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.
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