Beltrame wanted someone who could lead a police force that was under pressure, changing internally and externally at once. Mário Sérgio had a reputation for being clean. He also had the respect of many within the force, from the paper-pushers of the Institute of Public Security to the lethal skull-and-dagger battalion, BOPE.
Beltrame was an outsider, but when I landed in Rio in November 2010, his plan was winning over cynical Cariocas. The UPPs loosened the hold of criminal networks on favelas and brought crime down in the surrounding neighborhoods. In this city where even hospitals had bulletproof windows, some were starting to believe it might be possible to live without the fear of stray bullets and shoot-ups, without the daily dose of blood in the news. For the first time in decades, there was sense that real change, perhaps lasting change, was under way.
So, as I watched the CV spread terror in the streets in those first weeks of November 2010, I looked to Beltrame. The year of the Pan-American Games, 2007, was still fresh in my mind and in the memories of Cariocas. The last time the gang had staged assaults on the city, the response had been unprecedented bloodshed.
Rio had changed during its four years in Beltrame’s hands, but there was also far more at stake. Winning the Olympic bid had cost nearly $50 million and a great outlay of political capital from local officials all the way to the country’s president.
The international sporting competitions were meant to showcase Rio and an up-and-coming Brazil. Burning buses, a terrorized population, teenage gangsters who rested the butt of their semi-automatics against jutting hip bones and glared from the backs of motorcycles—this wouldn’t do. Neither would a return to the old shoot-first approach to policing favelas. Under either of these scenarios, Rio lost. Was there another way out? Everyone speculated, but no one knew.
* * *
I. Even after the measure was scrapped, the money continued to be paid out. A lawyer who represented a group of officers in their effort to keep their paychecks padded estimated 5,000 police participated in the program and saw salary increases of up to 150 percent.
II. Santa Marta was also symbolic. In 1996, Michael Jackson came to Rio and wanted to use it as backdrop for the video of “They Don’t Care About Us.” Local authorities protested and refused access, but it backfired. Spike Lee, the video’s director, called Brazil a “banana republic” for their bungled attempt to sugarcoat Rio. He and Michael Jackson shot the scenes anyway, their passage guaranteed by the local kingpin.
III. The state police force is divided in two groups: the Military Police, which is responsible for maintaining order and first response to crimes, and the Civil Police, generally charged with investigations and forensics.
CHAPTER 4
FEAR AND HEAT
As tension mounted in the city in November 2010, I celebrated my birthday with my family. It was the first time in decades we’d been together on that day. In a retro-hipster restaurant of the sort that was popping up to cater to Cariocas’ recent affluence, we arranged ourselves on vintage Formica chairs, picked out the wine, and ordered a half dozen tiny dishes with French names.
Like everyone in Rio, my family was following the play-by-play on the news as closely as they followed the prime-time soap operas. We discussed my younger sister’s pregnancy—she’d just had the last ultrasound before birth—but the attacks in the streets dominated our evening. Something as simple as driving to a restaurant for dinner was a risk. My mother fretted; everyone’s nerves were frayed. We ordered more wine.
Walking from the restaurant to the subway station after dinner, I saw television sets blaring the news from nearly every corner bar. Shirtless men at the rickety plastic tables leaned back from their beers to offer a stream of commentary. I stopped to listen. It didn’t take much prompting for Cariocas who were sick of living with violence to advocate violence as a solution.
Kill them all, one of them said. Bandido bom é bandido morto—a good criminal is a dead criminal.
With each day that passed, fear and heat rose in tandem. The attacks escalated.
Gangsters on motorcycles zigzagged through traffic, ambushing cars, setting them on fire, and spreading panic in working-class suburbs, upscale residential neighborhoods, near the state government headquarters. In one confrontation, an air force sergeant scrambled out of his vehicle just in time to escape a grenade on the Linha Vermelha, the highway to the airport.
