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Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
The histories of Brazil and the United States parallel each other in myriad ways. Both
countries were born of indigenous American peoples who were holdovers from land-bridge
migration from eastern Asia millennia ago. Both countries were colonized by European entities
in the middle of the past millennia, during the 15th and 16th centuries. Both countries came to
prominence standing upon the shoulders of enslaved Africans as part of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade. Both boast rich, diverse cultures, representative of various heterogeneous racial and ethnic
groups. Both are marred with ugly histories of racist cultural practices and policies that have
persisted for over a century since the abolishment of slavery in their respective countries and
through today. Though the racial climate in the United States is well-documented, the ills facing
Black Brazilians have historically been downplayed. In the past four decades especially, antiracism movements like Reaja Ou Será Morta have gained increasing traction in Brazil. However,
the dire straits in Brazil have consistently been overshadowed by the more-publicized racial
tensions in the U.S.
The #Black Lives Matter movement began with the death of Trayvon Martin in February
of 2012. On the 26th of that month, the seventeen year-old was shot by George Zimmerman, a
resident and member of the neighborhood watch for the community Martin was walking in.
According to 911 records, Zimmerman initiated the interaction between the two, and the
altercation culminated in Martin suffering a fatal gunshot wound to the chest. The incident
incited national uproar amongst the Black community in the U.S., inspiring young Black people
nationwide to wear hoodies, the attire Martin was shot in, in sympathy and solidarity with
Martin’s death. President Barack Obama even opined, “that could have been my son” and “that
could have been me 35 years ago” in addresses responding to the national issue (Obama, 2013).
Zimmerman was initially released from police custody on the grounds that his shooting of Martin
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
was legal under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, which permits lethal force in
the face of a personal threat, and later acquitted in a jury trial based on the same law.
#BLM gained more traction and national prominence in the wake of Michael Brown’s
death on August 9, 2014. The eighteen year-old died from multiple gunshot wounds suffered in
an altercation with Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, who confronted Brown
after receiving a dispatch call alleging him as a suspect in a shoplifting case that had occurred
just minutes prior (later, video footage surfaced of Brown stealing a package of cigarillos from a
local store, the Ferguson Market, and shoving a store clerk working there). The specific details of
the altercation between Brown and Wilson vary greatly, depending on the source and the
evidence provided. Nonetheless, popular public opinion behind #BLM boiled the issue down to
the facts considered most relevant: another African-American boy was dead over a minor
shoplifting crime, and the police officer who shot him would likely not face consequences
commensurate to the boy’s death. After a grand jury investigation, officer Darren Wilson was not
indicted for Michael Brown’s death.
Though the #Black Lives Matter movement was initially sparked by the perceived
wrongful deaths of two African-American male youth, the movement itself has since broadened
its mission to include not only “the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways
in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state,” but also to
affirm “the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks
with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum” (Haki Creatives, 2016). The
broader goal seeks to use the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century as a foundational
stepping stone for 21st century issues and identities.
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
In its initiation and implementation, #BLM is very similar to the iconic Civil Rights
movement. Though the African-American community had already begun working toward
legislation to abolish Jim Crow laws that instituted slavery in the south United States, the grisly
death of Emmett Till was a catalyst for the movement’s eventual ability to achieve many of its
goals. Till was a Chicago native visiting family in Mississippi and was beat, strangled, and
ultimately marred beyond recognition before dying and being thrown in a river, for the offense of
allegedly whistling at a white woman, twenty-one year-old Carolyn Bryant. Till was thirteen at
the time of his death. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, held an open coffin funeral, stating,
“There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the
world to see” (Hampton, 1990).
The horrid image of Till’s mangled, barely-recognizable-as-human face and head served
as potent motivation for societal change: people in the United States and around the world were
finally able to see with their eyes the gruesome reality that African-Americans had to endure.
The images and subsequent trial—during which confessed killers Roy Bryant and J.W Milam
were acquitted—begot the Birmingham Bus Boycott, which vaulted Reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr. into national prominence, providing a figurehead and ample fuel to drive the Civil
Rights movement to the key legislation it sought. Thus is the power of social movements.
