Rio protests disappearance of poor Favela resident.

AutorGaudin, Andres

The disappearance of Amarildo de Souza, a 43-year-old construction worker, two months ago exemplifies the ongoing political repression Brazilians face daily.

Authorities claimed they released De Souza immediately after police mistakenly picked him up as a suspected drug dealer. De Souza, however, never reached work or returned home. After a Unidade de Policia Pacificadora (UPP) patrol detained him as he left his home in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Rocinha on July 14, he has not been heard from or seen again.

Major media did not report on De Souza's "disappearance" until two weeks later when thousands took to the streets in protest. On Aug. 1, O Globo, a Rio de Janeiro daily, and O Estado of Sao Paulo reported on Movimento Rio de Paz's protest calling for the release of De Souza, a member of a neighborhood committee and father of six children. The demonstration passed through Copacabana beach, famed as a place of beautiful sunsets, lovers' encounters, and weekend beach-soccer games.

When Pope Francis spoke to 3 million faithful at the same beach on July 24 (NotiSur, May 3, 2013), less than a week before the protest, he denounced frequent violence and disappearances occurring in favelas (NotiSur, Jan. 18, 2008, and June 13, 2008), neighborhoods clinging to the hillsides surrounding the city that was Brazil's capital until 1960.

Number of disappeared tops 34,000

In the last seven years--between January 2007 and May 2013-34,681 people have disappeared in Rio de Janeiro, according to the Movimento Rio de Paz, a humanitarian organization that cited official statistics from the Instituto de Seguranca Publica (ISP). The organization says that 80% of the "disappeared" are from the favelas.

The figure is shocking when compared with the 30,000 killed or disappeared under Argentina's military dictatorship that institutionalized political disappearances between 1976 and 1983 because Rio is a city--obviously much smaller and less populated today than the neighboring country was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rio's 16 million inhabitants live in a 2,000 sq km area while 2.7 million sq km Argentina had a population of 25 million.

On Aug. 11, Brazilian Father's Day, a few hundred people gathered to call attention to De Souza's fate. His wife and children participated in the protest, the third of a series in which people carried signs asking, "Who killed Amarildo?" The same day Amnesty International (AI) called for an end of "the practice of suspending...

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