MORE INFORMATION
- Read the note in Portuguese | Radicalized wing of PM no Ceará echoa Bolsonarismo e rearing pump-relogio difficult to disarm
- Organized crime brings chaos to a Brazilian state and tests Bolsonaro
- Bolsonaro insists on giving impunity to the police when facing his first security crisis
The military police strike in the State of Ceará, in northeastern Brazil, has evolved in an escalation of tension that had its peak last Wednesday, when Cid Gomes, a prominent senator from that state and opposed to the Government of Jair Bolsonaro, received Two shots The entire scene was a symptom of the almost surreal situation. The senator, who was driving an excavator, tried to enter a military area occupied by hooded men - supposedly military policemen - in the city of Sobral and lashed out at the fence that separated them and against the protesters behind it. Gomes evolves favorably, but the episode has aggravated a crisis that began to be drawn at the end of last year, with negotiations for the salary adjustment for a sector that, due to the possession of firearms and its military character, is prohibited from going on strike
Amid a divided corporation and a crisis that has been exploited to the full by local and national politicians, the most radical wing of the Police has emerged as a new and strengthened protagonist. The most radicalized sector consists mainly of young soldiers who champion an authoritarian discourse. His position is increasingly popular among police officers since protests resurfaced last Tuesday and his hard-handed vision has been augmented by the arrival of the ultra-right-wing Bolsonaro.
Camilo Santana, governor of Ceará and a militant of the Workers Party (the main opposition formation) last year incorporated some of the demands of the police to try to placate the protests. Although some associations linked to agents agreed to reach an agreement, part of the base rejected it and rebelled. Since then, several battalions have been occupied in different cities. And the climate of panic has taken over the state on the eve of Carnival. Until this Saturday, four police officers have been arrested and another 300 are investigated for crimes ranging from the taking of patrol cars to the burning of vehicles of citizens critical of the movement. There have been at least 51 deaths in the last 48 hours in the region, when the average was six daily murders in 2020 until then, according to a study on the G1 website.
"It has been the first time in life that we have seen a barracks occupied in that way. All hooded. It is impossible to know how many of them are policemen, and if they are really policemen," said the senator from São Paulo, Major Olímpio, who visited one of the busy battalions, in Fortaleza. His statement surprises because, in addition to being chosen by the Bolsonarist base, he maintains links with the police in São Paulo. Olímpio integrated the delegation of senators who traveled to Ceará to find a way out of the crisis. The group fears that the situation in Ceará will cause a domino effect that unleashes violence in the rest of the country, given that police officers from at least six states also demand salary improvements.
When the reflectors are put on Ceará, it becomes clear that the different strategies of local and national politicians have helped the crisis to become a time bomb difficult to deactivate. Bolsonaro, the country's main authority and elected with the support of police and military sectors, has not yet condemned the riots in the military units of Ceará. In his weekly message on Facebook, the president announced last Thursday that he had authorized the sending of the Armed Forces to the northeast and returned to defend the approval in Parliament of an anticipated legal amnesty for the military to participate in the crisis. If this amnesty is approved, those who eventually kill someone during the operation cannot be investigated or punished.
Hours earlier, former Minister Ciro Gomes - a member of the Labor Democratic Party, brother of the gunman senator and Bolsonaro's rival in the last presidential elections - had already accused the president of propping up the most radicalized protesters. "Would a twenty-twenty-year-old boy dare to shoot someone like this if he didn't believe he was in the service of the greatest power in Brazil?" He questioned.
The discussion about amnesty has captured as many reflectors as the riot. Governor Santana - an ally of the Gomes brothers - has already rejected the proposal. The Government has not fired any strikers to date, but has already announced that it will cut the salaries of those who do not go to work. Even so, the policemen have decided that they will keep the strikes. "Those who can solve it are making a mistake in strategy. They [the police] now need to fight to guarantee at least amnesty," says Fortaleza councilman Sergeant Reginauro, who built his political career by supporting police mobilizations in the past in Ceará.
Councilor Reginauro's own existence shows that the tensions that are exploding now are not new. The current crisis reverberates another strike movement, almost a decade ago, that influenced security policies and the political life of Ceará. Since then, leaders emerged from police associations compete for public office in elections.
When the military police of Ceará announced a strike in December 2011, Capitão Wagner - a deputy deputy hitherto unknown beyond the police corporations - began to emerge as the main leader of the movement. Wagner, very present in social networks, brought together several forces from a sector that has at least eight representative associations. The strike catapulted him. That same year he became the most voted councilman in the history of the state capital, Fortaleza. Later, he conquered mandates in the Legislative Assembly and the Federal Chamber. And, in addition, it helped at least three other police officers hold parliamentary positions. This week, Capitão Wagner has used the networks to denounce the "lack of dialogue" of the Government with the police while preparing to dispute the mayor's office of Fortaleza, the fifth largest city in Brazil, in this year's municipal elections.
"There is no homogenous representation [in the Ceará military police movement]. It cannot be treated as if it were one thing," explains local deputy Renato Roseno, of the leftist Socialism and Freedom Party, very active in the area of Security and human rights. For him, a more radicalized sector of that movement, composed mostly of soldiers, would be operating mainly on the periphery of the capital and in inner cities. "There are policemen acting as militia groups, terrorizing the population," he accuses.
The researcher Luiz Fábio Paiva, of the Federal University of Ceará, insists on another point: the historical process of political intervention in the police. "Each new administration was aimed at the Military Police. In Ceará, we had politicians testing security programs that interfered with the structuring of the police. That produces effects," explains Paiva. The researcher adds the weight of the national political scenario: "We have a Federal Government that stimulates violence, aggression against opposition politicians, against journalists, against those who think differently. We must be aware of the impact of this discourse on the bases of the police, "he warns.