Though the legislation was the eventual goal, an important avenue to be able to enact the
legislation was the shifting of cultural perspectives. Many people do not comprehend an issue,
much less its magnitude, until they can see an overwhelmingly stark example or experience the
issue themselves—especially when it comes to matters of social justice.
Thus is the conundrum of fights for rights against violence and oppression across the
world. Though the images and gross examples of deaths to people of color are powerful, they
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
require both a platform to be spread and literal changes of heart in order to stop and, eventually,
reverse oppression. And these are not simple obstacles to overcome. Whereas during the Civil
Rights movement, TV and print media represented finite methods of receiving and processing
news and current events, in the 21st century, the media as a means of affecting change and
shaping understanding has changed wildly, due primarily to the infinite sources of information,
with myriad more gradients of perspective to color the rote events occurring in the world around
us. Regarding the actual change, movements are always faced with the question of which comes
first between changes in socio-cultural perspectives and legislative changes. Though the two go
hand-in-hand, they have a very symbiotic relationship with one another; both are inherently
necessary, yet both require the other to provide motivational fuel for the actual effectual change.
Social media outlets, though ever-present in citizens’ daily lives, are still struggling to
attain legitimacy in the eyes of the powers—especially governmental—that drive change in our
world. Still, their popularity- and buzz-driven nature makes it relatively easy to start campaigns,
even on a worldwide scale. It is with that spirit that Reaja Ou Será Morta was created. Translated
to “React or Die,” the campaign began in March 2005 in the wake of the death of six youngsters
between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two in Paripe, a bay district in Salvador, on the eastern
coast of Brazil. Their bodies “had been found beaten and shot, then burned,” with one of the
twenty-two year olds, a girl named Daniela, having been burned while still alive (Smith, 2016, p.
8). Though officials alleged that their deaths were drug-related, community members insist that
the dead youth were executed by the police.
Just as Mamie Till Bradley had sought to show her son’s torn body to the world, React or
Die! seeks to politicize the deaths of Brazilian youth, driven by the “desire to survive.” Smith
interviewed one of the movement’s cofounders, Hamilton Borges dos Santos, in 2012:
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
The campaign Reaja ou Será Morto arose in the streets of Salvador in 2005 in the
same month the youth from the community of Paripe were assassinated. . . . In a
meeting with more than eighteen organizations of the Black Movement, we came
to two conclusions: The first one was that we no longer would invite the Human
Rights Movement, because that movement didn’t fit with us. . . . The second was
that we would “politicize our death.” We were inspired by the Palestinian people,
who, when they lose a loved one they give prominence to the coffin and go to the
street in a protest march. We would turn the funerals in our community into a
political space, a space for amplifying our pain. Let’s politicize our death! (2016,
p. 8)
As opposed to Black Lives Matter, Reaja Ou Será Morta is not a formal organization, but rather
a campaign under which numerous Brazilian civil rights organizations rally. According to its
website, it aligns organizations that “fight against police brutality, prisons, death squads, militias
and extermination groups, and for reparations for the families of victims of the state (through
extra legal executions and killings)” and argues against rote political affiliations, positing that its
“only commitment is to life” (2016). It has become a formidable force in uniting such
organizations. The campaign held its first March Against the Genocide of Black People in
Salvador, drawing about 5,000 protestors in August 2013; a year later, in the recent wake of the
death of Michael Brown and subsequent protests in the U.S., the second March drew more than
50,000 protestors. In part due to the recent protests, President Dilma Rousseff highlighted
violence against Black youth as priority issue in the federal government’s Youth Statute in 2013
(Smith, 2016, p. 9). Though born in the same era and with strikingly similar goals to Black Lives
Matter, the circumstances facing Reaja Ou Será Morta are much more dire.
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
Special interest group reports affirm the discrimination and targeting of Black Brazilians
by police. According to the Brazilian Institute of Religious Studies, “police homicides were
twice as high as officially reported and that, in the majority of the cases investigated (64%), the
victims were shot in the back at close range—and most of these victims were of African descent”
(United Nations Human Rights Council, 2014). Looking at the issue from a wider lens makes the
situation much more horrific.
