Beautiful Horizons

Disturbing, But Unsurprising Video

The following video shows a young (14 year old) boy being shot by police in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas in Brazil.

 

 

I am not certain if live ammo was used or if rubber bullets were used. Ultimately it doesn't matter. This is so wrong for so may reasons, but it is also happens far too often. This is also disturbing:

The boy's family and the person in charge of the security camera, as well as the first reporter to see the footage, initially held the video back because they feared retaliation if it was made public, prosecutors said.

Amazonas state prosecutor Joao Bosco Sa Valente said the officers would face charges of attempted homicide.

"I have been fighting organised crime for 30 years, but every time I see those images I feel indignation and disgust," the prosecutor told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo.

I'm glad to see the outrage, but I'm in the least optimistic that this will make for any long-term change. These incidents happen far too often and they don't just involve children. I'm hoping that those responsible face significant jail time as impunity, sadly, has been the rule and not the exception in these incidents.

Nevertheless, public outrage appears to be high - and that's a good sign.

It's A Start

While I understand some of the snarkiness/cynicism at the end of this article, I happen to think that this is a good start:

The slums of Rio de Janeiro—the infamous favelas—pile onto and up and over the city’s iconic steep hillsides. Simply getting from point A to point B requires a sub-alphabet of zigzaggery up stairs, over switchbacks, and through alleyways that can be just a few feet wide. There’s nowhere for public transit to go. Nowhere, that is, but up.

That’s the direction for the newest transportation system in Rio, slated to open in March: a six-station gondola line running above a collection of favelas known as the Complexo do Alemão. The government says that 152 gondolas will carry 30,000 people a day along a 2.1-mile route over the neighborhood, transforming the hour-and-a-half trudge to a nearby commuter rail station into a 16-minute sky ride.

I'm for anything that gets people out of cars/buses and either above ground or below ground in Rio. Rio has a very, very limited, but comfortable subway system, but the nature of the city's topography makes it difficult to spread the subway beyond the neighborhood's that are closest to the water. There are currently two lines with a third under construction. Anything that helps keep cars and buses off the street in Rio is a plus, but I agree with the tone at the end of the article that it would be good to address more of the most critical basic needs of the favelados.

Brazil on 60 Minutes

I'm truly stunned that the most popular news magazine program in this country would actually do a segment on Latin America that doesn't involve coups, natural disasters, drugs or disease, so I'm generally pleased to see this segment on 60 Minutes focusing on Brazil:

 

I largely agree with the report regarding the infrastructure and the issue on training workers, but disagree with Eduardo Bueno, the historian/journalist/commentator, who seemed eager to generate old stereotypes about Brazil that seem more rooted in a carioca mentality, than say, one from Parana, Minas Gerais or Sao Paulo (yes, I know Bueno is from Rio Grande do Sul). There are plenty of serious, hardworking, dedictaed Brazilians. Now may very well be their time.

Another Step in the Right Direction

In 1994, not terribly long after the Candelaria Massacre, Mercia and I were at a party in which one of her Brazilian friends commenting on the massacre said "They should kill them all. They're not children anymore."

She steered me out of the room so that I wouldn't confront this woman, but it gave me some insight into how many in the middle class in Brazil perceive the homeless and favelados (favela dwellers) in Brazil.

That being said, I'm cautiously optimistic about this:

Leonardo Bento longed for vengeance after a policeman killed his brother five years ago. So when he heard that the new “peace police” force in the City of God slum was offering free karate classes, Mr. Bento signed up, hoping he would at least get to beat up the karate instructor.

But the unexpected happened. Eduardo da Silva, the police instructor, won him over with humor and a handshake. “I began to realize that the policeman in front of me was just a human being and not the monster I had imagined in my head,” Mr. Bento, 22, said.

Years of hate and mistrust are thawing in some of Rio’s most violent slums. Pushed to alleviate security concerns before the city’s double-billing on the international stage — the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games — Rio officials have embarked on an ambitious plan to wrest control of the slums, or favelas, from ruthless drug gangs who ruled for years with big guns and abject terror.

The peace officers are central to that effort, flooding in after the military police clear the streets in gun battles that can last weeks. Their job is part traditional policing, part social work. They devote themselves to winning over residents scarred by decades of violence — some at the hands of the police. And the tips fed to them from those who support their efforts, officers say, help them keep the relative peace.

