Not long after I landed in Brazil three years ago, an acquaintance took me to a safe house in one of Rio de Janeiro’s hillside favelas. A wanted man was in hiding. His crime, he argued, was being a preto favelado — a black man from the slums. He finally turned himself in amid fears he was going to be shot down by the police. Over the years, I lost track of his case.
But then a picture splashed across newspapers last week made me think of him. In it, a policeman in dark grey fatigues points an automatic rifle at an unarmed black man during a protest against police brutality. It did not happen in Minneapolis but in Rio de Janeiro amid growing protests against, among other things, police brutality that overwhelmingly targets blacks in a country with more people of African descent than any other outside Africa.
The antiracism protests that have erupted across the US following the killing of George Floyd have touched a raw nerve in Brazil. Tensions are running high amid fears that the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro — who made his name partly by disparaging blacks and praising police officers— is turning increasingly authoritarian.