Beyond the pale of pity

the long version

Beyond the Pale of Pity lays out the historical-sociological background of a phenomenon that has come to occupy a tropical strangle hold. This initial volume is the first of three dealing with what turned into vigilantism in South America's largest country. Nearly always with some connection to the police, modern-day death squads were invented in Brazil in the mid-1950s. Beyond the Pale of Pity aims at the lofty goal of understanding through an investigation of the antecedents of Brazilian downwardly directed elite violence, as the inculturation of that violence wound its way from the past to the present. Only with such knowledge can scholars and students seriously begin to comprehend one of the main dilemmas confronting Brazilian society.