Surrounded by lush green mountains on one side and the light blue ocean on the other, the neighborhood of São Conrado in Rio de Janeiro is home to the most expensive real estate in Brazil. The mayor of Rio, the governor of the state, and many of Brazil’s elite have luxury apartments here overlooking the white sandy beaches. But as night falls, thousands of specks of light appear on the hill overlooking these 20-story apartment buildings, revealing a seemingly endless trail of houses which stretches to the top of the hill. The hillside neighborhood, which continues down the opposite side out of view, is Rocinha. With a population somewhere between 75,000 and 150,000, it is the largest shantytown, or favela, in Brazil.
The proximity of the two neighborhoods belies the tension that underlies their uneasy coexistence. Fear of invasion by the favelados, as the favela dwellers are known, envelops the wealthy residents of the city, and is a constant presence in the relations between the two groups. As one resident told me: “If they decide to conic down here, forget about it.”
This particular resident was alluding to the widescale looting and chaos that has taken Rio by storm on occasion, as in 1992, when an informal punk concert involving hundreds of teenagers invaded the city streets of another of Rio’s wealthiest neighborhoods, lpanema. Some of the participarits took advantage of the situation to rob beach goers and ransack local stores. Known as the arrastão, or the “sweep,” the attacks sent shock waves through a city already devastated by increasing levels of violence. And though investigations into the arrastões noted that teenagers from all social classes had taken part in the violence, many blamed the favelados for the disturbances.
As the crime rate has continued to rise and hornicide numbers hit all-time highs, fear has gripped the entire city. Since 1995 the homocide rate has doubled, and while the number of robberies has remained constant, the number of deaths resulting from robbery has increased almost twofold. The victims of these crimes have been disproportionately black, pardo(mixed race), poor and uneducated, but middle- and upperclass residents of the city are extremely fearful, believing they are the most likely targets of the growing crime wave. In response, residents of such neighborhoods have surrounded themselves with dozens of private security guards and doormen at their apartment complexes in an attempt to better protect themselves.
It is, of course, the duty of the police to protect all citizens from crime, but in Rio, it is their unofficial job to protect the wealthy neighborhoods like São Conrado from the pending incursion of the favelados––and they do so using the deadliest means possible. The very name of the police force in Rio––the Military Police (PM)––reflects their tendency to act more like a mititary than a police force. The stated targets of the PM’s anti-crime operations are the drug traffickers who frequently operate in the city’s favelas, but the victims are more often civilians caught in the crossfire. Between 1993 and 1996, Rio’s police force killed 942 civilians, over half in favelas. In 1995 alone, Rio’s police killed 358 civilians, almost as many civilians killed by all U.S. police forces combined.[1]
The brutal behavior of the police has made it easier for the drug traffickers to remake themselves as the protectors of law and order in the favelas and to solidify their hold over these neighborhoods. The traffickers have set up sophisticated defense systems using the local population to protect the neighborhood from police and rival drug-trafficking gangs. These systems are also used to gain support from the local population by eliminating petty thievery from the favela as well as surrounding neighborhoods.
The result of these conflicts is one of the most militarized urban environments in Latin America, in which these private systems of security in both upper and lower-class neighborhoods often act as judge, jury and executioner of the accused. Death is a common outcome of this informal process, and it is rarely questioned––despite the fact that there is no death penalty in Brazil. The police, instead of applying the rule of law, have contributed to and participated in the rise of these informal systems of security provision.
Since favelas appeared on the hillsides of Rio in the 1930s, the government has been largely absent from the residents’ lives. In its absence, the “law of the hill,” or lei do morro, emerged. This informal system of rules insisted that older members of the morro be respected and it strongly sanctioned petty thievery within the favela. Before the arrival of organized gangs of drug traffickers in the late 1980s, neighborhood associations enforced these codes. These associations also settled conflicts between community members, especially property conflicts.
When the government did appear in the favelas, its actions only served to reinforce the deep mistrust between the authorities and the favelados. For example, in the early 1970s, in an attempt to solve what many called the “problem” of the favelas, the government forcibly removed 30,000 people from the wealthier southern part of the city, including Rocinha, and relocated them to far-away areas.[2] This wariness toward the government intensified as police brutality against the favelados grew worse. In some favelas, military police units created visible torture chambers in their stations.
