The operation in Rio was a deliberate massacre with a political objective.

"Get used to the mud that awaits you!"

The man, who, in this wretched land,

He lives among beasts, he feels it is inevitable.

"The need to also be fierce."

— Augusto dos Anjos, 1906, Intimate Verses

These notes do not claim to provide a comprehensive assessment of the topic, nor to offer definitive solutions. They merely gather a set of points and brief reflections that may contribute to the debate on the subject.

The fight against so-called organized crime — a non-homogeneous grouping of paramilitary forces sustained by illegal activities — is a social consensus. Some of these groups are rapidly moving towards becoming mafia-like; others originate from within the very heart of state forces. It is a complex phenomenon, with the PCC, Comando Vermelho (CV), and the militias being particularly noteworthy examples.

Rio de Janeiro is widely identified with the presence of these organizations, being the birthplace of several groups with national reach. The state pioneered unsuccessful actions that, instead of containing, exacerbated the problem: BOPE and other special forces with tacit authorization to kill; symbolic operations marked by high death tolls and no effectiveness; and ineffective military interventions, such as UPPs and GLOs.

In the 1990s, Rio de Janeiro state law even rewarded police officers for killing criminals in operations—a veritable "incentive to state lethality." The measure was widely criticized at the time, but has recently been brought back into discussion. This doesn't seem like a mere coincidence.

Public discussion, heavily fueled by the press, follows a consistent theme: living territories are presented as territories of crime. Communities are labeled "areas of group X or Y." Young people—mostly poor, Black boys—are treated as suspects a priori. The press has played a decisive role in stigmatizing residents of communities, suburbs, and peripheries, reinforcing the association between poverty and criminality.

Criminal factions and organizations produce exemplary cases of violence, cruelty, subjugation of the local population, and atrocities—and some of these forces originate from militias, formed by public agents. These episodes, in turn, are used to legitimize lethal operations, frequently backed by governments, parliamentarians, and the media.

The recent operation mobilized approximately 2.500 members of state forces—Military Police, Civil Police, and their special groups, especially BOPE (Special Operations Battalion). The toll was 121 dead, including four police officers, and 113 arrested. There are no official records of injuries: they were either killed or arrested. The ratio is shocking—ten police officers for every person arrested or killed—a comfortable ratio in military terms, but unacceptable in terms of public safety.

The operation can be divided into two phases: (1) the incursion into territory controlled by the factions, a stage of greater exposure for state forces and a greater possibility of escape for the armed groups; and (2) the encirclement, planned to force the escape towards an open, wooded area—without inhabitants—creating conditions for the mass slaughter of the fugitives.

The operation lasted more than ten hours, beginning before dawn and extending into the early evening—enough time to move from incursion to siege and execute what can be characterized as a massacre, something far beyond a mere slaughter.

By the end of the day, the official figures omitted the deaths in the woods, the site of the siege and executions. The operation was demobilized at nightfall on the 28th, leaving behind a trail of death and abandonment. The local population, without any institutional support, searched for bodies and survivors during the early morning hours. This conduct by the police is extremely serious: it was their responsibility to preserve the area for forensic examination and investigation, but by abandoning it, they facilitated the alteration of the crime scenes. It is reasonable to assume that this was intentionally planned.

The police forces claimed that the body cameras stopped working due to the duration of the operation, which exceeded the 12-hour battery life. It is unbelievable that, in an operation of this magnitude, no images were preserved—suggesting deliberate shutdown.

The results reveal the nature of the operation: there were no survivors. Historically, from the massacres of Acari, Vigário Geral, and Candelária to the operations in Alemão, Jacarezinho, Vila Cruzeiro, Santa Marta, and Vidigal, the problems for the authorities have always come from survivors and witnesses. In this operation, there are witnesses from the incursion phase, but none from the siege and execution phase.

The more than 70 deaths in the woods indicate summary executions. Even admitting—in an extreme hypothesis—that all those arrested and killed were criminals, the question remains: is an operation with one prisoner for every dead person acceptable? This would only be plausible if organized crime had military power comparable to that of the State—which is not the case. If that were the case, there would be more casualties among the police forces and less evidence of execution.

Beyond the problem of the cameras, the absence of witnesses, the lack of survivors, and the abandonment of the scenes, there is also a unified official narrative: all the dead were criminals, armed with rifles, and therefore the State had authorization to kill. The story of organized crime and the deaths of the four police officers are used to convince society that the executions were legitimate. It is an extrajudicial authorization to kill.

The investigation was also compromised: the crime scene was violated; the bodies were removed by the public; and access to the autopsy results was restricted to the Forensic Institute, the Civil Police, and the Public Prosecutor's Office of Rio de Janeiro. All of this hinders the gathering of evidence and reinforces the suspicion of a cover-up.

In practical terms, the operation yielded no concrete results. It did not dismantle Comando Vermelho, did not liberate territories under its control, and did not arrest any relevant targets. The amount of weapons, drugs, money, and leaders captured was negligible compared to the scale of the operation.

The post-operation ritual was the usual one: the police stated that all the dead were criminals, denied executions, tampering with evidence, or turning off the cameras, and attacked anyone who dared to question them—accusing them of defending criminals.

Governor Cláudio Castro initially tried to justify the operation as normal, claiming to have faced unusual resistance and that his request for federal assistance had been denied. After the prompt response from the Federal Government, he changed his tune, adopting a narrative of combating crime and counting on the immediate support of the mainstream press, especially Rede Globo, which legitimized the action, with rare and timid dissenting voices.

The Federal Government's response, with the meeting called by Lula on the morning of the 29th, was weak. There was no political confrontation, only an offer of technical support and the presence of ministers in Rio. The episode exposed a lack of coordination and political timidity.

Meanwhile, the right wing and the mainstream media took advantage of the vacuum to build a narrative hegemony: that of legitimizing and granting prior amnesty for the operation. A Consortium for Peace even emerged, inspired by Sun Tzu — "If you want peace, prepare for war."

The issue of public safety is complex, but the right treats it as simple. This asymmetry unbalances the debate. The left seeks to understand the structural causes of violence; the right, to explore the consequences, reducing everything to prison, punishment, and death. For the conservative camp, a frightened and violent society is more receptive to authoritarian and fascist ideas. Thus, the discussion of the roots of crime is avoided, maintaining the focus on penal populism.

The left, in turn, has concrete proposals and experiences, but no single policy is sufficient in the face of the national and international dimension of criminal organizations, which today infiltrate both illegality and legality, forming mafia-like structures.

The current clash pits two camps against each other: on one side, those who justify the operation beforehand, treating it as a military and moral success; on the other, democratic and progressive sectors that demand a real investigation and reject generic authorizations to kill.

The most delicate point is that the left still cannot balance the debate. While penal populism advances with simple slogans — “more prisons”, “fewer rights”, “the only good criminal is a dead criminal” — the progressive camp tries to articulate causes and consequences, confronting the issue in all its complexity.

Finally, amidst the doubts and evidence, there is an inevitable conclusion: an operation with ten police officers for every person arrested or killed, with more than 70 bodies abandoned in the woods, without preservation of the scene and without forensic evidence, can only be defined as a planned massacre. Its objective was not to combat crime, but to guide society under a false dichotomy — "support or not support criminals," "fight or not fight organized crime." And, in part, this objective has been achieved, thanks to the timidity, political calculation, and omission of the Federal Government.