Lessons from a murder in Rio de Janeiro

ON THE sweltering afternoon of March 18th some 2,000 people crammed the narrow streets of Maré, a favela in the north of Rio de Janeiro, to protest against the murder of a friend. Marielle Franco, a city councillor who grew up in Maré, was shot dead four days earlier in the city’s centre (along with her driver) after a meeting she had organised for young black women. “She was killed for trying to make things better,” said Diony, a supermarket employee watching the protesters parade slowly through Maré.

The assassination of Ms Franco, a young, black, gay activist, has reverberated far beyond her birthplace. It was the subject of 3.6m tweets in 34 languages in less than two days. Thousands of people marched in cities across Brazil. In February the president, Michel Temer, made Rio’s crime a national issue when he ordered the army to take control of the state’s police, prisons and fire services until the end of this year. This is the first such intervention since the end of military rule in 1985. Ms Franco’s murder will help keep crime uppermost in Brazilians’ minds when they vote in elections scheduled for October.