Noticia: Deadly Games
Autor: Acesso International Business | Publicado: 2011-05-11T08:59:00-07:00

Visão americana dos eventos esportivos no Brasil, o artigo foi escrito por Wright Thompson para o site ESPN. É importante lembrar que as noticias aqui postadas não representam, necessariamente, as opiniões da ACESSO International Business.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- A white cross rising above the Macacos slum marks  the spot where people are burned alive. A starving horse, his ribs  poking out, is hitched close by with a thin rope. A nearby soccer field  is dotted with pieces of melted rubber. No games are played here. The  Amigos dos Amigos gang that runs this favela has a ritual: Members stack  tires around their enemies, pour in gasoline and light the tires on  fire. This is called microwaving. Black smoke rises into the air. At a  school down the hill, near the famous soccer stadium where the 2016  Olympic opening ceremonies will be held, the students hear the screams  and cover their ears.    This is Rio in real life.

Wishful thinking in living colorThis is Rio in the imagination of the 2016 Olympic planners: a  19-page brochure full of color photographs and grand statements  outlining their bid. The opening spread shows children dancing on a  beach beneath an enormous Brazilian flag, and, above a photo of wind  surfers riding waves with a backdrop of Christ the Redeemer. The pages  proclaim a new birth. "It is driven by sport, with athletes and the  entire sports community looking forward to the lasting benefits the  games will bring."The brochure promises to change the economy, to educate children and  even to protect the world's largest "urban forest." The obligatory quote  from Pele is included. The document is full of maps and photos and  plans, but there's no mention of the war on the hill that overlooks  Maracana Stadium, where the opening ceremonies will be held.The word "favela" never appears.

When worlds collideThe two Rios are on a collision course.Part of the city is breathtaking, a place of shimmering beaches and  dark, trendy restaurants with stars on the wall. Men wear fedoras  without irony. Models strut down the Copacabana Boardwalk. White-linen  tourists sip from coconuts. There is always music, from a boom box on  the beach, from speakers inside an open-air bar. This is the Brazil of  glossy brochures. This is where things like these two sporting events --  the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics -- are born, things over which the  poor in the slums have no control but which will have immense power to  change their lives. The citizens of Macacos don't know if the changes  will be good, or if the changes ultimately will destroy them, or when or  how their fate will come. A sporting event is like the volcano on  Macacos' horizon: It is mysterious and, despite the citizens of Macacos  taking great pains not to anger it, eruption is inevitable. When the  Olympics and World Cup were announced, the volcano began smoking.The favelas, Rio's guilty conscience, almost a thousand of them,  overlook paradise but never, ever partake. Dense, urban slums with  wretched educational opportunities, no social services, no police  protection, they exist outside civilized society. Residents who live in  the city don't go up the hill. It's possible to live a middle-class life  without the violence of the slums affecting one's daily existence. But  the violence is always there. In 2010, there were 4,798 murders in Rio.  That's about a fourth the number of murders annually in the entire  United States. (The U.S. population is about 300 million people. Rio has  6 million.) Favelas are desperate places, and they've been ignored  since the first one popped up in 1897. Only now, some of them are close  to venues for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.Rio has less than three years to fix a crisis a century in the making.The clock is ticking.


A successful Olympics bid followed by a gang warThe hill overlooking Maracana Stadium gave the city's old problem a  new face. Two weeks after the IOC awarded the games to Rio, in October  2009, a gang war erupted. The extreme violence in such close proximity  to the Olympic announcement brought the two Rios into focus.Five months after the shooting stopped, a helicopter flew high above  the battle scene. The hill, a mile long and five miles around, curls  like a frown. The edges slope hard toward the streets. Lush green grass  and bushy trees cover most of the hill. Here and there, clusters of  naked boulders jut out. You can see everything from up here: the  middle-class neighborhood controlled by the police, the warring slums  controlled by the gangs, and the stadium that has the cops and the  drug-trafficking gangbangers in a showdown. The pilot swings around the  three favelas tucked into the hill's slopes and crevices, flying over  the switchbacks leading to the top, over the makeshift houses of red  brick and rusted tin stacked atop each other, something wedged into  every inch. Besides the soccer field where games are banned, there is an  empty swimming pool; the drug dealers forbid it to be filled with  water.The two neighborhoods sandwiching Macacos -- Sao Joao and Mangueira  -- are controlled by the Comando Vermelho (Red Command) gang, the most  powerful drug traffickers in Rio. Macacos is run by the Amigos dos  Amigos, or the ADA. Enemies surround Macacos, from ultraviolent business  competitors to corrupt cops.Maracana Stadium will host World Cup matches and the 2016 opening  ceremony. Fans coming to the stadium will be able to see the hill a mile  away, not to mention television cameras beaming the images to billions  around the world. "The message they send to the world is: Rio is at  war," says Ignacio Cano, a police violence researcher feared by law  enforcement officials because he exposes so much corruption. "We cannot  sell this model to people all over the world. 'Come to our war, and in  the middle of the war, we're gonna show you some sporting competition?'"The blades thump as the pilot swings around the slums. He won't fly  closer, and he won't fly lower. In that October 2009 battle, CV gang  members began firing at a police helicopter with anti-aircraft guns. The  big shells ripped into the rotors, leaving the pilot fighting for  control, looking down into the dense urban neighborhood for a safe place  to crash.

