UPP’s at Brazilian favelas: The fascist ideology in Brazil

Most people who knows Brazil are used to associate the country with marvelous beaches, pretty women’s and parties, a lot of parties.

The fame of Brazil (the country which people were used to associate as the un-development and the poverty) is changing constantly and getting better by the time, especially after the success of the World Cup 2014.

The event brought lots of foreign tourists from many places in the world to the country, who could saw how well prepared Brazil were to “receive the world”. They could see our fantastic’s stadiums and the structure of transport which were prepared specially for them.

During the event, the country could earn millions of dollars and change the polemic fame across the World Cup and the speculation about a disaster in terms of organization and security.

As most part of people knows, Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the planet, where 50.000 people are killed every year, in a growing process. But, the government prefers to fake the reality rather promote public politics to solve the problem.

Brazilian people, especially from the high and middle class, are adapted to support death penalty and coward punishments to criminals who stole and kill people all single day. Most of them think that the murdering statistics are only poor criminals fought, but forget how violent are our cops and the high level of dishonesty which are across the politic and high economic class.

The criminality is strongly related to the Brazilian sad history of racial discrimination and slavery, an important detail that the society never stops to think about.

In the beginning, the Portuguese settlers brought lots of prisoners from Western Africa to the new continent, to sell, slaver and threat like property.

After three hundred years of disgrace, exploration of slavery labor and fights between the resistance of black workers and white settlers, in 1888 was built a law prohibiting the slavery and making the black people free. But free for what?

Removed from their home countries in the past, after the “freedom”, black ex-slaves were spread on the street without housing, education, job or any basic elements to build a new life with quality.

Part of them tried to look for a job, but most part couldn’t find any conditions to have a proper, honest and forefeeling life. The prejudice and the stereotype across the black people during the period, when nobody were able to give them opportunities, built a legion of homeless, miserable and unemployed ex-slavers.

A little part of blacks were employed by rich farmers by a lower price than white employees, in other words, working as slaves to the same settler, but legally.

But, the huge number of them were obligated to move to big cities, living in low quality houses, wherein some of them were obligated to get involved on criminality and prostitution to survive.

Nowadays the low quality housing, built in the beginning of the last century by ex-slaves and miserable people, are named “favelas”.

Those horrible houses which crowd Brazilians big cities and where foreign tourists love to visit, expose a sad problem existent in Brazil and shows our cruel inequality that follow us since the country were discovered.

Lot of years have passed and those citizens kept living at the favelas in situation of risk, where the government just have forgotten to keep infrastructure, education, culture and basic pubic services.

The extreme poverty, impossibilities of change, low quality education, the violence and the institutionalized racism which builds a wall between the favelas and the rest of the society, make lots of kids and teenagers get out from the school and start a life of criminality and serving organizations of drug-dealers.

The society look disgusted to those young criminals and support the exclusion of the citizens from the favelas to make the crime lower, but what they never stops to think is that the segregation just will make those young more revolted and less prepared to the work market, and it will just increase the possibility of involvement of those young in criminality, violence and dishonest activities.

Another point is that the real big criminals who command those poor young criminals at favelas are living in luxury and millionaire apartments in Ipanema or Copacabana, next to the legion of Brazilians who blame the favelas to the problem of insecurity.

To solute the problem and rescue those kids, teenagers and young, and prevent that the drug-dealers recruit them to work for criminal organizations, the Brazilian government must promote politics of social inclusion and take to favelas opportunities, increasing the quality of the public education, building more libraries, giving them access to culture, heath and making them feel well treated and included on society.

But, rather that, in 2007 our government decided to build a program of security to make the violence in Rio lower and present to the World a safe and well prepared city, taking care of the tourists and foreign celebrities who were arranged to come to the soccer games.

This program named UPP´s (Unities of Pacifying Police) is a project of construction of military bases inside favelas and occupation by police officers to expulse drug dealers and criminals in a process of pacification.

But behind this initiative there are a lot of problems that the society never stops to analyze. Rather include the favelas and poor people on society and promote equality, the UPP seems a program of exclusion and stigmatization, well supported by high classes and the government.

The Great Media make it looks like a program made to protect the society and favela´s citizens, end the drug trafficking and urbanize poor communities. But according to some researches and data provided by government and NGOs of security, after UPP´s the violence didn´t got down.

The police occupation just built an unfairly system and made criminals move to other communities un-pacified, thus, the occupations just moved the problem to other places.

At favelas dominated by police and public forces, honest and humble citizens and workers aren´t protected by the State, unlike, they are subjected to be watched 24 hours a day and are used to be treated like criminals by cops and soldiers from Brazilian army.

The initiative wasn´t successful because just have expulsed some criminals from some favelas, and then, they gone to live in other places in the city keeping stealing, drug-trafficking and murdering.

Is hard to say, but the UPP´s is a politic of segregation and exclusion of poor people and just stimulate the racism and prejudice, making the kids, teenagers and young from favelas more revolted, excluded and helpless.

There aren´t politics of education and infrastructure working together UPP´s to make favelas more livable. Looks like the government don´t worry about the situation of the citizens living in risk areas, letting children helpless, and by the time those kids without structure will grow up and the conditions will make some of them get involved on crime and the violence will keep growing.

The plan is just to overlook the situation of un-equality and un-opportunity which increase the criminality in Brazil, during the World Cup and other events, faking the reality and preventing the violence by violence and discriminating.

Foreign visitors were expecting lots of steals and murders, but during the event, tourists slept on beaches and streets, and fortunately nobody were killed or attacked by criminals. The image showed to the world was of a country organized with developed politics of security and police well prepared. The tourists got impressed.

But normally, Brazilian big cities are used to be violent.

Behind this marvelous event, a lot of deals were made between the government, police officers and drug-dealers, and people from favelas were massive watched and censured by cops who kept all event long watching them steps.

Why people from favelas couldn´t live and have fun like the rest of society? How long they will e treated like criminals?

According to some reports of the population, the officers who work at poor communities aren´t well prepared and behave violently and discriminate citizens.

After UPP´s installation many cases of deaths by police murders were noticed. Their excuse is to say that people killed were delinquents, but after, witnesses prove that some of them were innocent.

But the justice in the country seems not accessible to poor people and the police officers keep dominating favelas, killing people day by day, and rather get convicted by murders, are supported by society.

It´s fascism. Discriminate and exclude poor, not giving them access to nothing, convicting just poor criminals and letting corrupt police officers and politics free. Not taking dignity to favelas and other poor communities, depriving them to have structure of live, blaming just the poor by crimes and violence, and watching humble workers like they were criminals and practice violence against the poor population. If you think that initiative is right, just look how many innocent people died on cops hands and imagine yourself being watched all time by officers and having your house invaded and searched month by month. It´s not life!

André Felipe Maria