Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after more than 130 were killed in pre-dawn assault
Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after more than 130 were killed in pre-dawn assault
Day had yet to break over Vila Cruzeiro but already dozens of corpses were splayed out along the favela’s main drag after more than 130 people were killed during the deadliest police operation in Rio’s history: grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies that had been dragged out of nearby forests and dumped on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street.
“I’ve brought 53 down myself … there must be another 12 or 15 up there in the bush,” said Erivelton Vidal Correia, the head of the local residents’ association, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night spent hauling bullet-riddled local men down from the hills.
Correia broke down as he described his relentless nocturnal hunt for the dead after Rio suffered what is being called one of the biggest police massacres in modern Brazilian history.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, brother – not even in the Gaza Strip does this happen … I can’t bear to see any more corpses,” he wept, covering his face with the surgical gloves he was using to handle the deceased.
Rio officials said on Tuesday that at least 64 people, including four police officers, had been killed after a force of 2,500 launched a pre-dawn assault on Alemão and Penha, the vast patchwork of favelas of which Vila Cruzeiro is part. By the early hours of Wednesday the public prosecutor said the death toll had risen to 132 – higher than during São Paulo’s notorious Carandiru prison massacre in 1992, when 111 prisoners lost their lives.
Between 4.15am and 9am, when government body collectors finally arrived, the Guardian witnessed pickup trucks delivering dozens of corpses to a square in Vila Cruzeiro named after Saint Luke the Evangelist.
“I’ve never seen anything like this … I still haven’t managed to comprehend what has happened. I feel empty. I have no words,” said Raull Santiago, a favela activist, as another cargo of corpses arrived, sending local women scrambling in search of their missing husbands, brothers or sons.
