Rio authorities battling to recapture favelas from gangs (Feature)

By Diana Renee Nov 25, 2010, 4:07 GMT

Rio de Janeiro - Even as it prepares to host the 2014 football World Cup final and the 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiro was was again shaken this week by clashes between police and drug gangs.

Local officials portray the tide of violence as a side effect of their attempts to root out the criminal gangs that have long terrorized the city and even ruled large, lawless swathes of Rio.

The latest wave of unrest started Sunday, worsening by the day even as more police officers were deployed in response. Leaving home can be a dangerous adventure, and cariocas - as Rio's residents are known - listen attentively to radio and television reports of the ongoing violence to pick the safest routes to cross the city.

Email and social networks have become vital sources of real-time information on places to avoid, although it can be hard to sort reliable tips from paranoid rumours.

A student who identified herself as Juliana emailed a local television channel to describe how her bus was attacked in traffic on Wednesday in the suburb of Santa Cruz and set ablaze with a Molotov cocktail.

'I was in the bus on the way to school. Suddenly the driver stopped, and we could see some armed men outside who ordered everyone to get out fast,' she wrote. 'I left the vehicle as fast as I could and, as I ran away, I could hear the bang that started a fire in my bus. I think I'm lucky to be alive.'

Another passenger, a 20-year-old woman on her way to work, was unable to escape as quickly and was hospitalized with burns to her feet.

For decades, much of Rio's crime was confined to the poorest neighbourhoods, particularly the city's close to 1,000 favelas, or slums. In the absence of effective state control, many of the neglected favelas became strongholds for both drug gangs and the so- called militias, groups of former police officers intimidating or brutalizing locals through extortion rackets.

The Peacemaking Police Units launched by Rio de Janeiro Governor Sergio Cabral and by his public security minister, Jose Mariano Beltrame, have reasserted law and order in 14 favelas, including City of God, which was made world-famous by the film of the same name, and Dona Marta, where Michael Jackson shot the video for the song They Don't Care About Us.

In favelas occupied by police, who are accompanied by a surge of government social and cultural programmes, the drug gangs and the militias have lost influence, and families are learning to live without fear.

Cabral insisted that the latest wave of violence was not a criminal offensive but a 'desperate action' by the gangs from whom the government has wrested control in their former strongholds. He called on cariocas not to let themselves be intimidated by attacks and to keep backing anti-crime policies.

'What criminals want is to generate panic and to make society backtrack,' Cabral said. 'They want to return to the crime-ridden situation in which they thrive. They are monsters, and big ones at that, and we are weakening that monster.'

At the national level, Brazil's federal Public Security Minister Ricardo Belestri supported Cabral. For the first time in 40 years, the current violence shows that the Rio state government has implemented a successful strategy to combat crime.

'Rio is undergoing the labour pains of the major historic transformation which is taking place,' Belestri said. 'The same thing happened in Medellin,' the Colombian city once dominated by drug cartels.

Beltrame, the main architect of the new strategy against the drug gangs, pleaded for patience from cariocas and underlined that his plan is to make Rio safe by 2014, when the 'Wonderful City' is to host several World Cup matches including the final.

'We are already showing results. We have rescued 200,000 people from the threat of armed violence. Before, we had 500 murders per month. Now, there are 300-350. These data are still bad, but we have a well-structured plan for Rio,' he said.

'This is not an ephemeral proposal, but a well-structured one, which will deliver results in the medium and long terms.'

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