CRIMINALIZATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS IN BRAZIL: COLONIALITY AND PENAL STATE

This study investigates the criminalization of human rights activists in Brazil between 2016 and 2024, examining it through the lens of critical criminology and penal coloniality. The aim is to demonstrate how state and legal practices of social control reproduce historical mechanisms of repression against individuals and movements that denounce rights violations and resist projects of economic, racial, gender-based, and territorial exploitation. The methodology employed is qualitative and deductive, grounded in an interdisciplinary literature review and documentary analysis of national and international reports, incorporating references in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, with particular emphasis on recent critical scholarship. The findings indicate that criminalization is not an episodic or dysfunctional phenomenon but rather a structural one, bringing together public and private actors in a selective process of repression that undermines democracy and deepens historical inequalities. The study concludes that analyzing criminalization from the perspective of coloniality makes it possible to understand the persistence of authoritarian practices and the continuity of state-driven self-colonialism, underscoring the urgency of strengthening collective protection networks, mechanisms of memory, and strategies of resistance to effectively safeguard the work of human rights defenders.