Invasion!The battle began with a phone call from a maximum security prison.CV bosses sent the order: Invade Macacos.CVers and other hired guns came from Mangueira. They came from  Alemao. They came from seven different favelas, gathering in Sao Joao. A  convoy of gunman in covered trucks, followed by at least nine cars and  dozens of motorcycles, formed an invasion fleet, unimpeded by the law,  flowing through the empty streets of one of the largest cities in the  world. Other soldiers, police sources said, followed the thin trails  along the back of the hill toward the white rock topped with the white  cross. The invaders could see a glow from the two dozen or so light  bulbs strung across the cross -- a beacon.They arrived shooting.As the gunshots subsided, residents heard shouting: "Macacos is red!"  They huddled on their floors. Mario Lima, the president of the Macacos  neighborhood association, hid in his bathroom with his family. His son  would still have nightmares more than a year later. They all clung to  each other; they could hear the gangsters on the other side of the wall.  As windows shattered in the house, the Limas could hear the glass  hitting the floor and the threats that followed. Finally, the CV moved  on to another house. Lima called the police. He called 10 times, begging  for help. None came.Through the long night, the CV held the favela. Entire families fled,  abandoning their homes. They brought only what they could carry.  Mothers pushed strollers down the hill. Others carried babies wrapped in  blankets in their arms. Citizens gathered at a jail at the bottom of  the hill, heating toward riot, angry that the police seemed to be doing  nothing. They lit tires on fire in the streets. They threw rocks at the  jail.A man hiding in his home wrote into the local paper's website: "Where are the police?"

You are what you shootBrazil's police forces have always treated the favelas as enemy  nations. They use the vocabulary of war: invasions, troops, battles.  Every few months, cops from the BOPE Elite Squad -- think Brazil's Navy  SEALS -- locked and loaded, would storm a favela, killing as many drug  dealers as possible before withdrawing. Popular culture celebrated these  raids in best-selling books and blockbuster movies.For residents, the first warning is almost always the gunshots. The  police come in behind a protective curtain of bullets. People run toward  their homes. If they can't get there, they dive through the first open  door. Schools close. Stores close. Everyone hides. Bullets ricochet off  concrete walls and fly through cheaper ones. They shatter windows. Some  people are executed. Others get shot randomly. Wrong place, wrong time.  Bad luck.To be fair, these raids are terrifying for the cops, too. Dogs leap  out of doorways, barking maniacally. Children scream. Doors slam. The  smell of garbage and raw sewage overwhelms the senses. Chests heave and  hearts pound from the fear and the steep vertical incline. SUVs rush  away the wounded. Gangster snipers aim high-caliber weapons from the  cubist towers of open windows. The world shrinks to the metal in your  hands. Firing a rifle brings you back into contact with yourself: You  feel the kick of the stock, hear the bang of the hammer, smell the  powder, taste the cordite, see the dense, white smoke and the glimmer of  sun off the ejecting cartridge. Brave cops look for muzzle flashes.  Most fire blind, hot shell casings jingling onto the pavement.

