RIO DE JANEIRO - Fans were lining up to watch an American beach volleyball duo square off against Mexico on the alluring sands of Copacabana Beach. But across town, far from the Olympic excitement, the crackling of gun battles echoed through the colossal favelas that envelop Rio de Janeiro's hillsides. As soon as he heard the bullets whizzing by early on Tuesday, Richard Conceicao Dias, 9, knew what to do. "I lied down on the floor, hugging my mom," said Richard, who lives in a one-room home in the sprawling Complexo do Alemao group of favelas with his mother and his three sisters. "She told me, 'Get away from the window, close your eyes, dream about something nice.'" [continues 1104 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil-Two Brazilian police bolted from a helicopter in Peru's Amazon jungle on a recent day with a squad of Peruvian commandos. Cracks of gunfire shook the forest before the group captured and destroyed a secret cocaine lab. The Brazilians had the legal status of unarmed observers during the Aug. 19 raid led by Peru's elite antidrug police. But both Brazilians carried assault rifles and faced hostile fire. The lab was in Peru, but the raiders flew from a Brazilian airport in a chopper running on Brazilian fuel to hit a target provided by a Brazilian-paid informant. From its Amazon border with Peru to its bustling cities, Brazil is getting drawn deeper into a drug war as surging cocaine use turns it into the world's biggest market after the U.S. It is a surprise since Brazilian politicians once criticized aggressive antidrug strategies espoused by the U.S. as causing more harm than good. [continues 1933 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO - Business was brisk in the Mandela shantytown on a recent night. Customers pawed through packets of powdered cocaine and marijuana priced at $5, $10, $25. Teenage boys with semiautomatic weapons took in money and made change while flirting with girls lounging nearby. Next to them, a gaggle of kids jumped on a trampoline, oblivious tothe gunsanddrug-running that are part of life in this and hundreds of other slums, known as favelas, across this metropolitan area of 12 million people. [continues 304 words]
Hampered in the U.S., Drug Traffickers Find a Replacement; Skeletal 'Zombies' Rule Sao Paulo's Cracolandia After Dark. SAO PAULO, Brazil--A crack cocaine outbreak reminiscent of the one that devastated U.S. inner cities in the 1980s is starting to take hold in this South American nation, as drug traffickers facing more difficulty selling into the U.S. are pioneering markets elsewhere. In Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, what to do about the hundreds of zombielike addicts who by night wander a downtown no man's land known as Cracolandia, or Crackland, has become a key issue for local elections this year. But mayors from Rio de Janeiro to outposts in the Amazon lament that dangerous cracklands are sprouting in their cities as well. [continues 1287 words]
One of the world's last uncontacted Indian tribes in the Amazon rainforest is nowhere to be found after a guard post protecting the indigenous clan was attacked by suspected drug traffickers, Brazilian authorities say. A preliminary survey of the tribe's lands near the Envira River on the western Brazil-Peru border by government officials has revealed no trace of the tribe, the existence of which was made public in February with the release of rare aerial photographs. Fiona Watson, research director of the tribal peoples' rights group Survival International, which is working with the Brazilian government's Indian Affairs Department, told the Star her organization fears for the survival of the indigenous tribe -- believed to have about 200 members -- after a backpack believed to have belonged to a drug trafficker was found with a broken arrow inside. [continues 380 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Flanked by officers holding assault rifles, Jose Mariano Beltrame, Rio's security chief, strolled through the streets of Complexo do Alemao, just days after the police and military had stormed the notoriously dangerous slum and retaken it by force. It was a historic walk, the first time he had set foot in the slum in years, underscoring this city's newfound willingness to wrest away areas of the city that have been violent refuges for drug gangs for more than three decades. [continues 1116 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- In a quick and decisive military sweep, Brazilian security forces seized control of this city's most notorious slum on Sunday, claiming victory in a weeklong battle against drug gangs that has claimed dozens of lives. By early afternoon the military police had raised the flags of Brazil and Rio de Janeiro atop a building on the highest hill in the Alemao shantytown complex, providing a rare moment of catharsis and celebration in a