Disappearances and police assassinations in contemporary Brazil: the politics of life and death
By Sabrina Villenave
Routledge, 2021
Some people disappear on purpose, and we call them missing persons. Others have disappeared; that is, they are killed and buried in unknown places and circumstances. The term “to be missing” is an attempt to translate Desaparecidos, which was first used in Argentina to name “political disappearances” during the dictatorship (1976-1983) and later spread to other countries, including Brazil. The book Disappearances and police assassinations in contemporary Brazilprovides an insightful and surprising critique of the concept of “political disappearance”, which is essential for truth commissions that delve into the history of the Brazilian dictatorship, but which is not useful, and is even counterproductive, in analyzing contemporary violence.
The book is part of the Interventions series’ goal of publishing work that pushes the boundaries of the international relations discipline, such as the division between inside and outside, the difference between public and national security, or its Eurocentric and racial prejudices. Villenave’s book works on these three questions, the role of a militarized police (interior/exterior, public/national security), which acts as sovereign, which decides on the exception in a postcolonial and racialized state.
The category of “political disappearances” in Brazil applies strictly to people, mainly from an educated, white and left-wing elite, who were allegedly involved in guerrilla movements opposed to the military regime (1964-1985). The term is present in the Law on the Disappeared (Law 9.140 of 1995), which created the Special Commission for the Political Dead and Disappeared. Other actors, such as the victim’s relatives, newspapers and the National Truth Commission, also refer to the “political disappearances” in their speeches.
This means that those who disappeared during the dictatorship but were not directly involved in the political battle, such as indigenous people and rural workers, are not considered politically disappeared or Desapacidos. Because the term disappeared is attached to a specific group and limited to the period of military rule (1964-1985), missing persons who do not fit this definition will not have the same visibility in the media or in the framework institutional. For comparison, the disappearances during the dictatorship amount to 243 people from different regions of the country over 21 years, while the number of disappeared between 2000 and 2012 only in the city of Rio de Janeiro is 600. Another problem, as Villenave points out. , is that the traditional understanding of politics as “engaged in organized activities” overlooks the fact that other types of disappearances based on racial structure are also political.
The question therefore remains: since the concept of political disappearance depends on these criteria of time and space, what framework underlies contemporary forced disappearances in Brazil? Through the analysis of the history of police violence and its origin in the colonial and racialized structure of the State, Villenave argues that the reasoning Security and the War on Drugs (with their similarities to the War on Terror) shape – and depoliticize – our understanding of “missing bodies” in democratic times. It also legitimizes the murders and disappearances of bodies, mainly black, in the “abject space” of humanity. favelas (slums). This logic is not foreign to racial capitalism (Robinson, 2000) and microeconomics (Montag, 2005), which aims to eliminate excess black labor. In this sense, the drug war framework aims to silence the fact that Brazil is not a racial democracy. Instead, the country erases the racial component in the explanation of police killings and disappearances. Notably, despite critiques of the concept of racial democracy, notably by Lelia Gonzalez (2021) and Abdias do Nascimento (1980), this concept still remains underlying much of the political and social debate in contemporary Brazil.
The book positions itself in the discussion on governmentality and biopolitics (Foucault 2008, 2019) and on sovereignty, camp and exception (Agamben 2005, 2009) in international relations. However, Villenave argues that these theories are not sufficient to understand state violence in postcolonial and racialized societies like Brazil’s. Agamben’s state of exception – and Schmitt’s earlier theorizing – asserts that the sovereign is the one who decides the exception. Scholars apply the Agambenian thesis to different contexts, but each requires certain qualifications. Contrary to the omnipresence of the state of exception in democratic states, an essential point for Agamben, the Brazilian police apparatus functions differently depending on skin color, confirming Judith Butler’s argument that there is an unequal distribution of vulnerability.
The author offers an innovative contribution by developing the concept of camp discussed by Agamben and Mbembe. Agamben says the camp is an exceptional lawless space. Although he agrees with Agamben’s broad definition, Mbembe insists that race plays a role in defining this space. Some populations are more likely than others to be included in the exclusion space. Villenave agrees with Mbembe, but says the favela has its specificity: the relationship between interior and exterior is more fluid than that observed in the concept of camp. Favelas do not confine its inhabitants. However, it is the “sovereign police” who will decide who can move according to criteria rooted in a colonial and racial structure. In this sense, the police are constantly redefining and redrawing city boundaries and citizenship status. In other words, the state of exception is not a place but a practice or movement of creating ad hoc exceptions.
The example that Villenave puts forward could be new for students of international relations who are not familiar with Brazilian society. As the author points out, the police can control the timing of the exception using a strategy called auto resistance, created under military rule to protect the police officer who allegedly killed someone as an act of defense. In democratic times, the police continue to use the same strategy, but now in the context of the “war on drugs”. In Brazilian legislation, there is no difference between drug users and traffickers, which leaves it open to the police to define who the trafficker is. Therefore, the police will define the exception by saying that some murders result from auto resistance against traffickers.
Mbembe is an essential author for Villenave’s argument on disappearance, because the sovereign will decide who will live or die and how people are going to die. Although murders and disappearances follow the same logic of the war on drugs, murders have more media visibility than disappearances because the latter is much more difficult to investigate and confirm. By its inherent characteristic, disappearance produces an information vacuum and no trace of how it could have happened. Contrary to auto de resistência (and the presence of the body)disappearance is based on a legal vacuum where the border between Zoe And biographyexterior and interior, presence and absence, is blurred.
Despite its relevance to the contemporary debate on IR, the book does not address certain aspects regarding the corpse that are essential for understanding the racial biases of police practice in Brazil. As the philosopher Adriana Cavarero asked, what does the state of the corpse tell us about the specificity of contemporary violence? In his seminal book Horrorism: naming contemporary violence, Cavarero looks at the dismembered and mutilated body, unrecognizable as human. We could say that there are three forms of contemporary murder: auto resistance which produces an identifiable corpse (present and identifiable); the disappearance of the body (therefore not identifiable due to its absence); and, following Cavarero, the mutilation of the body (present, but not identifiable as human).
Disappearances and murders in Brazil This acquires increased relevance at a time when the Brazilian far right emphasizes the discourse of racial democracy and criticizes positive actions in Brazil. It also brings an essential discussion on the concept of political disappearance in a country which, 60 years after the start of its last dictatorship (1964), is still struggling to understand its past and demilitarize its police. On April 2, 2024, the chairman of the amnesty commission investigating the crimes of 1964-1985 apologized to indigenous people killed during the dictatorship. Despite its local character, the study of disappearance in Brazil can be applied to other “abject spaces” where the “war on drugs” is only a facade to get rid of disposable people.
The references
Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agamben, G. (2009). What is a device? Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life. The powers of grief and violence. London and New York: Verso.
Cavarero, A. (2011). Terrorism: naming contemporary violence. New Directions in Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Do Nascimento, A. (1980). “Quilombismo: an Afro-Brazilian political alternative”. Journal of Black Studies11 (2), Afro-Brazilian experience and proposals for social change, pp. 141-178.
Foucault, M. (2008) The birth of biopolitics – Courses at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, M. (2019). Security, territory, population – Courses at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gonzalez, L. et al. (2021). “Racism and sexism in Brazilian culture” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly49(1), p. 371-394.
Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Montag, W. (2005). “Necroeconomics: Adam Smith and death in the life of the universal”, Radical philosophy134, pp.1-11.
Robinson, C. (2000). Black Marxism: the birth of the black radical tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Further reading on international electronic relations
