UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov on a visit to the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 10 2013 (IPS)

Tuchinha was once a drug lord in Rio de Janeiro’s Mangueira favela. But today he is helping youngsters in this Brazilian city turn their lives around and leave behind crime, prison and the likelihood of an early death.

Franciso Paulo Testas Monteiro, better known as Tuchinha, climbed to the heights of the criminal world. Because he could read and write – he went to school through the fifth grade – and was good with numbers, he was put in charge of the accounts of one of Rio de Janeiro’s main criminal bands.

He became an almost mythical figure in the world of organised crime as the drug baron of Morro da Mangueira, a violent shantytown where drug traffickers held sway. Half of his life – 25 years – was dedicated to the drug trade.

He had plenty of ready cash, women and other perks. But in his ascent, he paid a high price. He spent a total of 21 years in prison, serving two different sentences, and both he and his family lived with death threats.

Today, at 49, he says he is repentant. “I grew up in Mangueira, I was a leader,” he told IPS. “I had money, women, jewels, but I didn’t have freedom. When I ventured outside my neighbourhood, I had to hide, or else I had to actually leave Rio. If I had had an opportunity to do so, I would have changed my life earlier.”

It was Aug. 5, 2011 when he left drug trafficking behind forever, after he was invited by the local NGO AfroReggae to give workshops to help young people leave behind a life of crime.

“I did many bad things, and gave orders for many others to be committed,” he said. “I paid heavily for it, with my freedom. Today my role is to rescue those who want to leave crime behind, and I am the living proof that a life lived in peace is worth it.”

Tuchinha visits prisons to talk to young inmates, and he helps mediate in conflicts in violent neighbourhoods.

“We want to give the same opportunity I had to people who want to get back on track, abandon crime, and live in peace with their families. Many of them feel hopeless, but I tell them there is hope.”

The former drug boss is an advocate of amnesties for prisoners, so they can have a chance to begin a new life.

He is confident that he will be able to finish school, and hopes to live in a safer city, for the sake of his children.

Tuchinha works to convince young drug dealers and traffickers to join AfroReggae’s “employability” programme. Created in 2008, the programme has so far managed to find jobs for more than 3,100 people.

Daniela Pereira da Silva, 35, spent three years in prison and is now one of the programme coordinators.

“I form part of the statistics on women, which show that most women in prison are there because they had a boyfriend or husband who was a drug trafficker,” she told IPS.

The aim of the programme, she said, is to help ex-convicts enter the labour market. “Demand has been strong, and we’re also open to residents of communities where drug trafficking groups operate, and to relatives of ex-convicts, to boost family incomes and keep them from falling back into crime,” she said.

Tuchinha and Silva formed part of the group of former drug traffickers supported by AfroReggae who met with the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, on his first official visit to Brazil, May 7-9.

The meeting, which was attended by IPS, took place in AfroReggae’s main offices in the Pavão-Pavãozinho favela or shantytown, situated behind the world-famous Ipanema beach.

Pavão-Pavãozinho is one of the favelas “pacified” by the authorities under Rio’s strategy of regaining state control over areas ruled by armed drug gangs, by means of a heavy, permanent police presence combined with increased spending in the areas of health, education, sports and income-generating activities.

Fedotov visited the city to learn first-hand about the social and public security programmes underway in Rio’s favelas. “I came to Brazil to see how successful experiences of combating crime in Rio de Janeiro could be adapted to other places with similar security issues,” he said.

He added that the favela pacification project was apparently working, and said it was the first time he had seen anything like it and he was “very impressed”

“Such initiatives are enormously instructive for UNODC as they can provide a roadmap on how to reintegrate ex-traffickers in an effective and creative way as part of overall crime prevention interventions,” he said.

The Russian diplomat said he could see the changes since he visited Rio 10 years ago. He also expressed his admiration for the people who had the courage to leave behind a life of crime.

Mangueira and Pavão-Pavãozinho are two of the 32 favelas in Rio de Janeiro pacified by the police. The authorities’ goal is to set up a total of 40 police pacification units (UPPs) in the city’s poor neighbourhoods by 2014.

At least one million of the six million people in Rio proper (Greater Rio has a population of 11 million) live in some 750 favelas, a number of which are still ruled by drug gangs.

“Our policy used to be focused on repression, which generated more conflicts and deaths,” the commander of the local UPP, Major Felipe Magalhães dos Reis, said at the meeting in Pavão-Pavãozinho. “The police didn’t tackle the causes of violence, but its effects. Meanwhile, criminals had increasingly powerful weapons.”

The cost of the “war on drugs” was high in terms of loss of life, he acknowledged.

The police say more than 2,000 police were killed between 1991 and 2008, another 10,000 people died in confrontations with the security forces, and 170,000 guns were seized.

“There was no solution in sight, until the idea of creating the UPPs emerged,” Magalhães dos Reis said.

“Social inclusion and community development are essential components in preventing crime,” Fedotov said, adding that the experience could be adapted to other countries, especially the elements of social integration, pacification and alternative means of life.

Brazil is a transport point for the international drug trade. In addition, internal consumption has spiralled and it is now a major market for drugs.

During his visit this week, Fedotov met with government officials to discuss future cooperation, in regional and global associations.

In Brasilia, he told reporters that Brazil was a global actor, and that UNODC was interested in its support and participation in global issues like the fight against transnational organised crime and illegal drugs.

