The gangs and criminal networks that have historically occupied Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are classified by some as criminal insurgencies. The gangs operate in small and organized units, patrolling and defending their favela territories. The patrolling and defending is done in an effort to maintain autonomy from the Brazilian government and security forces in order to maximize profits from the drug trade. This is their main objective. Limited, yes; but becoming more and more difficult to achieve. The gangs have the capabilities to employ guerrilla tactics and warfare techniques to achieve their goals and control territories. These territories, which have a highly complex structure, are the operating grounds for Brazil’s drug commerce.
“At the local level, each favela is controlled by a senior leader or dono. Under the dono is the general manager who manages the gang operations including drug sales and military activities. Under the general manger, there are sub-managers for cocaine sales, marijuana sales, and security. Each drug distribution point, called a boca de fumo, has a manager and security force. Finally, guards are employed to protect the perimeter of the favela from police or rival gang incursions.”
The members of these gangs generally have access to assault rifles, grenades, and heavy machine guns. While many speculate that the control and power of the drug gangs has been overestimated, one security analyst explained, “To survive, they have to be intelligent, clever, and ruthless.” The attacks in December of 2006 demonstrate the gangs’ capabilities. On December, 28 2006, drug gangs launched a synchronized attack against buses and police stations. It has been speculated that this was coordinated to intimidate Rio’s new government. In October of 2009, a police helicopter was shot down just one mile away from the Marcana Stadium in Rio, where the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2016 Olympics are to take place. The helicopter was attempting to descend upon the Morro dos Macacos favela when criminal gangs began to fire. Two officers were killed during a forced emergency landing. A similar attack happened in November of 2010, when buses and cars were set on fire and improvised explosives were detonated. The attacks, which left over 35 people dead, were understood to be a reaction to the pacification program.
While there are clear similarities between insurgents and the criminal gangs of the favelas, the central demands of the gangs are not political. The underlying tensions are a result of conflicting social interests and a lack of opportunities for residents. The youth within the favelas are raised in this culture of violence where the gang leaders run the communities.
A nongovernmental organization in Rio determined that around 20% of the guns seized in the country are foreign produced. Others, which are produced in Brazil but cannot be legally sold there, are exported and then smuggled back in to Brazil. Within the last year, Brazil has started working together with neighboring countries Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru to monitor terrain and track drug traffickers and arms smugglers. Brazil initiated the operation, and has the rights to enter the other countries’ air space. Recent reports, however, show an increased use of maritime routes to smuggle in arms. Even if Brazil is able to reduce maritime smuggling, the country still borders ten other nations, much of which are densely forested and remote areas. Brazil needs to focus its efforts on border security, specifically in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. One report determined that Mato Grosso do Sul, which borders Paraguay and Bolivia, was the location of 30% of the export and re-importation of illegal weapons. Youth and impoverished residents of the favela would be much less likely to enter the drug world if they did not have access to the tools necessary to survive.
SOURCES
Boyle, Christina. “Brazilian Drug Gangs Shoot down Police Chopper Near Rio De Janiero; 2 Officers Dead.” NYDailyNews, October 17, 2009. http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-10-17/news/17937622_1_drug-gangs-rio-drug-traffickers.
“Brazil Unmanned Aircraft Hunt Drug Gangs.” UPI, n.d. http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2011/07/13/Brazil-unmanned-aircraft-hunt-drug-gangs/UPI-44691310596620/.
Burgoyne, Michael. “The Right Tool for the Job: An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Counterinsurgency Principles Against Criminal Insurgency | Small Wars Journal”, n.d. http://smallwarsjournal.com/resource/the-right-tool-for-the-job-an-evaluation-of-the-effectiveness-of-counterinsurgency-principl.
Killebrew, Robert. “PRISM 2, No. 3: Criminal Insurgency in the Americas and Beyond”, n.d. http://www.ndu.edu/press/criminal-insurgency.html.
Stone, Hannah. “Brazil Police Say Sea Is New Arms Trafficking Frontier”, n.d. http://insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/1242-brazil-police-say-sea-is-new-arms-trafficking-frontier.
Showing posts with label drug trafficking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug trafficking. Show all posts
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
War Within Brazil
There is a common perception that there is an undeclared war in Brazil that is taking place between the favelas, military police, paramilitary groups and drug traffickers. The situation has been described in comparison to US troops in Afghanistan and to the Brazilian presence in Haiti.
Rio’s diverse terrain and portions of extreme concentrated poverty have contributed to and reinforced these war-like perceptions. The terrain ranges from mountains to jungles which provide a dangerous patrolling environment much like that in Kabul.
Rio is home to around 1,000 favelas, which are generally built on the mountain sides and home to poor migrant workers. Brazil’s conservative middle class has been characterized as criminalizing the poor, and supporting any and all military operations to invade the favelas. The physical wall that has been built around 13 favelas has further segregated them, and was referred to by one professor as “a fascist fence around the poor.”
The favelas are being increasingly inhabited by military bases. General Enzo Martins Peri, a commander of the Brazilian Army, compared the operational base being set up in the Alemao favela Complex in 2010 to the operations taking place in Haiti. The army, which had already previously been involved in police actions, had the support of the State Civil Police in forming a military command center within the Alemao Complex. Army installations were set up and conducted under the same regulations as those in Haiti, with power that not even the police was given.
