Brazil’s Bolsonaro is struggling to tackle coronavirus

Coronavirus is devastating Brazil. 31,000 people have died and the country has 558,000 confirmed cases (the actual toll is believed to be much higher). But even in the midst of a global pandemic, the state’s war on the favela drug gangs continues unabated.

It was six o’clock in the morning on May 15 when Tiê Vasconcelos woke up to the sound of heavy artillery. ‘My first reaction, as always, was to lie down on the floor’, says the 25-year-old community organiser and YouTuber, who lives in the Complexo do Alemão favela, a sprawling impoverished community in the north of Rio de Janeiro. ‘There was an intense exchange of fire, heavy noises, sounds of war, grenade explosions, armoured vehicles roaming the streets’. The terror was the result of a police incursion, led by Rio’s elite squad known as BOPE (Battalion of Special Police Operations), aimed at capturing local drug traffickers. Eight machine guns were recovered and 13 people died in the operation.