Invasion II!The next morning the sun rose, chasing away the shadows.Cops marched up the hill. Even as the gangsters retreated, machine  guns rattled and rifles popped. Residents huddled in a nearby park,  wondering if they'd ever go home again. But, unexpectedly, the CV faded  fast. It gave up position after position. It lost everything, even the  cross. It fled down the back of the hill. Overhead, a police helicopter  named Phoenix 3 circled, providing air support. Downtown Rio looked and  sounded like a war movie.One fleeing drug trafficker looked up and saw Phoenix 3, flying low.  He aimed his .30 caliber. A stream of shells flew toward the chopper.  One pierced the floor and hit the co-pilot in the foot. Others cut up  the rotors.Pilot Marcelo Vaz felt the shudder. He smelled the smoke. The other  cops screamed. Vaz could hear them calling out their injuries. Burns.  Gunshots. He focused, looking down through the smoke. All around,  nothing but dense urban ghetto. If he crashed into the favela, people  would burn to death. He needed a clear spot. Finally, he saw it: a  soccer field, a patch of rich brown dirt surrounded by weeds. Its  systems failing, Phoenix 3 was now more rock than aircraft. Only 90  seconds had passed. Vaz braced. His passengers braced.Seconds later, everybody within earshot heard the loudest boom of the  morning, a roaring explosion. They saw the thick, black smoke. Lima,  the neighborhood association president, was horrified. He felt like the  city was collapsing. This was the final act in a long drama. The end of  the end. If gangsters can shoot down helicopters, he thought, everything  is lost.On the soccer field, the blue tips of the rotors poked at odd angles  from the wreckage. It didn't look like a helicopter. It looked like  someone had emptied a garbage truck of burning, crumpled paper. Two cops  died on impact. The two pilots suffered minor injuries. The two cops  who survived the landing suffered severe burns and were rushed to a  hospital.The people of Macacos knew what was coming now. They all did. It didn't matter who'd pulled what trigger.Everyone in the favela was guilty.

Hungering for revengeDown below, the CV raged. It had taken Macacos and then lost it. A  city bus driver on the 284 route saw gunmen run out of a favela. They  carried gasoline, a rifle and a pistol. They ordered everyone out.  "Down, down," they shouted. "We'll set fire." The scene repeated itself  throughout the rest of Rio: cars and buses burning, red flames and black  smoke, until only chassis were left, smoldering."The police invaded the slum and gave it back to ADA," well-known  gang war author Julio Ludemir explains. "The CV said, 'Bull----. I did  everything perfect. It was a perfect crime. I took this symbol.' We  don't have wars over drug spots. We have wars to take symbols. That war  was very planned, and they won the war. They sent a sign to the city:  'Bull----, police.'"That night, CV gangsters celebrated their temporary victory over ADA  and the downing of the Phoenix 3 with a concert, a rave with underground  rappers. A local newspaper breathlessly reported they partied with  whiskey and cocaine. The Internet hummed with songs eulogizing both  sides. A day passed. Lima prayed that the police would stay, that they  would occupy the neighborhood and rid them of gangs forever. A second  day passed. These were times of horror. That's the word he would use  later. Horror.On the third day, the Amigos dos Amigos returned. They vowed revenge.


Coming soon: more mindless violenceThe police vowed revenge, too.A cycle begins anew. Violence begets violence. Cops found a body,  blue from a beating and perforated with bullet holes, in a shopping cart  at the bottom of Macacos. That brought the death toll to at least 25,  including a secretary, a mechanic and two bricklayers. Cause of death:  bad luck. Police found a cache of weapons buried in the bushes of a  nearby favela: two shotguns, an AK-47, a 9 millimeter submachine gun, a  sword, a grenade, 3,000 rounds of ammunition, eight rifles, a .30  caliber pistol, three bulletproof vests, eight BOPE uniforms and, the  biggest prize of all, the gun used to shoot down the helicopter.Police funerals were held. Brazil mourned. One man killed in the  helicopter crash was an only child and had been married just five  months. Another had a 3-year-old daughter. His wife became ill several  times during the funeral. A third officer, who suffered severe burns in  the crash of the Phoenix 3, died a few days later. During his funeral, a  helicopter dropped rose petals on the casket.Cops held up widows and hugged children, comforted mothers and  carried coffins. Then they went hunting. They shot at traffickers. They  shot a housewife in the back. She died holding her 11-month-old  daughter. The little girl was hit in the arm. They shot at everything  that moved. In a slum to the east of Macacos, a week later, residents  told local reporters, the police raided the home of an 18-year-old  student. They beat and tortured him. They suffocated him with a plastic  bag.Macacos awaited its turn.