Brazil has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. In 2013, the state accounted for
55,878 homicides; in 2014, the number was 58,559 (Brazilian Form on Public Safety, 2015),
with the murder rate having skyrocketed in the last three decades, from 11.7 homicides per
100,000 citizens to 29.0 between 1980 and 2012—an increase of 143%, and far above the
murder rate of 10 listed by the World Health Organization (Amnesty International, 2015, p. 11).
By comparison, the FBI reported 12,253 total murders in the U.S. in 2013, down from 12,888 the
prior year—rates of 3.9 and 4.0, respectively (FBI, 2013). Brazilian police are accounting for a
staggering portion of these deaths, as well. In just a five-year period, from 2009-2013, Brazilian
police were responsible for 11,197 deaths, an average of six people every day, and a rate of 1.18
killed per 100,000 (CBS News). Law officials in the U.S. accounted for 2,202 “justifiable
homicides” in the same timespan (FBI, 2014). Though both countries have been criticized for
under-reporting deaths at the hands of its law enforcement forces, the 5:1 ratio between the
homicide rates in Brazilian and U.S. police forces, respectively, is grossly frightening.
The victims of the homicides in Brazil are overwhelmingly young, Black men: “Of the
more than 56,000 victims of murder in Brazil in 2012, 30,000 were young people aged between
15 and 29 years. 90% of those young victims were men and 77% were black” (Amnesty
International, 2015, p. 11). Of the more than 12,000 murders in the U.S. in 2013, 5,000 were
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
young people between 13 and 29, 86% were male and 64% were Black (FBI, 2014). The two
conditions—an imbalance of youth and Black male victims within the murder rate—further
underline the reality that young Black men have a target upon their backs. In the context of
Brazil’s harrowing problem with homicide nationally and within the police force, the deaths of
the six youngsters in Paripe were frighteningly average. The executions Black Brazilians face at
the hands of police are the current-day iteration of a long history of similar issues.
Unfortunately, the uphill battle against racial discrimination and violence facing Reaja
Ou Será Morta is as old as Brazil itself. Starting in 1530, Brazil accounted for nearly 40% of the
African enslaved peoples trafficked to the Americas—approximately four million, total, four
times the number received by the United States. Similarly to its counterpart in the U.S., a major
feature of slavery in Brazil that was markedly different from prior and almost all other
implementations of slavery was that of people being born into slavery. Still, the boom of Brazil’s
coffee industry increased the importation of enslaved peoples, rather than facilitating “breeding”
amongst the then-current population (Arsenault, 2006, p. 16). Not only did Brazil garner the
lion’s share of trafficked Africans, the state held onto the institution of slavery longer than any
other country in the Americas. When the country gained its independence from Portugal in 1822,
slavery was such an integral part of Brazil’s economy that the country’s founders did not even
take the time to question its continuance in any meaningful way. In 1871, Brazil passed “The
Law of the Free Womb,” freeing children of slaves from that point on. Fourteen years later,
Brazil passed a law freeing slaves sixty years-old and above (though not many people lived to be
sixty-five in those days, much less slaves). It was not until 1888 that Brazil passed “The Golden
Law,” which read: “From the date of this law slavery is declared extinct in Brazil.” Brazil only
changed its legal view on slavery after decades of international pressure, including seizure of
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
Brazilian ships by the British Royal Navy in order to free enslaved Africans (Arsenault, 2006, p.
16). By the time “The Golden Law” was passed, Brazil was the last country in the Americas to
end the institution of slavery.
Brazil’s newly established republican government instituted a “racial democracy” upon
its inception in 1890. Rather than segregating people by racial identity, the new regime outlawed
any discrimination on the foundation of race. There were no legal distinctions made between
those of African, European, or Brazilian descent. Unfortunately, Brazil’s retarded abolition of
slavery betrayed its harmonious intent. Racial discrimination persisted, albeit unofficially. One
of the main edicts that countered the idea of racial equality was, oddly enough, the promotion of
miscegenation. Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau pioneered the idea in Brazil during the mid19th century.