decades-long battle to rid this city's violent slums of drug gangs. [continues 905 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Police and Brazilian Army soldiers, struggling to take control of a second huge slum complex here, were fired on by drug gangs on Friday, but by nightfall they had managed to trap the traffickers inside, a military spokesman said. Friday's activity, at the Alemao complex of shantytowns, which is home to about 400,000 residents and considered by many to be the most violent of the city's slums, is a response to the latest eruption of gang violence, which began Sunday, as well as an effort by the Brazilian authorities to show that they can secure the city well in advance of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. [continues 515 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Two Brazilian federal police officers were killed and a third badly wounded Wednesday in a battle with drug traffickers in the Amazon region, authorities said. The shooting erupted in the wee hours when the crew of a police launch tried to board a suspected smuggling boat headed east on the Solimoes River, a tributary of the Amazon. Authorities had intelligence indicating the boat was carrying 500 kilos (1,100 pounds) of cocaine from neighboring Peru or Colombia, federal police said in a statement. [continues 131 words]
The Philippine embassy in Brazil warned Filipinos against being victimized as drug mules in light of the arrest of a Filipino woman found with 5 kilos of cocaine in the South American country, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday. The alleged 5kg of cocaine were found hidden in her luggage with false bottoms at the Guarulhos International Airport by Brazilian Federal Police on August 19. But during the investigation, the woman told police officers that she bought the bag in the middle of the street in San Paolo. She also said that she intends to sell the bags when she came back in the Philippines. [continues 411 words]
In the murky depths of the Amazon, there is a rare combination of vine and plant geneses, when combined, they are among one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man. Its many forms, which vary from brewer to brewer, are known as ayahuasca. The drug conjures up images of fantastical and illusionary worlds, gives the sensation of visiting magical cities and generally invokes a state of being which most of us will never know. Though similar to psilocybin (magic mushrooms) and LSD (acid), it has birthed some fantastical practices in the greater Amazonian area. [continues 426 words]
* Militia Says It Controls Slum Made Famous By Film * Forces Plan To Stay, But Community Is Sceptical It is one of the most notorious postcodes on earth - a sprawling red brick shantytown that has been under the control of heavily armed drug traffickers for nearly four decades. This week, however, police claimed the gangs were no more in the City of God, the Rio slum made infamous by Fernando Meirelles' 2002 film. On Tuesday, after two months of incursions, special forces celebrated the "conquering" of the City of God by hoisting the Brazilian flag over a creche they said was used as a base by traffickers. [continues 632 words]
TABATINGA, Brazil -- The Tikuna Indians living near this Amazon outpost long believed that their community was a portal to the supernatural, to immortals who would guard them and secure their existence. But lately they are finding that location may instead be a curse. The Tikuna community, Mariacu, lies along a placid stretch of the Solimoes River, less than three miles down a reddish-dirt road from Tabatinga, a bustling commercial town. While seemingly tranquil, the area has become a magnet for drug traffickers who roam the borders here with Colombia and Peru. [continues 1584 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- When several Brazilian journalists decided to go undercover here in May to report on life in one of the hundreds of slums that have sprouted up around Rio, they thought they had chosen carefully. The slum they picked, Batan, was under the control of a militia that had expelled a drug gang last September. The journalists assumed that a slum under the thumb of a gun-toting militia, which included off-duty policemen, would be safer than one controlled by drug dealers. [continues 1426 words]
