Edson Mendes Nunes Junior

On March 14, 2018, Marielle Franco, a Black, queer city councilwoman from Rio de Janeiro, was assassinated. Within hours, false claims that she was “married to a drug trafficker” began circulating; formally debunked, they recirculated two years later. The case exemplifies a structural pattern: in Brazil, disinformation targeting Black individuals who die amid State violence consistently substitutes identities, fabricates criminal histories, and defames private lives to retroactively legitimize racial violence.