Almost 63,000 people were killed by violence in Brazil in 2017. One every ninth minute. Adding up all the murders since 2001, more people died to violence in Brazil than during the wars in Iraq and Syria.

This is a sad statistic for the fifth-largest country in the world, which 20 years ago was still a beacon of economic and democratic hope. Rio de Janeiro, in particular, has been suffering from a wave of violence for the past two years because drug mafia factions are fighting each other here and taking control in more and more illegal settlements, the favelas. Rio has been bankrupt since the major events of the World Cup and the Olympic Games and has had to drastically reduce spending on public security.

The peace police UPP, which has been able to reduce violence since 2008, shrank from 9,000 to 7,100 men. The Rio state government even called in the military in June 2017 because of the overstretched police. The new radical right-wing president Bolsonaro wants to push back crime with massive violence. One of his first decisions was to relax the formerly strict gun laws: Citizens without a criminal record are now allowed to own up to four weapons.