Rio Drug Gangs Forge Fragile Security
Neuwirth, Robert
When armed robbers assaulted her store in Rio de Janeiro's Flamengo neighborhood and cleaned out her entire inventory of eyeglasses and jewelry, Val6ria Cristina knew just what to do. She closed...
...It's not only a problem here in Brazil...
...the city has a force called the Guarda Municipal, but it operates downtown and in tourist zones, and officers only carry nightsticks) don't patrol the streets...
...Vint6m, for example, is a north end favela that is run by Amigos dos Amigos, the smallest of the city's three drug gangs, which is controlled by Celso Luis Rodrigues, known on the street as Celsinho...
...Rocinha sprawls across Pedra Dois Irmaos-Two Brothers Mountain-between the wealthy beachfront enclave of Sdo Conrado and the luxurious wooded mansions of Givea...
...The gangs control the streets through brutal intimidation, or at least the reputation for brutality...
...Instead of raiding the favela every night and engaging the drug dealers in shootouts, the police are trying a new tactic in Pavdo Pavdozinho, which borders Copacabana and was once one of the most dangerous favelas in the city's Zona Sul...
...Here, houses seem to twist towards the sun, crowding each other for light re assaults, and air...
...The police didn't respect the residents," says Valquiria de Sousa Dias Rosa, the city's regional administrator for Rocinha...
...He is not a spiritual person, but he talks about the violence he has witnessed in religious terms...
...Instead, he bribes them...
...J Yet, at the same time, in a abductions an city where assaults and gun violence are common and where are commor thugs have been known to abduct people on crowded are amonc streets in broad daylight, the neighb favelas are also among the safest neighborhoods...
...And what gives them guns is money...
...But he's become a convert to community policing...
...Rules regarding construction techniques...
...When you see it yourself, it's incredible...
...M ost of Rio' s favelas are located on the hills, on land that was too steep for developers to tame for private homes...
...And they [the drug traffickers] don't want that...
...All of this may sound like theater to you...
...As a citizen, of course, it's a shock," he says...
...Yet he insists he feels most comfortable inside the favela...
...The drug gangs are at least community-minded, The gangs ai investing in local soccer fields, youth development programs, they don' and boistrous public dance par- crime-pett: ties called bailes funk...
...These self-built neighborhoods, home to about one million people, have sprung up all around the city...
...And it presents a clear policy conundrum to the officials planning the national and international war on drugs: Even law abiding favela residents who would prefer to get the guns and drugs out of their neighborhoods have an interest in maintaining the status quo because their communities are free of the siege mentality that plagues the wealthier areas of the city...
...It really works," he says...
...n Rocinha, one command leader, known as Denis, is so popular that residents blocked traffic in a nearby commuter tunnel as a protest after he was arrested...
...In addition, the police have begun a pilot program in community policing that seems to hold great promise for the favelas...
...Some stand as solo sentinels...
...Rocinha is furthest along in this process...
...And what gives them that power is guns...
...They seem like cartoon killing machines, with oversized bullet clips hanging off absurdly tiny barrels...
...And how do they get money...
...drugs and men with guns in exchange for security and freedom from crime...
...They do what they do...
...Each of the cornered a ri s bandits...
...One top staffer in Mayor Cesar Maia's administration who has worked in favelas for almost two decades notes that the experience has given officials lots of insight into how the drug gangs work...
...If you have a gun and you shoot at me, I will kill you...
...Because if you fight that might bring the police...
...Forget bad or good...
...But the poor figured out a way to build on this wild terrain, creating houses piled on top of each other in impressive agglomerations...
...But Jorge remains cautious...
...the favelas Just a beehive of human habitathe safest tions spread as far as the eye can see...
...What's more, Celsinho has community values...
...He funds the local samba school and sports programs for kids...
...Not wanting to d reward the land grab, local authorities initially refused to provide services, including police patrols...
...inated by traffic...
...From a distance there gun violence seem to be no roads, no yards, no restful space of any kind...
...If NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34DRUG ECONOMIES OF THE AMERICAS I gave you a map, word would get around quickly...
