Racism in the Act: images of police violence and the connections between activism in Brazil and in the United States

Abstract

This article focuses on movements against police brutality in Brazil and their connections with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, which gained momentum from 2013 to 2016 motivated by videos that exposed police abuse, and sparked a global debate about institutional racism. It analyzes the repercussion of the killings of three black Brazilians by Police officers – Amarildo, Claudia and Alan –, which occurred at the same time the first videos were released in the United States, exposing the brutal treatment of African Americans by the police. Drawing on interviews with Brazilian activists and participant observation of events organized by activists and researchers in New York City and Rio de Janeiro, the author argues that such context enabled the amplification of a ‘language of race’ in the struggles against police brutality in Brazil, and thus contributes to the construction of blackness as a political issue in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro during the second decade of the 21st century.