Solon Brochado: Rio de Janeiro has a history of Public Security secretaries who’re great at delivering speeches, or writing essays on social problems, but who are incapable of turning all that academic knowledge into results. Over at NoMínimo, Guilherme Fiuza is not very happy with the last in this lineage of fine men, mr. Marcelo Itagiba.
The incredible Itagiba
There’s nothing else to do. The phrase that doctors use to say to terminally ill patients’ families is the best synthesis of what the Rio de Janeiro’s State Public Security secretary, the federal agent Marcelo Itagiba, is saying to the population he’s payed to defend. In other words, of course. During the last shootings through the city’s streets, the man who commands the police has addressed sophisticated messages to the society. One would say that with his carreer as a comissioner, Brazil is losing a great sociologist.
Itagiba had already explained to the enlightened population that it shouldn’t keep its arms crossed, waiting for the police to do everything. That’s a concept from the past. In the third millenium, in the era of sinergy and holism, organized civil society is not a passive actor anymore. It can and should interact with the State, providing it with information and even physical collaboration - maybe even hunting a few bad guys, on the way to or from work, if that ain’t asking for too much.
That is, common people have to stop with this habit of thinking the police is all powerful. The security forces’ power is very relative, teaches comissioner Itagiba, already rounding Einstein’s backyard. Matter is made of moving particles, and everyone knows that, because of that, it is, but isn’t, is, but isn’t. Just like the police.
It’s a great relief for the population of Rio de Janeiro to have someone, at last, to explain to them the immaterial, impalpable state of the public security forces. The downfall of a belief is always a way that leads towards the truth. During the last panic crisis in the city, for example, when citizens abandoned their cars in one of the town’s most crowded tunnels and went off running desperately, professor Itagiba went to the core of the problem. It wasn’t a case of establishing police protection in front of the Rocinha slum, where the traffic’s boss had been killed. None of these physical simplifications. Thanks to the secretary, it became known that the problem was, once again, a sociological one. And again, it was the civil society that needed to do its part.
Marcelo Itagiba explained that the poorer population can’t compromise with the parallel power. It’s unbelievable that no one thought of that before. The Public Security secretary taught us that you shouldn’t buy gas supplied by the hills’ owners, you shouldn’t ride vans explored by forfeiters, you shouldn’t pay rent to illegal slum real estate speculators. Do not accept the protection and services offered by these bandits, exhorted Itagiba.
These residents of needy communities are real sloths. They buy gas and ride vans from bandits just because they’re at hand. If they catched a boat to the other side of the sea, they could easily use London’s subway and cook with British Petroleum’s gas. With the advantage that none of these suppliers threaten those clients who don’t use their products, at least not in front of children.
Marcelo Itagiba will run for a seat in Congress, and, as head of public security, is bravely taking care of his candidacy. He is, above all, a humble man. With so many vanguard ideas, he could be claiming a vacancy at the Academy of Letters. It is true that every once in a while he’s forced to abandon the phylosophical ground to watch over less luminous debates. When bandits from the Dona Marta hill launched a grenade against policemen, for example, Itagiba’s soldiers didn’t let it go unnoticed. Entrenched in São Clemente street, a route through which a good deal of common people insist on passing by all day long, they opened fire against the criminals. A few hours of heavy gunfire in the heart of the town, exactly where there’s the largest concentration of schools, these inconvenient establishments with no sense of tactics.
It’s a good thing Rio de Janeiro can count on Marcelo Itagiba’s authority. The population was really needing someone to put an end to this obsession with stray bullets, false blitz, tunnel closures and rifle shots. The Security secretary is here to awaken the civil society to its own power, to lift the spirits. But if the spirits are trapped in a tunnel and can’t rise too much, don’t go dialing 190 [Brazil’s 911]. The best thing to do is call Itagiba, and exchange a few ideas with him about the metaphysical notion of subjectivity, while the criminals finish their objective carnival.
