Although such parties are officially prohibited in the pacified favelas because of their multiple breaches of the law, ranging from noise violations to exhortations to murder—even the music played there is called baile funk proibidão—the state and its forces were nowhere to be seen. The rival gangs were a bigger threat than the police. The three gangs that control much of Rio have remained more or less stable for the last couple of decades: the Red Command, the Third Command, and Friends of Friends. According to a top police official I spoke to, in a city of just over six million there are some thirty to forty thousand people in the gangs.
The day after the baile funk, I was flying in a police helicopter over Rio. It took us over Ipanema, a beach for the well-to-do, and the newly pacified favela of Rocinha. I asked if we could fly over Arará. The pilot pointed it out in the distance, and said he could not fly directly over it. He was concerned about getting shot down. A couple of years ago, the traficantes had brought down a police helicopter with antiaircraft guns. So the police cannot safely enter a large part of Rio by land or by air. This, too, is the future of many megacities in the developing world, from Nairobi to Caracas. There is a de facto sharing of power between the legitimate organs of the state and the gangs, the militias. Many people will die as the exact contours of this power-sharing are negotiated.
My friend Luiz Eduardo Soares told me a story about power in the favelas. He is an anthropologist who was the national secretary for public security in 2003. He also wrote the book Elite da Tropa (Elite Squad), a study of police brutality and corruption that was made into the most popular film in the history of Brazilian cinema. He made many enemies among corrupt politicians and police. In 2000, security forces found detailed plans to kill Luiz and his daughters—there were notes on when and where they would be going to school, and at what times. The planners were corrupt police officers. Luiz had to flee with his family, first to the US, and then when he returned to Brazil, to a state in the south of the country.
One night Luiz had a call from a man named Lulu, one of the top traficantes in Rio. Lulu was now old for the drug trade—in his thirties. He wanted to surrender; he wanted to give up the gangs and live to see his children grow up.
Luiz said that if Lulu came to see him he’d have to arrest him. Then he would be put away in a jail like Carandiru, where after a 1992 riot the police opened the gates and sprayed the inmates with gunfire, massacring 111 of them. Luiz hoped for the best for Lulu, but his prospects did not seem good. He was wanted both by the police and by rival gangs.
A little later, Luiz was in the far north of the country, in a traditional temple where they worship old gods, the ones who were here before the Portuguese. Luiz was praying when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Lulu smiling at him.
“What are you doing here?” Luiz asked.
“I’m here to see my mother. I got away.”
Soon after that meeting, the Rio police found Lulu. It was stupid of him: the first place a wanted man runs to is his mother. Men came up in a jeep and, without arresting him, took him back to Rio, to his favela, to the police station.
According to Luiz, the chief of the local police appealed to Lulu: “We want you back. It’s been hell since you left. You kept the peace among the gangs. And besides, I need your money for my political campaigns. You have to get back to work, or else.”
So Lulu went back to work, selling coke and meth to the rich kids in the nightclubs of Copacabana and Ipanema. But he had tried to break away; the boys on the corner didn’t trust him, didn’t respect him as they used to. He couldn’t make the 300,000 reais the cops demanded each week.
So one day they came again for Lulu. The cops, Luiz told me, sat him down in a stone chair in an open area of the slum and, with the whole favela watching, shot him in the head. He was useful to the police only when he had power to share. Powerless, he was dead.
by Suketu Mehta, NY Review of Books | Read more:
Image: Walter Mesquita
