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Will the shooting ever stop?
By occupying the Maré favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, the police are trying to end three decades during which it has been run by drug traffickers and also tighten the “security belt” for the World Cup
“Alagados, Trenchtown, favela da Maré” — these lyrics from a song by the Brazilian pop group Paralamas do Sucesso that was a hit in the 1980s – made Brazil familiar with the name of the enormous complex of favelas (shantytowns)in Maré, an area right next to the international airport in Rio de Janeiro. It is now the city´s biggest warehouse for drugs and covers an area of 4.2 square kilometers, with 130,000 inhabitants. The state governor, Sérgio Cabral, made a big event out of the announcement that the authorities would occupy it in a joint operation between the police and the Armed Forces. The occupation is to be broadcast live on TV, in the early morning of Sunday March 30. The Special Operations Battalion (local acronym Bope) and police will start taking control of the 15 favelas in the complex with an escort of armored vehicles from the Navy. They will be replaced from April 5 by soldiers from the Army who will remain there until Police Pacification Units (UPP) are established by the end of the year. Many of the main gang leaders are already holed up in other parts of the city. Police intelligence says that at least half of the hundreds of rifles that were kept in the favela complex have been removed to the gang leaders´ new hiding places. For the action to be really effective and not just a change of address of the crime bosses, it is expected that criminals will be imprisoned like the top local drug lord, Marcelo Santos das Dores, the feared Menor P, who was captured last week after six years on the run.
The aim of the occupation is to end more than three decades in which the area has been dominated by the traffickers. For the last five years, it has been under the iron fist of 33-year-old Menor P (Menor is his longstanding nickname and the P stands for “poet”, believe it or not). He set himself up in charge following a series of turf wars which left more than 50 dead. Believe it or not but in one of these battles, he used an armored vehicle from the state police obtained thanks to his lucrative contacts with corrupt policemen. Menor P is a former parachutist who was expelled from the Army and has a bulky criminal record for extortion, beatings and murders. He shot a girlfriend last year and tortured football player Bernardo from the Vasco team when he suspected the two were having an affair. He also demanded payments from construction companies to allow them to operate near his headquarters. He has been named in hundreds of investigations, one of which accuses him of murdering a 37-year-old municipal guard called William Oliveira last October. VEJA had access to the details of this barbaric crime.
Oliveira, who was born and raised in Maré, was monitoring the movements of the bandits and their arsenal in videos he passed onto the Army and state police intelligence. The chief gangster learned about this (paying R$ 50,000 for the information) and took his revenge. Two gangsters went to get Oliveira in his home. One of them, Fabiano Santos de Jesus, known as Zangado, is Menor P´s brother and right-hand man. The municipal guard´s family was forced to watch as he was tortured for hours. Before killing him, the gangsters forced him to make the point to his relatives that he was an informant. Oliveira´s mother was taken to the scene of the execution by Menor P himself. He also fired an entire round from a rifle into the guard and when he ran out of ammunition, ordered his companions to continue firing. Witnesses say over 300 shots were fired before the criminals then set fire to the body which has never been found. The police have already identified 10 of the 15 gangsters involved in the crime. Menor P was imprisoned after being caught in a luxury apartment in the Jacarepaguá district. He was alone at the time and preparing to watch a football game. Zangado, who appeared lying in a hammock in one of the videos Oliveira made, has taken command of the gang.
The occupation of Maré has tightened the “security belt” around installations regarded as critical if the World Cup in Rio is to run smoothly. The entry into the complex of favelas six years after the first UPP was set up is intended as a show of strength at a time when police outposts in the favelas are coming under continuous attack from bandits who are feeling increasingly confident about returning to their fiefdoms. The operation had been planned for the first half of last year but was postponed due to the lack of manpower — as the police resources are split between beat patrols and the UPPs. The Rio police are stretched to their limits in terms of personnel (which led the state security Secretary, José Mariano Beltrame, to vote against the occupation now). The lack of people, training and equipment, linked to the endemic violence and corruption within the police force, helps the bandits to act, as was seen when four simultaneous attacks were carried out against UPP bases on March 20. Regaining control of this part of the city which is under the yoke of the criminals is essential but this will only be a symbolic event unless it is accompanied by an action capable of detecting and preventing the breaches that are undermining the pacification of Rio´s favelas.
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