Army Surprised by Discovery Lab Equipped to Make Leaves into Cocaine Also Found in the Amazon SAO PAULO, Brazil -- The army said Sunday it has discovered the first known coca plantations in Brazil's Amazon, along with a fully equipped laboratory to manufacture cocaine. The army used helicopters and small boats to reach the plantations and the lab near the northwestern city of Tabatinga, close to the border with cocaine-producing nations Peru and Colombia, army Lt. Col. Antonio Elcio Franco Filho said. [continues 231 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- After taking a phone call last week, director JosA? Padilha stepped onto the patio of his studio and told a business partner that the intense discussion provoked by his latest film had spread to yet another sphere of Brazilian society. "Now they're going to speak about it in Congress," Padilha said, looking at his watch. "In 20 minutes, someone is going to take the floor and start." The film, called "Elite Squad," centers on the police officers who wage war against the drug-dealing gangs that rule Rio's slums, called favelas. The movie has put almost everyone -- from the slums, to the penthouses, to the halls of government -- in the mood to talk about this city's violence. [continues 815 words]
Benedict Laments Lax Morals And Urges Bishops To Do Better In Building Up The Church. His Last Mass Attracts Only 150,000. APARECIDA, BRAZIL -- Pope Benedict XVI ended his first pilgrimage to the Americas much as he began it: with a searing attack on diverse forces, from Marxism and capitalism to birth control, that he believes threaten society and the Roman Catholic faith. And in comment likely to generate controversy in Latin America, the pope said the New World's indigenous population, "silently longing" for Christianity, had welcomed the teachings that "came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them." Many indigenous rights groups say the conquest ushered in a period of disease, mass murder, enslavement and the shattering of native cultures. [continues 1285 words]
Benedict XVI, In Brazil, Urges Ex-Users To Heal Their Souls, And Excoriates Traffickers APARECIDA, BRAZIL -- Recovering drug addicts, guitar-strumming youths and cloistered nuns on Saturday welcomed Pope Benedict XVI into rural Brazil, where he warned narcotics traffickers that they face the wrath of God for unleashing a deadly scourge across Latin America. Pressing a crusade that has attacked extramarital sex, abortion and hedonism, Benedict congratulated the addicts for kicking their habits but said that for full recovery they must also heal their souls. [continues 473 words]
GUARATINGUETA, Brazil -- Pope Benedict warned drug dealers yesterday to "reflect on the grave harm they are inflicting." "God will call you to account for your deeds," he said before a cheering crowd of 6,000 outside the Fazenda de Esperanca, or "Farm of Hope," a drug treatment centre founded by a Franciscan friar. The centre claims an 80-per-cent success rate, giving addicts spiritual guidance as they milk cows, tend apple orchards and work as beekeepers. The Pope urged the more than 1,500 recovering addicts in the crowd to become "ambassadors of hope." [end]
Tom Phillips reports from the front line in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, where the body count soars as paramilitaries and traffickers vie for supremacy Night falls on the shadowy back alleys of Cidade Alta, and at the heart of the favela Gilberto Martins and his men are preparing for war. At the back of a small, smoke-filled bar, a middle-aged man sits alone flicking through a thick wad of cash and occasionally fiddling with three revolver magazines stacked on the table in front of him. Outside a queue of teenage drug traffickers stare nervously down the road, with M16 assault rifles slung across their chests and their fingers clasped around the triggers. [continues 1417 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil is not for beginners. That was a line of Antonio Carlos Jobim, the musician who was the father of the bossa nova movement, wrote "The Girl from Ipanema" and knew that the languorous sensuality of his country that he captured in that song was only one aspect of the story. Another has been on lurid display of late with the killing of more than two dozen people, including seven incinerated on a bus, since violence led by drug gangs erupted in Rio on Dec. 28. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva marked the beginning of his second term this month by calling the slaughter "terrorism." [continues 927 words]
A Religion In Brazil Mixes Catholicism With Powerful Hallucinogens. Alex Bellos Joined The Congregation Ceu do Mapia is probably the smallest community in the world with its own time zone - half an hour in front of Boca do Acre and half an hour behind Pauini, the two nearest towns in this remote and underpopulated corner of the western Brazilian Amazon. The village of roughly 500 people is unique for another reason, too - it is the nucleus of a Catholic sect based on the regular consumption of the hallucinogenic tea ayahuasca. [continues 1000 words]
