🔫 Bukele is not the benchmark

Polls consistently show that Brazilian voters rank public safety among their top concerns, prompting candidates at every level to build their campaigns around it.

Renan Santos, a co-founder of the Free Brazil Movement now carrying the Mission party's presidential nomination, runs on the slogan "Prendeu, matou" — something like"Caught, killed" — and a promise to wage war on criminal organizations. Romeu Zema, from the libertarian Novo party, wants to import the mass-incarceration model Nayib Bukele implemented in El Salvador.

In Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, the frontrunner for governor, is campaigning on a promise to retake territory while faulting the October 2025 megaoperation in the Alemão and Penha favela chains — sprawling 26 communities housing more than 160,000 people. It was the deadliest police operation in the city's history, and yet both areas remain as firmly under criminal control as before…

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