The next victim
The architecture of violence against women in Brazil
It is 1995. Diego Bueno pushes Isabela Ferreto down a staircase when he discovers she cheated on him with Marcelo Rossi. Some time later, she officially starts dating Marcelo. When he finds out she is cheating on him, Marcelo — yes, the same guy who did not bother being the lover before — grabs a kitchen knife and slashes her face.
These two scenes aired in A Próxima Vítima (The Next Victim), one of the most popular telenovelas in Brazil that year. Isabela was one of its villains: serial adultery was supposed to be her crime, and it should be punished with physical violence at the hands of Diego and Marcelo. After all, these were the good guys: hot-blooded because they were passionate, the reasoning goes. Thus, they were entitled to their happy endings. The second scene got one of the show’s highest ratings and a warning from the Ministry of Justice.
“I think nobody would write that scene today, even for a villain,” pondered Claudia Ohana, the actor who played Isabela, in a recent interview. “It’s a lynching scene because she cheated.” The scenes are all the more shocking because A Próxima Vítima tended to be progressive in other matters: a groundbreaking upper-middle-class Black family and a gay couple struggling to come out to their families. Modern audiences may squirm at the violence against Isabela the way they would at the rape scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. The naughty lyrics for A Próxima Vítima’s theme song, “Victim”, carry a disturbing tinge today:
In the weird manner of an average guy
I get closer to you
Carressing a dagger, baby
When Globoplay started streaming the decades-old telenovela last year, there was a warning before each episode: “This show reproduces behavior and customs from its time.”
It does. Both the 1995 work of fiction and the reactions (from the Minsitry of Justice and from viewers) reflect an ambiguous trend in twentieth-century Brazilian culture. The acknowledgment of violence against women could come hand in hand with its dismissal.
A notorious quote from The Masters and the Slaves (1933), one of the foundational texts about Brazilian identity formation, states that the Portuguese colonizers “mix joyfully with women of color at first contact.” Later, it grudgingly recognizes women as “victims who were not always receptive to this ecstasy” or that these sexual intercourses occurred “in unfavorable circumstances for the woman.” Then, it tempers the previous stances with the academic equivalent of hearsay: “…it is known that sometimes the white conqueror’s sadism would completely meld with the masochism of the Black or indigenous woman.”
In other words, sometimes she “was asking for it,” as some Brazilian men and women might tell you even today.
Some decades later, journalist and playwright Nelson Rodrigues would explode the macho ridicule of Rodrigo, Diego, the white conqueror, and bourgeois morals in works like The Asphalt Kiss (1960) and All Nudity Shall Be Punished (1965). At the same time, he would say, “Not all women like to be beaten; only the normal ones — the neurotics react.” It was a country as jolly bondage again.
Mores have changed. In 2006, a new law, the Maria da Penha Act, increased penalties for domestic abuse offenders. It was followed by a Femicide Law in 2015. Later telenovelas have aimed at educating the audience and denouncing domestic violence. But society still lags in response. Punishment does not automatically translate into education and awareness.
In 2019, Brazil ranked second in the Women’s Danger Index crunched by journalists Asher and Lyric Fergusson.
According to a study by the Public Security Observatory Network, a woman was beaten every four hours in 2022. Most of the perpetrators were their partners or former partners.
The Brazilian Public Security Forum, a think tank, released another stark report this November. In the first half of 2023, 34,000 women and girls were raped in Brazil –– one every eight minutes. That’s a 14.9 percent increase compared to the same period in 2022. These figures are compiled from reported cases, so they might be higher. Seven hundred and twenty-two women were killed between January and June 2023, a 2.6% increase from the first semester of 2022 even as the general homicide rate dropped. For women, the numbers have never been higher.
Three recent cases highlight the role of multiple institutions in flaring up this nasty side of Brazilian culture.
“Many times, the [evangelical] church puts a lot of pressure on couples to sustain their relationships even when there is abuse or dissatisfaction,” wrote Lilia Sendin for Congresso em Foco. Such may be the case of Sara Mariano, a gospel singer in the northeastern state of Bahia. Mariano was found dead at the beginning of October; her body had been burned. Her husband, producer Ederlan Mariano, confessed to the premeditated murder. Sara’s mother revealed that her daughter had told her about several episodes of verbal and physical abuse, but none of them had pressed charges against Ederlan. He claimed he killed her because he thought she had been cheating on him.
Brazilians know what this line of defense means. In 1976, Doca Street killed Angela Diniz in Rio de Janeiro shortly after they broke up. They both belonged to Rio’s elite, which turned his trial into a media circus. He was initially sentenced to two years on parole thanks to the successful defense argument: he was “defending his honor.” The court accepted it as an interpretation of a mitigating circumstance for murder in the Brazilian Criminal Code. It became illegal under the new 1988 Constitution but lawyers continued using this strategy anyway — and courts continued accepting it. The Supreme Court has ruled against it twice: in 1991 and August 2023. It is a sign of the times that the lower courts might finally abide this second time.