As the violence increased towards them, so did the favelados’ reaction towards those who they saw as criminals within their own communities. While the neighborhood associations maintained their jurisdiction over property issues, organized gangs enforced the criminal side of the lei do morro. The residents themselves disciplined many petty thieves or suspected thieves, illustrated by the high number of lynchings in Rio in the 1980S.[3]
The arrival of the drug traffickers made these informal laws even stricter. Today, residents of favelas say there are no more petty thieves––they have either been killed or expelled. Stories circulate about those who have had things taken from their homes and ilmnediately went to the chefão, the guardian of the local drug den. Within hours after visiting the chefão the items had been returned and the victims felt secure in knowing that the thieves had been taken care of. “No one steals in the morro,” one neighborhood association leader told me. “To steal is to risk death.”
Those who do commit crimes are often punished in public. In his journalistic account of Rio’s largest organized-crime syndicate, the Comando Vermelho (CV), Carlos Amorint recounts the story of the CV’s shooting the hands of 11 kids who were caught robbing passengers on a bus near the traffickers’ favela.[4] The CV also expanded its jurisdiction to include crimes not always recognized by the government, such as domestic abuse against women and children.
By strictly enforcing the already-existing favela laws and making others more clearly punishable, groups like the CV have created a parallel security system. They have also created a new relationship with the residents of the favelas that is based on creating stability for themselves and their business. And it is not just the favelas where these codes are enforced. Residents of Rocinha told me that the lei do morro blankets their neighbors in São Corrado as well.
The drug traffickers realize that less crime and disorder in both neighborhoods means less police presence and less disruption of the sale of drugs. Brazil is a transit point for drugs on their way from the producing countries in the Andean nations to the consuming countries in Europe and North America, and some cocaine remains in Brazil where it is sold to middle- and upper-class residents. By some estimates, traffickers can earn up to $4,000 a day. Part of this money is put back into the favelas, where it is estimated that traffickers employ over 10,000 people.
By providing employment, drug traffickers are giving back to the neighborhoods that they came from. They are remnants of the gangs whose maturity and, some argue, jail time permitted them to construct a new relationship with favela residents. While in jail many gang members came in contact with political prisoners from the urban guerrilla movements of the 1960s and 1970s, from whom they obtained leftist literature describing ways to organize resistance movements.[5] Soon these gang members began to rob banks in the name of “the people.” Amorim quotes one CV member stating as he robbed a bank: “We don’t want the. money of the worker. We are from the Comando Vermelho and we just want to take the money from the bank.”[6] The CV also used political slogans like “Peace, Justice and Liberty,” which they painted on many street corners to enhance their image as a quasi-guerrilh organization.
Like guerrillas in other countries, the drug traffickers have also used police repression––one of the most enduring legacies of the military regime that ran the country from 1964 to 1985––to galvanize both military and political support in the favelas. During the military dictatorsbip, the government united the police and the military to deal with the small urban guerrilla movements that had emerged. As many as 1,000 civilians were killed in Rio de Janeiro alone between 1968 and 1974, the height of guerrilla activity, and thousands of others were thrown into jail.[7] After the guerrilla movements had been eliminated in the early 1970s, the military sought out a new enemy: common criminals and organized crime. By 1981, to emphasize the continuity of their mission, the police were categorizing the CV as the “left reorganized.”[8] The same brutal force used against urban guerrillas was now directed against alleged criminals, even after the restoration of civilian rule in 1985. The police were placed under the jurisdiction of the states’ governors, but the abuses continued. In São Paulo. for example, 4,470 people were killed by the police in 1992. In the face of growing international and domestic pressure, this number dropped to 400 in 1993 and has remained steady ever since.[9]
The alliances between the drug traffickers and the favelados against the police are often short-lived, however, due to the precarious existence of the gangs. Targeted by the government and rival gangs alike, local drug traffickers have used the residents to protect themselves. Kids are often the first and sometimes last lines of defense. The smallest children fly different color kites to signal the presence of police or unknown people while teenagers work in signal houses with flags that alert the drug traffickers to the presence of unwanted elements. They also work as guards to the drug dens. All are heavily armed, waiting for the inevitable struggle between them and the police or a rival gang for control over the drug dens.
