This week, CLALS Fellow Beatriz Rey interviewed Bruno Paes Manso, author of the new book, A República das Milícias. Their conversation in Portuguese can be watched here. In the course of their conversation, Paes Manso highlights a number of troubling trends:
-since the 2000s the milícias, armed groups with close ties to law enforcement, have increasingly dominated Rio neighborhoods, controlling criminal markets and selling protection;
-the Rio police largely focus their attention on traditional drug gangs like the Comando Vermelho, giving less attention and even turning a blind eye to the milícias, with whom they often have close ties;
-public services in Rio have been “outsourced” to the milícias, which increasingly provide public goods in place of public authorities;
-the rhetoric of the milícias has been picked up and in some ways appropriated by the Bolsonaro administration, amplifying its arguments for the use of violence to fight violence.
The interview is fascinating throughout, and the book updates the constantly evolving literature on crime in Rio. Paes Manso, a journalist with a Ph.D. in political science who also co-authored the acclaimed A guerra: a ascensão do PCC e o mundo do crime no Brasil, is one of the leading Brazilian scholars of how criminal organizations are interwoven into Brazilian society and politics.