Answers, but not for Macacos In the aftermath of the Macacos disaster, change was in the wind.  The old way was broken. Everyone knew this. The government saw the  collision course of the two Rios and, with the clock ticking, decided to  do something different.BOPE continued raiding favelas, only this time more cops followed,  putting up permanent police stations, walking the streets. The  occupation forces are called UPPs. This is Rio to those who believe  sporting events can change lives. Cops patrolling occupied favelas now  find children smiling at them."I can see the kids are happy," said Capt. Rosana Alves as she walked  through a favela in early 2010. "They have a better future. Their  future will be better than their past. This is priceless. The kids ask  me to play PlayStation with them. When they come back from school, they  give me a kiss. They call me Aunt Rosana."Guessing which neighborhoods would be retaken next consumed Rio de  Janeiro. Police could not be told until the last minute because of the  corruption that runs through every layer of government, so gossip filled  the halls of cop shops around the city. In Macacos, citizens waited  their turn. Some yearned for protection. Others feared what would happen  if the police came. Lima and a few others quietly reached out and  begged for a UPP in Macacos. They did so carefully; if the gangsters  found out, they would be killed. To Lima, it was a risk worth taking.  Lima believes the shiny brochures.In Macacos, some of the remaining ADA soldiers began slipping out,  relocating. Police watchdogs saw a trend. As the government forces  raided favelas in the South Zone, where the Olympic venues are located,  the poorer North Zone -- the safe harbor for fleeing traffickers -- grew  more violent, but that's a problem for later. Open warfare in the  vicinity of television cameras is Public Enemy No. 1.Tension filled Macacos. What would the future hold for them?Would the cops storm their hill?Would they stay, and for how long?What would be gained in the battle?What would be lost?
Angst and pessimismAn uneasy peace hangs over the favela through the summer.Five months have passed since the helicopter was shot down. At the  bottom of the hill, fruit stands crowd the sidewalk on the left. Across  the street is a school that caught fire during the battle. The road  curves up ahead, rising toward the cross at the top of the hill. The air  feels thick. Humidity presses down. The tension is as palpable as the  speed bumps and raw sewage drains that dot the road up toward the cross.Spray-paint graffiti scrawls a welcome: "Irak." The buildings stand  two or three stories high on the main strip. Wires form a canopy over  the narrow street. Power wires. Phone lines. Red and blue ethernet  cables. Crowds gather at intersections. Up ahead is a storefront, and  through a gate lives a woman who's spent her adult life trying to help  the people of this favela.She works at a school in Macacos. Several months after this meeting,  she'll panic and ask that her name not be used. She says she is not  afraid of dying but of endangering the school where she works.She's The Teacher.Since the helicopter crashed, she's been doing the same thing as  every resident of Macacos: waiting nervously. Lima is an optimist about  the UPPs and their future; she is the opposite -- a devout parishioner  in the church of real life. She's seen too much to believe in hope.  There's a Bible open in front of her, turned to Ecclesiastes. The first  verse quotes Solomon: "Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless."
A portrait of a favela in limboThe Teacher educated many of the drug dealers who now run Macacos.  She doesn't mess with them and they don't mess with her. They know she's  responsible for what little civilization there is on the hill.When she got to Macacos decades ago, the neighborhood was improbably  worse. No running water, no electricity, no schools. Thanks to her and  others like her, the community has managed to provide some of these  things for itself. A few. "The sewage system doesn't work," The Teacher  says. "In our kindergarten, the kids are stepping into feces. Every day,  we have to clean the whole kindergarten because the sewage water  invades it. The kids are getting sick."If she provides order, the traffickers provide law. The other Rio  stops at the bottom of the hill by the fruit stands. Up here, the drug  dealers are judge and jury. Battered wives go to them for justice. The  Teacher doesn't need a security system at the school; if anyone broke  in, retribution would be swift and gruesome. The rules cover offenses  large and small. A kid who danced with someone else's girlfriend had his  hair cut off. A kid who started a fight had to carry rocks in the sun.  Theft can be punishable by death. "Whenever somebody does something  wrong," says a resident of Macacos who asked not to be named, "the drug  traffickers will hold a trial."The current kingpin is nicknamed Scooby. He's the one who swore  revenge on the CV for the invasion. Underground rappers write odes to  him and put them on YouTube. He once kidnapped several cops and tortured  them. He likes to steal cars. Not long ago, newspaper pictures showed  his Mercedes-Benz convertible that police had seized.He and the other gangsters throw parties for kids, help out if  someone is in need. They aren't the ones roaring up in armored vehicles  and letting thousands of rounds go on full auto. Every time the police  come in shooting, Scooby grows more powerful. "The population here lives  in fear of the police," The Teacher says. "The police shoot without  thinking. You can see all the windows that have holes from the bullets."Law-abiding residents are caught in between the cops and the dealers."If you live in a community like we do, you always have to think  twice," The Teacher says. "You have to be careful. You have to pretend  you don't see what's going on. There is lots of fear dominating this  community. For example, you coming here to do an interview. Depending on  what I say in this interview, there is the possibility that something  might happen. From both sides. Police and the drug dealers."One former president of the neighborhood association had to leave  this community because of an interview he did. He lived for many years  in the community. He had a house here and a family. He gave an  interview. The drug dealers didn't like it. They burned his house. And  he had to go away with his family. Because of one interview he gave.  