This is not a panacea by any means, but it's a good start. It's no secret that civilians - many of them innocent - have fallen victim to police violence in Rio de Janeiro. There is also no question that favelados have often been the subject of disdain and contempt by many - for the simple fact of being desperately poor. I truly hope that more projects such as this continue in the other favelas throughout Brazil. In a just society, only criminals should fear the police.

Good News From Brazil

The last of the defendants in the Dorothy Stang murder has been sentenced to thirty years in prison. While I'm glad that this has finally happened, here's the more disturbing aspect of all this:

Stang's murder became a symbol of the often-violent conflicts over natural resources in the vast Amazon region.

In the 10 years through 2008, 365 people were murdered in such disputes, according to the Pastoral Land Commission, a watchdog linked to the Roman Catholic church that monitors conflicts over land in Brazil.

I would be interested in knowing how many of these murders have been solved or even if they went to trial. Para is a horribly violent and corrupt state. Dorothy Stang's greatest legacy would be to have justice be anything but newsworthy for being consistent.

Bad News From Brazil

Brazil's Supreme Court has rejected attempts by the Brazilian Bar Association to modify the amnesty that would have allowed those accused of human rights abuses to be prosecuted for torture.

As the article notes, unlike Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, Brazil has done nothing to prosecute anyone in the military accused of torture during the twenty-one year dictatorship. As time rolls on it's seeming even less likely.

A Couple of Good Perspectives

I believe that this article in The Economist  offers a very sensible understanding as to the core of the problem that Rio de Janeiro faces with drug gangs:

A further reason for Rio’s spectacular violence is that it has three large, competing drug factions, whereas in other big cities (including the largest, São Paulo) one gang is dominant. A recent study from Rio de Janeiro state’s government on the economics of the local drug business suggests that, because of this competition, far from living like characters in an MTV hip-hop video, Rio’s dealers are operating at “close to break-even”.

Using a conservative estimate for total annual drugs sales in the city, of R$316m ($182m), the study reckons that after buying the product from wholesalers, employing a sales force and investing in capital (guns,mainly), Rio’s dealers make combined annual profits of R$27m ($15m). The wage structure within the factions appears to be surprisingly flat, far more so than in the American gang analysed in 2000 by two academics, Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh. Rio’s dealers seem to be an exception to Brazil’s national picture of unequal income distribution.

Before the recent violence, some analysts had suggested that stretched finances were leading drug gangs to co-operate in some operations. But the more standard response to this situation is to invade a neighbour’s turf. This is what happened on October 17th, when members of the Comando Vermelho poured into an area controlled by the Amigos dos Amigos, and the shooting started.

In addition, this article is a sensible take-a-deep-breath moment:

In areas of the city like Ipanema, Copacabana and Lagoa, where many of the Olympic events will take place and where most visitors will be based, the crime of the favelas seems a world away.

I walked the length of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches to watch kids playing beach football and foot volley, but when I got to the stretch of the Avenida Atlantica outside the opulent Copacabana Palace Hotel, my heart sank.

Six youths, three white, three black, were sitting in a line on the pavement, hands on their heads, faces between their knees.

I guessed they were a gang of pickpockets from a favela. I looked for the police who had rounded them up. But there were no police.

A woman approached and handed me a flier. The boys were part of an urban dance troupe, she said.

They were publicising a performance to commemorate the killings of a group of children by a police murder squad 16 years ago.

Not pickpockets then. Not criminals. Not a security risk. Just another sign Brazil is embracing the 21st century with verve and optimism.

As I've written before, I've been to Rio several times. I've used good judgment about where I go and when I go there. I'm careful about what I show about myself. Granted, it helps that I speak the language fluently, and usually stay alert - a trait I refined living in New York during the 1980's.

The Pan Am Games went well in 2007. Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC has confidence in Brazil.

Time to take a deep breath.

Follow Up to the Weekend's Events in Rio

There is some good news in this article about last weekend's events in Rio de Janeiro and it's chiefly this:

With the community policing effort, police officers try to establish a more permanent presence within the shantytowns. That differs from the prevailing approach for more than a decade, in which the police guarded the entrances to the favelas and ventured in only for select operations that often turned into deadly gun battles with traffickers.

