RACISM AND NECROPOLITICS IN REPUBLICAN BRAZIL

Abstract

This study talks about racism and its expression through criminal and public security regulations in republican Brazil. We conducted a historical analysis of necropolitics in the American country that kept slavery for the longest period, the one that most received enslaved Africans, and that, currently, has the third largest jail population in the world. Our main objective was to investigate how the creation and enforcement of laws and guidelines worked ”“ and still do ”“ as means of control, criminalization, imprisonment, and even the execution of black individuals in the country. The proposed analysis made it possible to determine that, after having the black population been made free by the abolishment of slavery, the State made different use of its legal, judicial, and prison institutions to control black people, sentencing them either to social or actual death. Therefore, we can see that racism has always been a central variable in the Brazilian legal and criminal processes, also orientating the police practices. Such factors help to create the current scenario, in which black people are the majority among the jailed population, as well as the most victimized group because of the “war on drugs”. New threats to the poor and black populations also rise with the national ultraright-wing advent and the growing arming of the population.