Struck with the country’s natural beauty, Gobineau, a Frenchman, was disappointed with
its ability to sustain its racial makeup. Asserting that mulattos do not maintain the ability to
“reproduce themselves beyond a limited number of generations,” he concluded that Brazil’s
population would disappear completely within 200-270 years (Fry, 2000, p. 87). The solution?
Importation of European immigrants to advance miscegenation amongst African-descendant and
indigenous Brazilian populations. The concept stood in such stark contrast to perspectives of race
relations in the U.S. and other imperialism-influenced nations that Franz Boas, a noted opponent
of scientific racism remarked:
Race feeling between Whites, Negroes, and Indians in Brazil seems to be quite
different from what it is among ourselves. On the coust there is a large Negro
population. The admixture of Indian is also quite marked. The discrimination
between these three races is very much less than it is among ourselves, and the
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
social obstacles for race mixture or for social advancement are not marked.
Similar conditions prevail on the island of Santo Domingo where Spaniards and
Negroes have intermarried. Perhaps it would be too much to claim that in theses
cases race consciousness is nonexistent; it is certainly much less pronounced than
among ourselves. (Fry, 2000, p. 89)
Effectively, the race relations in Brazil were poignantly harmonious, as evidenced by the
intermarriage of racial groups. If there were no distinct racial groups, it would be impossible to
produce racism on an institutional scale. Such an idea led Black American leaders such as
W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and Black nationalist Henry McNeal Turner to speak
favorably of the Black experience in Brazil and “advocate emigration to Brazil as a refuge from
oppression in the United States” (Fry, 2000, p. 90).
Unfortunately, this contrast served nonwhites in Brazil no better than “separate but
equal” policies served Blacks in the U.S. In fact, downplaying racial tensions in Brazil arguably
allowed the issue to persist with vitality much longer than it had in the U.S. Contemporary polls
conclude as much: “In 1995, a survey conducted by the Sao Paulo newspaper A Folha de Sao
Paulo revealed that almost 90 percent of the population acknowledged the presence of racial
discrimination in Brazil” (Fry, 2000, p. 94). Independent research studies supported this
conclusion, as well. The infant mortality rate for nonwhites (105 in 1980) was higher than that of
whites (77). The life expectancy for nonwhites was a shocking six years lower than whites (59.4
years, compared to 66.1). In 1990, whites were four times more likely to complete twelve full
years of education than nonwhites (11.8% to 2.9%) (Fry, 2000, p. 92). The criminal justice
system showed similar imbalances. In 1988, 70% of the prison population in Rio de Janeiro was
composed of “blacks” or “browns,” as was 52% of the prison population in Sao Paulo—doubling
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
the city’s 22.5% population of people of similar ethnicities (Fry, 2000, p. 92). Although there
were no distinct penal codes for mulattos, Blacks, and whites, “the association of African
physical traits with a propensity for crime was ritualized in the obligatory measurements of color
and physiognomy in the Office for Criminal Identification of Rio de Janeiro until 1942” (Fry,
2000, p. 93). Though the practice was stopped, such racial prejudices continue to inform police
practices and public perceptions to this day. The problem is, of course, not particular to the
criminal justice system.
The passing of the Afonso Arinos Act of 1951 sought to punish publish discrimination by
making cases misdemeanor offenses, punishable by law. Initially seen as a giant step forward,
the practice of the law faltered in its implementation, seen as a minor concession to appease
Black activists like Abdia Nascimento, who argued that such policies were the perpetuation of
racial democracy, which he criticized as “the social lynching of the Black in Brazil” (Smith,
2016, p. 9). Groups like Movimento Negro Unificado (Unified Black Movement), established in
1978, gained increasing prominence and influence upon Brazilian politics in subsequent decades,
leading to revamped laws in the 1980s through the late 1990s that broadened the spectrum of
crimes, outlawed propagation of Nazi ideas, and stiffened penalties for violating racial
discrimination laws to jail time (Machado, 2013).
