“They have grown massively over the last few years to the extent that they are now the biggest armed group, with the greatest level of control,” said Fogo Cruzado’s director, Cecília Olliveira.Ĭláudio Ferraz, the head of Rio’s organized crime squad from 2007 to 2010, called militias “one of the greatest threats to sovereignty and the democratic rule of law state in this country”.ĭuring his mafia-fighting days, Ferraz jailed hundreds of alleged paramilitaries, including Jerônimo Guimarães, and became known as Rio’s “militia hunter”.Ī 2008 parliamentary inquiry – which recommended the indictment of more than 200 people for suspected militia ties, including the then local congressman Natalino Guimarães and city councillor Jerônimo Guimarães – dealt a major blow to the mafia-style groups. Last month the violence-tracking group Fogo Cruzado claimed Rio’s militias now commanded an area almost the size of Birmingham, the UK’s second biggest city, where more than 1.7 million people lived. But experts say militias now pose a far graver threat to the city and – because of their political ambitions and connections, including to far-right president Jair Bolsonaro – to Brazilian democracy itself.

Rio’s three drug factions have earned international notoriety thanks to blockbuster films about gangland life such as City of God and Elite Squad. In the two decades since the Guimarães brothers allegedly founded the Justice League, such groups have only grown more powerful. Jerônimo Guimarães is now dead but his murder will do nothing to slow the advance of Rio’s heavily armed milícias (militias) across Brazil’s most famous city. The murder made front-page headlines and ended a controversial life, nearly 11 years of which were spent behind bars for his alleged role in creating the Liga da Justiça (the Justice League), which would become Rio’s most feared paramilitary group. Guimarães’s “braveheart” brother was Jerônimo Guimarães Filho, a former policeman, politician and convicted paramilitary leader, who was shot dead in early August by a trio of black-clad assassins. “We fight for the people bringing good and not evil.” All these people here are Bravehearts,” Guimarães declared, motioning to the crowd outside the cemetery’s VIP chapel, many sporting caps or T-shirts emblazoned with the nickname.

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