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Turf War in Rio de Janeiro: Youth, Drug Traffic,

Guns and Hyper-masculinity

Chapter · January 2011

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4210-9_9

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 Turf War in Rio de Janeiro:
Youth, drug traffic, guns and hyper-masculinity

Alba Zaluar

Abstract

Rio de Janeiro has had a sharp increase in homicide rates since 1980.

Irregular or subnormal dwellings expanded, while urban growth diminished, due

to disordered urbanization. Nevertheless, growth of informality and irregular

dwellings cannot fully account for this increase. New forms of criminal business

affected informal markets, transforming them into gateways for criminal set-ups.

Trafficking gangs started to dominate some favelas and drug lords restricted

dweller and government agent movements in those where guns were more

easily obtained than elsewhere. Armed mobs appeared and militias were

formed. Prevention policies to hamper violence should be better schooling, and

more professional training, sport and cultural programs where different

generations socialize. Gun oriented policing and an investigative Police are

much needed.

Introduction

The City of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s former capital between 1688 and

1960 has had a sharp increase in crime rates since 1980, despite decreases in

population growth from 2% in 1980 to 0.4% in 2000, according to the last

Brazilian Population Census. Although there were urban infrastructure

improvements in some of the poorest regions of the city, the shantytowns

continued to expand, at a rate of 2.4% in 2000, six times higher than the city’s

1
growth rate. The city had then 5,857,904 inhabitants, of which 1,094,922 lived in

subnormal urban agglomerations, an official definition for the popular term

favela, where heterogeneous but mainly poor people live. Nowadays, favelas

are not shantytowns anymore for there are no mores shacks, but brick houses

and even buildings with water, electricity and sewage. Yet, the names favela or

morro (hill) are still used, mainly because the legal property of the field where

houses are being built is far from solved and overcrowding, overbuilding, very

narrow alleys, precarious sanitation, air wiring and air piping as well as people’s

poverty goes on.

This scenario is common to the largest Brazilian cities, as an effect of

accelerated and disordered urbanization that started in the early 20th century

without sufficient economic development to provide employment for all migrants

that move across the country. Vulnerability to the risks of crime, especially for

young men who have the highest unemployment rates, is unquestionable, even

more so inside favelas where youth unemployment reaches the city’s highest

rates. Yet, the growth of the informal work sector and irregular dwellings, lasting

phenomena in Brazil, cannot account alone for the amazing growth of

homicides during the 1980sand 1990s.

Indeed, new forms of organized crime or criminal business have affected

informal markets, transforming them into gateways for selling stolen, smuggled

or counterfeit goods, but also for trafficking illegal drugs, such as cocaine and

marijuana (Zaluar, 2000). These new markets had a strong effect on deaths by

2
aggression1 in so far as the illegality and dangers involved in the businesses

compelled the use of guns. During the1980s, trafficking gangs began to

dominate some favelas or morros (hills) as armed traffickers became not only

owners of the point of purchase, but were also called “owners of the hill”, an

expression heard everywhere in the city that I started listening to at the late

1980s, during my fieldwork research in Cidade de Deus. Homicide rates soared

astonishingly for young men between 14 and 29 years old. How do we explain

why young men are being killed or killing each other in Brazil’s second largest

and richest city? Can poverty and inequality wholly explain this phenomenon?

Socio-economic inequality in the city

Rio de Janeiro is divided into five major Planning Areas (AP) and

subdivided in 11 PA, as well as 32 Administrative Regions (RA). There are few

socio-economic differences between favela and asphalt dwellers in the suburbs

and other poor districts of the city, corresponding to PA1, PA3 and PA5. In fact,

there was a remarkable impoverishment of the suburbs (PA3) in Rio since the

1970s. De-industrialization, economic losses in the service sectors and

discontinued anti-poverty programs focused on the favelas, generated a

noticeable drop in family income as well as urban degradation in these districts

where lower middle-classes have always lived. Nowadays it is difficult to mark

the boundaries between favelas and the adjacent regular districts, although

there are islands of affluence in some of them. The opposite is true in the

1
This term is the official definition of murder as it appears in the data collected from the
National System of Deaths’ Information (SIM) of the Ministry of Health, found at
www.ms.gov.br/sim/datasus

3
richest zones of the city (PA2 and PA4). There, shantytowns are detached from

their surroundings and form islands of poverty inside rich environments,

presenting face-to-face the sharp contrasts of inequality in Brazil.

Rio de Janeiro is thus a city with many fractures according to income,

skin colour, religion, gender, age, risk of victimization and premature death, but

also of regular policing. As armed mobs appeared, death squads or militias

were formed in some other poor areas in order to eliminate those identified as

bandits. As regards income, there is a concentration of poverty in certain areas,

most of them inside favelas, where there are low educational levels, darker

skinned people, more children and adolescents, and higher unemployment.

This partly explains the risk of an early death from violent causes because of

the vulnerability of youths to the enticement of criminal groups.

As favelas continue to grow, and an informal real estate market functions

inside them, regularization of the legal property advances very slowly. Informal

constructions and irregular electricity or water procurement have given rise to

many areas of conflict due to the difficulties in restricting individual freedom

inside collective crowded spaces. In such a situation, the officially defined

“subnormal agglomerations” became an uncontrolled new market for many

goods, including real estate, where organized crime thrives.

Yet there are advantages of living in such areas: no urban taxes are

collected and informality enables the theft of energy, water and even cable TV

signals, with only a few paying the dues, preferring to pay less to illegal

businesses that sell them inside favelas. The result is that population density is

amazingly high in some of them and regular city dwellers pay for the losses of

the electricity and water services, including the poor who do not live in favelas.

4
 Thus, informality facilitated the military control of those areas by gangs or

“militias” that, besides selling illegal drugs (the gangs) or security services (the

militias), also started to trade irregular cable TV, informal transport, and

domestic gas. One million people in the city live in areas that have no regular

policing and police enforcement, but are quite well attended by some essential

urban services (Cardoso, 2008). Without formal control and with diminished

informal control, armed conflicts inside the neighbourhood between vulnerable

youths lured by armed drug gangs thrived. Without legal control over such

businesses, with access to Justice being so difficult for dwellers, and with many

urban blockages being the result of overcrowding and overbuilding, favelas

have become “sanctuaries”, some unassailable, for armed retail drug dealers. In

a vicious circle, military control over the territory hampered neighbours’ informal

control (Zaluar, 1994, 1998). Simultaneously, as will be described below, the

family, the social class, the associations became increasingly divided.

