Cleansing Rio's slums complicated by gangs - Drug traffickers stand in the way of programs aimed to help the poor

www.charlotte.com Posted on Sat, Feb. 08, 2003 KEVIN G. HALL Knight Ridder

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - At an entrance to Rio's infamous Cidade Alta slum, a skinny teen stands sentry, scarcely taller than his AR-15 assault rifle. He's a soldier for Comando Vermelho, the city's top drug gang.

As a taxi eases past, driver and passengers look away. Eye contact is a bad idea in Cidade Alta. So are visits by outsiders. Even police enter only in large, heavily armed, military-style raids.

New President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is promising nutrition programs, enhanced education and even some urban land reform to millions of impoverished Brazilians. But first he, too, must get past the teen sentries and the drug gangs they serve.

If the experience of charity groups is any indication, da Silva wouldn't be welcome. Aid workers in favelas, as Rio's slums are called, say they operate in unremitting fear of the gangs.

"What they want is that everyone knows THEY are in charge," said a worker for the well-known Brazilian charity Cruzada do Menor ("Crusade for Minors"), who spoke on condition of anonymity. It shuttered its operations in Pavaozinho, a hillside slum in Copacabana, after traffickers invaded one of its day-care centers and threatened to kill any child who returned. For many kids, the center had provided the only nutritious meal of the day.

Another group, Acao Comunitaria ("Community Action"), provides after-school activities in Rio's Mare slums and brings in professionals to assess learning disabilities and counsel children. Agency officials will talk to reporters only if trafficker-imposed conditions are met: No questions about drug gangs. No photos outside the agency's walls. All outsiders must be gone by nightfall.

Favela drug gangs, like the U.S. mob, controlled illegal gambling and vice for generations before they took over the drug trade. They, too, have a generous side, but the motive tends to include an assertion of power.

"They can impose their law with arms, but they can also use the power of money," said Brazilian criminologist Geraldo Tadeu. "They finance samba schools, homeowners associations, sponsor parties and even provide food baskets. They create a scheme of economic dependence for those who live in slums."

In slums where most residents are squatters, Rio state investigators say drug gangs control many traditional homeowners groups, set up to resolve disputes among neighbors and confer unofficial home ownership documents.

More legitimate forms of government barely penetrate the favelas, a water-by-the-pail world where PVC pipes jut from houses to carry raw sewage at least a few feet away. Garbage simply rots. On a hot day, the stench can dizzy a visitor.

"The vulnerability (to organized crime) has been brewing over time. There has been an abandonment by the government," said Marcelo Rasga Moreira, the author of a new book on drug trafficking, "Neither Soldiers Nor Innocents."

In March, da Silva's government will offer slum dwellers what sounds like a sweet deal: the chance to legitimize with land titles tens of thousands of homes built on federally owned land.

Theoretically, land titles will enhance the homes' value, enable banks to make home mortgage loans and end fears that the government will relocate residents.

Homeowners associations will be the link between residents and the federal government, however, and since drug traffickers control so many of them, da Silva may find the negotiations awkward.