However, such laws on the books have failed to lead to substantive action, just as they
had for the prior 100 years. The educational, economic, and legal disparities between whites and
nonwhites persist through today. Those factors, combined with the influx of drugs and,
especially, guns in the early 1980s, have coagulated into the maelstrom of violence that we have
today. After beginning export of revolvers to the United States in 1968, arms manufacturer
Forjas Taurus was purchased by the Bangor Punta Company in 1971, which served as the parent
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
company of Smith and Wesson at the time. Purchased by its current owners six years later, the
company gained control of Italian arms manufacturer Beretta’s plant in 1980, after the latter
company had finished a contract with Brazil’s military. After opening business in the U.S. in
1982 and instituting a lifetime repair policy for its firearms in 1984, the company has, according
to its U.S. affiliate website, “posted record years ever since” (Taurus USA, 2016).
Another Brazilian arms manufacturer, Amadeo Rossi, began distribution in the U.S.
around the same time, affiliating itself with the International Armament Corporation, a world
leader in arms sales, in 1977. In addition to gaining its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s with
military fire arms, as well as becoming an export agent for numerous international arms firms.
Interarmco’s owner, Samuel Cummings, “dealt with almost anybody, drawing the line Muammar
el-Qaddafi of Libya and Idi Amin of Uganda. He sold Communist Chinese rifles to flag-waving
American sportsmen. He sold weapons to the right-wing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and
his left-wing successor, Fidel Castro”; “Any government or guerrilla movement needing 30,000
automatic rifles in a hurry could dial Interarms' telephone numbers in Alexandria, Va., or
Manchester, England, and take delivery in days subject to cash and certain licensing niceties.”
(Weiner, 1998).
Indústria de Material Bélico do Brasil (War Material Industry of Brazil, or IMBEL) was
founded in 1975 in order to develop and manufacture arms for the Brazilian military
domestically, and Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos (CBC), though founded in 1926, has been
privately owned since 1979. The presence of these conglomerate arms manufacturers has
coincided with the boom in homicides in Brazil, which started in 1980, according to most data
metrics: “Across the country, gun-related homicide has increased by 387% since the 1980s”
(Muggah, 2015). The gun manufacturers’ presence alone, of course, does not necessarily
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
correlate with the skyrocketing homicide rates. However, “Of the 8,622 firearms seized by Rio
de Janeiro’s military police in 2014, over 68% were manufactured by Brazilian (governmentsubsidized) firms including Taurus, Rossi, IMBEL, and CBC. Most of these were purchased,
gifted, or stolen in Brazil” (Muggah, 2015).
In his 2015 article, Muggah goes on to argue that “At a minimum, the federal, military,
and civil police should start sharing information, tighten up controls to keep illegal firearms from
slipping into criminal markets, and mark their ammunition so it can be traced to source.”
However, the drug culture and gangs that have become prevalent in Brazil, especially since the
1990s, have created an antagonist, war-like relationship between Brazilian police and the
communities they serve:
In Rio de Janeiro and various other Brazilian states, since the 1990s, a model of
action has been adopted by police forces that places an emphasis on the repression
of drug trafficking through one-off operations and raids in favelas and peripheral
neighbourhoods where illegal selling of drugs takes place. This trade in illegal
drugs is controlled by criminal gangs and organizations which usually have a
strong armed presence in the areas where they operate. This reality has served as a
pretext to feed a narrative of war that portrays the favelas as spaces to be won
back from an enemy army (the trafficking trade). The illegality of the drugs trade
also stimulates police corruption. Indeed, the payment of so-called “arregos” –
periodic kickbacks paid by drug traffickers to the officers responsible for policing
a given area – is common practice in the city of Rio de Janeiro. (Amnesty
International, 2015)
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
The mindset regarding drug crimes adopted by the police organizations in Brazil has led to
increasing militarization and use of force within said departments. The result has been very
tangible violence against Blacks throughout Brazil, with spikes in both low-density rural areas
and high-density cities. The main feature of this tension is the “extrajudicial executions” carried
out by police forces.
In 1995, then-governor of Rio de Janeiro, Marcello Alencar, instituted what became
known as the “Far West bonus,” which rewarded both civil and military police officers with a
monetary reward up to 150% of their salaries “for actions deemed to constitute acts of bravery,
such as killing a suspect in a police operation” (Amnesty International, 2015). Though the
reward was abolished in 1998, it was a strong representative of attitudes towards police and their
relations with the communities they were assigned to serve. Not only did it entrench impunity for
killing citizens in the line of duty into the police culture with an official decree, it rewarded such
killings. In a country with as tenuous a history between races as Brazil, the edict was a veritable
death sentence for whomever the police would target—which, statistics inform, have been and
continue to overwhelmingly be young Black men—for years after its termination. It gave license
for the police to kill at will, with a back pocket excuse of drug offense to get out of jail free.