It's really dangerous to have a position. To tell the truth. You can't  trust anyone."Or anything, even the future. Upstairs at the school where The  Teacher works, in the corner of a computer lab, one young man who can't  be older than 12 hunches over a screen. He's playing an urban war game  -- a virtual version of the real thing happening outside these walls --  and on the screen, he's picking his weapon, from a pistol all the way up  to a chain gun. He's seen most of these weapons in the favela. A local  charity worker said her 9-year-old students play a twisted urban game:  Whoever takes the cell phone picture of the most shocking scene wins.Students who aren't in gangs borrow guns from students who are. Girls  like guys with guns. Kids from Macacos can't go to school with kids  from Mangueira or Sao Joao. Not long ago a nongovernmental charitable  organization with mission schools in Macacos and Mangueira managed to  organize a trip to Rio's Museum of Modern Art. It gathered students from  both favelas and prepared to show them the possibility of manicured  gardens and priceless masterpieces. The teachers wanted them to stand  side by side, not as enemies but as friends, and see there could be  beauty in the world.This is Rio in real life: The NGO had to use separate buses.
Finally, it's Macacos' turnThat was then, this is now. A year after the helicopter was shot down, the residents of Macacos heard the news.They were next.On Thursday, Oct. 14, 2010, almost 200 cops charged the hill, from  the bottom and from the back, converging on the cross. They found all  the ADA gangsters gone, having fled the night before after being tipped  off about the impending raid. Not a shot was fired.People came out of their houses into the light. Lima saw his  neighbors happy. They were happy to see police. He couldn't believe it.  For years, they'd seen cops raid and seen friends die and seen drug  dealers return as soon as the police left. But this was different. "Now  we know that the police will stay," he says. "At least for four years."The cops began organizing a soccer tournament for the long-abandoned  field. A UPP was set up, and the officers were welcomed by the  neighborhood. "It was one year full of frustration," Lima says. "We  thought that the police would never come. The government kept announcing  the occupation of other areas, but why didn't they come here? And our  situation was much more difficult than in other areas."Leonardo Novo is a BOPE commander. His job is dangerous, and his  father stays awake every time his son works nights, sleep not coming  until he knows his boy is alive. Novo, who looks young -- maybe it's the  braces on his teeth -- is one of the peacekeepers in charge of Macacos.  Four units work 24-hour shifts, keeping familiar faces on the streets.  Several months ago, Novo walked from his base near the spot where people  were once burned alive, making his way past the cross and on down the  hill."The people here don't trust the police," he says. "They fear that the police will leave and the ADA comes back."That won't happen."Still, fear remains. The cops sense it. The people know it. "I will  give you an interview in 50 years," one resident says, "when I am sure  that everything went right! Until then, everybody keeps their mouth  shut."But now, at least, there is hope. The two Rios are colliding and, in  some places, a new Rio is arising. There are signs everywhere, including  the middle of Macacos.The swimming pool is full of clear, blue water.A dozen kids paddle around, laughing, and more run along the sides,  ready to jump in. The once tense air of the favela is filled with the  splashes of children at play.
Free, but for how long?The Teacher is still afraid.The gangsters aren't dead. They've just moved. The cops expected to  find as many as 50 heavy guns. They found none. The Amigos dos Amigos  took their firepower with them, joining with other fleeing gang members,  waiting. Family members of gang members remain in Macacos, eyes on the  ground. ADA spies sneak in and out. They want to know who is giving  interviews and who is cooperating with the police.Scooby is thought to be in a favela called Rocinha.What if the cops leave Macacos when the Olympics are over? It's  happened before. Ludemir, the gang war journalist, described a  government program in the '90s in which cops flooded selected favelas.  Soon the government tired of this strategy, removed all the cops and, as  Julio says, "It all went back to s---.""It won't be forever," The Teacher says. "It will only be for a short  time, because it's too expensive for the government to maintain. So  maybe they put in the police unit just for the Olympic Games, so that  there will be peace during the Olympic Games, then if they run out of  money, they leave. Everything will go back to normal. When police leave,  the dealers will come back and everyone who cooperated will be shot."The sun hangs low and hot. She stands outside the school. There are  now smiling cops in her favela, and a soccer field used for games  instead of killing, and water in the swimming pool. But the favela  itself remains, rising around her: the patchwork homes, the gang  graffiti, the chicken-wire windows. The city below remains, like the  volcano in reverse, ready to change their lives on a whim. She faces the  cross at the top of the hill. Meaningless. That's what King Solomon  said. Olympics come and go. Governments get bored. Maybe the devil you  know is better than the one you don't."Much better," she says.She doesn't believe in shiny brochures, only Rio in real life.

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