Juvenicide and Access to Justice in the Northeast: Crossings of Race, Class, and Gender in the Narratives of Families of Victims of the State
juvenicide, families, Northeast, justice access
Lethal violence has been the main cause of death among young people in Brazil. People aged 15 to 29, black, poor, male, and from the Northeast, represent the majority of homicide victims in the country. After the death of these young men, the bereaved families, mostly made up of women and black people, are the ones who have to start dealing with the Criminal Justice System in the process of investigation, judgment, and accountability. Analyzing the crossings of class, race, and gender in the narratives and practices produced in the process of seeking access to justice, memory, and truth by the families of young victims of homicides and by the social movements that support them, was the objective of this work. The research was inspired by the Dialectical and Historical Materialism method, considering that people and their stories are central to the process of knowledge production, in addition to the fundamental intersectional analysis for understanding how social structures sustain and complexify reality. This study was divided into two main fronts: (1) collection and analysis of public data on homicides of young people in the Northeast and (2) analysis of the narratives of women, mothers/relatives of young victims of the State, about access to justice in the region North East. The narratives and practices of social movements that support the families of young homicide victims were considered in the case selection process and in understanding the reality, focusing on the states of Bahia, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte. The results not only identify specific elements to achieve the objective of the research but also seek to provoke reflections on violence directed at Northeastern youth, as a manifestation of a system that intentionally perpetuates "juvenicide" in Brazil, using racism, capitalism, and gender oppression as pillars, mechanisms and tools of policies that promote death.