Communities in Brazil are then faced with the quandary of having their loved ones killed by
police or allowing the ills of their communities persist by refusing police help. It is a lose-lose
situation for the masses of poor, Brazilian nonwhites.
Reaja Ou Será Morta has opposed itself to violence against Black Brazilians, and has
expanded the definition upon violence to include not just physical attacks, but those upon a
person’s vitality and viability as an individual with agency in the world around them:
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
Whether it is the physically violent moment when the police decide to use force
against black bodies, the structurally violent moment when employers decide to
discriminate in hiring based on appearance, or even the symbolically violent
moment when children’s entertainment stars associate black women with ugliness
and foul odors; words, gestures, actions, movements, looks, and attitudes produce
racial meaning dialogically. (Smith, 2016, p. 12)
The movement furthers the idea of violence as not purely physical, asserting that the conundrum
facing Black Brazilians is purposeful, an act of genocide against Black people. At once, the
definition of genocide is broadened as well. As Smith notes, the movement “addresses the
multilayered and multivalent dynamism of genocide against black people by identifying it as
inextricable from sexism and homophobia. Genocide includes ‘all sorts of sexual hatred’ and the
‘lethal combination of sexism and racism’” (2016, p. 18). It recognizes what a lot of historical
evidence points to: legislation is not sufficient to reverse the systematic injustices facing the
citizens of Brazil (or, arguably, any country with such problems) today.
So what of the end game? How, exactly, are the injustices to be stopped and eventually
reversed? As Smith notes, Reaja Ou Será Morta is a “witnessing project.” “Witnessing is
watching, placing oneself in solidarity with the struggle of the people, peeling back the layers of
hidden social meaning that are embedded in the practice of racialized, colonial violence, and
politically investing oneself in the active pursuit of the demise of the colonial system” (Smith,
2016, p. 183). The idea is that by beinging witnesses and bringing more witnesses to the literal
and figurative genocide of Black Brazilians, people will be moved to effect actual, meaningful
change. However, the problem of the heart remains. Though legislation and change of heart have
historically had a symbiotic relationship, taking turns in creating significant change, Brazil’s
Reaja Ou Será Morta: Fighting Genocide in 21st Century Brazil
history proves that legislation is not what the country needs to right its wrongs; only a culturewide change of heart will do.
React or Die! continues to get traction on a global scale. In 2007, Aurina Rodrigues
Santana, her son Paulo, and her partner, Rodson da Silva Rodrigues, were found face down in a
pool of their own blood, with their hands behind their heads, execution-style. According to Mrs.
Santana’s two young daughters, who witnessed the crime, three masked men then robbed the
house and left bags of marijuana and crack by the bodies. “Two months prior to her murder,
Aurina Santana had reported military police officers Ademir Bispo de Jesus, Antônio Marcos de
Jesus, and José Silva Oliveira from the Forty-Eighth CIPM… for invading her home and
torturing her son and her thirteen-year-old daughter” (Smith, 2016, p. 184). In response, Reaja
Ou Será Morta helped organize a U.N. investigation through public denouncement of the
murders by several of its organizations.
In that respect, Reaja Ou Será Morta has done well to respond to some of the problems
facing it. The more presence it gains on social media, the harder it becomes to ignore the
movement and its objectives. As they continue to be consistent, they will continue to garner
legitimacy from the U.N. and other organizations, in order to put increasing pressure upon the
government in Brazil to take tangible action to stop the literal and figurative genocide of Black
Brazilians. As they gains such notoriety, it will become easier to position its members into roles
of power within the Brazilian government and make the significant changes needed to set those
tangible actions in motion, perhaps even changing the culture from the top-down. But still, just
as the Civil Rights movement did, Reaja Ou Será Morta has a long way to go before its ideas will
take root.