Though the community policing effort has so far been limited, law enforcement experts said they were encouraged.

“For the first time the police are not coming into the favelas shooting, and then leaving only to draw the hatred and scorn of the residents,” said Silvia Ramos, the coordinator of the Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania at the University of Cândido Mendes in Rio.

These events started as the result of a turf war between two gangs as the article notes. I would hardly consider this a wake up call, bit for Rio's sake, it's better that it happened now and not shortly before the games. More disturbing images like these will be difficult to deal with:

This Won't Help

One of the arguments made against Rio de Janeiro being awarded the Olympics  was the issue of security. The events of this weekend is fodder for the naysayers:

Some 2,000 police officers patrolled the streets of Rio de Janeiro Sunday after a bloody confrontation between rival drug gangs and authorities that killed 14 over the weekend, including two police officers.

Two suspected drug traffickers were killed and four were arrested in Sunday's operations by Rio de Janeiro's military police, the official news agency Agencia Brasil reported.

But the atmosphere in general appeared calm in the slum known Morro dos Macacos in northern Rio, where the day before crossfire between two gangs left 12 dead, including two police officers who died when their helicopter was shot out of the sky. Residents had also set eight buses on fire during the clashes in an attempt to divert the attention of police.

"This was truly one of the worst incidents of this type," one local resident told CNN en Español, who declined to give his name for fear of his safety. "It was like a scene from a real war. It was like the world would end, lots of bullets, lots of noise."

The issue that is really alarming is how the helicopter was brought down:

Rio's secretary of public security, Jose Mariano Beltrame, said the helicopter was likely brought down by .30- and .50-caliber machine gunfire, the news agency [Agencia Brasil] said.

These are military weapons mounted on tripods and capable of firing several hundred rounds per minute. The fact that these are being used by criminals cannot help but be unnerving.

There is still time to remedy these situations, but my other great fear is in the solution. All too often, the remedy used is brute force with revenge as the motivating factor, with the result being extrajudicial executions and killings of civilians. The last thing Rio needs is a repeat of what happened in Mexico City prior to the 1968 Olympics.

What Mr. Trend Said

Here. Every last word.

In noting some of the comments from people, it's remarkable how ignorant  some people are. The reliably tendentious and in this case, clueless Big Tent Democrat in the comments to this post at TalkLeft makes the following comment:

I think it is not going to be a particularly successful Olympics in Rio imo. I do not believe that holding a World Cup in 2014 will leave Brazil in a great position to do what is necessary for an Olympics in 2016. There is a huge crime problem in Rio.

Not content to trash Rio, (notwithstanding the fact that two of us point out to him that Rio successfully staged the Pan Am Games two years ago), he then proceeds to trash South Africa making this comment:

I think the World Cup is going to be a mess next year.

I think the Olympics in Rio are likely to be a mess too.

Hell, I think the World Cup in Rio is going to be a mess.

Think Seoul, but worse.

And he bases this on what? In addition to reminding him about the Pan Am Games, I also point out that South Africa staged a successful Confederations Cup three months ago. Surely he must remember that. Brazil almost lost to the US. One wonders if he has ever even been to Rio.

If he's concerned about the safety, I’ve been to Rio some seven times. I have used the subway and the buses there with no problems. Last time I was there I saw numerous people on the subway with Ipods and without problems.

On New Years Eve 1999-2000, we walked from our cousin’s place in Botafogo through the Rebouças tunnel to Copacabana and back for the New Year’s celebration. There was not one arrest made tha night. I have walked from Botafogo to Flamengo, from Jardim Botanico to Lagoa Rodrigo Freitas. I have ridden the tram from Santa Teresa to Lapa.

I have found by using good judgment and good sense I have had no problems. Indeed, many of the homicides taking place in Rio are the result of police killing civilians.

He also - without a scintilla of proof, remarkably so for an attorney - claims that Chicago didn't invest enough in bribery.

If ignorance is bliss, he must be an incredibly happy man.In any event he never responded to the facts regarding thee Confederations Cup and the Pan Am Games in 2007.

As for the question of benefits to the host city, yes it can work out quite well. Barcelona (pdf file) is the greatest proof of that.