Estrangement from family and school increased the vulnerability of

youths to the appeal of gangs and, therefore, the risk of premature death. It is

on the verge of adolescence that young men, when they are finishing the first

grade or have dropped out because of repeated failures, are more vulnerable to

the lure of criminal gangs, that is, easy cash and power acquired from the barrel

of the gun. Lack of local informal control at the neighbourhood aggravated even

more this picture.

Migration is an important factor for such social fragmentation. Most

migrants from the poorest states of Brazil, especially the Northeast, where

illiteracy is very high, have flooded to the city since the 1940s. With their

descendants born in Rio de Janeiro, they form the majority of favela dwellers.

5
Whereas in the regular city, 67% of the dwellers 15 years old or more were born

in the city of Rio de Janeiro, 24% in other states of Brazil, and 3% outside

Brazil, 34% of favela inhabitants came from other Brazilian states (Zaluar et al.,

2007). In some of the larger and more violent favelas, the proportion of migrants

is bigger than that of city born dwellers.

As regards race or skin colour, racial segregation does not explain the

greater vulnerability of youths living in favelas. Racial classification in Brazil is

different from that of USA: it is hierarchical and not dichotomist, defined by

different racial marks and not by origin (Nogueira, 2008). The shades of brown

have a continuum that makes difficult to separate whites from “morenos” or

“pardos”. Racial classification is self-ascribed in the Census and negotiated with

governmental officials in the birth certificates, besides variations in self-

definition according to the social situation. Nevertheless, the proportions of dark

skinned and white people in favelas are exactly the opposite of the regular city:

in favelas 58.6% are blacks and browns and 41.4% white, whereas respectively

36.5% and 63,5% of those racial categories live outside favelas, proportions

closer to each other when one compares the figures existing in an Afro-

American ghetto.

However, socio-economic data are worse in favelas: 50% of the dwellers

are less than 25 years old as compared to 37,7% of those living in regular

districts. In 2000, illiterates in favelas were 10%, while 3% outside. Schooling

levels in Rio are high compared to the six-year national average, but the

proportion of people inside favelas with less than eight years of schooling

amounts to 82% of the total inhabitants, almost double (46%) of the dwellers in

regular districts. Only 2% of the favelados, as compared to 25% of non-

6
favelados, reach university. Nonetheless, 94% of children in favelas attend

school where they still have a comparatively poorer performance: 20% of them

are more than two years behind in school compared to only 10% of the students

outside favelas. Lastly, income distribution shows that there are some

differences between favelados in the zone where the majority of the rich people

live (PA2 and PA4), and favelados in other poorer zones, especially the West

Zone (PA5) and suburbs (PA3). There is also a sharper contrast between the

average income of favelados (US$208) and non-favelados (US$1180) in PA2

and PA4, than inside the poorer zones (PA3 and PA5) where this difference is

much smaller: US$ 175 for favelados and US$ 285 for non-favelados (Pero,

Cardoso & Elias, 2005).

PA3 is the area with a greater population density (116/ha) five times

greater than that registered for the recently populated PA4 (23/ha) and PA5

(26/ha), the only areas that have grown in the last five years (almost 10% in

PA4 and 7.61% in PA5). The older areas lost dwellers during the same period (-

6.96% in PA1, -2.99% in PA2 and -1.13% in PA3). PA3 and PA1 are also those

most affected by de-industrialization, such as youth unemployment. Yet, they

are served by public services, now well distributed in the city where only 1% of

households do not have water, sewage and electricity (Cardoso, 2007).

However, inside favelas, these services are more precarious and impose

diverse arrangements that shape vicinal associations.

One could say that PA1, a mixed central region, and PA3, former

industrial and commercial region, both marked by economic decadence and de-

industrialization and undergoing urban decay and concentration of poverty, are

closest to what is called an inner city in the United States. But favelas, namely

7
sub-normal urban clusters that concentrate underprivileged dwellers, exist

everywhere in the city.

Neighbourhood associations and collective action2

Studies on the favelas of Rio de Janeiro showed that local dwellers'

associations were deeply affected by the recent presence of very well armed

gangs of drug dealers. Around 1985, the dealers started to take an interest in the

local associations as a way of completing their control of territories. It was then

that the “title” changed: no longer “owner of the selling point”, but “owner of the

hill”. News in the press told how small huts bought by the dealers, who became

careful listeners of the priests’ sermons, surrounded Catholic churches, and

Evangelical temples were forced to accept the existence of hiding places for the

dealers, their guns and drugs (O Globo, 13/10/1993). Criticisms of their activities

were not welcome and tense relationships with communitarian leaders and

ordinary dwellers sometimes finished by the latter’s eviction or death. On the

other hand, traffickers had already been playing the role of security guards,

eliminating or sending away those who robbed working people or raped their

daughters. But their very presence as powerful and rich men changed power

relations inside the favelas. From the beginning, neighbours showed ambivalence

towards them: disgust and obedience, fear and support (Zaluar, 1985, 2004).

Changes were not due only to fear. Other kinds were particularly

noticeable in those associations in which the participative model of democracy

had been installed during the re-democratization process as a strategy for

2
In this and other sections I present data based on ethnographies collected during many
research projects over the past 30 years. It is a condensed writing of what was published
before, mainly in Portuguese (Zaluar, 1985, 1994, 2004).

8
overcoming the representative democracy, linked to clienteles, that is, an

exchange of favours between politicians and neighbours, especially during

general elections that demand personal contacts between dwellers and several

types of "brokers". If autonomy was reinforced in those associations and

consequently some of these brokers disappeared, accusations of corruption

directed to the local leaders also created new tensions and mistrust.

Within the associations, the main effect of the drug dealers’ presence was

to hinder certain routine activities and administrative functions such as the

gathering of water supply bills, which is a single state fare for the whole shanty-

town, and, of course, free discussion of certain common problems including noise

and gun violence. Light, water, and sewage are the main collective problems that

favelados demanded as public services from the State, and were finally provided

during the 1980s. But although light supply by a State Company was established

according to discussions between neighbour commissions and technicians about

the way of doing the connection network, the other public services did not

accomplish the task with the same success: water and sewage - provided by

another State company. Whereas each home had its own light meters, dwellers’

associations received the necessary money for the other services and there was

no public discussion of the technical plans. In the end, each family had to make

the necessary aqueduct or sewers, somewhere finding the main pipes coming

from the central source or going to the main sewer. Because of the lack of a plan,

some dwellers built the pipes and the sewers very close to each other, but the

payment for this state service, especially the water supply, remained

collectivized. More conflicts arose between neighbours, which were increasingly

closer to each other due to the growing population inside favelas (Zaluar, 1994).

