Why have murders of black women in Brazil soared but dropped for white women?

SÃO PAULO — Violence has stalked Joana* throughout her life.

After surviving a brutal childhood she had to defend herself and her two children from an abusive husband from whom she eventually ran after he tried to stab her to death. It didn’t stop there.

Struggling to make ends meet in her new home in a violence-plagued shantytown in São Paulo, Joana took in a nephew in order to help pay the rent but he was lured into local drug gangs.

“They wanted to show us who was boss,” the 40-year-old black Brazilian told VICE News, cracking a smile that quickly faded. “They raped me and my young daughter, and threatened to do the same to my son.”

Sitting in a small stuffy room with black mold creeping down the walls, Joana remembered her desperation over five lonely years of near-daily violent abuse.

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21 January 2015

World surfing community mourns Ricardo dos Santos

Anadolu Agency

SÃO PAULO — Members of the world surfing community paid tribute on Wednesday to popular Brazilian surfer Ricardo dos Santos, who died of gunshot wounds a day earlier.

Dos Santos, 24, was shot three times on Monday by an off-duty military police officer outside his house in Palhoça, near Florianópolis in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

Despite four operations, he died of his injuries on Tuesday afternoon.

Conflicting reports have surfaced about the cause of the altercation between the surfer, the officer and another man, reportedly the officer’s brother.

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