Like in Haiti, the troops had the right to use force in order to impose peace, often by entering properties without warrants and shooting to kill. The director of the UN Information Center in Brazil explained, “In Haiti, the military can fight back with gunfire, not only as a form of self defense.” In Haiti, the Brazilian military (as part of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti--MINUSTAH) had to clear Haiti’s streets and perform combat engineering, strategies which were originally used in Brazilian favelas.
In November of 2011, special police force and navy commandos invaded Rocinha and Vidigal, two of Rio’s largest favelas. After these security forces invaded the favelas at the crack of dawn, they hoisted the Brazilian flag in them to show that government authority had been restored. One journalist posed the question, “Where have we gone wrong if it is necessary to hoist the Brazilian flag in Brazilian territory, as if this signified the conquest of foreign land?” Military occupations of favelas are treating them as if they are foreign territory.
The media has further reinforced the war with favelas by using war-like language. For example, a hurt man is referred to as “a wounded bandit,” and the people arrested are referred to by their favela nicknames instead of formal names. This language paints a more gang-like picture of all of the favela residents, the majority of whom are not directly involved in the drug trafficking. For example, statistics of the Alemao Complex show that only .05% of the 200,000 inhabitants are actually involved in the trafficking.
SOURCES
Auler, Marcelo, and Tania Monteiro. “Brazil: Army to Be Peacekeepers and Police at Rio De Janeiro.” O Estado De Sao Paulo Digital. Sao Paolo, December 4, 2010.
“Police Wrest Control of Rio’s Largest Favela to Expel Drug Traffickers.” The Daily Star. Beirut, November 14, 2011.
Slater, Russell. “Brazil: Why Raiding Rio’s Favelas Is Not as Good as It Looks.” Brazzil (August 21, 2009).
Toledo, Renato Godoy de, and Claudia Santiago. “Brazil Police Use Press Coverage as Green Light to Kill and Invade Houses in Rio.” Brazzil (November 10, 2009).
Zibechi, Raul. “In Stretch to the Olympics Rio Becomes Lab for Genocide and Social Control.” Brazzil (January 20, 2010).
Rio’s diverse terrain and portions of extreme concentrated poverty have contributed to and reinforced these war-like perceptions. The terrain ranges from mountains to jungles which provide a dangerous patrolling environment much like that in Kabul.
Rio is home to around 1,000 favelas, which are generally built on the mountain sides and home to poor migrant workers. Brazil’s conservative middle class has been characterized as criminalizing the poor, and supporting any and all military operations to invade the favelas. The physical wall that has been built around 13 favelas has further segregated them, and was referred to by one professor as “a fascist fence around the poor.”
The favelas are being increasingly inhabited by military bases. General Enzo Martins Peri, a commander of the Brazilian Army, compared the operational base being set up in the Alemao favela Complex in 2010 to the operations taking place in Haiti. The army, which had already previously been involved in police actions, had the support of the State Civil Police in forming a military command center within the Alemao Complex. Army installations were set up and conducted under the same regulations as those in Haiti, with power that not even the police was given.
Like in Haiti, the troops had the right to use force in order to impose peace, often by entering properties without warrants and shooting to kill. The director of the UN Information Center in Brazil explained, “In Haiti, the military can fight back with gunfire, not only as a form of self defense.” In Haiti, the Brazilian military (as part of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti--MINUSTAH) had to clear Haiti’s streets and perform combat engineering, strategies which were originally used in Brazilian favelas.
In November of 2011, special police force and navy commandos invaded Rocinha and Vidigal, two of Rio’s largest favelas. After these security forces invaded the favelas at the crack of dawn, they hoisted the Brazilian flag in them to show that government authority had been restored. One journalist posed the question, “Where have we gone wrong if it is necessary to hoist the Brazilian flag in Brazilian territory, as if this signified the conquest of foreign land?” Military occupations of favelas are treating them as if they are foreign territory.
The media has further reinforced the war with favelas by using war-like language. For example, a hurt man is referred to as “a wounded bandit,” and the people arrested are referred to by their favela nicknames instead of formal names. This language paints a more gang-like picture of all of the favela residents, the majority of whom are not directly involved in the drug trafficking. For example, statistics of the Alemao Complex show that only .05% of the 200,000 inhabitants are actually involved in the trafficking.
SOURCES
Auler, Marcelo, and Tania Monteiro. “Brazil: Army to Be Peacekeepers and Police at Rio De Janeiro.” O Estado De Sao Paulo Digital. Sao Paolo, December 4, 2010.
“Police Wrest Control of Rio’s Largest Favela to Expel Drug Traffickers.” The Daily Star. Beirut, November 14, 2011.
Slater, Russell. “Brazil: Why Raiding Rio’s Favelas Is Not as Good as It Looks.” Brazzil (August 21, 2009).
Toledo, Renato Godoy de, and Claudia Santiago. “Brazil Police Use Press Coverage as Green Light to Kill and Invade Houses in Rio.” Brazzil (November 10, 2009).
Zibechi, Raul. “In Stretch to the Olympics Rio Becomes Lab for Genocide and Social Control.” Brazzil (January 20, 2010).
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