‘We feel angry – and we have reason to be’: Brazil’s resurgent punk scene is a howl of outrage at injustice

As black-clad police combatants charged into the hillside favela and opened fire, a black-clad punk scurried out of the community in the opposite direction, his hands trembling from fright.“Holy shit! All those guns! Things are getting ugly!” spluttered Rodrigo Cilirio, the founder and bassist of one of Rio’s most enduring punk bands, as he took cover behind a tree.It was here in the Morro da Lagartixa on Rio’s volatile northside that Cilirio’s group, Repressão Social (Social Repression), was born just over 30 years ago: a howl of rage against the relentless cycle of urban violence, police brutality, deprivation and discrimination that continues to plague the outskirts of Brazil’s largest cities.Veteran punk Rodrigo Cilirio at his home in the Morro da Lagartixa (Lizard Hill) favela in Rio, a day after a neighbour was shot during a police operation. Photograph: Alan Lima/The Guardian“[Punk] is my way of letting it all out so I don’t choke to death. It’s my voice,” Cilirio, 47, explained while waiting for the gunfire to subside near the favela where he grew up.“This is what we are exposed to,” the black musician sighed of that morning’s gun battle, during which one local was shot in the leg. “Punks