While the world dances to the rhythm of Bossa Nova and poses against Rio de Janeiro’s landscapes, Brazil mourns yet another police operation marked by death, blood and impunity. The images spreading online never reach the same audiences as the campaigns that sell the country as the land of joy, diversity and eternal sunshine.
The contrast is brutal: the same territory that inspires fashion editorials and luxury collections also carries a grief the world insists on ignoring. The price of this silence is high — and it is not only national.
The tragedy Brazil faced — and the world refused to see
The operation carried out on October 28, 2025 — known as Operação Contenção — mobilized around 2,500 officers and targeted mainly the Alemão and Penha complexes, in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone. Aimed at the Comando Vermelho faction, it became the most lethal police action in the state’s history, with official data and human rights organizations reporting dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
Initial counts varied: state authorities released lower numbers, while the Public Defender’s Office and residents reported a much higher toll, with bodies gathered in public squares. Families were prevented from identifying victims, and reports of bodies left out of the official count intensified public outrage.
Organizations such as Viva Rio and the Public Defender’s Office demanded investigation and transparency. The UN Human Rights Council said they were “horrified by the reports” and called for a swift and effective inquiry. Even so, outside Brazil, silence prevailed. No major brand, celebrity, or company that often associates its image with the country, spoke out.
“What we are witnessing is a selectivity of empathy”, says Silvia Ramos, coordinator of the Public Security Observatory at UFRJ. “The world is moved by Brazil’s image when it’s colorful, sensual, and musical — but refuses to face the fact that this same image is built upon a violent and unequal reality.”
When empathy has borders
Brazil’s colors and sounds have crossed borders. Our music plays at European parties, our beaches turn into movie and runway backdrops, our slang becomes social media trends.
The world loves Brazil as a cultural product — but seems unable to love Brazil as a people. When beauty gives way to pain, the enthusiasm disappears. Global empathy that mobilizes for tragedies in the Global North becomes selective when violence strikes peripheral, Black and Latin American bodies.
A report by Global Witness showed that Brazil is among the deadliest countries in the world for activists and human rights defenders, especially those involved in environmental and racial issues. Yet, few of these stories reach international media.
“There’s a fetishization of the Global South”, explains Eduardo Goulart de Andrade, journalist and researcher in communication and public policy. “Brazilian culture is celebrated, but the Brazilian people are made invisible.
There’s a deep gap between the Brazil the world consumes and the Brazil the world chooses to ignore.”
The business of silence
Companies and influencers who celebrate Brazil as a symbol of warmth and happiness remain silent before the tragedies that expose our social wounds. It is easy to wear the colors of the flag in advertising campaigns; but harder to face what those colors mean when green and yellow mix with the red of spilled blood. Silence becomes complicity — and often, strategy.
According to Datafolha, 71% of Brazilians believe police violence disproportionately targets Black people — a perception that mirrors how tragedies involving marginalized communities are often reported, or ignored. This internal perception is reinforced abroad: international attention faded quickly, as if the tragedy fell outside the world’s field of interest.
Love that refuses to listen
There’s a deep contradiction in this superficial love: Brazil is celebrated, but not heard. Seen as aesthetic inspiration, not as a society. The global cultural industry feeds on our creativity — on the music born in favelas, the fashion emerging from the outskirts, the resistance turned into art — yet ignores the structures that silence these same voices.
To love a country is also to take responsibility for it. This selective love — that applauds our culture while ignoring our pain — is a form of symbolic violence. The silence of those who profit from Brazil’s image is political. It defines which lives matter and which tragedies deserve attention.
While the world applauds our rhythm, mothers are burying their sons in the same soil that inspires songs. Global hypocrisy comes at a cost — and in Brazil, the price of silence continues to be paid in lives.
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The article above was edited by Luna Bahdur.
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