Hundreds of Brazilian police and marines yesterday swarmed through a Rio favela renowned as a center for samba lovers, in the most striking move thus far to “pacify” the city before the 2014 Soccer World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
Drunk revelers still packed the streets of the city as a column of armored vehicles began rolling towards Mangueira, a notorious hideout for one of the city’s largest drug factions. Overhead, Huey helicopters tore through the morning sky; on the ground 750 security operatives, among them marines, filed in past bullet-pocked walls.
Home to about 53,000 people, Mangueira is the most symbolic shantytown so far to be occupied by the so-called “pacification forces.” Famed for producing legendary samba artists such as Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho and Carlos Cachaca, Mangueira is also home to the city’s best-known samba school, the Gremio Recreativo Escola de Samba Mangueira.
On Sunday, the samba school’s doors remained shut as police poured into the favela. Normally welcomed with gunfire, the troops instead found eerily quiet streets and white banners calling for “peace.” The traffickers had fled.
“They’ve taken everything,” said one special forces operative, pushing his way into a concrete shack that had been used to distribute cocaine, marijuana and crack. The doors had been bricked up and the drugs had long gone; only two toothbrushes and a broken refrigerator remained.
Next door, Pastor Eduardo Barbosa Marques monitored the police’s arrival from inside his empty church — the Temple of Blessings.
“I’m not expecting many people for this morning’s service,” he said. “But tonight we’ll all be here to glorify the name of the Lord.”
Thirty minutes’ walk across the favela, special forces found another gang headquarters. Inside were three red sofas and an empty wrap of cocaine, featuring a picture of Osama bin Laden. On the wall outside gang members had left a message: “Screw the pacifiers: Shoot Them.”
However, there was no shooting, only an awkward silence as police moved from house to house, seeking information from residents who didn’t want to talk.
“People are still a little scared because this will mean having contact with different people,” Mangueira’s residents’ association president Simoes do Nascimento said. “But people are asking for peace and we hope everything goes well.”
Silvia Ramos, a social scientist and coordinator of Rio’s Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship, warned that while the retaking of Mangueira was an advance, deadly clashes between police and drug traffickers were still commonplace in more distant parts of the city.
“It is a turning point for the pacification project. [But] if Rio de Janeiro’s opinion makers and media get comfortable ... after this victory ... the project will fail. The possibility exists — and it is very worrying — that in pushing the gunfights further away the city will demobilize,” she added.
At the foot of the favela, Jorge Bombeiro, a local samba composer, headed out with a ukulele as helicopters circled overhead. What did he think of the occupation?
“All I know about is samba,” he said.
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