Brazilian Police Militia's

Insurgency Overview

For decades, Brazil has been plagued by extensive crime syndicates thriving on the drug trade. The fight against the cartels has allowed for another kind of “grey zone” of organized groups to emerge, the so-called police militias. These groups originated as neighborhood watches largely formed by law enforcement officers protecting their own areas, but have grown massively and now control large swathes of cities like Rio de Janeiro. Their ties to political institutions and their strong law enforcement component shelter them from official reprisal even as they have grown into extensive racket-based armed gangs.

History & Foundations

Brazil’s recent political history has been troubled. Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, the county was under a brutal military dictatorship. In this context, in 1965 some police officers [RG1] created the first “death squad” of Latin America in order to avenge a fallen officer[RG2]  (1).  The “Scuderie Le Cocq” death squad continued operating as a group until the early 2000s, while it and other death squads continued perpetrating brutal interrogations, extrajudicial killings, and even battles against anyone deemed to be an opponent of the state, a drug trafficker, or both (2). During this time, it has been estimated that such death squads killed at least 900 people (3). In line with other Latin American countries, Brazil went through a phase of democratisation in the 1980s; however, this did not result in the resolution of all institutional and cultural legacies of the dictatorship (4). This was exacerbated by the dramatic increase in drug trafficking and drug-related violence during the same time, which opened up spaces that the Brazilian state was unable to fill (5). Hence, the culture of violence in law enforcement not only remained unaddressed, but itself came to be considered a consequence of the dire circumstances of the explosion of drug crime, while the weak institutional framework created the necessary vacuum that self-organised policemen filled by creating “militias” (6).

As the structure and culture of policing was not reformed after the dictatorship’s end, no reform in procedures took place, and the same methods carried over to a new generation of policemen (7). It is quite explanatory that even the original “Scuderie Le Cocq” death squad continued operating until 2004, when it was disbanded by Brazil’s Federal Court; it then reappeared as a “philantrophic association” in 2015 (8).

These groups started establishing control of several urban areas throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, usually by entering neighbourhoods and promising residents to curb local crime and eliminate the threat of drug cartels (9). However, these groups gradually established their own protection rackets in the areas under their control, while also monopolising even basic services such as gas, TV, and taxis (10).

Objectives & Ideology

Militias are not inherently political groups, and so their political affiliation is at times not a primary driver of their activity or a foundational characteristic. However, it is important to note that their existence harks back to the era in which death squads emerged, i.e., in connection with a military dictatorship that saw political opponents as the prime enemy of the State (11). Over half of the original members of the “Scuderie Le Cocq” were even veterans of the police force of the Estado Novo, an earlier dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1937 and 1945 based on a fascist model (12). Other death squads also operated during the military dictatorship era and were directly responsible for the killings and the disappearances of hundreds of people, including left-wing opposition activists (13). While death squads between the 1960s and 1980s had as their primary objective the elimination of threats to the dictatorial establishment (and as such, were essentially state-sanctioned), modern police militias are mainly driven by a quest for economic and political power in the extralegal spaces created by Brazilian state institutions’ weakness (14).

Political & Military Abilities

The militias have been slowly expanding and solidifying their power for decades, not only in a structural but also in a cultural sense. Their networks have expanded to include complicit politicians, city council members, and even state congressmen (15). These are not only individuals who are sympathetic or committed to a particular militia’s objectives, but they are increasingly former or current militia members, indicating a pattern of collusion between state authorities and these organisations that goes beyond occasional and individual cases (16).

In some cases, colluded officials make use of federal programmes to create new revenue streams for the militias, e.g., by accessing federal funding for subsidised housing in order to build in areas under militia control and then dictate who is going to lodge in the new buildings, “tax” them, and so on (17). In this regard, some militias are able to constitute themselves as a parallel state-like entity, in which it is difficult or impossible to separate in what capacity acts are carried out by the same individuals—i.e., whether it is the state or the militia’s power that is being imposed (18).

