Carandiru Prison Massacre

By addressing one of the main tragedies of the 1990s, perhaps of post-dictatorship Brazil as a whole, this entry on the Carandiru Massacre (also known as the Pavilion 9 massacre) inaugurates a change in the line of entries on massacres in the Marielle Franco Dictionary of Favelas, taking the focus away from Rio de Janeiro and expanding it to the rest of the country. This makes it clear that, from the outset, the phenomenon of massacres is something common to the whole of Brazil, not just Rio de Janeiro; and that, although they don't always occur in favelas, massacres tend to annihilate mostly black people, almost always from favelas and the lower classes in general. The Carandiru massacre is an unavoidable landmark and here we present a little of how it happened and the basic consequences of the event.

Author: Matheus de Moura

Context

The Carandiru Massacre, at the São Paulo House of Detention in the Carandiru neighborhood, took place on October 2, 1992: 7 years after Brazil's democratic reopening - following 21 years of military dictatorship -, 3 years since the first direct election for the executive position at the federal level and on the very day that Fernando Collor, the then first president elected by direct vote, was removed from power to begin the impeachment process following numerous corruption scandals.

After a fierce electoral contest with PT candidate Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, Collor, who came from a strong political dynasty in Alagoas, was elected with a popularity based on anti-corruption and anti-establishment political speeches that soon deteriorated when he began to develop some of the worst economic policies in recent Brazil, such as, among the most controversial, the confiscation of Brazilian citizens' savings. Therefore, impeachment presented itself as a solid possibility when Pedro Collor, the president's brother, gave an interview to Veja magazine revealing a corruption scheme involving Fernando and his election campaign manager, Paulo César Farias, aka PC Farias.

Brazilian democracy had barely been reborn and was already suffering from its worst crises, which was affecting the possibility of establishing state credibility and legitimacy in the most diverse instances. Distrust of a state that until yesterday was literally dictatorial, instituting technical improvements in the general practices of torture and murder. The civil and military police have a history of repressive actions against black and favela populations, which has worsened over the course of our republican history, arriving in the 1990s, in the new democracy, with traces of the Vargas dictatorship and, later, the military dictatorship.

Add all this to the inflationary crisis of the period, and redemocratization is marked by the maintenance of instability and fear for racialized and/or poor people. In an academic article, Iwi Onodera ponders that “it was also in the 1990s that the number of civilians killed by the police grew alarmingly. In 1992 alone, the Military Police left 1,428 people dead in alleged shootouts in the state, including the 111 prisoners massacred in Pavilion 9, in the São Paulo House of Detention.”

The Prison Complex

On April 21, 1920, São Paulo inaugurated the State Penitentiary, inspired by the Centre Pénitentiaire de Fresnes in France. The idea was that the prison would operate with good sanitary conditions and infrastructure in order to “regenerate” criminals. In a report in Folha de SP, it says: “And for a few years it was like that. So much so that the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), who visited the prison in the 1920s, wrote in 1936 in his book Encounter with Men, Books and Countries: 'The exemplary cleanliness and hygiene turned the prison into a labor factory. It was the prisoners who baked the bread, prepared the medicines, provided services in the clinic and hospital, grew vegetables, did the laundry, painted and drew, and held classes.

Overcrowding, however, arrived within two decades and continued forever. In 1954, the governor of São Paulo, Jânio Quadros, inaugurated the Casa de Detenção there, increasing the maximum capacity to 3,250 prisoners. The dream of a model prison died. In his seminal book “Estação Carandiru”, the doctor and writer Dráuzio Varella describes that, at the time of his visits in the 1980s-1990s, the House of Detention had 7,000 inmates, having already reached 9,000 at the worst times.

