 It's been over 10 years since the murder of Heyo de Janeiro councilwoman Mariali Franco, a murder which shook the whole of Brazil. Mariali was in the forefront of struggling for a variety of progressive causes and was iconic not just in a city but in the country as a whole. It was clear that assassination was a political hit job. However, the prevailing political currents prevented a proper investigation. Finally, on March 24 this year, three masterminds behind the assassination were arrested. The federal police have also presented a report on the investigation. We go to Zoe to understand what happened in the case and why Mariali was assassinated. So on Sunday, March 24, which is six years and actually ten days since the murder of Mariali Franco, an important breakthrough was made in the case. Three suspected masterminds of her murder were arrested by Brazil's federal police. This was an arrest that was authorized by the Supreme Court. And the people who were arrested include policemen and members of the local government in Rio de Janeiro. And this is crucial and very, very important this breakthrough in the case because for these six years, activists have been asking who killed Mariali and why haven't there been any advances in the case. And so when President Luis Inacio Lula Silva was elected and sworn in the beginning of January 2023, one of the major campaign promises and then promises as president was actually to get justice for Mariali. Important to note that her sister, Aniali Franco, is the Minister of Racial Equality in Brazil. Again, showing a very clear commitment to finding justice in this case. The Minister of Justice Flavio Dino, again, also had reiterated the importance of finding out who was behind this crime. Activists had long alleged that the network of militias in collusion and working with local authorities was really this tangled web that was responsible for the crime. Also pointing out to the fact that Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil and his family, the Bolsonaro family, which is a very important and powerful family in the city was also involved in the crime. And so essentially, again on March 24th with these arrests and a nearly 500 page report compiled by Brazil's federal police, it not only points to these local officials and authorities who were involved in planning the crime, executing it and then the cover-up. But it also again highlights this level of why there wasn't justice for six years and this is largely because people who are involved in the crime do hold positions of power. People who have positions in Rio de Janeiro's police who were aware of the implications of a political murder and took steps to attempt to protect themselves, but again were inevitably and in the end unable to do so. And essentially in this report that the federal police of Brazil prepared, they detail kind of the motivations for this murder that was carried out by Roni Lessa, who was the hitman who was arrested by the police initially and he finally essentially confessed to who planned the crime through a plea bargain. And this was Chiquinho Brazil, who was a local city council official who had dealings with the militias in Rio de Janeiro and felt threatened by Maria, these activism by her work in the communities, by her work in the council to actually oppose plans to militarize the city and was working on the ground again to fight back against the militias and their control over the territory. And this was essentially one of the major motivations in why he decided to work with other members of the government to carry out this crime. And so this news and this breakthrough in the case has been saluted by activists in the country who again have been waiting so many years for justice, who have been demanding that people who have positions of power must be held accountable. And it's been said from the beginning that this was carried out by someone who had political interests. This was not just a random murder. This was not just a crime carried out in random. This was clearly a targeted assassination. And what the federal police's investigation proves, this is completely right. It's motivated by politics, motivated by control over the territory and the land and an attempt to silence activism that opposes the control of the militia in the city of Rio de Janeiro. On March 26th, the Francis Key Scott Bridge in the U.S. city of Baltimore collapsed when a massive cargo ship rammed it. The footage of this went viral across the world, but domestically it has sparked very vital questions about the state of infrastructure in the U.S., the treatment of migrants and more. We go to Natalia who will explain what are some of the key issues that have come up in the aftermath of this incident. So in the early hours of Tuesday morning, a massive 985 foot long cargo vessel collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor, collapsing the bridge and killing six construction workers. On Tuesday night, the U.S. Coast Guard stopped its search for the bodies of those construction workers who were drowned in the Baltimore Harbor, but did actually end up finding two bodies of workers submerged in a vehicle. This ship was chartered by the Dana Shipping Company in Mayors and had been experiencing what appears to be power outages on video footage shows several power outages on the ship before it collided with the bridge. This ship had actually sent out May Day signals, which led to traffic being stopped on both ends of the bridge to reduce the casualties. But for some reason, these six workers were not actually evacuated and passed away. Mayors has actually come under fire and has been sanctioned by the U.S. Labor Department eight months prior to the crash for retaliating against a worker reporting unsafe working conditions aboard a vessel. These included unpermitted alcohol consumption, leaks, inoperable lifeboats, faulty emergency fire suppression equipment and other concerns. Mayors retaliated against this worker, disciplining and firing this employee, and this case in the U.S. federal government revealed that the company actually had a policy against whistleblowers reporting things to the U.S. government before reporting those same things to the company, which really discourages any sort of whistleblowing, which is extremely important. It's extremely important that these massive vessels are operating correctly. And Mayorsk is one of the largest, most lucrative shipping companies in the world. This year raking in 51 billion U.S. dollars, but has spent a lot of his money locking federal regulators in the United States and suing trade unions. So these six construction workers who were not evacuated and passed away were all migrant workers from Latin America. There was an interview that was conducted by Jesus Campos, who is an employee for Bronner Builders, the construction company that these six workers were employed with. And he indicated that all of these workers were immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and they were all low-income workers. And this really brings forth this national debate that's happening in the United States where there is a massive amount of racist rhetoric against migrants coming from both major parties. You know, Biden himself, in his recent State of the Union, went on an anti-migrant rant lamenting the thousands of people killed by illegals, as he put it, even though undocumented immigrants commit far less violent crime than documented U.S. citizens. Biden has also pushed many anti-migrant policies that do not really differ significantly from Trump's. I mean, he expanded Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall. It has been putting these impossible demands on asylum seekers, has maintained the brutal sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela that drive so much of this immigration, which is economic refugees from sanctioned countries. And also, he has violently deported Haitian refugees while at the same time pushing foreign intervention in Haiti, the U.S., of course, being responsible for these major destabilization regimes across Latin America that drive immigration. So not only have migrants been persecuted in the United States by border militarization anti-migrant policies, but it is migrants who end up in the United States that often do the most dangerous and thankless work and are prone to the most workplace accidents and deaths. Child labor violations in particular have made a huge resurgence in the United States because of the presence of unaccompanied migrant children who are able to be exploited because they have so few rights. Migrant workers are uniquely susceptible to deaths and injuries on the job because of the level at which they're exposed. So this bridge collapse is really reigniting this debate about immigration and how undervalued migrant workers are and how vilified they are across the country. That's all we have in today's daily debrief. We'll be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. In the meantime, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. 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