Brazilian troops leave Rio slums

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- The Brazilian army ended its 10-day occupation of Rio de Janeiro slums, pulling the last of its troops out in the night as drug gangs shot into the air and set off fireworks in celebration.

The army carried out two additional raids Monday to look for weapons stolen from a military base, the act that triggered the military's full blown incursion into the slums on March 3.

"We are entering a phase of troop mobility. The raids will be more targeted," military spokesman Lt. Col. Paulo Meira said.

On Sunday, hundreds of troops left the Providencia slum near the center of the crime-ridden city, where they had exchanged fire with drug traffickers almost every night since the deployment.

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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/03/13/brazil.gangs.reut/index.html

Wow, they're army is everywhere!!

:popcorn:

:rimshot:

in the special features section on the City of God DVD. Makes the Bloods and the Crips look like West Side Story.

the drug lords were pillars of the communities, the de facto government. They did their level best to maintain order, which was a good thing because nobody else would. The police (who are extremely militarized in Brazil) wouldn't even enter a favela (slum community) except in overwhelming force.

Do you remember, about a dozen years ago, Michael Jackson was planning to film the video for his song "They Don't Care About Us" in Rio, using favela kids as dancers? The government called it exploitative, because Jackson was just throwing money around to get his way, and the drug lord from that particular favela said Yeah, by all means, exploit us! We can use the money! (There isn't any public education in Brazil the way we understand it, for example. Every dancer Jackson hired would have been able to go to school on that money.) But the government was determined not to allow it, and arrested the guy on bogus currency-hoarding charges. Jackson ended up doing the video in Bahia, using (if I remember right) the samba school Filhos da Gandhi.

But the scenario in City of God seems to be correct: the old, somewhat civic-minded drug lords have yielded to a new generation who are themselves users, and generally scatterbrained and sadistic.