DRUGS-BRAZIL: Child Dealers Do Not Fear Death

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 16 2002 (IPS) - Many children and adolescents in this coastal Brazilian city continue to fill the ranks of the drug trafficking world, even though they know it means they will likely die young, say statistics and studies about the drug trade here.

“For each one who dies or who we are able to pull out of activity, there are 20 willing to join the drug trade,” Luke Dowdney, a British anthropologist living in Brazil told IPS. The expert coordinated a study about the youths involved in Rio de Janeiro’s “armed organised violence”.

The children from poor neighbourhoods would like “to live well for a few years,” in spite of the risks they face, because they know that they have few alternatives or opportunities ahead of them, noted Dowdney, a researcher with the local non-governmental organisations Viva Rio and the Institute of Religious Studies.

The estimated 10,000 people employed by drug trafficking in Rio — 5,000 to 6,000 of whom are under age 18 — earn much more than they could in any other job they could get with their lack of schooling and their origins in poor, marginal neighbourhoods.

The 192-page report Dowdney coordinated, states that from December 1987 to November 2001, official figures show that 3,937 minors died from gunshots.

Experts compare that figure to the death toll in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, which claimed 467 children’s lives in the same period.

Statistics confirm that the violence in Rio de Janeiro kills more children and youths than the violence of the wars in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia, or the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia.

But the mortality rate among youths recruited to deal drugs could increase in the coming weeks because the war between four drug-trafficking gangs in Rio is escalating, lamented Dowdney.

He linked the worsening of the violence to the Sep 11 assassination of four leaders of the “Amigos dos Amigos” (Friends of the Friends) faction in the high-security prison Bangú I, amid a rebellion led by a rival gang, “Comando Vermelho” (Red Commando).

The group’s traffickers ordered the closing of all business in nine neighbourhoods, set city buses alight, fired machineguns at schools and other buildings, thus creating panic throughout the city.

“We heard gunfire for three hours in the ‘favela’ (slum)” that night, said Dowdney, who predicts more clashes between the two bands as they seek revenge and fight for drug-selling territory. The children and families caught in the crossfire will be the main victims, he added.

The gunshots and deaths tend to rise in Rio de Janeiro when some event disturbs the power equilibrium among the drug trafficking gangs. The uprising at the Bangú I prison indicates that the leaders continue to run operations even while behind bars.

The number of deaths and injuries from “stray bullets” in the city is explained in part by the fact that the drug-trafficking “combatants” are increasingly younger, with the average age today being 15.

At that age, say experts, they are unlikely to have expertise in handling weapons, so they try to make up for it by firing off many shots with the machineguns in their possession.

The most common weapons in the 1980s were 38-calibre revolvers, but they have given way to Russian and U.S. war weapons, like the AK-47 and AR-15. The evidence of their destructive ability is seen in the wounds treated at hospital emergency rooms.

While before the wounds were limited to a bullet hole, now “youths are mutilated, with an arm or leg destroyed by the machinegun fire,” said Dowdney, recounting testimonies by doctors from the Souza Aguiar Hospital emergency ward.

The photo of a 12-year-old boy who underwent surgery at the hospital “should be publicised” because it would have a great impact on any of the drug-dealing youths who see it.

“The bullet pulled off his jaw. His tongue is hanging out because he has no chin. His gaze conveys terror and panic,” said one of the doctors.

The mortality rate of adolescents aged 15 to 17 is eight-times greater than the 13-14 age group, according to research by the non- governmental groups. This would seem to indicate that at 15, the traffickers move to armed action, going beyond serving as messengers, lookouts or delivery-boys, tasks reserved for children.

One gang leader has said that a person is a child “until reaching age 13,” then he or she is an adult, reported an activist at an international seminar on youth violence held in Rio earlier this month.

In Colombia, the leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries have 6,000 to 7,000 boys and girls in their ranks, reports Iván Ramírez, a sociologist at the University of Antioquia in that war-torn country and an activist in the coalition fighting to prevent the use of children in the conflict.

Globalisation has made it easier to obtain weapons and of a greater variety, contributing to violence in the major cities, said Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms, a group calling for stricter worldwide control of weapons trade.