A Prison Gang Shows Its Deadly Power and Flatfoots The Politicians RIO DE JANEIRO is more beautiful, but residents of Sao Paulo boast that their city is safer. At least they did until May 12th, when a wave of violence orchestrated from within the prison system struck Brazil's biggest city and several neighbouring towns. In five days of mayhem and retribution some 150 people, a quarter of them policemen, were killed; 82 buses were torched and 17 bank branches attacked. Rebellions erupted at 74 of the 140 prisons in Sao Paulo state. Schools, shopping centres and offices shut down; transport froze. For several days, paulistanos could not even claim that their city was safer than Baghdad. [continues 852 words]
SO PAULO, Brazil -- Police launched a counterattack Tuesday against gangs rampaging through South America's largest city. At least 33 suspects were killed; police reported one death of their own after dozens of law officers were killed in the preceding days. The violence erupted Friday night when authorities transferred eight leaders of a drug gang to a maximum-security prison to isolate them. Gang members attacked police stations, courts, city buses and other symbols of government. Prison inmates rioted. At least 133 people, including 40 police officers and prison guards, have been killed since Friday night. [continues 192 words]
An unprecedented wave of attacks by a notorious drug gang in South America's largest city, Sao Paulo, entered into its fourth day on Monday, with reports of at least 20 more killings that raised the death toll to more than 70. Masked gang members, apparently enraged at the prison transfer of leaders, hurled grenades at police stations and sprayed them with automatic weapons over the weekend, then turned their rage on the city's buses on Sunday night and on Monday, torching dozens and stranding thousands of commuters. [continues 733 words]
The PCC Reached Out From Sao Paulo Prisons To Attack Police, Buses, And Banks RIO DE JANEIRO - The unprecedented series of attacks on law enforcement that has left as many as 74 people dead and more than 40 prisons under the control of rioting inmates marks the dramatic resurgence of a criminal gang in Sao Paulo. It also signals a new power struggle between police and organized crime in Brazil's biggest state, warn analysts and human rights experts. The weekend attacks were carried out by the First Capital Command (PCC), a gang formed in the 1990s in Sao Paulo's notorious prison system to demand better conditions. But the PCC's audacious and ongoing attacks beyond the prison walls show they have the means to confront the state, says Renato Simoes, a human rights expert who has followed the rise of the group. [continues 757 words]
Attacks Ordered By Imprisoned Leaders Of Gang Are Called 'Direct Attack' On State SAO PAOLO, Brazil // Four days of violence in Brazil's financial capital has killed more than 80 people, including 39 law enforcement officers, who were victims of an underworld run by prisoners able to use cell phones to order killings, drug deals and violent unrest in prisons and on city streets. Authorities called the attacks an unprecedented assault on public security in Latin America's largest country. One top official labeled it the first terrorist strike on Brazil. [continues 580 words]
Death Of Gang Leader Fails To Stop Battle For Control Of Rocinha RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Since the day in October when police killed the head of the Friends of Friends gang, the residents of Rocinha, South America's largest slum, worried about when the struggle for power would begin. Two weeks ago, they got their answer. More than three dozen members of a rival gang, Comando Vermelho, or Red Commando, swept into the streets at the upper reaches of Rocinha's hillside sprawl. Hurling grenades and firing automatic weapons, they blew up power transformers, cutting off electricity and shutting down traffic lights in the middle of the evening rush hour. [continues 535 words]
Battle Over Drug Turf In Rio De Janeiro Slum Shows Lack Of Security RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Since police killed the head of the Friends of Friends gang in October, the residents of South America's largest slum worried about when the struggle for power would begin. Two weeks ago, they got their answer. More than three dozen members of a rival gang, Comando Vermelho, or Red Commando, swept into the streets at the upper reaches of Rocinha's hillside sprawl. Hurling grenades and firing automatic weapons, they blew up power transformers, cutting off electricity and shutting down traffic lights in the middle of the evening rush hour. [continues 744 words]
VICOSA, BRAZIL - Here's a thought for today: BANG! You've been shot. Shot through the heart. Can you imagine it? Your body is warm as blood pours from it, but you feel so cold. There are screams. Someone tries to lift you, but all you feel is your last breath leaving like air from a punctured tire. Your eyes roll back. All goes black. And that's it. You're dead. Such a waste. The bullet wasn't even meant for you. Or maybe it was. It doesn't really matter. Such are the streets of Brazil, a place that gives perspective to gun problems in the Toronto and Hamilton regions. [continues 644 words]