Out of a lifelong habit, I hung on to the news, looking to commentators and talk shows for the information and insights that could help me make sense of the chaos. I also got to work. This violence had meaning, and if I couldn’t decipher it, there were people who could. I talked to anyone who would speak to me: taxi drivers, university researchers, cops who wouldn’t give their names, local crime reporters who chain-smoked on the patio of the police headquarters, waiting for press conferences that were always hours late. That was where I first heard that the Red Command was still pulling strings from within the maximum-security pen. In spite of the expensive safety precautions, the gang’s chain of command was unbroken.
What exactly the gangsters were planning, and how law enforcement would react, no one knew—not until those last days in November, when this simmering conflict exploded and forced those vying for control of Rio’s favelas into actions no cop, gangster, reporter, or academic could have foreseen.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23
Rio’s top law enforcement brass filed into Beltrame’s wood-paneled office at 5 p.m. sharp. Intelligence reports had confirmed what many of them suspected: the Red Command was behind the attacks. The UPP program and the transfer of gang leaders to the south were getting in the way of the gang’s business. Prison officials had apprehended letters from the bosses behind bars to their soldiers in Alemão and Vila Cruzeiro, a favela physically connected to the complex. Their orders were to zoar tudo, to ravage the city.
The consensus that evening was that the state security apparatus had to come down hard, and soon. Mário Sérgio walked out with plans to stage aggressive overnight raids in nearly thirty CV-controlled favelas.
After the meeting, Beltrame called a press conference. It was time to break his long string of “no comments” and speak plainly. He spoke to us, journalists, and through us, seeking to reassure the Cariocas who were cowering at home, and the Brazilians who were following the conflict, aware of how much was riding on Rio. It was an uncharacteristically forceful speech; the sober head of security almost raised his voice to make his point clear: no matter the threat, the state would not back down.
“Anyone who crosses the path of the UPPs will be plowed under,” Beltrame said, eyes focused steadily on the cameras.
Later that night, the gangs also made a statement of sorts. It came as a scrawled note left on a burning bus in Vicente de Carvalho, a north-side neighborhood: “If the UPPs continue, there will be no World Cup and no Olympics.”
The author was unknown; there was no signature and no one was caught in the attack. But it didn’t matter whether or not it was authentic. The threat it spelled out was implicit in the daily tally of burning vehicles. It confirmed what Beltrame had said: these strikes were meant to disrupt the state, to call into question the new security policy, and to destroy the vision of a secure new Rio.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24
Reports of deaths and injuries from the overnight favela incursions trickled in as Beltrame slowly sipped his morning chimarrão, the piping hot, bitter tea he drank from a gourd, according to southern Brazil tradition. He’d given the previous day’s intelligence report much thought. When his cell phone rang just before 8 a.m. with a call from the governor, the head of security was ready: “We are going into Vila Cruzeiro.”
As Beltrame told it later, he knew this could be ugly. Rio state police had occupied favelas and installed a dozen UPPs, but never like this, in the middle of a live confrontation with gangsters. And Vila Cruzeiro wasn’t just any fav
ela. It was a redoubt of the Red Command, the main bunker beyond Alemão. Law enforcement hadn’t been inside for more than a quick hit since 2007. The movimento, the movement, as the drug traffic was sometimes called, had spent the last few years fortifying its defenses. They’d be ready with turrets to shelter snipers, spiked metal barricades to protect access roads, and vats of oil and gasoline to pour down the steep pathways, plus years of stockpiled ammunition.
“We had no time to prepare, but we had no choice,” he said. “We either put an officer on each corner of the city, or we went in and occupied Vila Cruzeiro.”
The invasion would have to happen immediately. At noon, Beltrame headed to the Guanabara Palace, a cream-colored wedding cake of a building that is the seat of state government. He was meeting his chief of police, Mário Sérgio, and Governor Cabral for lunch. After the meal, they adjoined to a meeting room with supporting staff to plan their next steps. They had to consider strategy, such as how to broach a territory defended by men who knew each alley and who could count on the help of a population too scared or complicit to refuse. Now that Rio was under extra scrutiny by the national and international media, they also had to deal with prickly ethical questions of the sort Rio’s police didn’t often stop to ponder: How would such a high-risk operation appear to the population, to journalists? What was the acceptable cost in lives?