The judicial system still perpetrates other types of violence against female victims.
In 2020, a leaked video showed scenes of a hearing in a 2018 rape case in the southern state of Santa Catarina. The victim, Mariana Ferrer, is on a Zoom conference with four men. One of them is the defendant’s lawyer, Claudio Gastão da Rosa Filho, who slut-shames her. “I would like respect, Your Honor,” Ferrer finally says between tears. “I’m begging for respect, at least. Not even the accused, murderers are treated the way I’ve been treated [here], for God’s sake!”
The defendant, André Aranha, a wealthy sports businessman, was acquitted due to lack of evidence. But Ferrer’s virtual courtroom harassment caused such a stir that leftist and right-wing lawmakers joined forces to approve the Mari Ferrer Act, which protects victims of sexual crimes from abuse during trial proceedings. As for Ferrer, she has already attempted suicide several times since that evening in 2018.
Also in 2020, a Family Court male judge was caught on camera saying that he “couldn’t care less about Maria da Penha Law” and reasoning that “no one assaults anyone out of nothing.” He would be transferred to another district only two years later.
In June 2023, Intercept Brasil revealed audios in which a female judge tells a female victim of domestic violence that a woman can be beaten by her husband “but he can be an excellent father” during a child custody hearing in Rio de Janeiro. The court ordered the removal of the afrom the news site instead of taking on the judge.
The male-driven judicial system is not the only arena of women’s institutional struggle. Nowadays, Brazilian society is less willing to overlook violence against women. Still, a centuries-old patriarchal tradition drenches the words that people use to describe these stories.
Some patterns may be subtle. In Portuguese, there are still two main words in usage for ‘wife’: the literal one, ‘esposa,’ and the generic one, ‘mulher’ (woman). Another one, ‘cônjuge’ (spouse), is used for both genders but it never left Legalese. “Husband and woman” is the religious formula in wedding ceremonies. When the media reports abuse, they commonly resort to ‘mulher’ or ‘ex-mulher’ for their headlines, which is semantically confusing. You need to plunge into an article to fully understand that “Man assaults woman” is an episode of domestic violence against a female partner, not any woman — no matter what, her identity is subjected to his.
More insidious patterns emerge from the actual reporting. Take, for instance, a high-profile case from the November headlines. Ana Hickmann, an Internet and TV celebrity and former model, reported to the police an alleged assault by her husband, Alexandre Correa, in front of their 10-year-old kid on November 11. Here are the first-page search results on Google for “Hickmann Alexandre” on November 16:
Let me translate some of them:
O Globo: After confessing million-dollar debt, Ana Hickmann’s husband claims he didn’t want to besmirch her reputation.
Fashion Bubbles: Alexandre Correa, Ana Hickmann’s husband, says he feels humiliated after receiving more than 2,000 threats…
O Liberal: The Ana Hickmann affair - District attorney investigates violence against the TV presenter and Alexandre Correa’s son.
O Globo: Days before assault to Ana Hickmann, husband talked about the couple’s debts.
Extra: Internet reacts to Alexandre Correa’s interview after assault to Ana Hickmann
O Dia: Alexandre Correa mentions fears after assaulting Ana Hickman: “Losing her, being arrested…”
Terra: Ana Hickmann’s husband, Alexandre Correa, involves son in request after assaulting wife [woman]: “Sadness [in my chest].”
Hugo Gloss: Sources detail relationship between Ana Hickmann and Alexandre Correa and claim businessman didn’t allow her [to have friends].
Whose story is it? The second batch is more closely related to a TV interview with Correa on November 15, but the first list compiles news pieces from days before. Reporters could always argue that they needed to hear the other side of the story. Either way, it seems they overcompensated: it is all about Alexandre, plus fans, the district attorney, or “sources” — granted, these could be Hickmann herself. She had spoken about the events on November 13, but the first news cycle does not showcase her voice — they turn her into the object rather than the subject of her story. Whether she realized it or not, Hickmann became more active on social media days later and seized the narrative again. The shift may also be due to people taking to social media to complain about the coverage focus. Thanks to the pressure, the press stopped treating her as the “woman” to see her as the woman.
Hickmann has something else on her side: she is a wealthy and successful white businesswoman. As singer Jojo Todynho wrote: “Things are tougher for us Black women.” She has a point. According to a March 2023 report, Brazilian men are more physically abusive towards Black female partners (45%) than white ones (36.9%). Women from lower social strata also reported more physical violence. But Hickmann, a public figure, was widely praised for coming forward and reporting her abuse. Many women are still afraid of reporting abuse — the examples above may hint why — so a role model who is able to speak up is always welcome.
The story of Isabela Ferreto is slowly becoming an artifact from more awful times. Sadly, the keyword here is “slowly.”