Pubdate: Mon, 28 May 2001 Source: Newsweek (US) Copyright: 2001 Newsweek, Inc. Contact: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/309 Author: Mac Margolis BRAZIL'S NEW DRUG HABIT Complexo da Mare, sprawling over the flatlands behind Rio's sparkling Guanabara Bay, has long been a desolate place. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of poor people have flocked to the slum in search of work and a better life. Few found either and, packed into shanties, many of the most desperate residents turned to crime to make a living. But in the past two years, Mare and other favelas--collectively home to 17 percent of Rio's citizens--have become killing fields. Teenagers armed with AK-47s, AR-15s, Walthers, Uzis, hand grenades, even rocket launchers, shoot it out night after night, destroying homes and shops and killing civilians. What has made a tough neighborhood almost maniacally violent? Cocaine. Mare has been divided up, organized by gangs trying to take ad-vantage of a surge of drugs flowing into the country to serve a growing clientele. On a quiet Saturday evening earlier this month, police wearing bulletproof vests and carrying automatic weapons descended on Mare. Their mission: to take back territory that the government had virtually lost to rival drug gangs. Brazil has a big new drug problem. Latin America's largest nation was once relegated to the vaguely worrisome status of a "transit country," an entrepot on the great white way between the coca fields of the Andes and connoisseurs in upmarket Miami or London. No longer. Drug experts say domestic consumption--especially of cocaine--is growing, whether snorted from dollar packets, papelotes, in the favelas or off Waterford crystal in estates. The handsome proceeds from the trade are corrupting legislators, and even tarnishing the prized economy. No longer can Brazil blame only the ravenous appetites of gringos for bolstering South America's drug industry; it now has to contend with its own conspicuous consumption. "Ten years ago drugs were confined to the major cities," says Argemiro Procopio, a professor at the University of Brasilia. "Now they are everywhere." No one knows how many Brazilians indulge in under-the-counter drugs, but experts say there is no doubt that this restless, cosmopolitan nation of 170 million people has acquired a palate for powder and other world-class narcotics. Federal Police seized 4.7 metric tons of cocaine last year--much of it, they believe, bound for the burgeoning domestic market. Though that was less coke than the 6.8 metric tons confiscated in 1999, police say the decrease shows only that smugglers are becoming cleverer. "Unlike marijuana, cocaine is lucrative shipped in small quantities, which makes it hard to detect," says Getulio Bezerra, chief of the Federal Police drug division. "Transporters learn quickly." In the slums of So Paulo, favelados are consuming not just more coke, but cheap derivatives, like crack and merla; even hashish has made its debut in the streets, while in trend-conscious upper-class neighborhoods, the international taste for synthetic drugs has caught on. At Rio's most fashionable addresses, ecstasy is the party favor of choice. In a survey conducted among 1,900 middle-class kids in January, during the giant Rock in Rio festival, 43 percent of youths said they had tried drugs, and 16 percent admitted to experimenting with cocaine. "Drugs never pass through a country without leaving their mark," says Gen. Alberto Cardoso, a top military strategist who coordinates the country's anti-drug campaign. That includes the financial sector. Moroni Torgan, a congressman who ran the parliamentary narcotics probe, reckons some $30 billion or more in drug money is being decanted through Brazilian banks every year. Last year Kroll Associates, a U.S. security company, was retained by an American bank with offices in Brazil when a branch manager discovered that a single client had moved $300 million in a year to the United States through Uruguay--a windfall that only narcotics could explain. "Brazil has become a convenient laundermat," says Eduardo Sampaio of Kroll. And some of its politicians convenient tools. After a yearlong narcotics inquest ended last December, congressional investigators called for indictments of 827 suspects, ranging from drug thugs to frontmen for money-laundering outfits. Three local legislators and a former congressman are behind bars as a result. "The ostrich days are over," says Pedro Berwanger, former Federal Police chief of Rio. "We are fighting a war here." By far, the most devastating impact of the drugfest is a rise in violent crime--not just a surge in muggings and armed robberies, but lethal violence. In Rio, illegal-firearm seizures have nearly tripled in a decade. Since 1985, Brazil's homicide rate has doubled to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 residents; the country now leads the world in nonmilitary deaths by firearms per capita. The overall killing in Rio has abated slightly in recent years. But hold the champagne. With 47.9 homicides per 100,000, Rio is still one of the most dangerous cities on the planet--five times deadlier than New York City. Seventy percent of the violence is credited to either getting or using drugs. So commonplace is the violence of the drug culture, it has become popular entertainment. The computer game Counter Strike, now in vogue, is a typical cops-and-robbers showdown--except that the forces of good and evil shoot it out in Rio's favelas. Why has the plague finally reached Brazil? Globalization is one reason. Brazil was always ripe for coca's conquest. While the country produces little cocaine, it is a crucial supplier of precursor chemicals, such as ether and acetone. Its sprawling rain forest to the north is a perfect cloak for clandestine landing strips. Thanks to Mercosur, the trade pact uniting Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, factory and farm goods are flowing freely over the southern borders. So are drugs: "Narcosur," the cynics call it. "There are parts of Brazilian territory that Brazil doesn't control," says Procopio, of the University of Brasilia. Ironically, the drug impresarios have also been drawn by the fruits of Brazil's economic success: modern telecommunications, convenient flight connections, plenty of ports--and electronic banking: First World infrastructure with Third World policing. "As we open borders, we also open the door to those who export and import drugs, weapons, pirated merchandise and dirty cash," Acting U.S. Ambassador Cristobal Orozco told a Brazilian audience last month. "If anything, the criminals are ahead of the rest of us." No one knows that better than the favelados. Felony and favelas have