Brazil’s top drug slum swept

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This article was published 14/11/2011 (5255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — More than 3,000 police and soldiers backed by armoured personnel carriers raced into Brazil’s biggest slum before dawn Sunday, quickly gaining control of a shantytown ruled for decades by a heavily armed drug gang.

The takeover of the Rocinha neighbourhood was the most ambitious operation yet in an effort to increase security before Rio hosts the final matches of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Officials are counting on those events to signal Brazil’s arrival as a global economic, political and cultural power.

The head of state security and chief architect of Rio’s shantytown-pacification program, José Mariano Beltrame, called the operation a major success and a big step toward breaking drug traffickers’ hold on key parts of Rio.

“We have taken over areas that for 30 or 40 years were in the hands of… a parallel power,” he said. “This is a very large area. It’s one of the biggest shantytowns in the Americas if not the world. We’re returning dignity and territory to people.”

The action in Rocinha is part of a campaign to drive the drug gangs out of the city’s slums, where traffickers often rule unchallenged. The city of Rio de Janeiro has more than 1,000 shantytowns where about one-third of its six million people live.

Authorities said it took just 90 minutes to seize control of Rocinha. Police simultaneously overran the neighbouring Vidigal slum, also previously dominated by the Friends of Friends drug gang.

Both slums sit between two of Rio’s richest neighbourhoods, and Rocinha’s ramshackle homes climb a mountainside covered in Atlantic rainforest. Police methodically cleared alleys and streets on their way up steep, winding roads.

Huey helicopters swarmed over the slum, criss-crossing the hill and flying low over the jungle surrounding the slum, as police hunted down suspects who might have fled into the forest. By evening, police said they made just four arrests.

People peeked from their windows and stared as armoured personnel carriers roared up streets. Rifle-toting officers from the BOPE police unit, made famous by two Elite Squad films, trained their weapons down narrow corridors.

Down a side alleyway, police discovered a house they said belonged to the No. 2 gang leader, Sandro Luiz de Paula Amorim, known as “Peixe,” who was captured by police a few days earlier when they encircled Rocinha with roadblocks.

In stark contrast to the impoverished shacks around it, Amorim’s three-storey home was outfitted with a large whirlpool bath, swimming pool, huge aquarium, high-definition TV and just one book: the ancient Chinese military text Art of War.

 

— The Associated Press