The “wars” between rival gangs are frequently more damaging than those between the drug traffickers and the police. They can last for hours at a time and residents are often caught in the crossfire. Following a change in power, residents suspected of sympathizing with the previous gang are humiliated and sometimes expelled from the area. Those who speak to anyone who is expelled may also be persecuted by the drug traffickers in power. Some of the former residents’ homes remain unoccupied for fear of being marked as the home of sympathizers of another gang.
In order to survive, the favelados attempt to maintain their distance from the drug traffickers and respect their wishes. When a member of the local gang is killed, for example, store owners may close for a day. Some of the smaller favelas are controlled to an even greater extent. All those who enter and leave must pass armed guards. If the drug traffickers shut the gate, then no one leaves, and no one enters.
The activities of the neighborhood associations have also been reduced. Their former role of defending the interests of the residents has been undermined, and their mediation efforts with the government, once a key element of their activities, has also been curtailed. The police charge that as many as one-third of the associations are controlled by drug-trafficking organizations. Reflecting the changing balance of power in the favelas, the politicians who dare to enter the area now go through the drug traffickers instead of the associations. Traffickers welcome them with large parties during which these politicians will offer piecemeal solutions to what are deep rooted chronic problems of unemployment and poverty.
In the end, the politics of the drug traffickers differ very little from those of the politicians. As one favela resident and former president of his neighborhood association said, they act on “immediate matters” such as financing the samba school or building a road. Indeed, their seeming oppositibn to the system has paved the way for drug traffickers to clearly define themselves in a role that the favelados can relate to. At the same time, however, the draconian measures used to maintain this leverage leave the favelados with little choice but to follow what is known as the “law of silence.” “People here see things,” one resident explained, “but we have to remain silent. They kill many people, expel many people.” As a member of the human rights group, Bento Rubião, suggests, the favelados must endure a kind of “armed coexistence” with the traffickers.
The “wars” that occur in the favelas form the backdrop to an increasingly drastic crime situation in Rio that has the wealthy sectors also seeking more cover. In neighborhoods such as Ipanema and São Comado, the security personnel who surround virtually every building make up just a small percentage of the estimated 75,000 private security guards in Rio. Many of these security guards are current and former policemen who moved to the private sector for more money. Others with less training and formal education than the police monitor wealthy neighborhoods with high-powered weapons.
The upper-class perception that crime disproportionately affects them is intimately connected to what they perceive as the dramatic rise in the number of favelas surrounding them. In fact, the favelas are home to only about 17% of Rio’s population, but they are located in the most visible places: on the sides of the mountains that surround the city’s chic commercial and residential neigborhoods. The favelados are seen by Rio’s upper-class residents as invaders, not residents of the city, and the favelas are seen as evil, crime-breeding places. “Rio de Janeiro needs to elimi-nate the favelas, because they are the center of crime connected to drugs and drug dealers,” says one of Rio’s well-off residents. “In these favelas there will always be a huge number of kids who will grow up to accept this bad environment.”[10]
This logic underlies the behavior of the police, who often treat cases differently depending upon where the crime occurs and who is involved. Robberies in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods will more likely be investigated (and reported) than those in lower-class neighborhoods; a minor “altercation” in one neighborhood could be a disturbance of “public order” in another. The police also continue to use torture on a regular basis, but suspects from middle- or upper-class backgrounds, or those with a formal education, are rarely submitted to such treatment. Torture is almost exclusively applied to members of the poor underclass. As one police officer interviewed by Roberto Kant said: “It is the only language the poor are capable of understanding.”[11] Many citizens agree. In one poll conducted conducted by the nongovernmental organization Institute of Religious Studies (ISER) in1996, 45% of respondents considered that the “use of violent methods to force a confession of a suspect” by police was justifiable. The participants in this poll were primarily from the middle class but the results, when broken down by income or race, varied very little.[12]
The media is largely responsible for reinforcing these beliefs, as one recent case in Rio illustrates. On April 15, 1998, three armed men assassinated Ana Carolina da Costa, who was driving her car in her middle-class neighborhood of Laranjeiras. Da Costa was a student and the daughter of a prominent jewelry salesman. Despite the almost three homicides a day in Rio, this case dominated the front page of the two main daily newspapers in Rio, O Globo and Jornal do Brasil, for several days following da Costa’s murder.[13] While the manhunt centered on the favelas around Laranjeiras, dozens of Rio residents joined the grieving father in a march around the neighborhood, carrying flags stating “Enough impunity!” The governor of the state and the mayor of Rio, normally political rivals, responded by promising to join forces to fight crime. They instituted special measures, including shortening the time one has to stop for a traffic signal and unifying the county’s and city’s anti-crime units. “We are going to treat these animals like animals,” said the governor.
