“Rio de Janeiro Remains Beautiful” — or So the Song Said
“Rio de Janeiro remains beautiful,” the song said — but today the melody sounds ironic. What unfolds in the streets, alleys, and hills is an undeclared civil war between two powers: the formal power of the State and the armed power of organized crime. On one side, the government flirts with speeches about human rights and social inclusion; on the other, factions like the Comando Vermelho enforce their own “law,” collecting taxes, controlling supplies, and even deciding who lives and who dies.
More than 44,000 Brazilians die each year as victims of violent crime. The country faces a silent epidemic that no longer shocks — horror has become banal. And when the State finally acts, as in the recent operation in the Complexo do Alemão, the outcome is brutal: over a hundred criminals killed, dozens arrested, and nearly a hundred weapons of war seized. A bloodbath that exposes the moral and structural failure of a country where the line between right and wrong dissolves into political cynicism.
Meanwhile, President Lula remains unreachable — perhaps too occupied with international agendas and speeches about democracy to notice the fire burning in his own backyard. The UN, through António Guterres, rushes to condemn “human rights violations” in the favelas, yet ignores that the ones who suffer these violations daily are the residents held hostage by militias and traffickers. Human rights for those wielding rifles? Or for those living under their terror?
Brazil has become a parable of inversions: the State is blamed when it acts and scorned when it does nothing; criminals are treated as victims, and honest citizens, as statistics. Rio de Janeiro is the mirror in which the entire country should dare to look — and admit that the true enemy is not only in the favelas, but in the structural complicity that keeps them captive.
Until public authorities assume, with courage and honesty, that a war is underway — and that neutralizing crime is not oppression, but liberation — Brazil will continue to bury innocents to the melancholic tune of a song that no longer makes sense: “Rio de Janeiro remains beautiful…”