><\/a>, Missouri, after the police shooting of Michael Brown, were met immediately by militarized police forces and were <\/span>labelled \u2018riots\u2019 by the mainstream media<\/span><\/a>. In this way, Charlottesville speaks to the normalized web of structural or institutional racism<\/a> in the US in policing and criminal justice, where black and Latino people make up <\/span>69% of the incarcerated population<\/span><\/a> despite being minorities. This system disproportionately criminalizes, kills, and locks up black and brown people and stifles their expression: an extreme result of a \u201cnormal\u201d system.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In Brazil,\u00a0<\/span>police brutality<\/span><\/a> in majority Afro-Brazilian favela communities is also \u201cevery day.\u201d At a rate accelerated by\u00a0<\/span>mega-events like the World Cup and the Olympics<\/span><\/a>, police have been found to kill\u00a0<\/span>one person for every 23 arrested<\/span><\/a>, compared to 1 in 37,000 in the US. Rio\u2019s police, called\u00a0<\/span>the most violent in the world<\/span><\/a>, killed more than\u00a0<\/span>8,000 people<\/span><\/a> in the last decade, three-fourths of whom were black men. The post-Olympic economic crisis in Rio coupled with\u00a0<\/span>longer-term policy failures<\/span><\/a>, has increased violence in Rio in 2017. This August, the city ordered federal\u00a0<\/span>armed forces deployed<\/span><\/a> around eight favelas in the North Zone, including Jacarezinho, Alem\u00e3o and Manguinhos.<\/span>\u00a0This megaoperation has left many dead and\u00a0<\/span>22,000 students unable to attend class<\/span><\/a>. The newspaper <\/span>Extra<\/span><\/i> started covering the violence in a \u201c<\/span>War in Rio<\/span><\/a>\u201d section, sparking criticism from other sources. This language glorifies the <\/span>\u2018normal\u2019 killing<\/span><\/a> of Rio\u2019s failed policing policies, and minimizes favela residents\u2019 experience of extreme violence, what they call a\u00a0<\/span>massacre<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Police violence in Brazil led founder of the feminist collective <\/span>N\u00e3o Me Kahlo<\/span><\/i> Gabriela Moura to write that \u201c<\/span>there is a Charlottesville in Brazil every day<\/span><\/a>.\u201d Intolerance, hate, and institutional racism are\u00a0<\/span>deeply entrenched in both countries<\/span><\/a>, as a result of their histories and present realities. <\/span>Last year\u2019s visit<\/span><\/a> to Rio by a delegation of\u00a0<\/span>#BlackLivesMatter<\/span><\/a> activists showed the potential of engaging with racism across borders and has led to annual Black July community organizing events<\/a> across Rio<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0Groups in each country are increasingly looking to the other to help contextualize their own challenges and strengthen their parallel yet interwoven struggles for liberation.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more nuance on the way race is perceived in Brazil and policy efforts to reduce institutional racism, listen to NPR<\/em>‘s recent podcast, “Brazil In Black And White:”<\/h4>\n