Favela War - Jacarezinho Massacre: May 2021
On May 6, 2021, a civil police operation in the Jacarezinho favela resulted in 28 deaths, making it the deadliest police operation in Rio de Janeiro history until the October 2025 massacre. The operation lasted approximately ten hours and began relatively calmly. However, after a police officer was shot and killed in a confrontation shortly after the operation started, the violence escalated dramatically. Police officers were later accused of torture, as well as forging evidence, defrauding investigations, and lying to cover up executions.
On the morning of May sixth, 2021, approximately two hundred heavily armed officers from Rio's Civil Police Special Resources Coordination unit, supported by helicopters and armored vehicles, descended upon Jacarezinho, one of Rio's largest favelas in the North Zone. The operation, officially targeting an alleged criminal group recruiting children for drug trafficking, would become the deadliest police raid in Rio de Janeiro's history. For nine hours, residents of Jacarezinho were subjected to absolute terror as automatic weapons fire echoed through the narrow alleys, helicopters circled overhead shooting downward, and police used explosives in the densely populated residential neighborhood. The raid had been planned to execute arrest and search warrants against suspected members of Comando Vermelho, but what unfolded bore more resemblance to a military assault than a law enforcement operation.
By the afternoon, twenty-eight people lay dead including one police officer who was killed early in the operation. The death toll made Jacarezinho the deadliest official police operation in Rio's history, surpassing even the dark days of police massacres in the 1990s and early 2000s. Police commanders immediately declared the operation "legitimate from beginning to end" and claimed that all the dead were drug dealers who had fired at officers. However, testimonies from residents, photographs, and videos suggested a far more troubling reality. Of the twenty-one suspects specifically targeted by the warrants, only three were arrested and three more were killed, meaning that the vast majority of deaths involved individuals who were not the operation's intended targets. Witnesses reported seeing police execute unarmed suspects who wanted to surrender, break into homes without identifying themselves, and move bodies before preserving crime scenes. Two metro passengers were wounded by stray bullets that shattered train car windows. Blood flowed through favela streets. Homes were riddled with bullet holes. Families were trapped inside during the nine-hour assault, unable to reach hospitals or seek safety.
The massacre sparked immediate national and international outrage. Human Rights Watch called for immediate independent investigation into possible police abuses, noting the long history of excessive use of force in Rio's favelas. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the violence, stating that it "furthers a long-standing trend of unnecessary and disproportionate use of force" by Brazilian police in poor, marginalized, and predominantly Afro-Brazilian neighborhoods. Amnesty International described the number of people killed as "reprehensible" and demanded that Rio's prosecutor's office conduct a prompt, exhaustive, and independent investigation following international standards. Favela residents and activists marched through the streets shouting "justice" and demanding accountability. The massacre had occurred less than three weeks after a Supreme Court hearing on police violence in favelas, and it flagrantly violated a court order restricting police operations during the COVID-19 pandemic except in absolutely exceptional circumstances.
The intense gun battles caused widespread disruption to the surrounding area. Train services on the Saracuruna and Belford Roxo lines were suspended, as were operations on Rio de Janeiro Metro Line 2. A family health clinic and COVID-19 vaccination centers were forced to close. Over 2,000 students missed class due to the violence. The scope of the violence extended beyond the favela itself, with people being shot even outside the community, including at least one person inside a subway car passing through Triagem Station, which serves the North Zone neighborhood of Rocha.
Among the survivors of the 1993 Candelária massacre was Sandro Barbosa do Nascimento, who experienced profound trauma from that event. Seven years after the Candelária massacre, on June 12, 2000, Sandro hijacked Bus 174 in Rio de Janeiro, holding passengers hostage for over four hours in an incident that was broadcast live on television. The hijacking ended when Sandro was captured by police, but he died in police custody during transport, officially from asphyxiation. The Bus 174 incident and Sandro's life story became the subject of documentary films and dramatic productions that explored the connection between his traumatic childhood experiences as a street child, his survival of the Candelária massacre, and his subsequent actions.
Three years after the Jacarezinho massacre, families of the victims continued fighting for justice while struggling with grief and the impunity surrounding the case. Many families lacked the financial resources to properly memorialize their loved ones. The cost of exhuming bodies from communal graves and transferring them to individual burial sites with names, photographs, and dates proved prohibitively expensive for poor favela families. One mother explained that her son had become just another number in a nameless tomb, and despite organizing raffles and mobilizing her entire family, she could not raise sufficient funds for a proper burial. The families viewed exhumation as essential to reopening investigations and obtaining more information about the circumstances of the deaths.
The aftermath of Jacarezinho revealed the systemic nature of impunity for police violence in Rio. The Civil Police, whose commanders insisted no abuses had been committed, were tasked with investigating the actions of their own members. Crime scenes were not preserved, bodies were moved, and forensic investigations were compromised. In March 2021, Rio's new attorney general had dissolved the unit of prosecutors specializing in police abuse, making meaningful oversight even less likely. Brazil's Supreme Court had ruled in 2020 that prosecutors should open their own independent investigations into all police killings to guarantee impartiality, but this had not happened. A year after the massacre, police officers tore down a memorial erected by residents that listed the names of the twenty-eight people killed, using crowbars to remove metal plates from a wall before shocked onlookers. The destruction of the memorial symbolized the state's determination not only to continue violent operations but to erase even the memory of their consequences.
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