Resident of Rio's slums tried to go about their business, shaken by four days of deadly gunbattles with drug gangs and attempts by police to bring calm to the sprawling squalid communities. Rio's state governor, meanwhile, asked the federal government for 4,000 army troops to help keep the peace in the shantytowns.
In a letter to the country's justice minister Tuesday, Governor Rosinha Matheus said she would accept soldiers in the shantytowns, but federal officials denied there were any plans to send troops here.
No violence was reported Tuesday in the Rocinha and Vidigal hillside favelas, or shantytowns, where fighting between drug-trafficking gangs has killed at least 10 people, some bystanders, since Friday.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Police reportedly were combing the nearby Atlantic forest for gang members who fled when police stormed into the favelas Monday.
About 1,300 armed police were deployed to keep the peace, but residents said they felt the cease-fire was temporary at best.
"Today it is calm. What about tomorrow?" asked Antonio Trajano, a shantytown shopowner. "These days have been a terrible experience, and people will remain afraid for a long time."
The atmosphere in the shantytown Tuesday was bustling: loudspeakers blared advertising while merchants hawked wares from carts full of fish, meat, cloth and toys.
Residents say the government must invest time and money to keep the peace.
"Ninety-nine percent of the population are honest people, but still there is fear when you cross the sidewalk or a bridge," said William de Oliveira, president of the Rocinha neighborhood association. "What is needed here are long-term policies to boost education, sports and investments that provide jobs."
The war erupted Friday, when a drug gang tried to seize control of the rich drug-selling points on Rocinha's upper hills.
The commando-style invasion set off alarms across Brazil's main resort city, where drug violence rarely disturbs the wealthy neighborhoods.
But Rocinha and Vidigal are just a few hundred yards [meters] from trendy beaches, luxurious hotels and condominiums.
"Drug gangs are almost always fighting for territory," said Rubem Cesar Fernandes, president of the human rights group Viva Rio. "The difference is that this time it happened in slums which are part of the `beautiful' side of Rio."
In Brasilia, federal lawmakers from Rio de Janeiro state met with Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos to ask the government to intervene in the state.
"There is a clear lack of authority. There is a problem constituted by the difficulty of the governor to fire her security secretary, who has lost control of the situation," Representative Lindberg Farias, of the governing Workers' Party, was quoted as saying by the O Globo news agency.
Rio state security secretary Anthony Garotinho, who is also the governor's husband, proposed that elite troops occupy eight of Rio's most violent slums until 4,000 new police could be trained to take their place.
In a statement, the defense ministry denied media reports that there was an agreement to send troops to Rio. If troops were sent in, the army would decide how and where they would be deployed, the statement said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion