Originally published as: Anjuli Fahlberg, "Another Fire is Raging in Brazil — in Rio’s Favelas," The Washington Post, September 6, 2019.
As the fires rage in Brazil’s Amazon, another fire burning in Brazil has received much less attention: the dramatic rise in police brutality against Rio de Janeiro’s “favelas,” or poor neighborhoods, where nearly a quarter of the city’s population resides. Since Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his ally Rio Governor Wilson Witzel took office in January, a record 1,075 Rio de Janeiro residents have been killed by the police, accounting for 40 percent of all violent deaths in metropolitan Rio de Janeiro.