Lingering trauma in Brazil: Police violence against black women

Author: Christensen Smith

In: NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol 50, No 4, 2018, pp. 369-376

This article points out the necessity of resisting anti-Black women policing practices, and argues that resistance must be organised by rethinking how we understand police violence in relation to the passage of time. Smith makes use of the term sequelae, which indicates ‘a condition that is the consequence of a previous disease’, to help shed light on the effects of police brutality on women, and its medium and long-term effects that are often overlooked. The article recalls four known Black women whose murder prompted vast public outcry - Claudia Silva de Ferreira; Marielle Franco; Luana Barbosa; and Aurina Rodrigues Santana – and articulates how sequelae are the combination of both physical and emotional trauma suffered by Black women.