...Jorge says many of the cops who work in the most dangerous favelas are taking money from the drug commands...
...I ask why the city doesn't hand this information over to the cops...
...And this experience was minor compared with what favela dwellers have suffered for years...
...She closed up shop and opened a new store with the same name, Lince Optical and Jewelers, in one of Rio's more than 600 favelas, or squatter communities...
...But he suggests it is not a problem that's unique to the favelas...
...ys the officer...
...The dealers then executed the cops as they sat in their car...
...If you leave a bucket of money, if you leave your wallet in a restaurant, people will return it to you...
...Traffickers kill police...
...I wanted a more secure location," she explains cheerfully as she sits amid the stylish designer frames in her bright new store on the Estrada da Givea, one of the main shopping streets of Rocinha, Rio's largest and most urbanized favela...
...It's been in the newspapers and on TV...
...They don't trust us at all...
...Our federal government, our state I'm a warrior...
...You have more risk with a store in [the well-off neighborhood] Ipanema than in Rocinha...
...But Depli has a closer relationship with the traffickers than most businesses in Chicago, New York, or L.A...
...Vol XXXVI, No 2 SEPTEMBERIOCTOBER 2002 33 33 . n I a cit whe - Vol XXXVI, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002DRUG ECONOMIES OF THE AMERICAS When you see them for the first time, the weapons don't look real...
...And the police are also notoriously trigger-happy...
...The Mayor's office has opened satellite offices in many favelas, and two larger favelas, Rocinha and Cidade de Deus, are actually considered legal parts of the city...
...The military is very serious about making sure all weapons are accounted for...
...Here, the gunmen appear a few nights a week...
...Some days they question every person entering or leaving the favela...
...He insists he has no regrets about this massacre...
...I try to believe...
...Jorge believes that the true leaders of the drug gangsthe top dogs of the Comando Vermelho and Terceiro Comando-are not the drug dealers in the favelas, but people in high positions in society...
...We killed in a barbaric way...
...Jorge believes that the people who he is trying to kill (and or, I'm a man who are trying to kill him) are nother force...
...The theory is that bringing in representations of public power and political involvement will tame these wild boroughs of the city...
...For instance, Jorge has killed 13 people during his raids on favelas...
...If you take out your gun, it's sufficient for me: I will kill you...
...They are part of the problem...
...Their form is dynamic: bricks jutting out at odd angles, partial floors framed in concrete, walls that rise only to end abruptly in the soft blue of the sky...
...For him, it's more self-protection...
...In response, the police raided the favela and killed indiscriminately...
...There's money here...
...I said, 'You want to talk...
...After a lengthy exchange of gunfire, there was a lull...
...And the comic book image is enhanced when the guns are clutched by pimply adolescents or moon-faced teenagers who silently watch as families return from church or children run by kicking a soda bottle soccer ball...
...Our country is u I am good dominated by drug traffic...
...Because of its size, there are many bocas in Rocinha...
...Don't think about them," urges Jos6 Geraldo Moreira (aka Zezinho), a garrulous barrel-shaped man who has lived in Rocinha for 30 years and worked his way up from pushcart operator to fruit stand owner...
...In Rocinha, the cops have two small kiosks, but in my time here, I've never seen anyone talk to the cops who sit in the booths and I've never seen the cops do any policing...
...All big cities live with these problems...
...The police also have checkpoints on either side of Rocinha, just outside the favela...
...They're not written anywhere...
...If you have a fight, you can getwell, not necessarily killed but hurt...
...He doesn't defend this action, but he understands it...
...The officerlet's call him Jorge-has been on the force since the mid-1980s and now commands a Patamo-a motorized tactical patrol vehicle-that conducts raids on drug dealers in the favelas...
...If you leave your knapsack somewhere-he points to my shoulder bag, which contains my money and my camera-people will return it...
...Indeed, as things currently stand, the police are not part of the solution to the hegemony of the drug barons...
...They are very new weapons...
...And then all will be right...
...Not until then, he seems to be saying, will the violence end...
...Improvements in the look of the favela...
...It's a war...