The hype surrounding crime has led to even more radical solutions for “crime control.” In the 1980s, Brazilians witnessed the emergence of death squads and justiceiros––protessional hitmen––aimed specifically at eliminating criminals and other “undesirables.” This was a nationwide trend, but most common in São Paulo and Rio. Both the death squads and the justiceiros are privately financed but depend on the coordination and participation of state security personnel in cleansing the streets of alleged criminals and other “undesirables”––street children, indigentg and prostitutes.[14] In 1993, for example, eight street children were massacred by a death squad in the downtown Candelária plaza. One witness survived the massacre despite being shot, and identified three policemen and one private security guard as the perpetrators. In all, 5,644 minors were killed between 1988 and 1991, the majority by death squads, private security guards and drug traffickers. In another case, policemen killed 21 civilians in the favela of Vigário Geral in 1993 to avenge the death of four colleagues at the hands of a drug trafficker. The next year two members of a city commission investigating the case were also killed in what many believed to be a politically motivated crime.
Despite international outrage over these and other cases, many Brazilians had a favorable view of the death squads and the justiceiros. In the Candelária case, for example, one poll showed that 16% supported the brutal methods of eliminating street children. Some strongly criticized human rights groups and protested when the government pursued the assassins. “There are many crooks here,” said one resident of São Paulo after the arrest of the “Corporal,” an infamous justiciero in São Paulo who had killed more than 50 people. “What the Corporal did was right. Outlaws must die. They don’t deserve to be prisoners. He did only good for all of us here.”[15]
Much of the justiceiro and death-squad activity has died down since the early 1990s, only to be replaced by an increase in state-sponsored repression, particularly in Rio. One current policy rewards police officers for “bravery” in the line of duty, offering a promotion and a possible pay raise. Pay raises are incremental but can be substantial and a tremendous incentive for police officers to act in a inanner that warrants the title of “bravery.” Indeed, as a study by ISER illustrated, during the first six months of 1996, the first year this policy became effective, the number of civilian deaths at the hands of the police were seven times what they were the year before. In addition, rewards were given in clear relation to the use of deadly force. These cases occurred under the most suspicious of circumstances and may have enhanced the lethal reputation of Rio’s police force, already one of the world’s deadliest.[16]
In Rio, between 1993-96, police murders represented a startling 10% of all homicides. These so-called shoot-outs occurred in higher proportion in the favelas, where the homicide rate was almost triple that of the rest of the city. Of all the deaths caused by the police during these years, only six of the 1,361 total victims (dead and injured) had criminal records prior to their encounter with the police. In addition, the police frequently destroyed evidence of the crime scenes by removing the victims’ bodies. Of the 942 citizens the police killed in this time period, 777 were taken to the hospital, a high percentage of them two hours or more after the battle. [17]
There is little chance that police brutality will come under scrutiny because the police enjoy almost absolute impunity. Deaths of civilians in the line of duty are not investigated thoroughly and those that are investigated rarely result in punishment of the men involved. One reason is the 1979 amnesty through which the members of the special forces, in addition to the police and military, escaped prosecution and remained with the military. In addition, a military court system created in 1977 provides a blanket for the police forces, which rarely prosecute their own for what are considered acts of valor.
It is not surprising then, that when the police enter an area, people go into their houses and shut their doors. Even for the residents who have no connection to criminal elements, it is the police who are the number-one enemy. When people are robbed, they do not call the police. When they are taken into custody, they cringe with the knowledge that even if they are not guilty they might admit something under the strain of torture. The police are not only known for their brutality, they frequently flaunt it, driving around in vans and sports-utility vehicles with their guns hanging out the windows.
