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Lula starts program to clean up Rio's infamous slums

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivers a speech at the inauguration of the Growing Acceleration program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Friday. PHOTO: EPA

Visiting slums that few Brazilians dare to enter, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched a program on Friday to inject huge amounts of government money to lift poor residents out of misery in hopes of ousting the drug gangs that control the shantytowns.

The nearly US$1 billion public works project will fund basic services like running water and underground sewage pipes, while creating thousands of jobs and an official government presence in three of the largest of squatter settlements that cover many of Rio's hillsides.

The money will also build schools, widen roads that few cars can navigate and even give slum dwellers their first real addresses, as well as the ability to apply for government-sponsored credit so they can improve ramshackle homes that frequently collapse or sustain heavy damage in tropical rainstorms.

Silva, Brazil's first working class president, was protected by heavily armed police who secured the entrances and exits of the Alemao slum where he spoke before heading to two other shantytowns.

Underscoring the danger of the slums, police killed six criminal suspects before dawn in two other Rio slums just hours before Silva spoke.

Stray bullets from shootouts between police and gang members kill or injure an innocent person every other day in Rio on average.

"I'm tired of seeing Rio on the front page of newspapers as if the city is a symbol of violence and stray bullets, when 99 percent of the people here are honest," Silva told a cheering crowd.

He also said that police have a responsibility to improve life in Rio's 600 slums, saying they must start treating residents with respect.

Residents of the shantytowns have long complained that police officers consider the neighborhoods as enemy territory, entering with automatic weapons and shooting before asking questions.

"Citizens who are bandits don't have to be treated with rose petals, but the police before coming here have to know that men, women and children also live here," Silva said.

Last year, the Alemao slum complex -- home to some 150,000 people -- gained infamy for a months-long battle between drug gangs and police that claimed at least 38 lives.

Police are still stationed behind sandbags outside the slum's main entrances, and drug gang members with automatic weapons roam Alemao's mazelike alleyways.

Hundreds of residents, many waving white flags, descended from exposed brick hovels, down narrow alleyways, to hear Silva speak on a makeshift stage.

Samba percussionists played and a video showed an artist's rendering of the sprawling shantytown transformed into a utopian hillside community filled with wide avenues and an overhead cable car system to carry residents up and down steep hillsides from the commuter train station.

"Here we vote and then we never see the politicians. It's unprecedented for the president to come to Alemao. This day will go down in history," said 29-year-old Roni Charles, who works with the AfroReggae community group that tries to steer young people away from violence.

In the Alemao slum alone, Silva promised that 2,000 homes would be replaced and 4,000 would get renovations.

The program will also build new schools, job training centers, a health clinic and post office while creating some 2,000 jobs.

"I really hope this will improve things. We really need peace and we really need jobs, let's hope we get a little of both from Lula, after all that's why we voted for him," said Roseangela Coutinho, a 31-year-old housewife, referring to the president by his nickname.
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