Narcos Star, Brazil Movements Condemn Attack on MST School

Repudiation of a police raid Thursday on a school run Brazil’s Landless Workers' Movement was swift and unequivocal.

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Actors such as Wagner Moura, star of Netflix's Narcos, alongside notable political figures such as Brazilian Senator Lindbergh Farias strongly spoke out against the police operation that saw officers fire live rounds inside an educational institution.

“If anyone had any lingering doubts that Brazil is living a state of exception, a police-state, the invasion of the Florestan Fernandes National School is a cowardly show of truculence, typical of regimes of exception,” said Moura in a video posted to social media.

In a series of posts to his Twitter account, Farias echoed Moura's comments, calling police actions a “scene of vandalism” and a “criminal invasion.”

Federal lawmaker Paulo Teixeira also called the raid an invasion, adding that it was “unacceptable repression against social movements.”

In a video from the scene, one officer issues death threats against those inside the school. 

The raid is being widely seen as an escalation of the criminalization of social protest and movements by the government of de facto President Michel Temer, installed in power after a parliamentary coup.

Several Brazilian organizations, such as the Brazilian Workers Confederation and the National Union of Students, declared their solidarity with the Landless Workers' Movement, known as the MST.

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The Continental Coalition of ALBA's Social Movements, which brings together dozens of social movements throughout the Americas, also issued a statement condemning the raid.

“We energetically repudiate this persecution that the Temer coup regime is carrying out against popular movements,” read the statement.

Dozens of other social movements, including Colombia's Congress of the Peoples and Argentina's Patria Grande, also issued statements declaring their solidarity with the MST and the Florestan Fernandes National School.

The outpouring of support comes as no surprise as the school hosts hundreds of leaders from throughout the Americas and beyond on a yearly basis. Students live, eat, work and study at the school during their time there, with many developing a deep attachment to the institution.

Since it opened nearly a decade ago, the school has trained over 50,000 students from nearly 60 countries.