The gunmen wore black military fatigues and ninja masks when they arrived in Seropédica, a nondescript town of 84,000 near Rio de Janeiro, and began systematically driving out the drug gangsters.
Those who refused to leave were killed.
“There were three weeks of deaths,” said one resident – who like many locals was still unwilling to be named three years later. “Many people know. They just don't open their mouths.”
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Known as “militias”, paramilitary groups – which often include former and serving police officers and firefighters – have quietly taken control of swathes of Rio's western suburbs since they emerged in the early 2000s.
As they did in Seropédica, they commonly arrive in a neighbourhood claiming they will drive out criminals and dealers – but soon start their own extortion and protection rackets.
“It was like a tax, that's what everyone said, to keep the security of the neighbourhood,” the resident said.
Since then, various militia groups have exerted discreet yet effective control of Seropédica and other neighbourhoods across the hardscrabble flatlands around Rio, known as the Baixada Fluminense.
Their money-making operations include controlling or extorting “taxes” on business including cooking gas sales, pirate cable TV and internet networks and minibus transport routes.
Unlike Rio's drug gangs, they do not man checkpoints nor patrol on motorbikes with machine guns slung over their shoulders – but they routinely murder those who cross them, disobey them or speak too freely about them.
“Homicide is used as an instrument of force and to impose terror on the community,” said Daniel Braz, coordinator of Rio state prosecutors' organised crime group.
After years in the shadows, Brazil's militias are now back in the spotlight after the assassination in March of Marielle Franco – a black Rio city councillor – and her driver, Anderson Gomes.
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