Writing a New Story on Violence in Brazil

Though largely underreported, significant policy changes have been effective at reducing violence in Brazil.
Last month’s replacement of the head of the Civil Police in Rio de Janeiro by Martha Rocha, the first female chief in Rio, following corruption scandals implicating former chief José Mariano Beltrame, marks the most recent of five leadership turnovers in recent years all telling the same old story of Brazil: drugs, violence and corruption.  Indeed, the fact that this combination no longer causes raised eyebrows speaks to the unfortunate longevity of the problem.  However, while the media highlights stories of violent gun battles between police and drug gangs, the story that deserves greater attention is that of decreasing homicides in Brazil and—of particular significance—in Sao Paulo, which had previously been the site of WHO-termed “epidemic” level homicides (10 deaths/100,000 population annually).

Within the story of decreasing homicides, there is another story to be told: that of effective mobilization of civil society and the coordinated action of civil and political actors. One face of this process is that of Denis Mizne (current CEO of the Lemann Foundation) and his organization Instituto Sou da Paz (I’m for Peace Institute). Mizne spoke of his experiences as a social entrepreneur and his impetus for change this past Thursday at Harvard.
Mizne is one advocate bolstering the emergence of new strategies to reduce violence in Brazil. In Brazil, as with many other Latin American countries characterized by extreme socio-economic inequality, the dominant perspective for several decades has been the pressure for “mano dura” (literally: hard hand), repressive policies. Criminals, who were often poor, were seen by the public as social deviants, deserving of long prison sentences and brutal policing methods often crossing the line to human rights violations. However, since then it has become clear that this policy was not effective. In the 1990s, voices stressing police reform, community improvement, and increasing state presence in impoverished areas grew louder.
One of these voices was Mizne’s. He began mobilization against violence as a law student in Sao Paulo, while recognizing that “this [was] our generation that [was] killing each other” (violence is concentrated largely among 15-24 year old males). Mizne and his peers began by focusing on the issue of gun control, with two goals: physical disarmament and “the disarmament of the spirit or soul,” –referring to the necessity of changing the way youth dealt with conflict. Acting quickly, they began the first gun buyback movement (with gun-owners receiving a handshake and a sticker in exchange), which got 1,721 guns off the streets, an improvement from the around 1,000 collected by police the year before.
Mizne felt that in order to expand the effects of his movement, he needed an organizational entity, and so founded Sou da Paz. Sou da Paz decided to go into what many referred to as the most violent place in Brazil, the district of Jardim Angela, which had 116/100,000 homicides in 2000. Sou da Paz worked directly with the community to build student associations in schools, establish leadership training programs, and erect the first community police station, among other strategies. Sou da Paz also made connections with other actors, including NGOs and local and state governments, to garner as much support as possible. Their key was both to take guns off the streets, as well as to develop a different civic culture—one that had civic leaders as role models instead of drug lords, recreation programs for youth, and an improved relationship with the police. And it worked. In 2005, the homicide rate dropped to 40/100,000 deaths.
But, one may ask, how could the work of this organization in one campaign and one neighbourhood translate into the decrease of homicides in the city of Sao Paulo from 54/100,000 in 2000 to 10/100,000 in 2010? Mizne points to the role of government, and significantly, the effective cooperation between civil and political society. After the law students’ gun buyback campaign, not only did Sou da Paz help create legislation on firearms control, but the federal government also organized a buyback program with help from Sou da Paz, leading to the collection of 500,000 guns. The Jardim Angela experience modeled the possibilities for a successful strategy shift from Brazil’s more traditional repressive policies toward violence reduction through civic engagement.
Mizne reflected on one possible relationship between civil society and government for effective concerted action: civil society’s ability to find creative solutions to problems, and government’s ability to scale up those solutions for maximal impact. Clearly, different actors and control processes in different contexts makes the issue of violence far from simple. In Rio, where high levels of violence does continue, this problem is much more deeply entangled with that of drug gangs and the lack of state presence in urban peripheries. However, Mizne and Sao Paulo’s experiences inform us of the possibility for progress in Brazil through civil-political cooperation.
Photo credit: http://article.wn.com/view/2010/11/27/Rio_facing_gang_backlash_as_police_invade_slums_trying_to_br_b/