The Political Assassination of Marielle Franco

On March 14, 2018, after leaving a meeting in the center of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, city councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver were brutally shot by 13 bullets. The following day, the head of Rio's civil police, Rivaldo Barbosa, visited the family of the victim. He promised them the investigation would be their priority and calmed the distressed family with hopes of justice. Six years later, Barbosa was arrested under the suspicion of being one of the three individuals behind Marielle's murder. 

Marielle Franco was a prominent name in the political scene of Rio. A left-wing politician raised in a favela (a specific type of Brazilian slums) and acting as one of the few black queer politicians; her image was antagonistic to the waves of conservatism that would elect Bolsonaro a few months after her assassination. She was an active advocate for human rights, with a particular focus on the work of militias in Rio and their violent administration over the city's periphery. Before her assassination, Marielle had been working towards stopping the illegal seizing of land in Rio's west side for speculation and para-governmental authority over the neighborhood. 

The investigations were carried out for years, hitting the Brazilian headlines often with small findings, questionable plea bargains, and occasionally essential advancements to the case. It was only in March 2019 that two former police officers were arrested and convicted of being the hitmen. It was still not clear, however, who had been behind this operation. For the years that followed, a question lingered that tainted Bolsonaro's administration: Who ordered the killing of Marielle? 

The question was present not only in official government discussions and protests but also in art and graffiti throughout all the main streets of Brazilian cities. The image of Marielle became a figure of opposition to Bolsonaro's government and an overt depiction of how militias in Rio had obtained a monopoly over crucial administrative features. In 2020, impeached governor Wilson Witzel admitted to having intervened in the investigation of Marielle's death. Moreover, the recent arrest of Rivaldo Barbosa, chief of Rio's civil police in 2018, rejects the idea once put forward by Brazilian media outlets that her assassination was a perfect crime – rather, it exposes to the public that it was an investigation pampered with corruption at all times. 

Alongside Barbosa, brothers Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão were also convicted of ordering the assassination of Marielle. The Brazão family is an established political family in Rio, receiving most of its support from voters in the highly-populated west side of the city. According to investigations, Barbosa, in a scheme with the brothers, would have promised immunity to the architects of the crime. The same investigations have also pointed to a robust relationship between the family and the illegal subdivision of land in the area. 

The Minister of Justice Ricardo Lewandowski recently stated, "She was opposed precisely to this group that, in the Rio City Council, wanted to regularize land to use it for commercial purposes, while the councilwoman's group wanted to use this land for social purposes, popular housing purposes." 

Albeit the confinement of the masterminds of the crime, justice seems far from being reached. Recently, Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, was present at a candidacy pre-launching event for a member of the Brazão family. Governors and politicians have praised and upheld the same militia political families that have long brought havoc to Rio's periphery. 

According to an investigation by Insight Crime, one of Rio's most prominent militias, Escritório do Crime, is composed mainly of former and serving police officers. So, it does not come as a surprise that this precise militia was involved in the murder of Marielle, nor that the bullet used in her assassination had been registered under federal property to the military police. 

Attempts to tackle the militia question in Rio have been beyond unsuccessful. Paramilitias are now long established in governmental institutions and have acted as a quasi-governmental force in Rio's periphery for decades. The political assassination of Marielle does not exist in a vacuum; it stands alongside numerous other victims of violence and repression. Past efforts to combat the issue have been just as tragic – Temer's militarization of Rio in 2018 cultivated an environment of violence that led to Marielle's assassination, and direct military operations in slums have caused an outrageous number of civil casualties (namely the Jacerizinho slaughter of 2021). 

While dealing with the issue of militias in Rio seems inconceivable, it is nonetheless necessary. Political voices like Marielle are crucial in confronting the presence of militia groups in governmental institutions and serving as representatives to those who have fallen victim to the mundane violence present in Rio's most impoverished neighborhoods. In the words of Marielle herself "How many more will have to die for this war against the poor to be over?"

Photo by Mídia Ninja/Flickr Creative Commons License.