Poor community in Rio favelas welcome ‘stop and search operation’
Rather than view the move as an invasion, violence-weary residents of the favelas hailed it as a liberation
To quell a burst of carjackings, supermarket lootings and murders, military troops rolled into this tropical metropolis last month heading straight for the slums. They set up checkpoints and sent armed patrols to root out criminals, searching everyone from children to grandmothers.
The military campaign, the first of its scale since Brazil’s return to democracy in the 1980s, brought an outcry from human rights groups. Had this happened in the United States or Europe, some argued, lawsuits would have been filed. Communities would have rebelled.
But in Latin America’s largest nation — where security has emerged as the No. 1 issue amid a surge of urban violence — an extraordinary thing happened. Rather than view the move as an invasion, violenceweary residents of the favelas, or shantytowns, hailed it as a liberation.
“They want to check my ID? Fine!” said Magna Oliveira, 50, who runs a van-rental business in Vila Kennedy, a favela founded in the 1960s with the aid of US funds disbursed by President John F. Kennedy’s government. One of Rio’s most violent slums, it is now the epicentre of the military takeover of the state’s security.
“Here, here,” she said, pretending to take multiple ID cards out of her pocket. “Everything has changed since they arrived. I feel free,” she adds
The response here illustrates a national reality: Brazilians want security — and are backing heavy-handed tactics to get it.
Some in Brazil are even clamouring for a return to the kind of military dictatorship that was in place from 1964 to 1985 — and the discipline that came with it.
“Fear of violence has reached such high levels that the population is crying for help,” said Renato Srgio de Lima, president of the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, a think-tank that studies violence.
A former military officer preaching harsher criminal sentences, including the adoption of the death penalty, is now polling in second place in the presidential race. The politician, Jair Bolsonaro, has the support of about 16 per cent of would-be voters.
“To those who complain of crowded prisons, I say it again: I prefer a prison clogged with bums than a cemetery full of innocent people!” Bolsonaro tweeted in September.
In Rio, the showcase city of the 2016 Olympics Games is now a distant memory.
Crime has exploded, with a toxic mix of corrupt police officers, feuding drug dealers and gang warfare fuelling the surge.