...So far, the baile funk promoters are lying low, but no arrests have been made...
...In the favela, the community protects itself...
...But he freely admits he has broken that rule: He was leading a patrol into a favela where two drug gangs were battling for turf...
...They know that making the community better is making it better for their families, for their kids and wives and parents and grandparents...
...He puts on a There ii police uniform and goes wherever he wants to go, transported by the cops...
...not the ones who control the drug trade...
...It's a very fragile model," admits Pedro Strozenberg, a lawyer who works for VivaRio, a non-profit organization that helped spawn the community policing program...
...Not only don't they allow people to oppose them, but they don't allow any crime, petty or violent, that might draw the cops to their hideouts...
...The manager of a supermarket just outside Rocinha that caters mostly to favela residents, says that Rocinha's drug traffickers call him regularly to find out how things are going and ask whether any customers are giving him problems...
...And there is fact to back up this fear: The government estimates that $15 million in drugs-three to four tons of cocaine and seven to eight tons of marijuana, 20% consumed locally and 80% destined for Europe and the United States-move through Rio's favelas every month...
...Human beings are very bad...
...And there's also a boca on my street, in a quiet area called Cachopa, halfway up the hill...
...But there's another boca on the Via Apia, one of the favela's main commercial streets, where young men sell papelotes, little paper sacks of cocaine and marijuana...
...What's more, the dealers are so rooted in some favelas, such as Complexo Alemdo, Mar6, Nova Holanda, and others in the city's working class Zona Norte, that gun battles with the cops are almost everyday occurrences...
...This meant the drug gangs could operate openly and yet not be observed by the police...
...How can three or four boxes of grenades, pistols, and rifles simply disappear from the military and re-appear at the favela...
...One police officer, who agreed to talk as long as he was not identified, admits that the police often cause more problems than they solve...
...The main one is in an area called Valdo ("sewer"), a crowded section of the favela that takes its name from the ten-foot-wide channel of storm water, trash and sewage than runs down the main street...
...These guns will pierce a bullet-proof vest at a great distance...
...We injured the chief of that group," Jorge recalls...
...The cops here (the military and civil police-the cops with guns-are branches of the state government...
...The violence has been greatly reduced...
...For me, everyone is born bad," he tells me...
...I feel safe here," Washington says...
...They couldn't understand why gringos would have any business going to a favela except to buy drugs...
...Back in Rocinha, my friend Washington has changed his tune...
...And fifteen per cent are involved in big corruption," meaning that they are in league with the drug dealers...
...He is extremely moral...
...I only feel scared when I go to the rest of the city...
...At the same time, if you go to the authorities, you know corruption exists and the problem will not be solved...
...They are considered perilous places where drug dealers ply the streets and shootouts are the norm...
...But the authorities have so little credibility within the favelas it's not clear how many people believe this...
...Businesspeople, too, accept the trade-off: the proliferation of hard re brutal, but allow any y or violent-raw the cops hideouts...
...Estimates are that Rocinha has 120,000 residents...
...Another city worker whispers that he'd rather work with the dealers than the cops because they're more honorable...
...The drug rings took root in the favelas because of a power vacuum: These illegal communities were created through land invasions...
...Even the murder of television journalist that might d Tim Lopes, who disappeared in June while researching a story to their on the bailes funk in Favela da Grota in the Zona Norte of the city, may not have dimmed people's sense that the criminals are better than the cops...
...He has never used drugs and does not participate in the underground squatter economy...
...I don't need to explain them to you or give you a book...
...He concedes that it is strange to see heavily armed men stalking the streets of the neighborhood after dark...
...Similarly, Dante Quinterno, who manages Rocinha's cable television company, TV Roc, must deal with the traffickers...
...The program's working, but it depends on everyone working together...
...They would bust into people's houses, guns drawn, looking for dealers...
...I won't tell you I am good and he is bad...
...Jorge takes a slow sip of soda before he continues...
...Even in the rich neighborhoods, they stand impassively at security posts holding their weapons with obvious pride...
...If you lose your wallet in Copacabana [one of Rio's most popular tourist neighborhoods], forget about ever seeing it again...
