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 Brazil was gripped by violence in the past few days. Everyone is talking about it but few are discussing its reasons. This is because we witnessed scenes we are unaccustomed to seeing. But we have become accustomed to the omission that, throughout the centuries, has been producing the current violence.
No one remembers that those who pulled the trigger, blew up banks and set fire to police cars and city buses were once children in what should have been their time of dreams, toys, pencils and pens. It was the past lack of these things that manufactured the majority of today's bandits. Many would have turned into peaceful young people. They were sidetracked, in some case by personal or psychological reasons, but for the immense majority, by social reasons. Brazilian society is a factory of violence. Even if we do not understand how it works, we may be able to control it temporarily. But scenes like those of the past two weeks will repeat themselves and grow worse. Our country was born in kidnapping, in assault. The indigenous peoples of Brazil had their lands taken from them. For four centuries, black people were kidnapped from Africa and brought here. We called the kidnapping "economy," "agriculture," "production." But in reality it was the kidnapping of slaves that built this country. And we did not stop there. We freed the slaves, but did not give them employment or schools for their children. The factory of violence continued. We experienced the miracle of economic development between the 1950s and the 1980s. But the benefits of growth went to a minority of the population, who concentrated income, expropriated the poor, exploited the workers. We built Brazil with social violence. We invested in economic growth and turned our backs upon social development. We abandoned education for the children and healthcare for the population. We built an unjust society that does not guarantee the rights of the majority. The results, which are visible today, were to be expected. They should have been foreseen. We are no longer facing common violence. What we are confronting today is a form of terrorism. It is violence for the sake of violence and crime to maintain crime. What happened in São Paulo had a single purpose: to terrorize the police and the society. The assailants began by killing police, so that the police would be afraid to carry out their duties. Tomorrow they will kill judges in retaliation for the judicial system. Then, they will assassinate the politicians who passed laws to make their activities difficult. And it is useless to hope that the governors will solve the problem. The problem is no longer a state one. The tragedy of violence is a national matter and stopgap measures are not enough. The federal government must be responsible for guaranteeing security. It is necessary to create national jurisdictions that confront the growing terror in the country. The Military Police must be a federal organ, with resources to arm the police, guarantee them the same training and salary standard, independently of the limits of each state's resources. But this will not be enough. We do not combat violence by simply arresting bandits. We must admit that our exclusionary development created the cauldron and provoked the explosion. Besides improving our jails we must construct schools and stop the crime factory, which will continue growing if we do not take the necessary measures. We will not control the violence as long as we do not stop the factory that is Brazilian society. But the simple closure of the factory will not put an end to today's violence because its product is already armed in the streets. We need drastic measures. We have to put the brakes on what the factory has produced. Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is the candidate of the PDT to the presidency of Brazil in the October 2006 elections. Buarque is also a senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at
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. Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome -
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