Lynchings:

insecurity and popular revolt

Abstract

The study of four cases of lynching that occurred in low-income neighborhoods of large Brazilian cities (in the state of São Paulo) allowed us to observe connections between these violent popular actions and the context of growing urban insecurity in the period of intense urbanization that marked the 1980s in the country. We have tried to situate the slingshots as forms of conflict resolution through collective violence, an alternative of justice legitimized by members of neighborhood community networks in face of the lack of confidence in the state system of security and justice (which implements discriminatory and unequal policies) and also the collapse of traditional forms of private justice based on revenge. Violent collective action is a way to circumvent the tension between the legitimacy and illegality of private revenge by diluting in the collective the penal and moral responsibilities too heavy to be borne by individuals. It is a conservative way to equate the social conflict for security, in which citizens privately assume tasks in which the State is absent, without being able to modify their position of exclusion in the elaboration of public security policies.