4 more in Sao Paulo. We already have groups in 13 states made up of family members affected by the military police," she says with pride. Their organization collaborates with the Network Against Violence in Rio as well as mothers from Espiritu Santo, Minas Gerais, Belem, Pará, Acre and Pernambuco, and other important states.

When Débora speaks, even when she gets upset, she does so with a certain serenity. "Our meetings are very painful. We cry. We suffer anguish because the impunity is what hurts the most. People raise a child and the state kills it. Mothers don't symbolize death, but life. During the meetings people don't accept what happened. They cry when they see a photo of their child. I'm being treated for depression. I'm a widow because my husband died in a similar way as my son did … and I have a brother who was disappeared." From what one hears in the Bahia Social Forum, Débora's reality seems to be shared by many Brazilian families.

Expendable People

"The state exterminates the poor, black inhabitants of favelas because it's easier to kill them than give them education and healthcare, because to them the poor are expendable. Black boys are the most vulnerable. The security policy of this country is a policy of extermination; they prefer jails to schools. When young people are murdered, their deaths are deemed 'resistance' killings, or 'acts of resistance,' which do not exist in the penal code," Débora explains, politicized by her life experience.

Nonetheless, these are not just the opinions of a mother in distress. The book Crimes of May published six months after the events by the CONDEPE (State Council for the Defense of Human Rights, of Sao Paulo), an independent commission composed of representatives from the Federal ...