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Paramilitary Games |
| Section: CURRENT ISSUES / SPECIAL REPORT: ARE THE GAMES WORTH IT? |
| Author: Luke McLeod- Roberts |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 9/1/2007 |
| Size: 3,272 Words, 20,473 Characters |
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As Rio de Janeiro prepared to host July’s Pan American Games, the largest sporting event in the hemisphere, private paramilitaries occupied favelas near two of the city’s main highways, in an apparent effort to impose security near crucial tourist infrastructure. A NACLA investigation, supported by the Samuel Chavkin Investigative Journalism Fund, finds that for many favela residents, the militias are little better than the gangs or corrupt police they have replaced.
When I first spoke with Dirce, she heaved a big sigh. I had called to ask if I could interview her about the milícia, or private paramilitary group, that controls the Rio de Janeiro favela (shanty-town) where she lives. I interpreted her sigh as that of a favelada tired with yet another reporter asking about violence in her community. But when I meet the proud woman at her workplace, I quickly realize that it came more from fear of the milícia.
“I should have asked them for permission to speak to you,” Dirce says as we sit in her busy office in the city’s north zone, her small frame darting about in her seat. “If anyone asks, I will deny we met.”
At around 6:30 p.m. one evening in December, Dirce was startled in her home by screams from the street. She ran outside to find about 10 men surrounding Maria de Fátima, her daughter, one of them bashing her head against a wall. The men called her a bandida (criminal) and said they knew she was friends with a drug dealer. They threatened to kill both Maria de Fátima and Dirce but eventually let them go. The two escaped death, Dirce says, because of her own standing at the time as the head of a residents’ association and because many people witnessed the attack.
Such brutal use of force against alleged gang members and their friends and family is characteristic of Rio’s milícias, which are thought to be composed largely of retired, fired and moonlighting officers from the police and fire departments, both of which are military entities in Brazil. Rio statutes explicitly forbid police fr...
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... which have largely been critical of the milícia, supported these investigations, while there have also been efforts to enliven the debate from some politicians. Earlier this year, state deputy Marcelo Freixo attempted to file an official inquiry on the milícia but was blocked on procedural grounds.
NACLA Report on the Americas, Volume 40 Number 4 (July/August 2007)
Copyright © 2007 NACLA
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
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