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The Vigário Geral Massacre (''
Chacina de Vigário Geral'' in Portuguese) occurred on August 29, 1993, at the
favela
Favela () is an umbrella name for several types of working-class neighborhoods in Brazil. The term was first used in the Providência neighborhood in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was built by soldiers who had ...
of
Vigário Geral
Vigário Geral is a neighborhood in the Rio de Janeiro#North Zone, North Zone of Rio de Janeiro with a large ''favela''.
It is infamous for the Vigário Geral massacre that occurred here in 1993.
;Popular culture
The movie ''Favela Rising'' follo ...
, located in the north of
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
city. A
death squad
A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are ...
composed of
Rio Military Police was responsible for carrying out the act of violence. The group supposedly did so out of revenge for the killing of four police officers two days prior, who were allegedly involved in the extortion of drug traffickers. After arriving to the favela of Vigário Geral on August 29, 1993, the squad spent two hours traveling around wearing hoods over their heads and sporadically shooting at local residents, leaving 21 innocent people dead. "Among the deceased were seven men playing cards in a bar and eight members of a family, including a 15-year-old girl, killed inside their home." After the federal and Rio de Janeiro state governments commenced a series of official investigations that year, charges were brought against thirty three people: twenty-eight military policemen who were believed to belong to infamous death squad "''Cavalos Corredores''" (the "Galloping Horses"), three civil policemen and two civilian employees of the civil police. By 1998, the number of people charged increased to the total of fifty-two, but only two had actually been convicted thus far.
Six policeman had been convicted as of 2003, yet according to a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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newspaper published in August, only two were actually in prison as the other four were released with the expiration of the time periods for their appeal hearings.
Implications of the Vigário Geral massacre
The theme that has continued to dominate Brazilian society from the early twentieth century up until the present, is the accepting attitude held by middle-upper class citizens and policemen towards the use of violence. Police violence directed towards citizens continues to be a problem in Brazil decades after the 1993 Vigário Geral Massacre, and is evident in its murder statistics. In one annua
Brazilian Forum on Public Securityreport, it found that police killed 2,212 people in 2013, and increasing to a total of 3,022 the following year, Brazil's national murder rate was 30 deaths for every 100,000 people. This data contrasts greatly with that of the United States, which, according to the FBI's
Criminal Justice Information Services Division
The Criminal Justice Information Services Division (or CJIS) is a division of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) located in Clarksburg, Harrison County, West Virginia. The CJIS was established in February 1992 and is the lar ...
crime report of 2013, had a much lower rate of only 4.5 murders for every 100,000 people.
One major factor that directly contributes to
Brazil's high murder rate (police killing citizens, and citizens killing each other and officers) are its laws on both intentional and unintentional murder. According to Brazil's
homicide
Homicide occurs when a person kills another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act or omission that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no inten ...
laws, the penalty for intentional murder ranges from six to twenty years of imprisonment except in more severe instances which it could increase to thirty, and only one to three years for unintentional homicides. As if to favor those who commit serious felonies, Brazilian law states that the maximum penalty for any crime is 30 years, and those sentenced to more than 19 years in prison are automatically granted retrials.
In 1998, ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' Foreign Correspondent Laurie Goering made several interesting points in her article, showing that there was more to Brazil's murder culture than just its comparatively (to the U.S. and elsewhere) lenient laws. Due to the fact that Brazil's court systems were slow, inconsistent, saw only 8 percent of all cases, and brought "showy sentences" with small jail time, Goering explained that "most people favor street justice by police, including executions of criminals caught in the act."
See also
*
List of massacres in Brazil
The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in Brazil (numbers may be approximate):
References
{{Massacres
Brazil
Massacres
*
Massacres
Massacres
A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especiall ...
References
External links
*“Murder.” ''The Federal Bureau Of Investigation'', 2013
*Rocha, Jan. “Rio Police Killings Condemned.” ''BBC'', August 28, 2003, sec. Americas. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3190101.stm.
*“BRAZIL: RIO DE JANEIRO 2003: CANDELARIA AND VIGARIO GERAL 10 YEARS ON.” Amnesty International, August 27, 2003. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr19/015/2003/en/.
*“THE KILLINGS IN CANDELÁRIA AND VIGÁRIO GERAL: The Urgent Need To Police the Brazilian Police.” ''Human Rights Watch'', November 1993
*
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Mass murder in 1993
August 1993 events in South America
Massacres in 1993
Mass shootings in Brazil
Massacres in Brazil
1993 in Brazil
Police brutality in Brazil
People murdered by organized crime
1993 murders in Brazil
1993 mass shootings in South America