9
 Greater population density and conflict over individual and collective

responsibilities, as well as competition with non-governmental organizations that

then had become important local actors, impaired the dweller associations’ work.

Lack of law enforcement that would make payments obligatory was one of the

reasons for an increasing willingness to accept traffickers’ control, since the latter

had already been playing the role of security guards. Some community leaders,

who believed in the participation model of democracy, watched in despair that

their members no longer attended meetings and left the associations (Peppe,

1992). As it had happened elsewhere, people became more isolated inside their

homes and families, a consequence not only of the economic crisis and rampant

inflation, but also of violence and mistrust, lack of predictability and security.

Nevertheless, one of the several researches that I did in "Cidade de Deus"

has shown new directions of sociability and political action. In one of the existing
associations at this place, the participative democratic model was itself the
reason for disbelief and abandonment by former members. According to these,
the fact that the association became the focus of dispute from different left-wing
parties, the rhetoric of which was based on the participative model but that
presented candidates to the Legislative and Executive powers, showed
neighbours that the private interests of those politicians remained very strong.
As they had not learned to deal with the conflict between collective interests and
politicians’ private goals, but on the contrary they were told not to trust the old
type of politician called "interesseiros", supposedly only concerned with their
own interests, neighbours felt betrayed in their confidence. When they saw their
own associates becoming candidates and were asked to work at their electoral
campaigns, the neighbours concluded that the values of communitarian work
were lost. Former comrades who became politicians began to be accused of
behaving as "interesseiros" and, therefore, false friends that only "used" the
community, the same images applied to the old-style politician (Zaluar, 1985).

10
 At the same time, the ideals of a more egalitarian participation left the

association members displeased with the authority hierarchy that always existed

in voluntary associations. Far from being autonomous in relation to the State,

such organizations followed the institutional model of Brazilian presidential ethos,

in which the figure of the chief is somewhat authoritarian. This feature, associated

with corruption and disguised forms of clienteles, created a critical situation that

eroded the very basis of the movements. But criticisms to this model do not follow

only the rhetoric of new social movements but also of religious affiliations. As two

of former directors, both Evangelical, one male, the other female, said:

"I only did not stay because I was not pleased. I saw things that did not
please me. I think that the president of the Republic, who is the ruler of our
country, cannot do things alone. I have already said to him (the president
of the association, Catholic, A.Z.): you must, as a president, give me an
account of your expenditures because the fiscal council is pressing me...
You don't want to pay attention to what people who belong to the same
body we do belong are saying…”

"If we are going to do everything together, why one command the other?
... If you go to a meeting and try to speak, people make such a row that
you are not able to say anything. You have an idea and you want to
suggest it then you get three, four, five negative answers. But you look at
them asking yourself why they are so negative if the interest is the same?
It is because "a" wants to appear, "b" wants to appear even more. There
are interest and political groups, people who don't live in Cidade de Deus3.
They only have personal interests. Collor4 is the one that appeared on
television, but if you go from association to association, you will find many
honest people and also a great number of dishonest people. And the
dishonest end up disturbing us in these matters..."

3
He is alluding here to party members who go to the associations looking for votes.
4
Collor is the Brazilian former president ousted by the Congress on the basis of
accusations of corruption in 1991.

11
 Besides the unresolved problem of a hierarchy existing within a

communitarian organization, general mistrust has generated accusations of theft

to those in charge, whatever their political affiliation. In this matter, there was a

big difference between Catholics and Protestants, the former accepting what they

called "the existence of human weakness" and the need to stay, to mix with the

sinners and to fight corruption permanently inside the association; the latter

leaving and staying out of the association after some evidence or even mere

suspicion of it5. The attachment to the dwellers' association showed by Catholics

was also justified in terms of the inevitable need for solving common problems

collectively, such as water and sewage services, which demanded a local

urbanization plan. As they said:

"The dwellers' association even facilitated me because when I went to

collect monthly payments, I took God's word as well... I preached the
Gospel because this is what Jesus wants; I said that Jesus was the
Saviour, that He is the one who gives us the wanted peace of spirit... God
cures the sick, God frees the oppressed outside, the one that is inside the
prison, and gives them a new life. The person acquires a new vision... I
don't leave this neighbourhood because of my wife. The place is good,
what spoils it is certain people that make it unbearable... Then I don't
engage anymore. If sewage passes there, I jump over it. If it comes to my
door, I get a shovel and dig it to the middle of the street, as long as it does
not harm anyone, I put it there. What can I do? (Ex-2nd. secretary,
Evangelical)

5
Nevertheless, the Catholic Church is one of the most trusted institutions in the country,
according to public opinion polls. On the other hand, Evangelical politicians, who were
elected to represent their religious congregations, as well as some Evangelical charitable
organizations, have been involved in scandals about corruption at the National Congress

12
 "I see the Catholic Church offer all this without the need of leaving the
movement. Protestants, though they talk only of a God that frees people,
but that is a little egoistical, only think about themselves. You cannot mix...
To separate bad seeds from wheat is what is told in Saint Mathews, in
truth it is not that, it is praying and watching. You know you are in the
middle of the corrupt but you have to be prudent as a serpent ... you have
to be in the middle with serious motions to change, otherwise corruption
prevails. He (the ex-secretary) is there at his place. Shit is still at his door,
sewers are full in front of his house, but he doesn't want to mix (president,
Catholic).

From these statements, one can observe the complex articulation between

politics and religion. In this case, one cannot say that citizenship is only an effect

of the Protestant Reform. Both Protestantism and Catholicism have had

contradictory effects on the building up of citizenship. Individual isolation and a

major concern with corruption - on the side of Protestants -, mobilization, mixing

up and an over-tolerant attitude towards corruption and other crimes - on the side

of the Catholics -, are the main features of local politics, what restricted their

collective action.

As for traffickers and their young helpers, another feature, in the opposite

direction, differentiates the relationship between the political and the religious in

both great religions. Whereas Catholic militants prefer silence and distance vis-à-

vis the threatening presence of armed drug dealers, with a veiled reproach to

them within the local community and a strong opposition to harsher punishments

from the State, Protestants have chosen an evangelical proximity, trying to save

them. To take Jesus' words to vulnerable youths in order to convince them to

resign vice and the Devil's domain ended up sometimes in exorcism rituals that

have become the registered mark of neo-Pentecostal sects. Although the

13
evangelists are the ones that have achieved a more permanent work of

prevention and re-education of drug users and criminals, they are also the ones

that became increasingly concerned with their own families, children and private

affairs, encouraging individual solutions for collective problems.

