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In Rio's Slums, Militias Fuel Violence They Seek to Quell
A hearse leaves a Rio shantytown with the coffin of Felix dos Santos Tostes, a police officer suspected of also being a militia leader who was slain Feb. 22. Rio's governor rejects the view of anti-gang militias as the lesser of two evils.
(By Ricardo Moraes -- Associated Press)
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Allan Turnowski, the state director of special police operations, said the militias recruit members from a police corps that pays low-tier troopers about $450 a month. Many Brazilians assume the police forces are corrupt, he said, which lowers officers' morale and makes them vulnerable to recruiters.
"Imagine it: A police officer who works for the state never gets any respect, and suddenly he joins a militia and he's worshiped as the man who brings peace to the community," said Turnowski, who described the militias as dangerous substitutes for the state resources chronically lacking in the city's poor communities.
Leonardo Pontes, a hotel security guard in a Rio tourist district, sat at a red plastic table outside a restaurant in Rio das Pedras last week, sipping a bottle of beer. He said residents pay the militia about $14 a month for an illegal cable television connection, whether they want it or not, and in return get a neighborhood free of drug gangs. He said he thinks it's a good bargain.
"Of all the favelas in the city, this one is considered the best," said Pontes, 29. "The gangs don't even try to come in here anymore."
But official statistics do not support the idea that violence disappears when the militias take over. Ana Paula Miranda, a researcher with the government-sponsored Institute of Public Security, recently conducted a statistical study of several favelas known to be controlled by militias. That study, commissioned by the O Globo newspaper, determined that the rates of violent crime in those areas were similar to the rates in favelas run by drug gangs, she said.
A scan of the daily newspapers seems to back up that finding. Last week, for example, local newspapers reported that militia members in the favela of Vargem Grande were suspected of killing a real estate agent there. The killing was believed to have been connected to the militia's effort to control land sales in the neighborhood, according to the reports.
As such stories circulate, some community leaders have become reluctant to welcome militias. Angelo Marcio da Silva, 36, is a social activist who lives in Jardim America, a cluster of seven favelas all ruled by drug gangs. Infighting has weakened the gangs recently, and the militias have tried to pounce. Last month, one militia group tried to take over the area but was defeated by the Red Command, the controlling gang in his neighborhood.
Marcio da Silva takes an unexcited view of the militia phenomenon, calling it just the latest evolution in a conflict caused by chronic governmental neglect. In 10 years, he predicted, the militias, the gangs and the police will split and transform into new factions, but the residents will still be saddled with the same sense of insecurity.
"You can't choose a side," he said. "Because if you do that, you'll either be one of them or you'll be the next victim."
