by Ross Kemp
I tried out my Spanglish on the waiter. He ignored me – not to be rude, but because as a speaker of the harsh, Hungarian-sounding Rio Portuguese, he didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. Following my gaze, which had settled on a group of stick-thin local girls hovering in the restaurant entrance, Heron said, ‘The girls are thin like that because they are hungry, not because they are on a diet.’ The more I looked around the more I noticed hungry people.
Next morning, bright and early, a man from the insurance company handed each of us a set of body armour before we went off to try to talk to some gangs. Fernando’s upper lip curled. ‘If you go into a favela wearing that stuff, the gangsters will shoot you just to see if it works.’ You never saw three people strip off anything so quickly. But I felt less safe without it. I’m not ashamed to admit I was really worried about going into the first favela Fernando had arranged for us to visit, the Morro do Borel.
With one of the highest crime rates in South America, Brazil’s favelas have a fearsome and well-deserved reputation for violence and death. In a conurbation of some six million people, Rio witnessed 6,620 murders in 2004, 6,438 in 2005, and 5,232 in the first ten months of 2006. A total of 18,290 killings in less than three years, the vast majority of them shootings, this was about six times the number of US troops killed in Iraq over the same period. The figures for São Paulo are even worse.
As we moved uphill towards the favela, things rapidly started turning worse. The approach route looked, smelt and felt like the entrance to an underworld. This is gang country, where outsiders tread at extreme risk. My guide to the Borel gang was MC Catra, a tall, laid-back former CV gang member turned master of ceremonies or rap artist. Catra is a favela celebrity who specializes in a style of music called baile funk – funk dance. Four-square and personable in his cut-off T-shirt, Catra made it plain he was a bit of a lad when it came to favela women. And as if to bear this out, they kept coming up to talk to him. On the morning we met, Catra was smoking a big, fat spliff. Judging by the slightly glassy look in his eyes it wasn’t his first of the day. When he got to the end of one joint, Catra lit a new one from the roach. As a result, he got more and more stoned as the day wore on. Despite his default sullen expression and slightly menacing manner, Catra turned out to be chilled once he decided I had an open mind about the gangs, the favelas, and the people who lived in them, and was not looking to try anyone by television.
Adopted by a wealthy middle-class family as a small child, Catra was well educated – his English was a whole sight better than my Portuguese. Sadly for him, his adoptive parents split when he was sixteen, and the local authorities sent him back to live in the Borel shanties. Right away he fell in with the controlling Comando Vermelho gang, dealing drugs until his talent for music gave him a way out. That his brother still allegedly controlled part of the Borel drugs trade probably helped him get out of the gang alive, instead of leaving CV the usual way – feet first.
Like all Rio favelas, Catra explained, Borel is a drug-fuelled society that operates alongside and in direct opposition to local and national government. With a teeming population of about 25,000 – no one in officialdom has ever dared try to carry out a census – Borel squats on a broad, steep-backed hill to the north of the downtown area. Run by the CV gang, it is a bit like a medieval European city state. Distorted mirror images of the heavily guarded fortress compounds where Rio’s rich live, favelas like Borel are gated communities, only instead of locking crime out, the favelas and the gangs that control them lock crime in.
There is only one road into and out of Borel. The checkpoint at the entrance is known as the boca do fumo – mouth of the smoke. There we found about two dozen heavily armed CV gang members on duty, ready to repel any attack by a rival gang or discourage one of the sporadic police raids. Foot soldiers, these gate guards are usually on a flat wage of around a thousand dollars a month, ten times the income of an average Rio labourer. With spotters and lookouts all around, the boca do fumo is the eyes and ears of the favela. The gangsters had a mixture of weaponry: FAL self-loading rifles, M16s, AK-47s and hand grenades. They also all had semi-automatic pistols holstered in proper, military-style webbing belts. The other meaning of boca do fumo is drugs outlet. Retail points for dealers and the users who come in to buy their drugs, mostly cocaine, the bocas are where the gangs make most of their money, and as such are vital parts of any favela.