There is another point in which no clear-cut and unambiguous distinctions

between Catholics and Protestants is possible. For it also became clear from

their statements that the establishment of democratic practices within the popular

organizations would become easier according to the religious practices

developed by the Evangelical believers, among whom the habit of discussing and

talking about decisions is a fact and where hierarchies do not hamper it. Yet, neo-

Pentecostal sectarians began a new wave of religious discrimination and conflict

not known beforehand in Brazil. As a woman, ex-director of the association,

disappointed with men's authoritarian leadership and the individual interests

among other non-Evangelical directors, said:

"... Because if you discuss with him - "mister, look the Bible explains this
and that, it is not what you are saying" - he is going to listen to you. If you
ask for someone higher, he will come and talk to you as an equal. No way
of them saying we are going to stop now out of respect for the brother who
is 30 years older than you”

Nevertheless, dwellers, which had never participated in meetings, adhered

in growing numbers to neo-Pentecostal sects because of the thrust to destroy the

Devil through rituals of exorcism. In these rituals, symbols from Catholic and afro-

Brazilian rituals are mixed: the devil incorporated in someone has the same

gestures of Afro-Brazilian exus and exhortations follow the Catholic discourse.

And it is exorcism, more than devotion to a new ethics that matters. In those

14
sects, the idea that absolute evil would explain the explosion of violent crime is

their strongest belief (Zaluar, 1994). Solution for them, including many converted

bandits, is therefore the preaching of Christ's word and the practice of charity

towards the unfortunate.

Another feature of the recent adherence to Evangelical sects is the clear

and radical opposition to the other religions, especially Afro-Brazilian ones that

are referred to as "things of the Devil" and their ambivalent entities (exus)

identified with the Devil itself. This has conveyed a strong intolerance that

Brazilian society did not know before. Poor workers that stayed together in

neighbouring organizations, getting married to form families regardless of race

or creed, now watch the shattering of their families and vicinal organizations, so

important for creating culture, achieving moral and political autonomy,

participating in public debates about justice and inequality. In another research

at favelas in Rio de Janeiro, I heard depositions from teary-eyed mothers saying

that they used to go to samba parties with their families, and although they were

born and raised there they would like to move now from the favela, a place full

of conflicts, risks and threats. Afro-Brazilians female shamans painfully

described how they had to stop visiting their children converted to the

Pentecostal religion because the pastor had forbidden their “diabolic” presence,

even at their grandchildren’s birthdays. Even if not the initial effect, shattered

families and organizations they had built up during decades of republican

history (Zaluar, 1985) fuelled a chain of effects that diminished their

participation in local sociability and politics.

Inside vicinal associations, the religious model of restricted sociability and

religious preaching, on the side of the Evangelicals, and of closed community,

15
collective work and authoritarian leadership, on the side of Catholics, estranged

one from the other politically during 30 years. There was also a noticeable return

to domestic life and individual concerns with work, marriage, earnings and private

affairs. At the end, traffickers or militias’ dummies took most of the vicinal

associations.

Violence linked to drug trafficking

Drug dealing has become synonymous with war since early 1980s in

many Brazilian counties, but with regional differences between cities and

neighbourhoods. In Rio de Janeiro, even if not completely coordinated by a

Mafia-like hierarchy, the drug trade has an efficient horizontal arrangement. If

there is a lack of drugs or firearms in a favela, it is possible to immediately

obtain more supplies from other allied ones. These “Commandos”, as they are

locally called, conciliate the mechanisms of a geographically and hierarchical

defined set-up, which includes central points, most of them inside prisons, and

widespread selling points, as well as a network established on the basis of

horizontal reciprocity. Nevertheless, unlike the Italian-American mafias, this

organization has never had the stable ties of loyalty that exist among people

related by ritual kinship or blood. (Luppo, 2002)

Drug Commandos have transient skirmishes to dispute the territory of

shantytowns where their markets are located. As a result of the ensuing military

control, in most areas inside favelas or near them, the drug lords or “donos”

restrict the movements of dwellers and government agents, therefore limiting

the access to public services, such as schools, health agencies, and sports

compounds. Residents of one favela cannot enter the territory of an “enemy”

16
favela, even when delivering goods, visiting friends and relatives, or having

dates. If they do, they are killed, especially when they are young men. Many

adolescents have been killed simply because they have passed from one sector

to another commanded by feuding drug gangs, even if just to got to work or to a

dance. Violent traffickers do not allow their turf to be “emasculated” and strictly

control the sexuality of young women, killing those that do not abide by their

rules.

This “endless war" consists of opposing members of enemy trafficking

Commandos or policemen confronting traffickers. During these violent clashes,

not only gang members, but also youths that live in threatened favelas are told

to help the local defenders against their “common enemies”. Adolescents

working for traffickers, who are called “soldiers” or “falcons”, then form a

“bonde” that will confront another one thus constituted. Some of them have in

fact been trained as recruits in Brazilian Armed Forces, a conscripted army.

Even when they are not gang members, recruits are "invited" to assemble

automatic weapons either smuggled or stolen from the Army arsenals, and to

train the younger traffic soldiers. Such invitations cannot be refused because

youths feel compelled to cooperate with the crew that controls the community

where they live and because they know that, if they refuse the invitation, the

price is very high: they will lose “consideration” of the “dono” and other peers;

they may be expelled with their families from the favela and even be executed

(Zaluar, 2001). Yet some charge quite a lot of money for their services when the

trafficking gang is a large, powerful and successful one in a well guarded

complex of favelas.

17
 Violence linked to drug trafficking is thus located at vicinities, and does

not divide the whole population in two opposing groups, that is, a civil war.

According to the interpretation of ethnic conflicts found in Wessell (1998),

soldiers belong to proper military or paramilitary armies in civil wars and leave

their localities and do not generally participate in everyday activities within them.

Consequently, there is less militarization of children and adolescents in the

favelas of Rio de Janeiro where they are not taken away from their families,

schools and neighbourhoods in order to join military forces that go far away. In

turf wars for business and territory control, “soldiers” do not loose contact with

local networks and organizations but acquire the warrior ethos without the

institutional controls that exist in armies.

Due to the violent exchanges of turf wars, adolescents are not only

casualties of an ongoing armed conflict, but also carriers of a prevailing sense

of status or self-esteem predicated on demonstrations of virility and “manliness”

not in the sense of a mannerly gentleman, but in one’s capacity and willingness

to destroy the enemy (Zaluar, 1994 and 2004). This is in agreement with results

obtained separately by Monteiro (2003) and Cecchetto (2004), the former on

soccer club fans, the latter on funk and jiu-jitsu gangs that have violent

skirmishes, most of which without guns.

