Scapegoating outsiders: The murders of street youth in modern Brazil

Abstract

This analysis of youth murders in modern Brazil focuses on victim‐generating sociostructural situations and the social creation of victims. We assert that as political and social outcasts the young victims of murder are virtually powerless within the legitimate system ‐ hence their civic invisibility. And when poor youths’ presence on Brazilian streets is combined with their political inconsequence, the prospective victims are socially visible only as symbolic assailants and are rendered vulnerable to uncontested murder by strangers. For the most part their murderers are “rent‐a‐cops” and on‐ and off‐duty police, either working as lone‐wolf justiceiros or in groups of death squads. The actions of these killers is neutralized by cultural stereotypes that transform victims into victimizers and make killers into social servants.