Rio de Janeiro – No end to the gang violence?
BRAZIL | Thursday, 21 June 2007 | Views [1591]
On 14 June, more than 400 military and federal police officers from Brazil’s elite security forces raided the German Complex, a sprawling slum located just twenty minutes from downtown Rio de Janeiro. The officers, clad in combat gear and carrying assault rifles, sealed off access to the area, conducted searches of men, women and children, and arrested a number of drug gang members. The raid was part of a month-long operation, dubbed ‘Wide Siege’, which aims to curb drug- and gun-trafficking in Rio de Janeiro, and reduce the level of violence ahead of the Pan American Games to be held in the city next month. However, the Brazilian government’s aggressive tactics do not guarantee success and even run the risk of provoking Rio’s various drug gangs into launching a wave of anarchic violence across the city.
Rio de Janeiro is one of the world’s most violent cities. Statistically, the postcard-perfect South American metropolis is more lethal for young males than the occupied Palestinian territories. Rampant poverty, a huge (and growing) gap between rich and poor, an abundance of guns and drugs, and an underfunded, poorly trained and often corrupt police force have all conspired to drive Rio toward the top of the world’s homicide rankings. However, even by Rio’s standards, 2007 has been an exceptionally violent year; there were some 1,300 murders in the city in the first three months of the year alone. Although much of the violence is confined to the slums, or favelas, in which the gangs reside, recent months have seen increasing incidents of violence spilling out into the heart of the city itself.
The various drug gangs, be it the Comando Vermelho (CV, Red Command), Amigos dos Amigos (ADA, Friends of Friends) or Terceiro Comando Puro (TCP, The Third Command), are largely responsible for the increase in violent crime. Well-armed, well-funded and highly-motivated, the gangs compete for and oversee the majority of criminal activity in Rio. They base themselves in the favelas, where their power extends to the point that they decide when the garbage is collected, when shops open and who should die for breaking their rules. The favelas provide the gangs with a safe environment in which to operate, and the slums' impoverished nature provides a ready supply of willing recruits.
In order to counter the increasing violence in the city ahead of the Pan American Games, Rio de Janeiro’s recently-elected state governor, Sergio Cabral, has taken a hard and uncompromising line. He has drafted in the federal police and the military, and has used the security forces to encircle various favelas and erect security cordons. The police and military have conducted incursions, seizing weapons and drugs and arresting gang members. However, the raids have thus far produced only mixed results. Daily gun battles between the drug gangs and security forces now blight the favelas. The gangs have responded by barricading the entrances to favelas with burnt cars, blowing up sewage pipes to create trenches, and building concrete fortresses to deter fuller, more long-term incursions. Although numerous gang members have been killed or detained by the authorities, the gangs remain embedded within the slum communities.
Having resisted the security forces’ initial push, there is now a possibility that having come under this pressure the gangs will begin violently striking out into central Rio. A similar crackdown on the gangs in February, just before the Carnival, in which the security forces successfully disrupted the supply of drugs to traffickers in the city, saw crime rapidly escalate as the gang leaders ordered their foot soldiers to mug, steal and rob in order to make up for the revenue shortfall. Furthermore, having come under this pressure, the gangs may feel the need to organize a show of force. The CV, ADA and TCP are essentially gangs composed of loose alliances and have weak chains of command. The sustained security offensive by the authorities could therefore provoke the gangs into orchestrating civil unrest, indiscriminate violence and other symbolic acts in order to protect their reputations, enforce contracts and hold on to allies. The Pan American Games provide an ideal opportunity for such actions and the violence Rio witnessed in December 2006 could well be a taste of what is to come. Then the gangs coordinated a terror campaign across the city. Policemen were assassinated, buses and banks firebombed, and innocent civilians murdered. The gangs are already rumoured to have ordered the killing of 150 security officers as a response to Cabral’s crackdown, and attacks on civilian and tourist targets cannot be ruled out.
Cabral’s crackdown on Rio de Janerio’s drug gangs is a much needed initiative in a city wracked by violent lawlessness. However, the government's current strategy to aggressively starve the gangs of drugs, weapons and money, combined with its apparent failure to actually rid the favelas of these influences, threatens to trigger a wave of gang-inspired criminality and violence across the city. This could have disastrous consequences at a time when large numbers of visitors are about to descend on the city for the Pan American Games.
Tags: travel safety, red24, brazil, rio de janeiro, gang violence
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