Hunting White Elephants / Caçando Elefantes Brancos: Violence, violence, violence...and more violence

10 October 2012

Violence, violence, violence...and more violence

You don't have to speak or read portuguese to get the jist of this video where the Municpal Guard of Rio attacks beach-goes in the form of a gang. It's incredible. This happened yesterday, October 9, 2012 because the Guardas apparently didn't like that some people were playing football on the beach. Who knows their motivations. Whatever they were, the reaction was right out of MMA or a crappy 1980s video game where you whack inert creatures with long sticks. International visitors, are you ready for this? Oh, and if you need to wash the blood off your cracked skull in the showers on Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, don't. It's untreated grey water, fecal coliform counts off the charts. Mmmm.

Remember, this is the "unarmed" police force of Rio. In Ipanema, on a Tuesday afternoon. As one of the mayoral campaign slogans quipped: Não Paz com Paes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hey Chris.

This and the Mascot police brutality are shocking to say the least but what I find curious are some of the comments by viewers suggesting that the Mascot and beach protesters somehow instigated the violence.

Let be clear its obvious that the police need much more training but do you think these videos are only showing one POV?

thanks.
Bianca; October 23, 2012 at 6:00 PM
Christopher Gaffney said...: Hi Bianca,

Sry for delay in getting back...been swamped.

Well, cell phones are only POV so it's hard to show the whole picture without some editing software, and that's not really the point of the video. Even without knowing what they did or if they provoked the police, their violent response is obscene. They cheapen the dignity of the name "police" by attacking like enraged thugs. If the police were dressed as football fans, there would be on national news, but on Ipanema it's just the police being police.

so whatever the cops' point of view, their reaction was a disaster and reflects the more general attitudes about the relationship between "authority and subject".; October 30, 2012 at 5:50 PM

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