This week, Claudio Machado intended to celebrate his twenty years of marriage in style. A party was planned at his mother-in-law’s, a resident like him of Parnamirim, a town of 272,000 inhabitants located in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, in the Northeast. But, at the last moment, everything had to be cancelled. “It’s too dangerous to go out at night. We will settle for a small reception in the afternoon”regrets this 44-year-old man, employee of the Brazilian Heritage Institute.
“We live in terror”, he continues. In Parnamirim and the surrounding area, supermarkets, cars, motorcycles, buses were set on fire, administrations, banks, warehouses and police stations targeted by gunfire or explosives. “We no longer dare to walk in the street. Shops close at 5 p.m. Garbage collection is done under police escort”says Claudio, who only feels safe at home, in his residential building, protected “by electric fences and armed guards”.
All this is just a glimpse of the wave of violence that is hitting the small state of Rio Grande do Norte and its 3.5 million inhabitants. Hundreds of attacks, sponsored by criminal groups, have targeted at least 56 towns in the region since March 14. In several of them, public administrations, hospitals and schools had to close their doors, while football matches were canceled and public transport suspended, in an atmosphere of civil war.
Tourist region
Originally, there is a local faction of drug trafficking called “Crime Syndicate”, born in 2012 in opposition to another group, the First Commando of the Capital (PCC), from the State of Sao Paulo and present in the region. This would seek to respond with violence to the seizure of narcotics and the arrest of several of its members, but above all to denounce the conditions of detention in the region’s prisons.
Overcrowding, corporal punishment, rats, spoiled food, tuberculosis… “Human rights are seriously violated in penitentiaries”, denounces Juliana Melo, anthropologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. In 2017, an ultra-violent conflict between the Crime Syndicate and the PCC claimed twenty-seven victims in the local prison of Alcaçuz, transformed into a powder keg. “Since then, the situation has not changed and has even worsened”notes the researcher.
Faced with the panic, the federal power reacted quickly. The highly touristic Rio Grande do Norte is known for its dunes and fine sandy beaches. It is also a stronghold of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who won here in the 2022 ballot with 65% of the vote against Jair Bolsonaro. The left also dominates at the local level: the governor of the state, Fatima Bezerra, is a leading member of the Workers’ Party.
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