Deadly Games

IO DE JANEIRO -- A white cross rising above the Macacos slum marks the spot where people are burned alive. A starving horse, his ribs poking out, is hitched close by with a thin rope. A nearby soccer field is dotted with pieces of melted rubber. No games are played here. The Amigos dos Amigos gang that runs this favela has a ritual: Members stack tires around their enemies, pour in gasoline and light the tires on fire. This is called microwaving. Black smoke rises into the air. At a school down the hill, near the famous soccer stadium where the 2016 Olympic opening ceremonies will be held, the students hear the screams and cover their ears.

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The favelas, Rio's guilty conscience, almost a thousand of them, overlook paradise but never, ever partake. Dense, urban slums with wretched educational opportunities, no social services, no police protection, they exist outside civilized society. Residents who live in the city don't go up the hill. It's possible to live a middle-class life without the violence of the slums affecting one's daily existence. But the violence is always there. In 2010, there were 4,798 murders in Rio. That's about a fourth the number of murders annually in the entire United States. (The U.S. population is about 300 million people. Rio has 6 million.) Favelas are desperate places, and they've been ignored since the first one popped up in 1897. Only now, some of them are close to venues for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

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The hill overlooking Maracana Stadium gave the city's old problem a new face. Two weeks after the IOC awarded the games to Rio, in October 2009, a gang war erupted. The extreme violence in such close proximity to the Olympic announcement brought the two Rios into focus.

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For residents, the first warning is almost always the gunshots. The police come in behind a protective curtain of bullets. People run toward their homes. If they can't get there, they dive through the first open door. Schools close. Stores close. Everyone hides. Bullets ricochet off concrete walls and fly through cheaper ones. They shatter windows. Some people are executed. Others get shot randomly. Wrong place, wrong time. Bad luck.


link:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110510/Rio

for where we are heading here, in our long, slow, distracted, dived dissent into a very dark reality where there are only the multitudes of have nots who serve a small number of controlling haves. It is only a matter of time, considering how we accept the onslaught and ignore the actuality of it all.

Enjoy your Hell on Earth because apathy and ignorance will make it so.

It is a good time to be wealthy!