...Vol XXXVI, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 200235 0 Vol XXXVI, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 35DRUG ECONOMIES OF THE AMERICAS "Seventy percent of cops are corrupt," Jorge says, meaning that they are willing to take money to void an arrest...
...favelas can only be reached on foot, by traversing steep becos-alleys-that zigzag between the buildings, sometimes leaving you in a dead end, sometimes winding upward the whole way like a narrow, twisty ladder...
...It's gone...
...Many parts of the rhoods...
...There is still drug traffic...
...The city has big plans: Better sewage and drainage...
...I laugh, but he remains serious...
...It's only long after our conversation that I realize he's talking about the Last Judgment...
...You can usually see them on the streets where the drug trade is active, in locations called bocas de fumo, or mouths of smoke...
...We killed five guys...
...till, politics does offer ways to help integrate favelas into the urban fabric...
...20 minutes...
...A few have pistols-sleek nine millimeter jobs that are light enough for kids to stick in the elastic waist bands of their Bermuda shorts-but most carry guns that would make even a well-heeled terrorist or revolutionary drool with envy: AK-47s, AR-15s, M-16s, submachine guns, even grenades...
...Jorge does not see police work as public service...
...Jorge, who has engaged in many shootouts in Pavo Pavdozinho, was initially dubious about this effort...
...These are the rules if you want to work well in this situation...
...But in the squatter community, things are different...
...Sometimes I imagine He will come back to tell people that all this is wrong...
...When I won't tell y Celsinho needs to leave the favela, he calls the cops, who and he is bad send a Patamo...
...The second problem is for people to speak out...
...You can't fight in Rocinha...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32DRUG ECONOMIES OF THE AMERICAS Among Rio's elite, the favelas are treated as an embarrassing secret...
...But it's true...
...That's because, instead of being controlled by politicians or patrolled by the corrupt and trigger-happy military police force, Rio's favelas are ruled by three tightly organized drug gangs: The Comando Vermelho (Red Command), Terceiro Comando (Third Command) and Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends...
...Today, 100 specially trained officers walk the beat in the favela, and are working with the residents rather than fighting against them...
...The police quickly announced that Elias Pereira da Silva-known as Elias Maluco ("the madman") and said to be one of the leaders of the Comando Vermelho-had ordered the hit...
...There is a war...
...If I'm a warrior, I'm a man who combats another force...
...If someone broke in or tried to rob this store," she says, still smiling, "they would die...
...It depends on the government and on the community sticking to it when things get tough...
...In one case, a six-year-old girl was seriously wounded during one of his gun battles, and though she recovered fully, he says the sound of her pleas for help plague him to this day...
...Here's how we'll talk...
...Other merchants report similar encounters...
...The guys with guns come out at night...
...For instance, in a favela called Pavdo Pavdozinho ("Peacock-Little Peacock") the owner of the Depld franchise is invited to parties thrown by the chief drug trafficker...
...The strength is to control your bad instincts, control your impulses...
...Most favela dwellers handle the dealers in a slightly different way: They obey the rules but pretend the men with guns aren't around...
...When you are trading shots and you see a friend of yours wounded and all the blood, when the mission stops, you have to control yourself not to take revenge," he says...
...If I'm a war "It's not a secret...
...In 1993, a band of marauding cops massacred 21 residents of Vigdrio Geral, a large Zona Norte favela, after local drug dealers killed five policemen...
...You might be with the police...
...The Comando Vermelho controls most of the drug trade in Rio, and Rocinha, the favela where I lived for three months, is part of its empire...
...The community still hates the police," he says...
...He has a hardcore attitude...
...We can talk now...
...Celsinho is an unusual drug dealer, because his posse has an unwritten rule not to kill cops...
...The proper traffickers respect public power," Valquiria, the regional administrator, tells me...
...It is very difficult...
...But I do believe...
...In the 14th dis- "It's a war," s trict, almost all the cops receive "If money from him," Jorge says...
...But if you don't, if you surrender, then I will not kill you...
...He took a bullet to his leg and fell to the ground...
...He has seen violence...
