Thundercats, Ho!

Death squads are no laughing matter, and yet you can't be a member of my generation and not find this lead anecdote from a Washington Post article on death squads in Brazil a bit amusing:

"What do they call the death squad here?"

Five middle-aged women, all of whom were visiting a church in their neighborhood's central square, answered in imperfect unison: "The Thundercats."

Is that a Brazilian idiom of some kind, or are they really referencing the show?

Comments

I feel bad for the death-squad member who has to be Snarf.

Posted by Josh E. | March 18, 2008 1:59 PM

Another prominent situation, though with less pop culture-y names:

...there is a wealth of evidence showing that there are dozens of new paramilitary groups waging a dirty war in Colombia. Numerous human rights groups have shown that new paramilitary groups operating under names such as the New Generation or the Black Eagles do indeed exist and that they are responsible for a significant percentage of the country’s political violence. In 2006, the Colombian NGO Indepaz reported that 43 new paramilitary groups totaling almost 4,000 fighters had been formed in 23 of the country’s 32 departments. Last year, the OAS estimated that there were 20 new paramilitary groups with 3,000 fighters operating in Colombia. According to Alirio Uribe, a leading Colombian human rights lawyer with the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective:

There are forty-three new paramilitary groups but, according to the Ministry of Defense, these new paramilitary groups have nothing to do with the old ones. But the truth is, they are the same. Before they were the AUC, now they are called the New Generation AUC. They have the same collusion with the army and the police. It is a farce.

http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia279.htm

About a week and a half ago, there were marches throughout Colombia calling attention to the victims of not just leftist guerrillas but also of government-linked right wing narcoparamilitary death squads.

Since then, 6 of the march's organizers have already been disappeared.

Posted by El Cid | March 18, 2008 2:04 PM

Thundercats was a horrible horrible show

Posted by hugo | March 18, 2008 2:04 PM

I'm guessing it's probably related to the Jaguar and some kind of Native American myth.

Posted by john | March 18, 2008 2:05 PM

Dadgumit, Josh beat me to it.

Posted by Curtis | March 18, 2008 2:05 PM

Apparently one of the main rebel groups in the former Zaire was called the Ninjas.

Posted by Reality Man | March 18, 2008 2:11 PM

We Brazilians LOVE really crappy American TV shows and have done so for decades. And we watch them dubbed which makes them even more delicious.

Posted by charlotte | March 18, 2008 2:13 PM

I'm betting it's a reference to the show. There's precedent for this sort of thing.

A book published by Human Rights Watch in the nineties was titled "Final Justice." The author explains that the title refers to the name of a death squad that took it's name from an American TV show shown in Brazil, Equal Justice.

Posted by moema | March 18, 2008 2:21 PM

I'm betting it's a reference to the show. There's precedent for this sort of thing.

A book published by Human Rights Watch in the nineties was titled "Final Justice." The author explains that the title refers to the name of a death squad that took it's name from an American TV show shown in Brazil, Equal Justice.

Posted by moema | March 18, 2008 2:23 PM

I can't wait for the Smurf death squad, led by Murdery Smurf!

Posted by Greg | March 18, 2008 2:31 PM

The Ninjas are in Congo-Brazzaville, not Zaire.
And they fought against the Cobras and the Coyottes.

Posted by Nu | March 18, 2008 2:33 PM

Other little-known South American death squads:

Berenstain Bears
Wuzzles
Muppet Babies and Monsters
The Real Ghostbusters
Snorks
Kissyfur
The All-New Ewoks

Posted by Chuck | March 18, 2008 2:34 PM

It must be a reference. I'm from Argentina, and I loved Thundercats as a kid.

Posted by Alejandro | March 18, 2008 2:56 PM

It's a reference to the show, which was a hit here in Brazil during the late 80s.

Posted by Daniel | March 18, 2008 3:00 PM

There was apparently a death squad in Liberia during the 1990s called "General Buck Naked and the Buck Naked Brigade."

Posted by Hector | March 18, 2008 3:39 PM

What, no Fraggle Rock references yet?

Posted by Reality Man | March 18, 2008 3:40 PM

There was apparently a death squad in Liberia during the 1990s called "General Buck Naked and the Buck Naked Brigade."

If I recall correctly, they were more a guerrilla group than a death squad. The general and his brigade lived up to their name, though, going fully commando into battle.

True.

Posted by James Gary | March 18, 2008 3:47 PM

Ha! I just bought a thundercats t-shirt on thinkgeek.com last week, I'm so damn hip!

Posted by tom.a | March 18, 2008 3:48 PM

The good general's name was Butt Naked not *Buck*.

