THE violence in Brazil it is a structural problem of our society that generates panic in the population, financial losses for the country and that reduces the quality of life of the Brazilian people. The problem of violence in Brazil is related to bankruptcy and corruption of public institutions, especially education and safety.
We also face issues related to failure of the judiciary, which cannot maintain a rigid system of punishment for violent crimes. In the wake of these problems, we have structurally a state formation racist, which keeps the black population at the margin of society and at the heart of violent crime.
Read too: Brazilian culture: from diversity to inequality
Causes of violence in Brazil
Violence in Brazil is a problemsystemic that has accompanied us since the times of colonization. When the Portuguese arrived in Brazilian lands, there was already a land misappropriation
that belonged to the Indians and one violent imposition of culture white european regarding the indigenous culture. With the enslavement of African peoples, this violent cultural imposition continued and became even more intense.The forced cultural imposition is, in itself, a form of violence, as it generates the forced cancellation of the individuality of the other, the reality of the other, the religion of the other and the culture of the other. Furthermore, this forced imposition of a dominant culture generates a violent society. Insofar as there are exclusion from an ethnic group, this group, which tends not to have access to the same services as the dominant group, which grows in poverty, with no expectation of growth, also tends to reproduce the violence imposed on it by exclusion from childhood.
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The Brazilian economic system has always been exclusive. In our formation, exclusion began with the way colonists took over and appropriated indigenous lands, maintaining themselves as legitimate owners in an exclusionary system. Even today, the social exclusionand access to goods remain, with this exclusion being the biggest problem causing violence.
In the wake of exclusion, we have a system that, in addition to concentrating land ownership, concentrates access to quality education and health care in the hands of the ruling elites. In this system, social ascension is almost impossible, which keeps a social class marginalized. When there is no access to basic services and social mobility is difficult, violence becomes a chronic problem. Allied to this scenario, we have a flawed educational system, who cannot cope with formal instructional education and society's moral problems.
To understand how social exclusion, also motivated by ethnicity, generates violence: in 1888, The slavery was abolished in Brazil with the enactment of the Golden Law. The descendants of Africans who were enslaved here were freed. No indemnity was given to them, on the contrary, compensation was given to former slave owners. The ex-enslaved were left adrift.
No education, no job, no place in society, no housing and no food, they went to inhabit the places that no one else wanted to inhabit, forming the shanty towns and suburbs in urban areas. In addition, homeless white people also went to the same outskirts. Urban violence arises from the moment when the living conditions for a large part of the population in a place are not good. Hunger, misery and lack of perspective are added together, creating a pressure cooker ready to explode. there is a whole system created even to keep things as they are: keep wealth concentrated and prevent the mass of the population from reaching a more dignified social situation.
Therefore, when we analyze the economic formation of Brazil in relation to other European and North American countries, the founding factor of the high levels of violence is, at its deepest roots, linked to the type of colonization and the capitalism predator.
Read too: How was the life of ex-slaves after the Golden Law?
Consequences of violence in Brazil
The consequences of violence in our country are the most diverse. Brazil is very poorly placed in relation to the human development index (HDI), taking into account its potential. Despite having a relatively high HDI index (0.761 in 2019, on a scale ranging from 0 to 1), we are in 79th position in the ranking. Two factors cause our drop in the HDI: violence and an element that causes violence, namely, income concentration. We are one of the most unequal countries in the world.
As a result of the high levels of violence, we have financial problems. Financial institutions linked to the international market hardly make big bets on the Brazilian market due to the structural problems of our country. The main problem we face is the quality of life for our population, drastically affected by violence.
We have other structural problems here that are closely linked to poverty and the maintenance of social inequality. The structural problems in Brazil make it difficult for our young people to stay in school. Dropping out of school is still a problem to be solved here, and, the lower the average schooling in a society, the greater the violence. According to data from the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea)|1|, a person with up to seven years of formal education has up to 15.9 times more chance of being murdered than a person who had access to higher education.