The infrastructure, he continues, was made up of old and poorly maintained buildings, gray and with five floors (including the first floor); the environment had a wide circulation of prisoners for much of the day. The environment was unhealthy, with little access to sanitation, the widespread spread of diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV, and instability in terms of internal violence - some degree of self-management between prisoners meant that the worst disagreements were resolved in “Rua Dez”, which was nothing more than a section of the gallery “opposite the entrance cage to the floor, on the other side of the square, out of sight of the guards, who, in order to reach it, are forced to go through the side galleries”, as Varella describes. There, serious cases were solved with stabbings and beatings, drastically reducing the victim's chance of survival - something usually done in large groups against one or two people, rarely, if ever, solved one-on-one.

Despite the decrepit conditions and the constant tension of a considerably violent environment, there was something calm about the House of Detention. Traffic with a certain degree of freedom meant that inmates could express themselves and develop some peaceful sociability. Firearms, for example, were very rarely found hidden among the inmates. In the 12 years up to the day of the massacre, only five had been found, according to the book “História de um Massacre: casa de detenção de São Paulo” (History of a Massacre: São Paulo House of Detention), which means that 0.4 weapons per year were seized inside the prison.

Pavilion 9

One of the most crowded pavilions in the House of Detention, Pavilion Nine held up to 2,000 inmates. Like Pavilion Eight, it had cells that were considered large, almost a hundred meters long.

“In [Pavilion] Nove, there are two sorting cells with up to thirty prisoners, sleeping on the floor, squeezed together, taking care not to touch their faces to their companions' feet,” Dráuzio Varella describes in his book.

This was one of the most violent pavilions in Carandiru. The reason for this was the number of new people there. The sorting staff were always passing through and so, without having access to the rules of coexistence and still soaked in the emotions of disaffections and affections outside the prison walls, it was common that, when they came across a newcomer whom they had disliked on the streets, the blows would be delivered - and by blows we mean stabbings, beatings, etc. That's why some of the more experienced prisoners were often kept in Nove, in order to minimally control the newcomers' tensions.

The day of the killing

October 2nd, 1992.

In the morning, in the prison yard, a soccer match that had started out friendly ended in a conflict that escalated into physical aggression after the game. Barba and Coelho, two inmates from rival teams, clashed over issues related to the use of the clothesline. Coelho insulted him during the inmates' game, which was later reciprocated by Barba punching the other in the middle of the face. The rejoinder came in the form of a blow from Coelho.

The officers promptly intervened, rescuing Barba and beating Coelho and removing him from the premises. According to the report drawn up by the Organizing Committee for the Carandiru Trials:

“The gate that gives access to the second floor was locked by the guards, a fact that causes the reaction of the prisoners, who break the lock and start the riot. A friend of 'Barba' considers the aggression cowardly and challenges one of 'Coelho's' cronies to a fight. A prison officer tries to break it up, but is threatened by other inmates, who want the fight to continue. The commotion grows. Sentry PM Leal sees the prison guard in the middle of the group and, aiming his rifle, orders the jailer to be released. Another prison guard shouts for the alarm to be raised. The alarm sounds. PM Leal calls the Guard Battalion and warns them that there is a rebellion in Pavilion 9. At 1.50pm, the warders try unsuccessfully to contain the fights between the inmates. There is no possibility of inmates escaping, there are no hostages and there are no demands from the inmates. By 2pm, the jailers had left the area...

“Colonel Ubiratan Guimarães, Commander of the Metropolitan Police, became aware of the events at the House of Detention via the radio of the Police Command (Copom), which had been warned by Dr. Ismael Pedrosa, Director of the House of Detention. He went to the scene and was informed of the situation, asking for help from the São Paulo Shock Police Command, Lieutenant Colonel PM Luiz Nakaharada, who sent reinforcements. Col. Ubiratan Guimarães also met with judges Ivo de Almeida and Fernando Antônio Torres Garcia to assess the situation. Col. Ubiratan Guimarães spoke by telephone with the then Secretary of Public Security, Dr. Pedro Franco Campos, who contacted the Governor of the State of São Paulo, Luis Antônio Fleury Filho. At 2:51 p.m., it was decided that the situation was serious and the decision to hand over command to the Military Police was made official. Authorities above Col. Ubiratan assessed the need for an invasion of the House of Detention. At 3.30pm, the riot police, under the command of Col. Ubiratan, stationed themselves outside the wall. According to the complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office, despite the great uproar and signs of fire, there was no danger of escape. With the arrival of the Military Police, the prisoners began throwing stilettos and knives outside, demonstrating that they would not resist the invasion. Some put banners in the windows, indicating a request for a truce.