Posted by Greg | March 18, 2008 3:49 PM

I heard a very interesting anecdote in the mid-90s about the popularity of the Smurfs among the gangbangers in South Central LA.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | March 18, 2008 4:06 PM

Brazilian here: it cannot be anything BUT a reference to the show.

Posted by Cisco | March 18, 2008 4:29 PM

It's a shame more death squads aren't run with the efficiency of COBRA!

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/01/02cobra.html

Posted by Njorl | March 18, 2008 4:37 PM

Other little-known South American death squads:

...Muppet Babies and Monsters

Rumor has it the Muppets are leaving their winter bases in the Hudson River Valley and will once again try to take Manhattan. God help us all.

Posted by JB | March 18, 2008 4:46 PM

Not but a Brazilian but lived there for some years. It probably is a reference to the show.

"I'm guessing it's probably related to the Jaguar and some kind of Native American myth."

Native American culture is a lot more important to U.S. culture than it is to Brazilian culture in the Southeast of Brazil. Carioca gangs do not romanticize about indigenous warriors in the way colleges, sports teams, and criminal organizations in the U.S. do.

Posted by Colatina | March 18, 2008 4:50 PM

Apparently, General Butt Naked (aka Milton Blahyi) is quite a bit creepier than I imagined. He claims, however, that the Devil made him do it.

"In January, 2008, Milton Blahyi, 37, confessed to taking part in human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." He fought versus Charles Taylor's militia.
When he goes out to preach now, he says he sometimes encounters relatives of his victims. "I feel very bad, so bad", he said, but he insists it was satanic powers that possessed him in the past and he cannot be held responsible.[15] In January 2008 Blahyi returned to Liberia from Ghana and admitted before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia that between c. 1980 and 1996 he and his men were responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 people.[18]"

Unbelievably, General Butt Naked is now an evangelical Protestant pastor. Truth is truly stranger than fiction.

Posted by Hector | March 18, 2008 5:11 PM

He was one of Charlie Taylor's All-Stars!

And if there is a better piece of evidence that God doesn't like us than him, I've never seen it.

Posted by Greg | March 18, 2008 5:45 PM

I have to say, General Butt Naked is one of those people (the Hitlers, the Stalins, the John Gottis) who provides a good argument for the existence of God.

It's hard to explain General Butt Naked without postulating the existence of the Devil. What would possess a man to kill and eat a child, except the Devil? No _man_ acting alone could initiate such a superhuman level of evil. And it doesn't make much sense to postulate a Devil unless you also postulate a God.

Posted by Hector | March 18, 2008 6:15 PM

Ah, Hector, I'm moviequoting, but didn't you know that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist?

And I'm not postulating on God's existence or lack thereof; I'm just saying that, postulating God's existence, Charles Taylor's All-Stars provide some good proof that He's a big, angry fella like in the Old Testament.

Posted by Greg | March 18, 2008 6:21 PM

"In January, 2008, Milton Blahyi, 37, confessed to taking part in human sacrifices which "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat." He fought versus Charles Taylor's militia."

Wait, he fought against Taylor? It's said when the child-sacrificing, naked-fighting, human heart-eating guy is the less crazy one. Ironically, Taylor had a decent amount of support from American Christianists. Wasn't Falwell or Robertson one of his big supporters?

Posted by Reality Man | March 18, 2008 6:45 PM

If we're naming our death squads after bad 80's shows, I call dibs on Night Court.

Posted by matt foley | March 18, 2008 9:08 PM

The Economist, October 2002

"RECIFE, a north-eastern Brazilian city famous for its vivid Carnaval parades, has a district called 'Planet of the Apes'... Planet of the Apes started out as a favela..."

When a country names entire NEIGHBORHOODS after television shows, a death squad named after a cartoon seems like small potatoes!

Posted by Surabaya Stew | March 18, 2008 10:25 PM

The Economist, October 2002

"RECIFE, a north-eastern Brazilian city famous for its vivid Carnaval parades, has a district called 'Planet of the Apes'... Planet of the Apes started out as a favela..."

When a country names entire NEIGHBORHOODS after television shows, a death squad named after a cartoon seems like small potatoes!

Posted by Surabaya Stew | March 18, 2008 10:26 PM

No need for exclamation marks!!

Brasil is a huge country with a terrific sense of humor, violence, and history ...

Posted by charlotte | March 19, 2008 8:56 PM

My favorite This American Life covered apartment superintendents and featured a super who claimed to be a member of a Brazilian death squad. Everyone thought he was a compulsive liar, until he was involved in a murder trial later, and it was discovered that some of his stories might in fact be true.

Posted by Mike | March 20, 2008 3:27 AM