Warned before going that filming at any of the bocas would result in instant death by shooting, Peter kept the camera off and pointing at the ground. Looking at the expressions on the faces of our local crew, I took a mental pace back. They looked worried. Since I always take my cue as to how scared to be from the guys with local knowledge, that worried me.
After checking to make sure we were not armed or in league with the Rio police, the guards let us into Borel. As soon as I stepped inside the favela, waves of colour, sound and smell stopped me dead in my tracks. Everything was in sensory overdrive. Most of the shacks are made of a bright pink brick, many painted in garish colours and then daubed with graphic, violent murals and gang graffiti. In this favela, in a kind of gangster corporate branding, the lurid, scarlet scrawls of Comando Vermelho were everywhere. Small children dressed in football shirts and shorts darted about kicking plastic footballs, shouting and screaming and bumping into us; horns blaring, taxi bikes roared up and down the narrow, twisting streets and alleyways missing the throngs of brightly dressed people by a whisker; loud music blasted in the background and televisions roared out a mid-morning TV soap. A kaleidoscope of hand-painted shop signs advertised shoestring enterprises selling everything from stolen goods to bottled liquid petroleum gas and booze – especially booze and especially the favela favourite – big bottles of ice-cold Skol lager, chugged down fast before the intense heat has a chance to catch up with it.
An intoxicating mixture of marijuana smoke, barbecued meat, baked earth, garbage, sewage, petrol and diesel fumes and sweating humanity, the favela smelled like nowhere else I had been. I felt intensely alive in there, more than I ever had anywhere else. Everything was heightened; life was on fast forward; everyone looked happy, shouting and laughing and doing their deals. But at the same time I detected a strong undercurrent of tension, a sense that all of this could turn in a moment and not to the good.
Passionately loyal to Borel like almost all of its inhabitants, Catra had a colourful way with words when it came to describing his home. ‘It feels, it laughs, it cries, it gets scared, it becomes tense,’ he said, pausing only for a fresh puff of his spliff. Listening to the pulsating noise all around us, and watching the ebb and flow of some of the world’s poorest, most disadvantaged and at the same time most interesting-looking people, I could see what he meant.
Built with maze-like, poorly lit alleyways and narrow streets on a steep slope that rises up through a broad gully from the skyscraper blocks of the city below and then gets steeper and steeper until you wonder how the jerry-built stilt houses cling to the cliff, Borel is a mudslide waiting to happen. The miracle is how some of the shacks remain upright and in one piece for as long as they do, given that they defy every principle and practice of sound building. From time to time, they don’t: lacking proper foundations, if it rains these boxes can and do collapse down the hillsides like packs of cards. The poor-quality bricks don’t help. So crumbly you can scratch a groove in them with a fingernail, they are also useless when it comes to stopping high-velocity bullets. During gunfights between gangs or between gang members and the police – and these are more or less a nightly occurrence – rounds tend to blast through your living-room wall and out the other side; it pays to throw yourself flat when the shooting starts. Having said which, some of the streets around me were paved, the construction work, Catra told me, paid for by CV – hearts and minds exercises designed to keep the people onside. Gangs will sometimes also put in street lighting or run water pipes or basic drainage. A few favelas like the city’s biggest one, Rocinha, are showing signs of de
veloping some real and lasting infrastructure. One day, if they continue to spruce themselves up and the gangs lose control, they may become part of the city instead of its bad neighbours.
In Rio, I realized, looking back across the city below, the poor hold the high ground while the rich live in the troughs between – the opposite of what happens just about everywhere else in the world. But then the rich know better – the hills might be cooler, but when the rains come the ground beneath the favelas can turn to slippery mud.
As the streets are mostly too narrow and twisting for cars, the two main ways of getting around favelas are on foot or by small motorbike or scooter. Driven at breakneck speed up and down the hills, these seem to be locked in a series of death-defying races. Riding pillion on one of these taxi bikes is a hair-raising experience. Or would be if I hadn’t already shaved what I have off.
‘Most people who live in Borel,’ Catra assured me languidly as we dodged bikes, children, street hawkers and people of complicated sexuality offering diverse personal services, ‘are not actual gang members. Many try to make an honest living. Like me.’ He grinned. ‘The problem? If you live in a favela, everyone assumes you are a criminal before you even open your mouth. The only jobs most honest favelados can get in the city are rock-bottom, poorly paid menial stuff like chambermaiding, waiting tables, washing dishes or pumping gas.’