These political and institutional ties continue to feed into a gray area that makes prosecution difficult, something that is compounded by the predominating culture in law enforcement, whereby police are reluctant or incapable of understanding militias as entirely criminal entities (19). At the same time, the extended control that a militia holds over a certain territory creates not only a long-lasting shadow economy in the area, but also an electoral stronghold (20).

Such ties are further cemented through the infiltration of every facet of local community life; militias are known to establish ties with local Christian churches and are able to integrate themselves and be present even in the religious sphere (21).

The pervasiveness of these organisations cannot be understated, as they are now present in fifteen of Brazil’s federal states, and not even the country’s presidency has remained unsullied: former president Jair Bolsonaro and his family have been heavily implicated in militia activity (22, 23). In the aftermath of a local anti-militia politician’s murder in Rio de Janeiro, it has been revealed that the wife and daughter of a high-profile militiaman involved in the murder were on Jair Bolsonaro’s son’s political payroll, and were thus formally employed by the State (24).

Jair Bolsonaro has always had a controversial history, and has been known to express public support for the death squads that operated under the dictatorship, but the revelation that one of assassins in the slaying of Marielle Franco (the local politician mentioned previously) lived in the same upscale gated community that Bolsonaro lives in, is evidence of the close ties that the former president has enjoyed with the militia underworld (25).

Bibliography

1. Araujo de Paula, L.  The “Grey Zones” of Democracy in Brazil: The “Militia” Phenomenon and Contemporary Security Issues in Rio de Janeiro. In: Justice spatiale = Spatial justice, 8, 2015. pp. 15

2. Ibidem, pp. 16-17.

3. Fogel, B. & Richmond, A. R. Outsourcing Repression. In: Jacobin, 06.04.2019. Available at: https://jacobin.com/2019/06/colombia-paramilitaries-bolsonaro-militias-fascism

4. Araujo de Paula, L.  The “Grey Zones” of Democracy in Brazil, cit. pp. 23

5. Cfr. Ibidem, pp. 18-19.

6. Ibidem, pp. 19-21.

7. Lima. T. Rio de Janeiro’s Militias and State Power, Part 2: Specialists Describe Their History and Expansion Over Time. In: RioOnWatch, 18.04.2025. Available at: https://rioonwatch.org/?p=71202

8. Ibidem.

9. Phillips, D. 'Lesser evil': how Brazil's militias wield terror to seize power from gangs. In: The Guardian, 12.07.2018. Available at:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/brazil-militia-paramilitary-wield-terror-seize-power-from-drug-gangs 

10. Cfr.  Fogel, B. & Richmond, A. R. Outsourcing Repression. Cit.

11. Cfr. Lima. T. Rio de Janeiro’s Militias and State Power, Part 2, Cit.

12. Araujo de Paula, L.  The “Grey Zones” of Democracy in Brazil, cit. pp. 15.

13. Ibidem, pp. 16.

14. Ibidem, pp. 17.

15 Phillips, Dom. 'Lesser evil': how Brazil's militias wield terror to seize power from gangs. In: The Guardian, 12.07.2017. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/12/brazil-militia-paramilitary-wield-terror-seize-power-from-drug-gangs

16. Ibidem.

17. Simões, M. “No Rio de Janeiro a milícia não é um poder paralelo. É o Estado”. In: Pública, 28.01.2019. Available at:https://apublica.org/2019/01/no-rio-de-janeiro-a-milicia-nao-e-um-poder-paralelo-e-o-estado/

18. Ibidem.

19. Ibidem.

20. Lima. T. Rio de Janeiro’s Militias and State Power, Part 2:, cit.

21. Ibidem.

22. Ibidem.

23. Greenwald, G. & Pougy, V. Video: As Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro Prepares to Meet Donald Trump, His Family’s Close Ties to Notorious Paramilitary Gangs Draw Scrutiny and Outrage. In: The Intercept, 18.03.2019.

24. Ibidem.

25. Ibidem.