Carrefour has a race problem in Brazil

In 2009, Januário Alves de Santana was beaten by five security guards at a supermarket unit of the French multinational Carrefour in Osasco, in Greater São Paulo, after being mistaken for a robber. He was getting into his own car. 

Even bloodied, he had to prove to police officers that he really was the owner of the car. At the time, Mr. Santana’s attorney said that neither the security guards nor the police believed that a black person could drive a Ford EcoSport SUV. He was paying for the car in 72 installments (a new one today costs BRL 96,000, or USD 19,000).

After the incident Carrefour fired the security guards, paid compensation to Mr. Santana, and promised to take measures to ensure that such cases did not repeat themselves in the future. 

But similar situations continued to pile up in the following years.

In 2017, a black woman was beaten and raped by security guards at a Carrefour in Rio de Janeiro. She had stolen a bag of cod fritters and a kilo of chicken wings. 

In 2019, Luís Carlos Gomes, a black man with a physical disability, was punched, kicked, and choked by security guards at a Carrefour in São Bernardo, São Paulo state. He had opened a can of beer inside the supermarket and said he would pay for the drink. 

In 2020, João Alberto Silveiro Freitas was beaten to death by white security guards in a Carrefour in Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He was black. The murder took place one day before Brazil’s Black Consciousness Day, which is celebrated on November 20.

Footage shows two security guards kicking and punching Mr. Freitas when he was already on the ground. His wife and other clients tried to intervene, but were ignored and prevented from helping the man — even as the floor was smeared with blood.

He was killed by mechanical asphyxiation after a guard put weight on his back to immobilize him. The cause of death was very similar to that of George Floyd in the U.S. a few months...