In the humid backstreets of Simões Filho, just outside Salvador, the walls tell a story the newspapers are only beginning to read. Not with ink from pens, but with spray paint — bold, threatening messages scrawled across the facades of homes and small businesses: “We know where you live.” “This is just the beginning.” The targets? Families of those who testified against the killers of Mãe Bernadete, the 89-year-old ialorixá whose murder in August 2023 shocked Bahia and reverberated through Brazil’s spiritual and activist communities. What began as a horrific act of violence against a beloved spiritual leader has mutated into a campaign of intimidation, revealing how deeply the tendrils of organized crime have entwined themselves with the suppression of Afro-Brazilian religious expression.
This is not merely a local crime wave. It is a symptom of a broader, more insidious dynamic playing out across Brazil’s periphery: the leverage of terror not just to control territory, but to erase memory, to punish dignity, and to silence the voices that have long guarded ancestral knowledge in the face of erasure. Mãe Bernadete, born Bernadete Pacífico, was more than a religious figure. She was a quilombola leader, a descendant of escaped enslaved Africans who founded the quilombo of Pitanga dos Palmares, a community that has resisted displacement and cultural annihilation for generations. Her killing was not random. It was a message — one that, months after the conviction of her assassins, is being reinforced through fear.
According to court records from the Bahia State Judiciary, the man identified as the triggerman, Carlos Madeiro, was sentenced to 29 years in prison in January 2024 for his role in the murder. Madeiro, a known associate of a local faction tied to the Comando Vermelho, was killed in a police confrontation in March 2024, an event that initially seemed to close the chapter. But instead of deterrence, his death sparked a retaliation campaign. Over the past six weeks, residents of Simões Filho and nearby Lauro de Freitas report a surge in nocturnal visits from unidentified individuals, threats delivered via WhatsApp, and the now-familiar graffiti marking homes associated with witnesses or advocates for the quilombo.
“This is about more than revenge,” said Dr. Elisa Larkin Nascimento, a renowned scholar of Afro-Brazilian studies and longtime collaborator with the Movimento Negro Unificado, in a recent interview with Agência Brasil. “It’s about the continued criminalization of Black spirituality. When they kill a ialorixá and then terrorize her community, they’re not just attacking individuals — they’re attacking a worldview that has survived slavery, dictatorship, and now, narco-terrorism.” Her warning, issued in early April 2024, frames the intimidation as a form of cultural genocide — a term gaining traction among human rights monitors who notice parallels in the systematic targeting of Indigenous and Afro-descendant spiritual leaders across Latin America.
The quilombo of Pitanga dos Palmares, home to approximately 800 families, has long existed in a state of precarious legitimacy. Though formally recognized by the Palmares Cultural Foundation in 2004, its territorial demarcation remains incomplete, leaving it vulnerable to encroachment — not just from developers, but from criminal factions seeking to exploit the ambiguity. According to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Bahia recorded 28 land conflicts involving quilombola territories in 2023, the highest number in the Northeast. Of those, 11 involved threats or actual violence against community leaders. “We are seeing a convergence of interests,” noted João Pedro Stédile, national coordinator of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), in a statement to Rede Brasil Atual. “Drug traffickers want quiet corridors for their operations. Land grabbers want to erase claims. And both discover willing accomplices in those who fear or hate Afro-Brazilian religions.” The CPT’s findings underscore how economic opportunism and ideological prejudice often converge in these regions.
What makes this case particularly alarming is the apparent coordination between the intimidation campaign and the timing of legal proceedings. The graffiti and threats intensified just as the Bahia State Court prepared to hear appeals from the convicted — a tactic legal observers say is designed to undermine judicial process through extralegal means. “When you see witnesses suddenly relocating, or refusing to testify further, you have to ask: is this witness protection failure, or is it something more systemic?” questioned Mariana Azevedo, a public defender with the Instituto de Defesa do Direito de Defesa (IDDD), in a conversation with Jornal Correio. “We lack the resources to provide true safety, and the state’s response has been reactive, not preventive.” Her critique highlights a critical gap: while police have increased patrols in Simões Filho, there is no coordinated witness protection program tailored to the unique risks faced by those testifying against factions with deep community roots.
The spiritual dimension cannot be overlooked. In Afro-Brazilian traditions, the death of an elder like Mãe Bernadete is not merely a personal loss — it is a rupture in the transmission of sacred knowledge, a weakening of the community’s spiritual armor. Her followers describe her as a “living oxum,” a vessel of the orisha associated with wisdom, fresh water, and maternal protection. To attack her was to strike at the heart of a cosmology that has sustained Black resistance in Bahia for centuries. The retaliatory graffiti, often accompanied by symbols mocking Candomblé or referencing evangelical supremacy, suggests an ideological layer to the violence — one that aligns with the growing influence of neo-Pentecostal factions that have, in some areas, framed Afro-Brazilian religions as “demonic” and legitimate targets for eradication.
Yet, amid the fear, there is resistance. Community elders have begun organizing nightly vigils, not just in mourning, but in reclamation. Murals of Mãe Bernadete, her arms raised in blessing, now appear on the very walls once defaced with threats. Local artists, supported by the Bahia State Secretary of Culture, have launched a campaign titled “Oxum Não Morre” (Oxum Does Not Die), using public art to reassert spiritual sovereignty. “They thought they could bury her with bullets,” said one elder, who requested anonymity for safety. “But they didn’t realize they were planting a seed.”
The state’s response, while increased in visibility, remains fragmented. Operation Shield Quilombo, launched by Bahia’s Secretariat of Public Security in April 2024, has led to increased police presence and the arrest of three suspects linked to the intimidation ring. But without addressing the root causes — territorial insecurity, economic marginalization, and the ideological warfare waged against Afro-Brazilian spirituality — such measures risk being little more than a bandage on a gangrenous wound.
What happened to Mãe Bernadete is not an isolated tragedy. It is a flashpoint in a longer struggle over who gets to define Brazil’s soul. Will it be a nation that fears its own ancestral wisdom, or one that finally learns to listen? The answer, for now, is being written not in courtrooms, but on the walls — and in the quiet courage of those who refuse to let the spray paint have the final word.