The Brazilian anthropologist once Darcy Ribeiro he said that the education crisis in Brazil is not a crisis, but a project. This is the project that creates a school based not on an emancipatory educational system, but on an industrial production line. Brazilian education serves the interests of a system that needs social inequality to function. The problem is that social inequality also generates violence.
Data on violence in Brazil
Data on violence in Brazil are alarming. Despite the decrease in crime rates in the country in 2019, we still have high rates of homicides and violent crimes. Listed below are some indices on violence in Brazil:
Brazil had a 22% reduction in violent deaths recorded in 2019 compared to 2018.
In 2018, 39,527 homicides were registered between January and September, while 2019 registered, in the same period, 30,864 homicides.
The Violence Map organized by the UN Security Forum points out that there were 59,080 homicides in Brazil in 2015.
The same map shows that 54.1% of homicide victims were young people between 15 and 24 years of age in 2015.
In 2015, while the average number of homicides for the total population was 28.9 deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants, the homicide rate for the young population was 60.9 deaths for every 100,000 inhabitants.
While the homicide rate for blacks increased 18.2% between 2005 and 2015, the homicide rate for non-blacks dropped 12.2% in the same period.
The homicide of women in the period mapped (2015) was recorded in 4.5 deaths for every 100 thousand inhabitants, which results in 4621 women murdered in the year. This data does not specify the cases of femicide (when death occurs exclusively because the victim is a woman in a power relationship with a man), it only reports the number of deaths of women victims of homicides.
71.9% of the homicides in 2015 were committed with firearms. For every 1% increase in the proliferation of firearms, there was a 2% increase in the homicide rate.
Also access: Slave labor in Brazil today - a reality that has not yet been abolished
Violence in Brazil and worldwide
THE World Health Organization (WHO), agency linked to the United Nations (UN), stated that, in 2018, Brazil was the ninth most violent country in the world. For every 100,000 inhabitants, we have an average of 31.1 homicides. Our homicide rate is five times the world average. Ahead of Brazil in this calculation are only:
Honduras
Venezuela (since political crisis)
El Salvador
Colombia
Trinidad and Tobago
Jamaica
Lesotho
South Africa
The world average of homicides is 6.4 deaths for every 100 thousand inhabitants. The American continent leads the ranking between the too much. One factor that stands out is that the rate of violence on our continent is close to the rate of wars in the world. This means that we live in a place where there is almost as much violence as in places where long-lasting wars are raging, as in some countries of the Middle East.
THELatin America leads the ranking of world violence. Much of the violence that takes place here results from social inequality and ineffective anti-drug policies., which, instead of reducing violence, end up feeding the drug cartels, which are responsible for generating much of the urban violence.
Allied to drug trafficking, there is also the arms trafficking, human trafficking and a complex cycle of crimes that, despite appearing more clearly in the peripheries, are headed by powerful people. Data even show that violence does not grow due to a lack of incarceration, but despite incarceration, which demonstrates that a punitive policy and mass incarceration are not effective against violence.
According to the World Prison Report, the US prison population (with the exception of the United States) grew 121% between 2000 and 2019, but organized crime gained more and more strength. This reinforces the thesis that to dismantle crime it is necessary to overthrow the head of the organized crime. However, who is behind the crime is not the person who carries a gun and sells drugs on the street, but big businessmen of crime, generally financially and politically powerful, who launder the dirty money they earn and pass themselves off as ordinary citizens, businessmen, politicians and farmers from success|2|.
The rate of intentional homicides in Latin America is very close to the same rate in African countries that live in situations of extreme poverty and political instability, such as:
Sudan
Congo
Namibia
Uganda
South Africa
Lesotho|3|
Grades
|1| Check out the data presented in the magazine's article Examclicking here.
|2| Check out the data provided in the BBC article, entitled Why Latin America is the most violent region in the world, clicking on here.
|3| Check out the list of countries with the highest rate of intentional homicides organized by Wikipedia by clicking on here.