Al Jazeera Wonders, 'Why So Deadly?' on Brazil Raid
Al Jazeera's coverage of a Rio favela raid, which left over 130 dead, asks 'How did it turn so deadly?' — a question that echoes across decades of similar operations. This isn't a mystery; it's a pattern. Brazilian police, often trained by tactics imported from abroad—including lessons from US urban policing and Israeli military doctrine on 'pacifying' civilian areas—routinely use overwhelming
force in these communities. These 'raids' are not surgical strikes; they are often collective punishment. Ignoring the historical context of state-sanctioned violence against Brazil's poor, predominantly Black populations, allows media outlets to frame each massacre as an isolated incident. It's not a 'turn' to deadly; it's the expected outcome when militarized police view residents as enemy
combatants, a perspective honed by years of unchecked aggression and minimal accountability. One might wonder if the question should be 'How did it *not* turn deadly sooner given the context?'