The mothers' war: Pain and politics in situations of institutional violence

Abstract

This work discusses relations between "violence" and "gender" by focusing situations involving forms of "struggle for justice" and the expression of pain by relatives of persons killed by Rio de Janeiro's military police. By following different situations where those relatives, connected in networks of support and political organization, seek the conviction of the policemen that have killed their sons, brothers or nephews, we reflect on the work of social construction of "violence" and illegitimacy of these murders as being inseparably connected to grammars of gender, especially to the symbolic protagonism of "mothers".