...I'm a warrior...
...In Ipanema, we have problems almost every three months...
...There are guns...
...He threw his weapon forward and said 'Hey...
...For instance, he explains the Vigdrio Geral massacre this way: Five cops who were on the take decided to extort more money from the local drug dealers...
...But it is very small...
...Let's talk...
...He will tell everyone that they cannot judge, only He can judge...
...Once, when I was leaving Rocinha with a friend, two cops rushed us, guns drawn.They pressed the revolvers against our stomachs and questioned us for Kids with guns provide more security for favela residents than the trigger-happy police...
...Selling drugs...
...High up the hill, his team got into a shootout with one of the gangs...
...If you leave them alone, they leave you alone...
...Robert Neuwirth is writing a book on squatter communities around the world to be published by Routledge...
...Then she smiles and adds, "And, with our work, little by NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36DRUG ECONOMIES OF THE AMERICAS 0 z o 0 While an armed man looks on, a samba drum school parades through Vigdrio Geral, site of a drug-related police massacre in 1993...
...Jorge says he has also marched into favelas and beaten people up in order to prove his toughness to the dealers, and has even seen innocent people wounded in crossfire...
...Everyone who combats knows it...
...When we go to favelas and we find an arms stockpile," he explains, "we see boxes from the Air Force, Army, Navy...
...He pantomimes a series of gunshots...
...But when I ask him if I could get copies, he declines...
...And this allows him to justify things that to an outsider seem absolutely incomprehensible...
...till, it's hard to convince favela residents that the police are not the bad guys...
...It exists in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, too...
...They were bandidos, the bad guys, and they were trying to kill him...
...But if I give you a map, I will get a call saying 'Be careful...
...I am almost certain that the guys that really run the drug commands are big military guys from the army, air force, and even politicians...
...Washington Gongalves Miranda Ferreira, a teenager who has spent almost half his life in Rocinha, feels this acutely...
...It's very difficult to live with that...
...But these are not caricatures...
...others congregate in packs of ten or more...
...He has seen the smugglers-his word for the drug traffickers-beat a man, douse him with gasoline, and dump his burning body onto a highway at the height of rush hour...
...Let's work this out...
...There is no risk doing business in the favelas," says Daniel Pla, whose DeplA film developing franchise has 160stores, including three in favelas, and Pla is making plans for more...
...You do what you do...
...And, ultimately, some form of property rights...
...government, everything is doma war...
...This contradiction-the relative safety of the criminal areas and the criminality that runs rampant in the legal neighborhoods-is startling to an outsider...
...He has witnessed shootouts...
...His job, as he sees it, is to interrupt that pattern...
...The official leans forward and wags a finger in warning...
...He's talking about the end of the world...
...The first problem we face is to convince people that there is a problem...
...little, we're trespassing a bit on the privacy that allows them to operate...
...In Flamengo, being assaulted was always a risk...
...In order to string the cable to each of his 30,000 customers in the favela, he had to create maps detailing every beco in Rocinha...
...He was recent- ly awarded a Research and Writing grant from the MacArthur Foundation...
...Val6ria Cristina is frank about the reason she fled the legal city and relocated to an illegal neighborhood where cocaine and marijuana are sold openly and groups of men with guns roam the streets at night...
...For the favela dwellers-and one in five residents of this beach city is a squatter-the kids with the guns are infinitely preferable to the police...
...Because in Rocinha we have no robberies...
...To be fair, Jorge doesn't have a positive view of human nature...
...What's more, the existence of an entrenched criminal power base in the favelas suggests that the power structure in Brazil doesn't mind ceding some turf to criminal enterprises-as long as they remain out of sight and out of mind in the poor communities...
...The gangs ensure that there is no crime within the areas where they operate...
...They are the other side and it's my job to fight them...
...Sometimes it's hard to believe in God," he tells me...
...his "don't ask, don't tell" policy seems the dominant attitude of City Hall, as well...
...And in the favela it's worse...
...Look," the staffer says, "everyone knows the difference between the traffickers and the police is very small...
Vol. 36 • September 2002 • No. 2
