Favela Pacification Plan Underway
By Jaylan Boyle, Senior Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO – Three people suspected of setting fire to a bus in Copacabana have been arrested as the fall out from an attack apparently carried out by gangs controlling the drug trade in the nearby Pavao-Pavaozinho favela community continues, following last week’s occupation by the Military Police.
Elite security forces in conflict with gangs in Pavão-Pavãozinho favela, photo by Pavão-Pavãozinho.
The three men were caught near the scene in possession of hand-grenades and fuel, according to police Colonel Marcus Jardim. The bus at the time was not in operation, meaning no passengers were inside, and the driver was taking a break in a bar nearby. Witnesses said that the only injured party was in fact one of the perpetrators, who suffered burns to his feet.
The recent occupation of the Cantagalo and Pavao-Pavaozinho favelas between Copacabana and Ipanema is part of a wider strategy of pacification aimed at limiting the ability of drug trafficking gangs to control Rio’s favelas, where there is usually inadequate police protection for residents. It is reported that gang control in the favelas can even extend to the administration of ‘justice’, with the gangs imposing arbitrary sentences on transgressors.
View of Cantagalo favela in Ipanema, photo by Amadeu Júnior.
The aim of the security forces is to set up bases of permanent occupation in the affected favelas, called Peacemaker Police Units. The units installed in Cantagalo in Ipanema and Pavao-Pavaozinho in Copacabana are the six and seventh such stations to be initiated in Rio’s favelas, beginning with the Dona Marta community in Botafogo. All of the occupation efforts have been met with heavily armed resistance from the gangs.
Both of the latest favelas to be occupied are considered to be of particular importance to the infrastructure of the largest criminal organizations in Rio, the sizable market for the drug trade in the streets of Ipanema and Arpoador being especially lucrative.
The latest efforts to improve security in Rio and the lives of it’s poorer residents were undermined somewhat last week when the Human Rights Watch group released a damning report accusing police both in Rio and Sao Paulo of routinely using unnecessary lethal force, and of thereby exacerbating the violence problem in both cities. The report goes on to say that police have ‘militarized’ the situation by engaging in war tactics with the trafficking gangs.
Rio, with a reported 5,700 murders in 2008, has also demonstrated it’s commitment to improving the security situation with the announcement last Thursday that the advisory services of ex-mayor of New York Rudi Giuliani. Mr Giuliani is widely credited as having been instrumental in dramatically reducing crime rates in New York. “He’s going to help us in day-to-day security and, especially, with an eye toward … the Olympic Games,” said Rio state governor Sergio Cabral.
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The worsening cycle of criminality which “pacification” addresses only superficially will remain in spite of the plan. That’s a big problem.
Back in the mid ’80′s, I used to live near P. Gen. Osorio, on Rua Visconde de Piraja. Pavaozinho was blighted then, and it’s far worse today, as you’re doubtless aware.
Even in those days, it was clear that Rio’s so-called “tough on crime” or “war on drugs” approach was having a corrupting effect upon an out-numbered, out-gunned PM/Policia Civil, etc., and the capital flows from the drug trade would likely suborn enforcement efforts less well funded than the operations they were nominally charged with eradicating. Did it work? Were the drug gangs eradicated? No, in fact the problem is much worse today, as many of us predicted it would be.
There are a host of more promising things Rio must implement or the shameful trajectory will only plunge her populace into violent chaos:
1.) Decriminalization and taxation of recreational drugs. As with the repeal of prohibition in the States, this will begin the process of taking drug gangs’ economic monopoly away from them. The tax revenues would be dedicated to effective treatment of those drug-addicted persons desirous of a path back to sobriety.
2.) Respecting the right of law-abiding Brazilian citizens to exercise legitimate self-defense, to keep and bear firearms, with their permitting fees and reasonable taxes on ammunition dedicated to a so-called “victims of violent crime” fund.
3.) A complete, comprehensive ground-up re-vetting of any law enforcement officers who are customarily armed while in performance of their duties, designed to professionalize these public servants, and provide tangible financial and promotion incentives for those whose peer-review, and community-review performance remains demonstrative of an abiding respect for due process and human rights.
4.) A so-called amnesty process for marginalized persons and those police officers adjudged to have committed human rights violations should be instituted at the state-government level that will permit them to regularize their status during a 5-year intensively-monitored community-based infrastructure and sanitation improvement program designed to facilitate not only their personal rehabilitation, but give them tangible tools to help rebuild their communities, as partners, with a mutuality of interests, rather than an adversarial “drug war” mentality which has been shown to dehumanize both sides while eroding public safety.
5.) Brazil’s federal government must urgently craft a program of temporary 5-year waivers effectively rescinding, during a 5-year period of re-evaluation, ALL anti-business, anti-competitive, taxes, out-moded regulatory burdens, laws which impede the inflow or egress of foreign capital, and must END the old mercantilism-like practice of huge import duties on imported capital equipment.
6.) Rio’s city government must re-dedicate all monies now being spent on drug policing and incarceration, and devote EVERY DIME of it to improving primary and secondary educational programs, basic literacy, basic nutrition for pre-schoolers, etc, with a view to a more competive workforce capable of taking advantage of the new “business-friendly” climate to be implemented.
7.) Last, but perhaps most important of all, is that all of Rio’s citizenry must acknowledge that if it’s merely about finger-pointing and assigning blame, there’s plenty of that to go around. One could look in a mirror to begin their search for the guilty. We all judge, though we know it’s wrong. We cheat, we lie, we look the other way when we should stand firm in solidarity. We must teach our young people that the flashy “conspicuous consumption” lifestyle of the Playboy, the Drug Kingpin, “tough guy” or “tough gal” is inevitably hollow and without value compared with the familial digity, respect, hard work, and loving attention we’re called upon to render to our “cidade maravilhosa”.
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