“The assembled authorities decided that, before the invasion of pavilion 9, the director of the Casa de Detenção, using a megaphone, would attempt one last negotiation. In the meantime, soldiers from the Special Tactical Actions Group break the padlock and chains on the gate of pavilion 9, while Col. Ubiratan meets with the commanders of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Shock Battalions of the Military Police. There was no negotiation. The Military Police troops pushed Dr. Pedrosa out of the way and invaded Pavilion 9 under the command and instruction of Col. Ubiratan Guimarães at 16:30, an action that continued until 18:30. Three hundred and twenty-five military police officers entered pavilion 9 without their respective insignia and identification badges.

“The MPs shot at the prisoners with machine guns, rifles and automatic pistols, mainly targeting their heads and chests. Dogs were also used in the operation to attack the wounded inmates. At the end of the confrontation, 111 inmates were found dead: 103 victims of gunshots (515 shots in all) and 8 died from sharp injuries. No police officers were killed. There were also 153 wounded, 130 inmates and 23 military police officers.”

The book History of a Massacre explains that the killing can be divided into three parts: first with the invasion, when most of the people in the cells were killed; then when people were removed to the courtyard; and finally when the surviving prisoners were forced to carry the bodies out of the cell, some of whom were killed while doing so. “Each prisoner received an average of 4.04 shots and some received 16, 13, 9, 8, 7, 6 or 5 shots,” the authors describe.

By moving the corpses out of the cells, the police managed to tamper with the crime scene and hinder the investigation against them.

The massacre itself was only publicized more than 24 hours later, since it took place on the eve of the municipal elections and risked affecting the performance of the right-wing party, which was seeking to remove the PT from the mayoralty of the capital of São Paulo.

Consequences

The Carandiru massacre ultimately ended without punishment for the state agents who committed the massacre. Colonel Ubiratan was even sentenced in the first instance: 632 years. It was the longest trial of the SP judiciary up to that point, with the longest sentence in the history of Brazilian justice up to that point. Still in 2001, he, who was already a state deputy for the PTB, filed an appeal, which he answered in freedom.

According to a report in UOL: “Benefiting from the privileged forum of being a member of parliament, in 2006 - the year in which he was preparing for re-election - he ended up being acquitted by the special body of the São Paulo State Court of Justice, which understood that the police officer acted, during the rebellion, in the ‘strict fulfillment of legal duty’. Months later, on September 9, 2006, the MP was shot dead in his apartment in Jardins, a noble area of São Paulo. ”

References

DE LIMA VEDOVELLO, Camila. Quem sangra na fábrica de cadáveres?: as chacinas em São Paulo e RMSP e a Chacina da Torcida Organizada Pavilhão Nove. 2022. Tese de Doutorado. [sn].

MACHADO, Marcello Lavenère. História de um massacre: Casa de Detenção de São Paulo. Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, 1993.

ONODERA, Iwi Mina et al. Estado e violência: um estudo sobre o massacre do Carandiru. Dissertação, Mestrado em História, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil. Link, 2007.

Relatório elaborado pela Comissão Organizadora de Acompanhamento para os Julgamentos do Caso do Carandiru.

Relatório n 34/00 Carandiru - Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos - 2000.

SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz; STARLING, Heloisa Murgel. Brasil: uma biografia: Com novo pós-escrito. Editora Companhia das Letras, 2015.

VARELLA, Drauzio. Estação Carandiru. Editora Companhia das Letras, 2005.

Carandiru, que faria cem anos, foi de prisão modelo a palco de massacre

Após ser condenado a 623 anos por massacre, coronel Ubiratan foi absolvido e assassinado em 2006

See also

Marielle Franco was killed for defending the right to housing (article)

The Network against Violence