Morro da Providência. Credit: Daniel Garcia Neto CC BY 2.0

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 12 2012 (IPS)

Opinions are divided in Morro da Providência, Brazil’s oldest favela, over construction works for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. While some residents are optimistic about the improvements that lie ahead, others point out that hundreds of dwellings will be demolished.

The letters SMH painted on the walls of some of the houses in this Rio de Janeiro shantytown were at first a complete mystery to local people. But now they know only too well what is in store for the houses that they say are branded “like cattle.”

“SMH means Secretaria Municipal de Habitaçao (Municipal Housing Secretariat) which is the agency that is going to evict us,” Morro da Providência resident Jailce Felix dos Santos told IPS.

“It’s depressing. Many people have fallen ill. Arriving home and seeing those letters and knowing that your house is marked for demolition is terrible,” dos Santos, whose house was marked even though the area is regarded as part of the city’s historic heritage, told the press.

A total of 832 houses have been earmarked and 140 have already been demolished, according to the Port Community Forum, made up of people in Rio’s port area affected by works being undertaken for the 2014 FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

The Rio de Janeiro city government says the house clearing is necessary to build an overhead cable car across the favela that will connect to the “Central do Brasil” railway station, Rio’s most important train terminal and a transport hub.

But as the favela has some of the most beautiful views of Rio de Janeiro, it will also attract large numbers of tourists. A funicular tram that will take people to the top of the “morro” or hill, and other works such as a sports centre, sanitation and upgrading of the roads, most of which are so narrow as to be barely passable, are also being built.

Jorge Carvalho, who has worked as a dockhand at the port – which is also being upgraded – for 45 years, pauses for breath on a landing of the steep stairway of nearly 200 steps that is currently the only way up into the favela.

“I’ve given up counting the stairs,” he said. “Now, with the cable car and the funicular, it will be like flying up in a jet plane!”

But another local resident, who preferred not to be identified, said he had nothing to be happy about, because the house where he has lived for over 40 years, and which he now shares with seven relatives, has been marked for demolition. He built it brick by brick, and said the money the municipal government is offering as compensation is too little, while the alternative housing they offer is too far away from his place of work.

But the main issue for this resident, who took us proudly around historic places in the favela, is how the planned transformation will wreck a neighbourhood regarded as part of the city’s history. The Morro da Providência, where the earliest settlements date back to the late 19th century, was the first favela to emerge in Brazil.

The origins of the favela, located between the “Central do Brasil” and the port district, date back to another instance of housing injustice in the history of Rio, formerly the capital of Brazil.

The national government failed to make good its promise to provide housing for soldiers returning from the 1896-1897 War of Canudos – a civil rebellion against the central government, in the northeastern state of Bahia. So they occupied the hill they called Morro da Favela and built their own houses.
According to historical accounts, the word favela was probably taken by the soldiers from the Alto da Favela, a hill overlooking Canudos that was named for a shrubby local tree.

Some of the existing buildings, like chapels and churches, date from that time. The earliest houses were made of clay, so it is easy to identify their ruins. Morro da Providência was also the cradle of one of the first “escolas de samba” or samba schools in Rio’s carnival.

Dos Santos sold a bar she owned, where funk and other music popular among young people in the favelas is played, and opened another called “Favela Point” close to one of the cable car stations, anticipating the arrival of foreign tourists.

Morro da Providência, the scene of new “battles” between drug trafficking organisations and the police in the 20th and 21st centuries, is one of the favelas in Rio where “Police Pacification Units” (UPPs) have been set up.

“The Providência community was neglected for a long time, but after the UPP arrived it became better known and changed a great deal,” dos Santos said enthusiastically. “Recently, the number of firefights has gone down, and now there are job opportunities in the community because of the infrastructure projects.”

But as someone who was born and raised in the favela, she is compelled to recognise the “sad” side of the “progress” that has arrived and the changes that her community will have to accept, not just in physical terms. “They are taking away our friendships, and creating distances between people,” she said.

Carolina Pacheco, who works at the Casa Amarela, a cultural centre in Providência, also fears the social changes coming to the community. She predicted that the cable car would bring up “all sorts of people and we will have to keep a closer eye on the children, because anyone will be able to come to our neighbourhood, and some of them may not be good people.”

This future scenario, which scares her, contrasts with the life of the community, where “things are safe because there is no public transport; everyone knows everyone else, everyone looks out for the kids, and when a stranger appears we all know he or she is an outsider.”

However, Pacheco also said the coming “transformation”, as such, “has a good side and a bad…The positive side is that these projects will bring development.”

But while some people are happy with the changes, no one can hide their distress over the forced departure of those whose houses are marked. “They will have to leave at a moment’s notice, after living here all their life,” she said.

In some cases, the Rio de Janeiro city government argues that the evictions are for safety reasons, because the houses are built where there is a risk of landslides.

But in the view of Caroline Rodrigues da Silva of the Port Community Forum, this is just another chapter in real estate speculation that has unleashed an endless spiral of price rises in property sales and rentals.

“There are two major issues behind it. One is state violence that legitimates the implementation of the infrastructure projects. An example of this are the UPPs in Rio de Janeiro, deployed only in the favelas that surround the sites of the big sporting events. This is a city for sale. The population control measures are to make people accept what’s coming,” Rodrigues da Silva said in an interview with IPS.

“The other is the use of public spaces that had been left aside for many years. Now, that land has become valuable and the entire area has been restructured, so there is more and more speculation,” she said.

The people who know this best are the residents of Morro da Providência, who lived with the effects of neglect by the state for decades, and now fear that after the mega sporting events, they will once again be forgotten.