Some adolescents, not involved in trafficking, identify themselves with

the drug Commandos of the favelas where they live as if they were soccer

team’s supporters. They interiorize the warrior ethos (Elias, 1997) or hyper-

masculinity6 (Mosher&Sirkin, 1984), both of which exult over the physical

6
Hyper-masculinity consists of three dimensions: callous attitudes toward women,
aggression as a manly posture, and danger as exciting, sustained by the lack of empathy

18
destruction of rivals, called “alemães”, namely Germans in Portuguese, a

reference to Second World War movies still very much seen on Brazilian TV.

The end result of transforming rivals into enemies may be participating in

actions where they need actual guns for survival, i.e., practices and ideas

developed in trafficking networks that become contagious in larger social

contexts. Favela boys grow up regarding the exhibition of guns as symbols of

power and their cruel use as lethal instruments for punishing foes. Favela boys

learn to hate policemen and to be afraid of being accused as informers, leading

to loss of respect and death threats. They also learn the values that sustain the

pride and virility of “Sujeito Homem”: a man that does not accept an insult and

who reacts with a deadly disposition towards his opponents, as described in

Lins (1997) and Zaluar (1994, 2004).

However, it is a known fact that not all adolescents follow a criminal

career. In Cidade de Deus, around 1% of the population end up somehow

connected to the drug crews7. And the symbol of this involvement is carrying a

gun. Possession of guns also follows the dynamics of small and local peer

networks. Youths who otherwise would not carry firearms have started displaying

them in order to be “admired” by their peers and to not be victimized by those

who possess guns. Using weapons is a learned behaviour and not a natural

inclination of poor youths. This learned posture increases where there is a high

concentration of handguns, also understood as the “ecology of danger”.

for potential victims.

7
In 1991, my research assistant Paulo Lins estimated the number of youths doing drugs
in Cidade de Deus. A study done at FIOCRUZ (www.fiocruz.gov.br), calculated that
15% of adolescents in another favela were so involved.

19
 Dangerous favelas are the ones where firearms are easily procured and

exhibited for traffickers associated to corrupt policemen dominate them. Since

1980, when I started my first research in Cidade de Deus I heard how easy it

was to get handguns and how policemen sold heavy guns, sometimes

smuggled, sometimes stolen from Police and Army deposits, to traffickers.

Youths also believe that by joining a gang they will have military, juridical,

political and personal protection from the powerful “donos” (bosses). There,

local youths learn to be ruthless and to unhesitatingly kill other “enemy” youths.

For good reason, they also believe that their crimes will be exempt from penalty

although they often end up as victims of homicide.

Boys grow up in a locality where an aggressive and destructive virility

permeates what is known as “street culture”. In the streets where they play, they

internalize the codes by which they become impervious to the suffering of

others, that is, they master cruelty and the disposition to kill. Such configuration

is not natural, eternal or consensual and nor is it only found in poor vicinities. It

is the destructive social configuration hyper-masculinity that carries also the

new successful masculine identities defined by conspicuous consumption. On

one hand, the powerful male helps friends, neighbours and relatives, impresses

everyone by wearing jewellery and expensive clothes, give parties and

providing beverages at public places. On the other, they display an exacerbated

or spectacular masculinity in the local but endless war, where gun-wielding

youths, with pockets full of money, become a threat to their neighbourhoods.

This trend is evident since the 1970s and is replicated by youngsters

whose parents are either too busy or too negligent to pay attention to them,

whose relatives and neighbours do not dare to challenge the rules of the

20
“context” and remain silent about abuse, and whose schoolteachers are unable

to deal with their learning problems. These are the children who become

conformists or are “tele-lead”, as local workers call them, to express the idea

that they obey the ruthless rules of the criminal gangs without hesitation or

thought. Their main source of pride or illusion is to belong to the armed crew

that commits muggings and wages war against others, to one day become

famous for their deeds.

But they are still members of their families, localities and schools, even

though they may leave them and return continuously. The war is local. And

there are many styles of masculinity among migrants from other states, among

the second-generation youth, among young whites, blacks and mulattos from

the city.

Patterns of violent mortality in Brazil

In Brazil, while deaths by infectious diseases diminished steadily since

the1980s, violent deaths have increased several times over, especially among

people in the 14-19 and 20-25 age groups. In 1980, violent deaths accounted

for 50% of the youth deaths, whereas in 2003 they reached 75%, 40%of which

were homicides. Rio de Janeiro’s homicide rate tripled from 20.5/100,000 in

1982 to 61.2/100,000 in 1989, when it reached its peak, following the expansion

of cocaine trafficking. In the states of Pernambuco, Espírito Santo, Rio de

Janeiro and São Paulo, where drug trafficking rose sharply since the end of

1970s; homicides represented 50% or more of youth’s deaths. Official data

shows that in Rio de Janeiro the Brazilian pattern of higher male youth homicide

21
rates is undoubtedly clearer in so far as for those in the 14--30 age bracket,

94.5% of murder victims were men and only 5.5% women.

In fact, the most amazing feature of the national pattern in murders is that

their victims are mainly young men. Whereas the homicide rate in the 14-25 age

bracket soared from 30/100,000, in 1980 to 54.5/100,000 in 2002, the rate

amongst older men remained stable, from 21.3/100,000 to 21.7 during the same

period. Nationwide, 90% or more of the cases involved males while only 10% or

less referred to women (Waiselfisz, 2004)8.

Why has lethal violence affected men 10 times more than women, and

young people five times more than older people in Brazil? Although this criminal

pattern is a global phenomenon, it is very different from ethnic or religious

conflicts where women, children and the elderly are also killed or sexually

assaulted. Sexual crimes have not increased in Rio de Janeiro, where they had

a rate of 1.5% in the Victimization Survey.

Official crime data for the metropolitan regions of Brazil show that in the

MR Rio de Janeiro the homicide rate by handguns tripled from 20.5/100,000 in

1982 to 61.2/100,000 in 1989, when it reached its peak. From then on it has

been around 50/100,000, with a lower rate in 2001 (45.3/100,000), up again in

2002, down again in 2005 (34.9/100.000).

Yet, eight of the 26 Capital cities had average homicide rates greater

than the city of Rio de Janeiro in 2005. Recently the scenario changed but Rio

de Janeiro has not the greatest average homicide rate in Brazil. Nevertheless, it

8
Unesco-Brasil now has yearly publications called “Mapa da Violência” in which
official data is presented in new tables and graphs. This one appeared in 2004 written by
J.J.Waiselfisz.