I discovered the truth of this by getting out of bed really early one morning and standing at the bottom of the hill below Borel. Crowds of favela wage slaves swarmed down into the city to work, many in the uniforms of the swanky hotels – the kind I was staying in – which employed them for a pittance. In the evening, as the curtain of tropical darkness falls down hard and fast to close the day, they tread their weary way back home again, sometimes stopping for refreshment on the way up. One of the lasting memories I carried away from Borel is of two respectable-looking middle-aged mothers stopping off at a boca do fumo on the way home from work to score a few lines of cocaine. I watched as a couple of armed teenage CV gangsters, one of them clutching a satchel full of ready-wrapped cocaine, perched themselves on a high wall and began trading. In case of trouble the salesmen drop down behind the wall, which offers protection from gunfire. Usually, there will be two or three more gang members either mixing with the customers or sitting somewhere high, watching and ready to defend the boca in case of attack.
Joining the end of an orderly queue that formed in a matter of minutes, when it came to their turn the two ladies each handed up the equivalent of two pounds in limp folding money and in return got a small stapled plastic bag holding a gram of cocaine. Leaning on the bonnet of a nearby Volkswagen Beetle, they took out ready-rolled bank-notes, stuck them into the bags and snorted heartily. In its own way it was like watching a couple of London matrons stopping off at the local boozer for a stout before heading home to do the chores – except that the cocaine was a lot cheaper. The same amount of coke would cost fifty or sixty pounds in the UK, but in Brazil it generally arrives on the back of a truck, avoiding all those pesky transatlantic shipping and handling costs. Catra assured me the cocaine in Borel is always close to 100 per cent pure – no baking powder, laxative or any other additive padding it out to increase profits as happens elsewhere in the world. I rubbed a smidgen on my lips; they went numb in a matter of seconds.
Warned against openly filming drug dealing the next evening, we used a battered nondescript van to do it covertly. Determined to get some footage of the Borel gangs at work, we were in a really dangerous area in the heart of the favela, parked near a well-established boca. We got lucky: two very young gangsters arrived, set up shop on top of a nearby wall and began selling cocaine. Punters arrived in ones or twos to get their order, and as soon as we thought we had enough material we stopped filming. Catra had gone off to do some business of his own.
By now, dusk was falling. Assuming everything was cool, I went across the road to get some drinks from a little kiosk. We were standing casually by the van sipping from the cans of soft drink. Mariella, a friend of Fernando who was helping us out that day, was looking past me down a slight slope. We were always very aware of how vulnerable we were, and always on the lookout for trouble, especially near the bocas. All of a sudden, Mariella’s eyes widened. ‘Ross!’ She yelled the kind of yell that means life-threatening trouble. Without looking round or even thinking I grabbed her, lifted her up, flung her into the van and leapt in behind her.
When we picked ourselves up again I lifted my head to see why she had shouted. It was an amazing and terrifying sight. Where seconds before the street had been empty, now there were dozens of people breaking in a human tidal wave around the van, rocking it violently from side to side. Word was out the police were mounting a big raid. Terrified in case they missed a fix, the locals were stampeding to the boca before that happened. Most raced past on foot, running as hard as they could; others zipped by on scooters and motorbikes; a few people – and this really threw me – charged past on horseback. Whatever their mode of transport, everyone wore the same fixed expression, focused exclusively on the prize up ahead before it disappeared back into the night – and God help anyone who came between them and the drugs. Like us. The police may not have been the problem. This particular boca was badly protected, run by a handful of young CV guys. As a result, it often came under attack from rival gangsters.
With a lead on one of the CV gang commanders, once the crowds had passed, Tim, Peter, Fernando and I went further inside the favela on foot, to meet him and his bodyguards. They had agreed to be interviewed on condition we didn’t identify them. As darkness fell it started feeling much scarier. ‘Night time is gang time,’ our contact said right by my ear. ‘The favela belongs to the gang.’ Paranoid in case we were part of a sting and leading the police in, our guide kept stopping and looking back, dodging left and right through half-finished buildings, doubling back and back again to make sure there was no one on our tail.
