Last Tuesday, we witnessed yet another carnage in Rio de Janeiro. The deadliest police operation in Brazil’s history left at least 121 bodies lying along a favela street. Public defenders speak of 134.

For nearly three decades, I have studied events like this. Some massacres became national wounds: Carandiru in 1992, when police executed 111 prisoners; the Crimes of May in 2006, when at least 497 civilians were killed in the São Paulo’s police revenge to the deaths of 45 police officers ordered by the then-emerging PCC, now the largest criminal organisation in Latin America.

At first, what struck me was the industrial scale of these sporadic mass events. Over time, I realised that it was not the spectacle of violence in bulk that lingered, but its silent repetition at retail. In 2024 alone, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice recorded 6,014 people officially killed by policemen, out of approximately 45,000 homicides and 25,000 missing persons nationwide. Between 2023 and 2024, the police in the UK shot two people, Germany police around fifteen.

Reflecting on my ethnography, I also studied carefully individual homicide produced by organized groups. Both the spectacular massacres and routine killings followed a repetitive pattern. The bodies were almost always young, racialised, poor, and of men who, as I gradually understood, had been recruited to operate violence at the base of illegal markets. They are hired to sell drugs and informal protection, to commit petty crime and, in far smaller numbers, they are men of the same profile but wearing uniforms. According to the 2025 Atlas of Violence published by the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, the vast majority of victims of police use of lethal force were men (91.1%) and black (79%). Nearly half (48.5%) were under 30 years old. Most were killed with firearms (73.8%), and over half (57.6%) died in public spaces.

Many were close interlocutors, whose silent funerals I later attended. My sociological interest in this violence has never been driven by death itself. I find no appeal in true crime or in psychopathic serial killers. What interests me sociologically are violent forms of political performance: riots, uprisings, eruptions of indignation that have held my attention for decades. That is how I see these massacres. Because in these critical events where order is contested, no matter in which direction, what is put in motion is the foundations of future authority, and thus the contours of everyday life to come.

Despite the repetitions and regularities I had already understood, this massacre in Rio de Janeiro showed me that things are changing fast. When I began my research in the favelas, these killings were carried out by masked squads. Public discourse insisted that extermination groups had nothing to do with the police officers, condemning any action outside the law.

This week, in Rio de Janeiro, there were no masks, no ambiguity. After the massacre, the governor stood before the cameras, flanked by his secretaries, and celebrated the success of the operation, which also left four police officers dead. This is twice the national average proportion (4%). In 2024, 170 police officers were killed in Brazil, accounting for 2% of the 6,000 people died after the police use of lethal force. The politician spoke of a planned action, of efficiency, of restoring the rule of law. In a place where 99.2 percent of police killings will never be officially investigated, such celebratory tone should not surprise me — yet it still does.

During the interview, the Governor announced that five other far-right governors would travel to Rio the next day to congratulate him, sharing in electoral propaganda written in blood. Their political networks take inspiration from Bukele, president of El Salvador, now the godfather of political propaganda via massacre. Parts of the press praised the action, and opinion polls showed overwhelming public support.

This time, the massacre was not framed as a tragic necessity against a wary criminal organisation but displayed as public virtue, full stop. Political marketing consultants appeared on YouTube to announce that the governor had skilfully occupied an empty political space. It matters little that the dead soldiers from both sides would be replaced the next day, since the core of the targeted criminal organisation remains untouched, as has happened repeatedly over forty years.

The legitimacy of ethnocidal terror in Brazil showed itself without hesitation. The following day, a draft for new anti-terror legislation was introduced in the Chamber of Deputies, now including drug traffickers and vastly expanding the subjects placed under a State of exception. When we shift from the violent explosion to ordinary social processes, terror against favelas emerges as an increasingly legitimate mode of governance, not a deviation.

After the slaughter, Brazilian politicians arrive with its rituals of meaning. Terror is no longer just a moment of extreme violence; before the event, there are deliberate intentions, and afterwards, professional modes of communication. If massacres are repetitive in Rio’s favelas, their public legitimacy is new. Terror proves politically effective and signals a shift in hegemony. Whereas once terror was completed not through punishment but by silent promotion of police; not through reparation but hidden humiliation of victims’ families; not through loss of popularity but embarrassed votes—now the situation has changed. The triumphant election of those who order terror has become the norm, as they act as if they have cleansed society of evil.

Terror imagines its violence concludes history, yet something always remains: trauma, mourning, thirst for vengeance, political lucidity, collective memory, stubborn ways of imagining peace, and the fragile fabric of everyday life. From these residues arise divergent paths: renewed radicalisation or practices of memory and reconciliation, bureaucratic mechanisms or insurgent criminal forces. Life insists on revealing that the victors are themselves killers. That story repeats, marking the long-term failure of terror despite its immediate force. Social scientists and historians trace ethnocidal terror to the convergence of Western expansion, monotheistic certainty, and centralised sovereignty. The more terror is applied, the more these internal civilisers of former colonies label opponents as terrorists. The more they violate the law, the more they claim to restore the rule of law allegedly threatened by criminals. History is written in the plural. It insists, refuses to end, and in doing so, terrifies power.

About Gabriel Feltran

Gabriel Feltran is a sociologist and Research Professor at CNRS (CEE, Sciences Po) whose work examines governance, violence, and power in urban peripheries, particularly through illegal and criminal value chains. His research on São Paulo explores how crime becomes embedded in the urban fabric, as reflected in books such as The Entangled City (2020) and Stolen Cars (2022).