22
is the champion for youth homicide reaching the rate of 289/100.000 in the 14-

19 age bracket, probably due to the pattern of homicide in the city, where

around 60% of these deaths involve drug trafficking and other similar conflicts,

most of which are not investigated. On the other hand, murder of kin or people

close to the family, the ones that mostly become judicial processes, is far more

unusual than elsewhere in the country. Even so, in 1991, a careful study of

police records and criminal judicial actions in Rio de Janeiro showed that 57%

of the homicides committed that year were related to drug dealing. In fact, this is

only one of the many threads suggesting that the increase in homicide rates can

be linked to a heavier influx of firearms and narcotics into the country, since

both phenomena increased simultaneously in the late 1970s.

Indeed, this fast upward trend in homicides, besides affecting mainly

male youths from 15 to 29 years of age, were committed in public places among

people who were neither intimate nor relatives, at most acquaintances. This is

the same pattern found in conflicts over the defence of territories and earnings

among dealers and armed robbers, as developed during the violent competition

between gangs in the ghettos of some American cities at the beginning of the

20th century, and later, during the heroin, cocaine and crack epidemics of the

1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (Sullivan, 1992).

Inequality and youth violent deaths in Rio de Janeiro

Several studies have shown that violent crimes are more common in

favelas and in the more remote poor districts, corresponding to inequality

differences, but also to lack of social informal control and state policing in the

more far-away areas or in the larger complexes of favelas, what diminishes

23
social control and increases corruption and impunity (Zaluar, 1994, 2004;

Dowdney, 2008).

Unfortunately it is very difficult to compare official rates of homicides in

different districts or favelas where the absence of property rights means lack of

addresses. As a result, people give existing or non-existing addresses in

adjacent districts to avoid being discriminated as “favelados”. Moreover, since

police repression is stronger against favelados, bodies are dumped in

neighbouring districts, which then had much higher homicide rates.

Nevertheless, it is possible, from the Census data, to estimate indirectly

the risk of dying young from the data collected about children born alive and

deceased for each mother. Since violent deaths account nowadays for 85% of

premature deaths between 15 and 30 years old, one can say that the probability

of dying young due to violence, especially homicides, in some favelas is much

higher than in wealthier districts (Monteiro, 2004). The formula 15q15 per one

thousand gives the probability of dying before 30 years old for those 15-year old

youngsters. The following graph is the result of comparing several districts and

favelas that are administrative regions of the city.

INSERT HERE Figure 1

In the richest districts (Copacabana, Lagoa and Botafogo- PA 2.1) where

there are few favelas, for each cohort of 1,000 youngsters of 15 years old,

around five youths do not reach their 30th birthday. In the biggest favelas that

have become administrative regions and are all dominated by traffickers

(Rocinha, Cidade de Deus, Maré, Jacarezinho and Complexo do Alemão, in

black), the risk of dying before reaching 30 years old becomes four or five times

24
higher, that is, 23 youths die before they are 30 years old. In some

administrative regions that include poor districts and many favelas controlled by

different traffickers, commandos or militias fighting each other in order to

maintain their domain (Campo Grande and Pavuna), there is a similar risk of

dying young. But in other poor suburbs, such as Irajá, Madureira and Ramos,

this risk is significantly smaller. Thus, poverty cannot fully explain the higher risk

of either dying young. It is vital to take into account the effects of well-armed

traffickers´ presence in those areas.

The Domicile Victimization Survey

The data gathered in the 2005-2006 Victimization Survey9 confirms an

irregular association between poverty and violence. It also showed that black,

low income and less educated people have a larger proportion of relatives and

friends killed during the last year than brown and white people: 3.6% of white

residents and 6.7% of brown and black residents had murdered relatives; 5.1%

of whites, 5.7% of browns and 8.5% of blacks had friends killed - only 3% in the

richest and most policed area of the town, and more than 6% in the more

peripheral and poorer areas -; 3.8% of whites and 5.6% of browns and blacks

alike had neighbours murdered. The percentage of residents with family income

less than twice the monthly minimum wage (about US$ 380) that lost relatives is

9
The survey took place in 2006 in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro with 15 years and
older people, that is, a universe of 4,658,482 people. The sample was random in three
stages: 3435 questionnaires done in 200 census tracts where 20 domiciles were picked
and one person was interviewed in each of them. Each person accounted for 1,500 other
15 years old and more city dwellers. The research was sponsored by federal and
municipal agencies and is accessible at the NUPEVI site, where the executive report can
be found: www.ims.uerj.br/nupevi since Jan. 2007.

25
almost double the percentage of people whose family income is more than 11

minimum wages (about US$ 2,095).

But there are other disparities, besides the striking difference by gender.

Killings vary considerably by age. Older people have far lower indexes of

friends killed whereas younger ones have percentages six to ten times higher.

Since these percentages point to losses of friends, the steep curve, varying

from 9.4% for 15- 20 years old youths to 2.1 for 60-69 years old people, is

another indication that homicide rates mostly affect youths and is not the result

of ingrained social practices valid for everyone.

Furthermore, lack of policing, police corruption and violence led to

impunity and an “endless war”, as neighbours call it, which puts those who live

in poor areas between two opposing armed conflicts: between bandits of

different “commandos”; between policemen and bandits, not always to repress

crime and to abide by the law. In our ethnographic studies since 1980, we heard

how easy it was to obtain guns in dangerous favelas, that is, the favelas

dominated by traffickers that exist mainly in PA1 and PA3, where blacks and

browns have lived for more than a century in the city.

These favelas are also the ones most attacked by police gunfire (Zaluar

et al, 2007), especially by the Military Police, responsible for the street policing

but more scarce or even absent in those districts where the poor live. At the

same time, the police are more violent in the areas controlled by traffickers that

are “invaded” from time to time in armed conflict, mainly in PA1 and PA3. There,

policemen shoot 10 times more than in the regular areas of the city and use

excessive force twice as much on neighbours, according to what residents

respond. Although crimes are witnessed and shots are heard in other middle

26
class neighbourhoods with favelas dominated by drug dealers, such as Tijuca

(PA2.2) with similar percentages as those of the suburbs (around 6%), the

proportion of neighbours who said that they had seen policemen shooting

(0.4%) was 20 times less than in the suburbs (PA 3.1) where 11% of them

declared the same.