Police brutality only enhances the sense of insecurity in Rio and strengthens the argument for more informal security. In the ISER poll, when asked how to solve the problem of rising crime, the respondents invariably said more police.[18] There was also strong support for deadly security operations. Operation Rio, a joint police and military effort carried out in 1994 in which favelas believed to be under the control of drug traffickers were occupied by the army, enjoyed widespread popular support despite what Human Rights Watch called “torture, arbitrary detentions, warrantless searches” and the unnecessary use of force.[19] In the same survey noted above, 68% polled supported the program, while only 10% strongly disagreed with the policy.[20]
The survey illustrates the complexity behind the issue of security in a place like Rio. For good reason, people do not trust the police. They do, however, trust the idea that safety comes from an increase in security personnel, even if they ignore citizens’ right to due process. In reality, even after the implementation of a Brazilian Bill of Rights in the 1988 Constitution, due process is a luxury afforded only to the elite. Non-elites scramble to survive outside this hierarchical system by employing their own security systems to protect themselves from each other and the police. But while these systems present short-term solutions to the sensation of insecurity in Rio, the consequences for the poor are similar to when the police wield their guns. Unfortunately for many residents of Rio, the logic of the argument in favor of private security will only be flawed when the government accepts and remedies the complete breakdown of social and judicial order and halts the onslaught of extrajudicial violence being carried out by its own police.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Steven Dudley Is a fredance writer who has reported from several Latin American countries. He wrote “Walking Through the Nightscapes of Bogota” in the SeptemberlOctaber 1998 issup of NACLA Report.
NOTES:
1.Institute of Religious Studies IISER), Letaliade da Ação Policial no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: ISER, 1997), P. 64,
2.Anthony and Elizabeth Leeds, A Socologia do Brasil Urbano (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1977), pp. 239-241.
3.Between 1979 and 1988, José de Souza Martíns documented 272 cases of lynchings. Of these, 47 occurred in Rio de Janeiro. In contrast to some research suggesting store owners are the predominant catalysts for lynchings, de Souza’s data shows that almost half of the alleged crimes of the victim were aimed at people (rapes, assaults, murder) and not property making store owners participation less critical. See Jose de Souza, Martins, “Lynchings––Life by a Thread: Street Justice in Brazil, 1979–1988,” in Martha K. Huggins, ed., Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays on Extralegal Violence (New York: Praeger, 1991), pp, 24-26.
4.Carlos Annorim, Comando Vermelho: A Hist6ria Secreta do Crime Orgarrizardo (Rio de Janeiro: Distibuidadora, 1993), p. 28.
5.Carlos Amorim, Comando Vermelho, pp 119-125.
6.Carlos Annorim, Camando Vermelho, p. 123.
7.Paulo Sergio Pinhelro, “Police and Political Cirds: the Case of the Military Police,” in Martha K. Huggins, ed., Vigilantism and the State in Modem Latin America, p. 176
8.Carlos Amorim, Consando Vermiellso.
9.Americas Watch, Police Brutality in Urban Brazil (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997), pp 13-15.
10.Lurz Eduardo Scares, et al., Violencia e Politica no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: ISER, 1996), p. 37.
11.Roberto Kant de Lima, A Policia da Cidada do Rio de Janeiro: Seus Dilemas e Paradoxes (Rio de Janeiro Foliate Militar do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 1994), p. 134.
12.CPDOC-FGV/ISER, Lei, Justiça e Cidania (Rio de Janeiro, 1997), p. 20.
13.Between 1993-1996, the police registered 3,831 homicides in
Rio de Janeiro. ISER, Letalidade da Ação Policial no Rio de
Janeiro.
14.Americas Watch, Police Brutality in Urban Brazil, pp. 32-33.
15.Helorsa Rodrigues Fernandes, “Authoritarian Society: Breeding Ground for Justicieros,” in Martha K. Huggins, ed., Vigilantism and the State in Modem Latin America, p. 62.
16 Just to cite one suspicious element of these promotions, in 83% of the cases, no civilian witness was available to corroborate the policemens stories. ISER, Letalidade da Ação Policial no Rio de Janeiro, p. 52.
17.ISER, Letalidade da Ação Policial no Rio de Janeiro, pp.58-61.
18.CPDOC-FGV/ISER, Lei, Justiça e Cidadania.
19.Americas Watch, Police Brutality in Urban Brazil, p. 33.
20.CPDOC-FGV/ISER, Lei, Justiça e Cidadania p. 42.
