On this day, 14 March 2018, Marielle Franco, a bisexual Afro-Brazilian socialist and feminist was assassinated in Rio de Janeiro. Raised in a favela (shanty town) in the city, she began work at the age of eleven and later raised a daughter as a single mother working for the minimum wage, before being elected to the city council in 2016. The day before her murder, she had spoken out against extrajudicial killings by police and paramilitaries. The bullets that killed her had been purchased by the federal police. The minister of public security claimed that the bullets were stolen from a post office, but this lie was retracted when the post office publicly stated it was untrue.
At the time of writing, four suspects have been arrested for the murder, all with ties to state security forces, and two of them with links to the family of right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro. Another suspect, a former police officer, was shot and killed by police in February 2020, as they were attempting to arrest him. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1942148445970296/?type=3