The only option not on the table was defeat at the gangsters’ hands.
“If we failed, it would be seen as a failure of our entire security program,” Beltrame said.
There was one more serious impediment to taking Vila Cruzeiro. Even with all of Rio’s officers mobilized and with the Federal Highway Police lending support, law enforcement simply didn’t have the manpower or the equipment to invade and hold the favela. Even the caveirões, the BOPE’s black armored vehicles with skulls emblazoned on their sides, had weaknesses. Their tires could be shredded by bullets and would skid on the oil-slicked roads. The officials discussed this as they got up and walked out. The men were already standing by the door when the governor turned to Mário Sérgio with a question:
“What about the armed forces? The navy, for example. Would their tanks work?”
Tanks would cinch the deal, Mário Sérgio said; they had caterpillar tracks, revolving turrets, and steel bellies big enough for more than a dozen officers. The navy’s weaponry included the M-113, which was being used by the U.S. Army in Iraq. Cabral called the justice minister right away. The go-ahead came that afternoon: the navy would back the operation with equipment and logistics.
Local news outlets were covering the conflict round-the-clock. This latest bulletin ignited discussions all over town.
A taxi driver named Bira drove me around often in those weeks when I was reporting on Alemão. He is a hulking man, with hands that cover half the steering wheel, and he took a hard-line stance against the traffickers.
“The government has to come down on these guys, break their back,” he said, pounding a meaty fist on the wheel for emphasis.
No one could anticipate the cost of taking Vila Cruzeiro or the likelihood that it would work. Every housewife in line at the market and every suited-up businessman in the subway had an opinion. Mostly, they agreed with Bira, the cabdriver: authorities were raising the stakes, but they couldn’t afford to lose this round.
Before going to sleep that night, I checked for an update. Over the past twenty-four hours, twenty-eight buses, vans, and cars had gone up in flames. Five passengers were injured in fires; one driver was killed for refusing to stop at an ambush. The stench of burning rubber wafted through the streets, a constant, acrid reminder of the pervading threat. In their raids, police had seized rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, grenades, homemade explosives, and a lot of gasoline.
They’d also killed fifteen suspects.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25
The day dawned long and hot. I woke with the sunrise and dressed in a hurry, eyes on the news: a fleet of flatbed trucks had rolled down Avenida Brasil overnight with the military-grade armament promised by the justice minister. A crowd clapped and cheered as three M-113s maneuvered. The state had never prepared to take on the gang in this way.
Watching the tanks brought back my family’s last few days in Iraq, when we hid under the stairs while shock waves from bomb blasts punched in the windows. I’d left with the faces of the neighbor’s children in my mind. They’d climbed onto their front gate to see us go.
“They can’t leave,” my mother had said. “This is their country.”
Rio was not Basra by any stretch, but the sight of men with assault weapons and tanks rolling down residential streets brought back the same nauseous, dry-mouthed anguish I’d felt as a kid. I went over to the balcony of the hotel room and slid open the glass door to let in the ocean breeze. To the left, Cristo rose on Corcovado mountain’s blue-green shoulders, his stark white face blank and unreadable in the bright morning glare. Even the day’s first breath was heavy and humid. In spite of the warmth, a shiver ran down my spine.
Behind me, the voice of the morning news anchor updated the stats: There had been another fourteen attacks overnight. They’d left six buses, a truck, motorcycles, and five passenger cars in flames. There were now more than seventeen thousand police on duty. Searches for suspects and weapons continued in favelas across town.