By now, it was pitch dark. Our contact led us in through the door of a dilapidated two-storey brick shack. Pointing up, he edged back into the gloom. At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped. Something felt wrong. I went up a few steps to the first turn. A masked face loomed from the darkness above, a pistol pointing straight at my face. Without thinking, I put up my hands. At the same time I felt a surge of anger that blasted out some of the fear. I let my hands fall back to my sides. In a flash contact like this, you trust your gut. And after the initial shock, my gut told me this guy was trying me out: he wanted to see if I would bottle it, fall apart, turn tail and run, beg him not to shoot – whatever. If I had seen something different in his eyes, then run is exactly what I would have done.
I said, ‘Don’t point that thing at me.’ This sounds cool, but I was scared. Anger at being threatened stopped me showing it. Just as well; fear is the worst thing you can let someone see at a time like that. The sentry pointed the semi-automatic away. Beyond him I could see a bare room. Three masked gangsters holding pistols were sitting with their backs against the far wall. One of them had the familiar drug satchel between his knees.
‘Come in,’ one called softly. ‘Join us.’ They were jumpy, their eyes flicking over me, then beyond me and back. Under the bandannas pulled up over their noses and mouths, the baseball caps pulled right down, I guessed not one of them was older than eighteen. I went in and squatted down in front of them. The one with the satchel pulled it open. Inside were sixty to seventy standard one-gram cocaine wraps in clear polythene bags stapled carefully closed.
I asked, ‘Can I see your weapon?’ Without a word, the guy who had spoken handed it over. It was a Ruger 9-millimetre with a full magazine. I checked it; the bullets were live.
Our being alone in the heart of the favela with them worried me; the fact they might have taken drugs worried me; the fact they were armed and so casual with the weapons worried me; but most of all it was their extreme youth and restlessness that set me on edge. I asked the leader how long he expected to live. He shrug
ged. ‘Not too many people make it past their twenties.’ Both carrying recent bullet wounds to the legs, his friends to either side of him were living proof of how easy it was to get shot in Borel.
Telling me they wore masks ‘because if they see us on the TV, the police will recognize us, come after us and kill us’, the boys showed me the hand sign they make to signal membership of Comando Vermelho. Favelados who are not actual gangsters make it all the time, even on the dance floor, to confirm their allegiance to the ruling gang.
They stood and led us out through a hatchway onto the flat roof. It was one of the many observation points from where they could spot rival gang or police raids. A Brazilian-manufactured FAL and an early-model Heckler & Koch G3 rifle stood propped against the parapet ready for action. Next thing we knew, someone started firing in our direction. The rounds were coming from some distance, but we could hear bursts of automatic fire. ‘You, you go!’ someone shouted from the darkness. ‘They are shooting at the camera light.’ Peter dowsed the light, pronto. I had reached the limits of my bravery for one night.
‘OK, let’s go, guys,’ I shouted. We went – fast.
Next morning, we went back into Borel to do some more filming. It was hot and muggy again, the sky bearing down on us, heavy as lead. Within minutes of leaving the artificial cool of the hotel, my shirt was sticking to my back.
Catra was an expert in the ways of the gangs. Bocas like the one we had filmed the day before are continually being attacked by rivals looking to take over. With Rio’s internal drugs market alone worth more than £100 million a year and the even bigger international trade on top of that we are talking very large amounts of money – the kind a never-ending stream of gangsters are prepared to fight and die for.
I didn’t need Catra to tell me that the relentless fighting is about control of this massively lucrative business. Who controls the favelas controls the drugs trade; who controls the drugs trade gets rich – or at least gets to eat, depending on where a member stands in the rigid gang hierarchy. And it is rigid: at the top is the ‘owner’, the kingpin who controls trafficking in a whole favela; below him may be one or more general managers, depending on how large and well organized the shanty town is; there is often a product manager who oversees quality control; and then there are the soldados, who do the fighting and maintain security, the street dealers, the couriers or ‘mules’ and finally the lookouts, virtually all of them children.