Every day since 6 May 2021, Sandra Gomes dos Santos has waited for a familiar sound: the front gate being unlocked and the call, “Mum, I'm here!” Every morning since that fateful day, Adriana Santana de Araújo has found herself checking her phone for a “good morning” text from her son.
Both women wait in vain. Their sons were among 28 people killed in the deadliest police raid in Rio de Janeiro state history. Heavily armed police stormed Jacarézinho, one of Rio’s largest favelas, in pursuit of drug traffickers. The attack occurred just a few days before Dia das Mães or Mothers’ Day. Santos and Araújo were just two of the many mothers who spent Dia das Mães burying their sons.
That was just the start of their ordeal. There was also the enervating business of simply living. “We have to survive every day,” said Araújo, as Santos nodded in agreement. Our interview took place in a samba school, just a few metres away from the entrance to Jacarézinho. Santos, who still lives here because she can’t afford to rent anywhere else, says she is in constant fear of the police on guard nearby. They are part of the Cidade Integrada, a programme that has police permanently posted within a favela, supposedly to protect residents from financial exploitation by gangs. But some of the policemen in Jacarézinho were part of the operation in which Santos’s son was killed.