Down in the lobby, I swallowed some coffee and scanned O Globo. The paper had dedicated pages to its coverage, all of them under the all-caps heading a guerra do rio, “Rio’s War.” This bellicose language permeated the reporting. There were maps that indicated the sites of “battles.” Articles referred to police as “combatants” and to the lanes of Vila Cruzeiro as “the front.” Favela residents were “civilians.” Again, this incongruous talk of war. When had a densely populated neighborhood become “the front”?
But there was no time for the paper, or breakfast. Bira was already waiting. Once out of Ipanema’s drowsy streets, we headed to Vila Cruzeiro along an eerily quiet highway. I don’t remember seeing a single bus that morning as we approached the favela, although they usually choked Rio’s thoroughfares on weekday mornings. Later I’d confirm that about 115 bus lines had canceled service.
On the way, we listened to the news. About ten public schools and an untold number of preschools were closed. There were around twelve thousand kids out of class. The population in favelas was young—younger than in the city as a whole. On quiet days, the lanes thronged with children. As far as I knew, no one had evacuated the families. Then again, I’d never covered something like this before. Maybe it was pro forma, a step not worth announcing, and I’d missed it.
I turned to the driver. “Did anyone tell parents to get their kids out? Have you heard anything about where families are supposed to go?” I asked.
He looked at me through the rearview mirror, the muscles in his forehead bunched above his heavy brow line. “What? No, no one said anything about kids.”
Bira dropped me off in Penha, the working-class neighborhood that bordered Vila Cruzeiro and Alemão, as close as he could to the slope where modest two- or three-story buildings met the favela. Nearly five hundred officers and elite BOPE troops, plus some three hundred federal officers, were already milling about.
Flora, my colleague on AP’s video side, was there in a bulletproof vest and boots, pulling equipment from the trunk of another taxi. Silvia, the veteran photo editor, and Felipe, a lanky twenty-five-year-old photographer who’d just started with the AP that year, had been there since before dawn. More than the print reporters, it was the photographers who tracked the action. By the end of the day, their bulletproof vests would be so soaked with sweat they’d lay them on the sun-baked car hoods to dry.
I looked around. Madness. I’d been in Rio for less than three weeks and was not equipped for what looked like urban combat. I had no vest and my thick-soled hiking boots were in my luggage, which would remain tangled in re
d tape at the port for six months. I wore the first thing I’d pulled out of my carry-on that morning—a bright green dress and purple sandals that made me look like an absurd parakeet among the camo of tanks, the black of BOPE.
My chest felt tight, shortening each breath. It wasn’t fear; it was the sense of being so clearly out of place. This gang, this favela, this operation, these were things I’d read about or discussed in a handful of interviews. I’d rushed to Vila Cruzeiro because it was my job to be there, to watch whatever happened, gather information, write it up. It wasn’t until I saw the police cars pull up bristling with artillery—the cops stuck the long black snouts of their weapons out the windows—that I realized how unprepared I was, how absurd in my highlighter colors and with my reporter’s notebook. I would not head up the hill, that much was clear. Beyond that, I didn’t even know where to position myself when the shooting started. I looked around: What here could stop a rifle bullet? A car? A brick wall?
I stayed busy filling my notepad with quotes. The conversations were clipped. There was an anguished mother cowering with two children under an awning, crying to whoever would listen, “What am I going to do? I can’t go to work, I can’t go home.” There was a sixty-five-year-old retiree who gestured angrily at the tank outside his front door, saying, “This is no way to live!” A police officer no older than twenty-five was twitching for action. “We’re going to flush them out,” he said.
The warmth that was such a benediction in the beachfront south of the city turned vicious in these northern suburbs that stretched far from the open ocean and Cristo’s embrace. The sun was an angry white eye glaring down from the sky. The heat weighed down my shoulders and rose in waves from the pavement, pressing against the skin. Sweat gathered in the small of my back and smudged the blue ink of my pen as I wrote.
Dancing With the Devil in the City of God: Rio De Janeiro on the Brink Page 6