INSERT HERE Figure 2

Even when the sound of gunfire is more heard than seen, the noise (and

the fear it produces) is unevenly distributed between neighbourhoods, even the

poor ones. The richest planning areas (PA 2.1 and PA4) are the ones where

gunfire is less heard. Some of the poorest (PA 1, PA3 and PA5.2), where

trafficking gangs dominated most of the favelas, are those with most gunfire

noise. PA 5.1, where many military personnel lives, and 5.3, where paramilitary

groups control the territory instead of trafficking gangs, also have the lowest

gunfire rates. Only in poorer planning areas (PA5.3, PA1 and PA3), where there

are many favelas dominated by traffickers, the proportions of victims or

witnesses of some crimes are much higher. Other poor areas (including the PA

2.1, PA 4 and PA5favelas) have much lower proportions of the same crimes.

In Rio de Janeiro, guns are more easily obtained due to the port and

several airports existing in its territory, as well as the most important silos of the

Armed Forces. Many thefts took place and continue to occur in these

warehouses that do not have suitable stock control. As a result, drug dealing

became more easily militarized (Zaluar, 1994, 1998, 2001; Dowdney, 2008).

Not surprisingly, PA1 and PA3 are the areas closest to the port and the larger

airports, and to Guanabara Bay.

27
 In turn, a wider circulation of guns induces youths to fire at each other

during conflicts and increases the rate of deaths by aggression or homicides,

greater in these two areas (Szwarcwald & Leal, 1997). There, guns have

become an everyday way to keep domain over a territory, settle debts, avoid

rivalry and scare possible witnesses.

This is a global pattern and international literature shows that gun

possession is explained by the socio-cultural context of small groups to which

youths belong. Studies carried out in the United States point out that the peer

group is the major predictor of youth delinquency, especially in the more serious

violent crimes and gun carrying. In this research, gun-carriers were 20% of the

sample of black adolescents between 12 and 15 years. These youths

mentioned 19 times more than the ones that do not carry guns that they have

mates that carry gun as well (Myers et al., 1997). Thus, family may have a

direct or indirect bearing on this behaviour, but more important is the social

network in which youths interact with other youths of similar age. Other studies

assert that, in predictors of violence, gun carrying and school failure are more

important for explaining youth violent postures (Saner & Ellikson, 1996;

Resnicket al., 2004). The aim of these studies was to understand why youths

that otherwise would not carry guns do so in order to avoid being victimized by

armed peers and gain respect and status from gun possession.

Thus, higher homicide rates can be explained by the higher gun

concentration if these areas, developing what a criminologist called "ecology of

danger", after interviewing 400 youths in the most dangerous New York

neighbourhoods and discovering that violence increased between 1985 and

1995 from contagious ideas and practices shared by peers (Fagan, 2005).

28
Forms of private security and militias

Considering the violent ongoing disputes in favelas and their vicinity, and

the weakening of vicinal associations, it is not surprising that neighbourhoods

have lost most of the informal controls over youth and prefer private forms of

security. The police, until recently, only appear in armed disputes, that is,

exchanging fire with traffickers, reinforcing the practices based on repressive

tactics of “war against the internal enemy” and “chasing the bad guys”. These

ideas and attitudes make it even harder to comply with the regulations of the

state of law, already affected by corruption. Therefore, the image of the Military

Police (PM) as violent and corrupt achieves very high percentages among

young favelados, especially women: more than 70% agreed that the PM uses

excessive force and is corrupt, and 92% of women between 15 and 19 years

old indicate an almost complete mistrust of the institution.

Private security modes have spread throughout the city, where people

are able to pay and where people have to pay, as so happens where private

security is as provided by the so-called “militias”. They first appeared in the

areas more recently populated (PA4 and PA5), mostly by migrants from other

states, as occurred in the first favela controlled by an extermination group – Rio

das Pedras.

According to the victimization survey, 25% of the people interviewed

admitted they had some form of private security: paid or non-paid traffickers,

paid or non-paid neighbours, vigilantes, uniformed security company

employees, non-uniformed informal employees (Zaluar et al., 2007). Many such

companies offer security services in more prosperous areas of the city (PA4 e

29
PA2) and are managed by senior police and military officers, whereas in poor

areas “militias” are run by or linked to lower rank military policemen, firemen,

and prison wardens (PA1, PA3 and PA5). The difference also lies in the

relationship between security guards and dwellers. In poorer areas, especially

in favelas, where housing is informal without legal rights to property, people do

not have access to the legal system and consequently security agents soon

become tyrants who force extralegal or illegal decisions on neighbours by the

barrel of the same guns that keep dealers and robbers away from their vicinity.

Comparing city areas by the type of private security, one gets the

following picture: where traffickers dominate the neighbourhood, the proportion

of neighbours who listen to gunfire, and see people shooting and battering each

other, people being killed or taken forcibly away, people dealing or using drugs

is far superior to other areas. The percentages of murdered neighbours,

relatives or friends are also greater in those favelas controlled by drug dealers.

There, the people who said they had seen drugs sold in their neighbourhood

(45%) were three times as much as in the favelas dominated by “militia”

(14.9%). People using drugs in the streets were also three times as many as

seen in favelas dominated by drug dealers (52.2%) than in favelas controlled by

“militia” (18.5%). Of course, tolerance to drug-using is built up or forced on

neighbours where traffickers control the territory, but these results also show

that one of the goals publicly defended by militiamen for justifying their

presence is exactly to stop people from drug dealing and use.

As regards other violent crimes that people fear, there are even more

disparities between the favelas. In those controlled by “militias” 26.6% of the

interviewees had seen robberies in the neighbourhood while 47% alleged the

30
same in those controlled by traffickers. Militias, paramilitary forces linked to

extermination groups, were first created to banish by illegal means the presence

of those suspected of mugging, a criminal activity that traffickers valorise for

sharing profits in order to buy drugs and guns.

These contrasting objectives are also clear where the noise made by

gunfire is heard. In the favelas controlled by militias, 15% have always or often

heard gunfire, compared to the 62% in those controlled by traffickers. In the

former 34.2% of the interviewees have seldom or never heard it, while only

11.6% have never or seldom heard it in the latter. The proportions in the

trafficker-controlled favelas are therefore three times as large. In the city, 45%

of interviewees had heard gunfire, a proportion concentrated in PA1 and PA3,

the poorest and older areas of the city, where are 50% of the favelas. Armed

skirmishes have been seen by 13% of the dwellers, also concentrated in the

same areas, apart from PA5 where underprivileged newcomers to the city live.

