The Making of the Penha Massacre

On October 28, Rio de Janeiro’s police besieged the Penha favela for 15 hours, killing at least 121 people in the city’s worst massacre. Brazil’s right is hailing it as an anti-crime victory while overlooking their own links to violent gangs.

The sun had only just begun to inch over Rio de Janeiro’s horizon when it began. On October 28, in the tangled shantytown of flimsy dwellings that cluster beneath a Baroque church in the Penha neighborhood, thousands of heavily armed police quietly assembled to carry out what would become the largest police massacre ever recorded in the state of Rio.

Residents of the Complexo do Alemão and the Complexo da Penha — two of the city’s most impoverished and embattled favelas and strongholds of the Red Command gang — were jolted awake by the whir of helic