Do you see the building at the end of this avenue? You’re looking at the Candelária Church, infamous for a horrible event that took place there. In the early hours of July 23, 1993, six children and two teenagers were murdered by military police in a massacre that shocked the country and the world. The police arrived in plainclothes in a civilian car and a taxi with covered plates. They shot at dozens of homeless people, mostly children, who were sleeping around the Candelária Church.
TV Globo covered the event extensively. “On [the television news program] Jornal Nacional on the 26th, the reporter showed that Rio de Janeiro still mourns the death of murdered children. Candles and cards were left on makeshift monuments in Candelária Square. Activists from all over the world arrived in Rio to protest the crime. One activist, an American and member of an organization in defense of black rights, compared Brazilian police brutality to that of Los Angeles police. European TV broadcasters and print media also covered the Candelária massacre. In London, correspondent Silio Boccanera explains how reports from the era discuss the crime as one more example of routine tragedies in major Brazilian cities: the slaughter of children and the indifference of the authorities,” summarizes the site from the memory of the broadcaster.
The investigation led to the condemnation of three police officers. “Two decades later, key figure in a series of murders, soldier Marcus Vinícius Emmanuel Borges, 46-years old, is on the run. The other two officers had their sentences overturned and are also free,” says the report by the journal O Globo in 2013, twenty years after the crime. Marcus Vinícius Emmanuel was condemned to 300-years prison, but served only 18 years. Six other suspects were cleared, despite proof of their involvement in the massacre.