The Candelária Massacre

The victims

Around the Candelária Church in central Rio de Janeiro, dozens of children and young people slept rough every night in the early 1990s. Eight of them died in the attack of July 23, 1993: Paulo Roberto de Oliveira, 11; Anderson de Oliveira Pereira, 13; Marcelo Cândido de Jesus, 14; Valdevino Miguel de Almeida, 14; a 17-year-old known only by the nickname Gambazinho; Leandro Santos da Conceição, 17; Paulo José da Silva, 18; and Marcos Antônio Alves da Silva, 19. Most were homeless street children. Some rights groups have said that far more people were hurt or later harmed than the official toll records.

What happened

Reporting at the 30th anniversary, citing investigations and testimony, traced the attack to clashes in the days before it. Police had taken two adolescents to a station for sniffing glue and then released them. Later, youths near the church were said to have taunted a military police patrol, and a stone was thrown at a patrol car. Late that night, while dozens of young people slept outside the church, gunmen arrived and opened fire. Prosecutors later showed that military police officers were among them. Estimates of how many people were sleeping there differ between accounts.

The investigation and the key witness

A survivor, Wagner dos Santos, then 22, was shot several times and left for dead. His testimony became essential in identifying the attackers. He was later shot again in a second attack, which Amnesty International dated to December 1995, and the federal government eventually moved him abroad for his safety. Other young witnesses received little protection. Amnesty reported that one of them, Fabio Gomes de Azevedo, was shot dead by police in November 1996, shortly before the second trial. Accounts differ on how many people were implicated: Amnesty counted nine, and later Brazilian press reports refer to seven people investigated. One military police officer linked to the case was killed in 1994, before he could stand trial.

Trials and sentences

The first trial ended in April 1996. Former military police officer Marcus Vinícius Emmanuel Borges, who had confessed to taking part, was sentenced to 309 years. On appeal that June the sentence was cut to 89 years, and at a retrial in 2003 he received 300 years. In November 1996, officer Nelson Oliveira dos Santos Cunha was sentenced to 261 years, 243 for the murders and 18 for the attempted murder of Wagner dos Santos. Officer Marco Aurélio Dias de Alcântara later received 204 years. In December 1996, two military police officers and one civilian were acquitted. Amnesty International warned at the time of a possible cover-up and said that some of those responsible might escape justice. Most press accounts say three men were convicted. One 2023 report also lists a fourth, Maurício da Conceição.

Release of the convicted

Despite sentences of hundreds of years, none of the convicted men served anything like the terms handed down. According to Rio's state court, Nelson Cunha's sentence was declared served in 2008. Alcântara was released under a presidential pardon in 2011, and Borges under a pardon in 2012. Reports in 2023 and 2024 said that all of them were free. Another survivor, Sandro Barbosa do Nascimento, became known nationwide in 2000, when he hijacked bus 174 in Rio and was killed by police afterward. His life was the subject of a documentary and a feature film.

Remembrance, 2023-2024

On the 30th anniversary in July 2023, families, campaigners and the Candelária Nunca Mais (Candelária Never Again) movement held a vigil, a mass and a march at the church, and the Christ the Redeemer statue was lit in green. Campaigners used the anniversary to point out that young people in Rio are still being killed, many of them by state agents. A study by Fluminense Federal University (UFF), reported by Agência Brasil, counted 629 police-linked killings of three or more people in Rio between 2007 and 2022, with more than 2,500 dead. Educator Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, who worked with the Candelária children, said the massacre brought no real change in policy. In October 2024 Netflix released Os Quatro da Candelária (The Four of Candelária), a drama series created by Luís Lomenha that tells the story through fictional characters based on the children. No new legal proceedings were found for 2025 or 2026.

Why it matters

Candelária, together with the Vigário Geral massacre a few weeks later, became a worldwide symbol of police death squads targeting poor and mostly Black young people in Brazil. International pressure followed. In 1996, intentional killings by military police were moved out of military courts and into the civilian justice system, although Amnesty noted that military police still ran the initial investigations. The case also showed how vulnerable witnesses were at a time when Brazil had no working federal witness protection program. It remains a reference point in Brazil's debates over police violence and impunity.