Maps of domains and spatial clusters of homicides

The last research that our team carried out was double. On one hand, a

careful listing of all deaths by aggression as registered at the Health Secretary

of the municipality, a source that contains the victim’s address. These were

spatially marked so that one could see the main clusters or kernels of these

violent deaths in the city. On the other, another team made during fieldwork a

listing of the 976 favelas in the city according to the organization that dominated

its territory, that is, whether the favela was dominated by one of the three then

existing trafficker commandos or by a militia. The results were surprising and

revealing. From 2005 to 2008, militias increased the number of favelas they

31
controlled and their area of domain, gaining some formerly neutral ones (from

165 in 2005 to only 27 in 2008), but also invading those dominated by traffickers

in PA5 and quite a few in PA3. In 2008 they controlled more favelas than the

Red Commando, the larger traffic organization that dominated 67% of them in

2005. Yet, the growth of militias in the city territory was delimited by the main

roads that linked the city to other Brazilian states, to the Guanabara Bay and to

the sea that bathes the richest part of the city (PA2 and PA4). On the contrary,

the area that remained under the control of traffickers’ gangs was near these

two main roads and the Guanabara Bay where the port and the international

airport are. Through them, guns, ammunition and drugs enter the city and are

kept by traffickers inside their well-guarded favelas. Not surprisingly the greatest

clusters of homicides in the city were situated at the areas controlled by

traffickers, especially those that had favelas of different commandos close do

each other.

INSERT HERE Figure 3

INSERT HERE Figure 4

INSERT HERE Figure 5

What is to be done?

As elsewhere, it is crucial to have social projects and state policies that

integrate all governmental levels (local, state, and federal) as well as several

Secretariats and Ministries with a hold on violence control. Thus, the education,

health, economic and legal systems should have coordinated projects in order

to confront all challenges presented by new forms of criminality affecting mainly

young men. This coordination is also very important to make the many social

32
projects managed by NGOs -- some full of good ideas -- more effective at the

macro level.

Data on the correlation between schooling and homicides indicate that

the teaching quality is vital to assure that poor youngsters will finish first grade

and continue to the second grade, including the fitting and much wanted

professional training. If Brazilian children are not taken away to become soldiers

only better schooling will guarantee that these youngsters will not repeat their

year, or drop out and join a criminal gang. The aim is to diminish the contingent

of stray youths that neither work or study, and join gangs to feel protected and

powerful because they carry guns and have money to spend lavishly in

conspicuous consumption before their peers.

At the local level, cultural and sports neighbourhood projects that

integrate adults and youths are important for families that can and should be

engaged in them. Dwellers’ associations should be encouraged to maintain

autonomy from political parties but being empowered by the public power.

Traditional forms of community association, such as samba schools, carnival

blocks and soccer teams have always played this role of integrating generations

in order to socialize the young. They can and should be supported as much as

the new projects that develop globalized identities and juvenile styles, such as

hip-hop or reggae. Since Reichenberg & Friedman (1996) have shown that

trauma from violence is collective, and since Wessels (1998) has argued that

such actions will be more successful with groups of youngsters and adults than

programs focusing on individuals, the more efficacious policy in Rio de Janeiro

are those long lived vicinal organizations that have not received so much

funding from the governmental agencies.

33
 Last but not the least, cultural and sport projects will only be successful if

there are public policies for reducing access to guns that youngsters use to kill

others and that expedite their own deaths. It is paramount to prevent the flow of

weapons coming from army arsenals and across the Brazilian frontiers. This is

a responsibility of the Federal Police and should be followed by changes in

policing and law enforcement that respect the civil rights of any citizen,

regardless of their economic status, skin colour, gender or religion.

Many actions may be envisaged to disarm these youths. For example,

the employment of gun-oriented patrolling, designed to seize firearms is one

policy that results in disarming youths from the instruments of death and.

Providing youths with other status symbols and respect is an alternative to

disarm their dispositions to kill. Thus, it is necessary to change police approach

and investigation practices. New investigation techniques and prevention

strategies involving the neighbourhoods, including those inside favelas, may

have more solid and long-term effects than other ones. City dwellers need a

better understanding between themselves and policemen that will change their

image as abusively violent, corrupt and the archenemy of poor favela residents.

This renovation will only be possible when Brazilian police forces change their

way of approaching the poor and policing their neighbourhoods.

Fortunately, such changes are already under way.

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Rio de Janeiro. Journal of International Affairs. 53, 2: 654-671.
(2001). Violence in Rio de Janeiro: styles of leisure, drug use, and
trafficking. International Social Science Journal, LIII, 3: 369-379.
(2004). Integração Perversa. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV.

Zaluar, A.; et al. (2007). Pesquisa domiciliar de vitimização do Rio de Janeiro,

Relatório Técnico. Rio de Janeiro: NUPEVI, Instituto de Medicina Social/ UERJ.
www.ims.uerj.br/nupevi

Figures

36
Figure 1: Probability of dying before 30 years old amongst 1000 15 years old youngsters
(15q15 per 1,000), by Administrative Regions of Rio de Janeiro.

Source: Census of 2000. Software: Mortpak, developed by United Nations Population Division
Graphic by Mario F.G. Monteiro IMS/UERJ.

37
 12% 11,2%

10%

8% 7,4%

6% 5,5%
4,3% 4,5%
4% 3,2%
2,4%
2% 1,4%
0,5% 0,4%
0%
PA 1 PA 2.1 PA 2.2 PA 3.1 PA 3.2 PA 3.3 PA 4.1 PA 5.1 PA 5.2 PA 5.3

Figure 2: Percentages of people in the city of Rio de Janeiro who saw policemen firing in
their neighbourhoods, by PA.

Source: NUPEVI/ UERJ/IPP/PCRJ Victimization Survey 2005-2006.

Domains Guanabara Bay

ADA
CV
MILITIAS
TCP Mendanha
Brazil Ave. Mountain Ridge

Pedra Branca
Mountain Range

Tijuca Moutain Range

Sepetiba Bay

Atlantic Ocean

Source of data: NUPEVI/UERJ

Data Digitalization: IPP/PCRJ and LABGEO/FIOCRUZ
Mapping: NUPEVI/UERJ
4 2 0 4 8 Km
/
Figure 3: Favelas dominated by trafficking commandos and militias in 2005
(dom05blackandwhite.emf)

38
 Domains Guanabara Bay
ADA
CV
MILITIAS
TCP Mendanha
Brazil Ave. Mountain Ridge

Pedra Branca
Mountain Range

Tijuca Moutain Range

Sepetiba Bay

Atlantic Ocean

Source of data: NUPEVI/UERJ

Data Digitalization: IPP/PCRJ and LABGEO/FIOCRUZ
Mapping: NUPEVI/UERJ
4 2 0 4 8 Km
/
Figure 4: Favelas dominated by trafficking commandos and militias in 2008
(dom08 blackandwhite.emf)

39
 Figure 5: Homicide density in Rio de Janeiro by the victims’ addresses 2005
(denshom05 blackandwhite.emf)

40

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