Violence, Drug War and State Racism in Brazil

Abstract

The 'war on drugs' policy generates a situation of widespread violence in Brazilian society, especially for those who are in a condition of greater economic, social and ethno-racial vulnerability. Based on data from recent years on homicides, deaths resulting from police intervention and police victimization, crimes by trafficking and incarceration, the article aims to analyze the relationship between violence derived from drug policy in Brazil and racism. Considered from a biopolitical perspective, the data indicate that the 'war on drugs' policy operates by building the notion of a dangerous individual and by the criminal and lethal selectivity of black people, revealing the racist nature of the state itself, not only in establishing who should live and who should die, but also in producing death thus promoting necropolitics.