always been closely associated, but drugs have ratcheted up the caliber of violence. Twelve years ago, when Col. Rosemberg da Silva, now commander of the 20th police district, faced his first hostage crisis, the kidnappers were armed with a kitchen knife and a .38 revolver. Last year he found himself negotiating with six drug-gang bandits, armed with 9mm and .45-caliber revolvers, hand grenades, two .762-caliber assault rifles and enough ammunition for a four-hour gunfight. This is not another tale of crime in the slums. "We are confronting urban warfare," Rio Police Chief Wilton Ribeiro said recently. "This is a guerrilla war for fractions of territory." Those fractions are growing. Take Mare. Like a botched suture, Evanildo Alves Street cuts a ragged gash through the wrong side of Rio. On one side sits Nova Holanda, ruled by the Red Command, Brazil's oldest drug faction. On the other lies Baixa do Sapateiro, where the rival Third Command reigns. There is hardly a home, a shop, a church or a lamppost along the street that does not bear the marks of their deadly contest for territory and consumers. "Sometimes I feel like I'm living on the Gaza Strip," says Luciano, a postman, who recently abandoned his home in a bullet-pocked alley. "The difference is, no one hears about this one." Hill by scruffy hill, the drug lords have made the favelas their castles, and the poor their vassals. They have turned Rio into a strategic distribution center for drugs and arms throughout the country. Now and again, when the bloodletting gets too scandalous, the police invade, often in a cloud of cordite. The bandits lie low, but only until the overtaxed lawmen move on to other emergencies. Today the massive police presence in Mare has cast a sudden aura of peace over the slum. Like a Potemkin village, all seems right with the world. But the locals know better. For two solid years they have lived under siege. A handful of favela youths serve as lookouts, drug packagers or rifle-bearing soldiers. The leaders have women and money, and style themselves as a combination of retailers, avengers and the pro bono local court, rolled into one. Woe to the Alemo (German)--favela slang for the enemy--who falls into their hands. There is no Geneva Convention in Rio's alleys. Prisoners may be summarily executed in the trunk of a car, or sliced up with cleavers and tossed into a ditch. One of the favored methods of disposal is the "microwave": thrust the victim into a stack of tires, douse him in gasoline and light a match. Increasingly, Brazilians are discovering that the violence of the favelas is spreading beyond the slums; stray bullets have claimed lives and lowered property values in middle-class neighborhoods. As they speed along expressways on their way to handsome homes in Barra da Tijuca or to the international airport, commuters wonder whether today is the day they'll be stopped at gunpoint by drug bandits--moonlighting for extra cash. In Brazil, like everywhere else, the demand for drugs begins not in the poorhouse but in the penthouse. Glossy magazines revel in the confessions of Rio's elite, who once turned to drugs for recreation or for comfort against the rigors of celebrity. And the favelas always obliged them. As a Rio socialite and former drug user once commented, "I just snapped my fingers and cocaine came into my hands." Rio Gov. Anthony Garotinho, an Evangelical Christian, is not amused. "If you want peace, stop snorting coke!" he scolded the rich recently on a radio talk show. Some of his exhortations may be sinking in. When four students at a tony and famously liberal private school, Escola Parque, were caught smoking pot on a school field trip recently, they were expelled. Some observers worry aloud over the "Colombianization" of Brazil. That seems unlikely. The country has no ideology-steeped guerrillas, no paramilitary thugs and no penchant for political assassination. Its drug lords are altar boys compared with the Mexican and Colombian hagiarchy. Last month, when reputed top Brazilian traficante Fernandinho Beira-Mar staggered out of the Amazon jungle, injured and famished, in the custody of the Colombian Army, he looked more like a vagrant than one of the world's most-wanted criminals. Weary of scandals and funerals, Brazilians have begun to fight back. Lawmakers have passed severe penalties for money laundering and weapons smuggling. The armed forces have bolstered their garrisons in the Amazon rain forest, a growing drug smugglers' haven. Starting next year they will get a boost from Sivam, a $1.4 billion radar surveillance system designed to watch over Brazil's biggest blind spot. Additionally, Rio is the centerpiece of the nationwide, $7.4 billion drug-prevention program, run by General Cardoso. In the end, winning will come down to containing the cocaine guerrilheiros of the favelas. The program calls for 47 separate initiatives to restore order and a modicum of public services--small-claims courts, sports facilities, job training, health care--in communities that are accustomed to none of that. The main objective is to combat drug-related violence, and help its main victims, the young. Meanwhile, to confront the nationwide drug problem, Roman Catholic clergymen have launched a campaign--"Yes to Life, No to Drugs"-- in 8,000 parishes. In the tonier sections of Rio, intellectuals and artists have donned white and marched along the beachfront for peace in Rio's meanest streets. Viva Rio, a prestigious citizens' NGO, has pitched in by creating a database to trace the international arms brokers who run guns to the hillside outlaws. Still, taking back the territory, and the people who have fallen under the influence of drugs, won't be easy. Ask Col. Marcos Fazio Correa, commander of the First military police battalion. When NEWSWEEK caught up to him recently, he was stalking heavily armed Third Command thugs along the muddy footpaths of Kerosene Hill, a vertiginous favela near the heart of Rio. Sweating copiously in his 10 kilos of commando tackle--a bulletproof vest, a Kenwood radio, a 9mm pistol and an M-16--Fazio was also suffering from severe sleep deprivation. As if the bands of teenagers trying to kill him were not headache enough, Fazio also struggles against Brazil's lopsided history. "For years the police were used to defend the state, not the people," he says. "We are trying to change these values." After a pause, he adds, "Security also means education, jobs, food on the table." He knows that stemming the rising tide of drugs and violence will take more than a few high-profile investigations and cracking heads in the favelas. How long will it take? "How long did the cold war last?" he answers. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek