Ahead of the 2014 World Cup, Crackdown in Brazilian Favelas

Brazilian authorities are cracking down on drug lords in the country’s infamous slums or favelas. It’s an on-going effort ahead of the 2014 World Cup which Brazil is hosting.

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Global Post reporter, Tom Phillips, who covered a police operation this weekend that took control of one of Brazil’s largest and most lawless slums.

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Marco Werman: Brazilian security forces are making headlines too, more positive ones though. In Rio de Janeiro over the weekend police forces backed by helicopters peacefully took control of one of the country’s largest and most lawless slums. The sprawling favela of Hosinia. It was part of an official campaign to restore security in Rio before Brazil hosts the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Tom Phillips is a reporter with Global Post. He covered the pre-dawn operation and joins us now. So, 3,000 heavily armed troops stormed the favela, Tom, it’s home to more than 100,000 people, and yet authorities claim not a single shot was fired. Sounds like a success, was it?

Tom Phillips: Yes, I think it’s fair to say it was a success. It was an unusual kind of operation. Normally in the past the police have launched secretive last minute operations going into slums without any warning. This pacification operation as they’re called them are being announced several weeks in advance. Drug traffickers therefore have the time to try and flee, which is what happened this weekend.

Werman: Right, so where did they go and what’s to keep them from returning to Hosinia?

Phillips: Well, most of the big ones are now in police custody. The “Boss of Hosinia” was arrested trying to sneak out of the slum last Wednesday night in a car with his lawyers and a man who claimed to be a Congolese diplomat rather bizarrely.

Werman: Right, I read about that, yeah.

Phillips: Yeah, so they offered a big bribe to police, but were eventually arrested as several other drug traffickers were arrested a few hours before that, and they were being escorted rather interestingly out of the slums by a group of corrupt police officers.

Werman: What made this operation different because as you said, the previous attempts to rest control of the favelas from drug traffickers have ended poorly, sometimes in bloodshed.

Phillips: Yeah, very often in bloodshed and very often [inaudible 1:41] as they have been very, very violent police operations that have ended with multiple deaths. What makes it different as I said, is that this is part of what the police here are calling the pacification project. So the idea there is that there is violence and the idea is that the police, once they go into the slums rather than going in killing someone or arresting someone and moving out, the police are now staying. That is the big difference.

Werman: I guess the question is if the police kind of semi-permanently occupy the favelas, can they permanently pacify the slums as well?

Phillips: The whole point of this game, police and government officials say, is not to prevent the drug trafficking, it’s to get the big weapons off the streets. So we’re talking about 1,000 slums in Rio, many of which have been over the last 25-30 years occupied by armed gangs carrying M16 assault rifles and AK-47s, often Bazookas. Once a Bazooka was found [inaudible 2:34] maybe a year ago.

Werman: Hm.

Phillips: So the idea there is to get rid of those guns, not necessarily to get rid of drug trafficker, and most of the pacified sums are located either in the tourist beach zone or near the World Cup installations. So the west side of the city and much of the north side is still business as usual there as it were.

Werman: So the police see some pretty big guns this weekend. They also uncovered some pretty wild and unexpected things in the raid, considering this is a slum. What are we talking about?

Phillips: One of the federal drug squads came across a house of a chap called Fish, which was down a very cramped alley way filled with houses made of bit of wood and red brick, not particularly wealthy people at all. And then at the end you came to a similar looking building, but inside we found a rather striking swimming pool with an electronic reclining booth[? 3:21]. We found an immaculately decorated nursery perhaps for one of his children, a gym, and given the drug trafficker’s name was Fish, there was a rather exotic looking aquarium filled with multicolored fish from all over the place. So rather a contrast compared to the poverty that does exist in Hosinia. It shows you how much these guys make out of drug trafficking.

Werman: They have a descent profit margin. Tom Phillips of Global Post speaking to us from Rio de Janeiro. Thank you, Tom.

Phillips: Thank you.

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