Ms. Maggessi Wins Acclaim As She Takes on Brazil's Drug Bosses RIO DE JANEIRO -- Once every few months, the sky above this city's sprawling Rocinha slum is lit by phosphorescent red trails of crisscrossing bullets. Residents know that yet another battle has erupted between cops and local drug lords. As Brazil's best-known city continues its decades-long war on drugs, Rio police are having a harder time arresting drug bosses because the new breed of bosses operate among the densely packed residents of the city's 500 slums, home to nearly one of every five of Rio's six million people. Police raids often produce bystander casualties. [continues 758 words]
More Than 4,000 Have Died at Hands of Police in Violent Cycle RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - The pop-pop-pop of firecrackers filled the air. But this was no party. To warn drug dealers of a police sweep, youngsters employed as lookouts in this sprawling Rio de Janeiro slum lit string after string of fireworks. Moments later, five officers waving automatic rifles charged down the crowded main street. As they ducked for cover, fruit vendors and taxi drivers seemed more spooked by the cops than the criminals. [continues 1668 words]
The sweltering heat inside the Capital Female Penitentiary got hotter - - contestants to the Miss Penitentiary pageant were working overtime using hair dyers. Angelica Mazua, a statuesque Angolan facing international drug smuggling charges, was voted Miss Penitentiary 2005 on Thursday after a six-hour contest pitting 40 female inmates from 10 prisons around Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo. "People told me, 'You're tall. You should enter the contest,' so that's why I entered," said Mazua, who has been jailed for four months and could be sentenced to about five years behind bars if she's convicted. "I've always been interested in fashion." [continues 126 words]
Brazilian Officials Say A Bus Blaze That Killed Five People Was A Retaliatory Assault By Suspected Drug Traffickers. Some Fear More Violence. RIO DE JANEIRO - A deadly arson attack this week on a bus full of passengers has shocked residents of a city already accustomed to rampant crime and raised fears of a surge in violence on the cusp of the busy tourist season. Five people were killed and several others hurt after a gang of suspected drug traffickers flagged down a bus, doused the interior and those aboard with gasoline and set everything ablaze. Among the dead were an infant and her mother, whose charred body was discovered atop her daughter, an apparent attempt to shield her baby from the flames. [continues 679 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's anti-narcotics police, or Denarc, said Saturday it arrested Paraguayan Ernesto Pablo Villalba, considered a top marijuana trafficker. Villalba was arrested Friday in Foz do Iguacu, a city on the Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina border where his base of operations was located, and was transferred Saturday to a prison in Sao Paulo. According to authorities, the drug kingpin's organization smuggled an average of 20 tons of marijuana per month from Paraguay. The gang transported the drug, hidden inside trucks, through various towns of the southern Brazilian state of Parana to Sao Paulo, from where it was distributed to the rest of the country. Three other Brazilian traffickers were also arrested in the police operation, which had been planned over the past six months and was known as Operation Foz. "Operation Foz was a success, since we dismantled the gang," Denarc director Emilio Francolin told reporters Saturday. [end]
Rio Woman Films Drug Use, Sales In Favela RIO DE JANEIRO The neighbors have their doubts about the woman called Dona Vitoria, but no one disputes that the drug trade thrived in their neighborhood or in this city where she has become a hero. Dona Vitoria is the pseudonym given to a Rio woman who, fed up by what she says was the lack of response by police, videotaped from her apartment window a stream of drug sales on the hills outside her home. She gave the tapes to a local reporter, and the publication of photos from them won Dona Vitoria recognition, relocation and, with good reason, witness protection. [continues 528 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO -- The neighbors have their doubts about the woman called Dona Vitoria, but no one disputes that the drug trade thrives in their neighborhood or in this city where she has become a hero. Dona Vitoria is the pseudonym given to a Rio woman who, fed up by what she says was the lack of response by police, videotaped from her apartment window a stream of drug sales on the hills outside her home. She gave the tapes to a local reporter, and the publication of photos from them won for Dona Vitoria recognition, relocation and, with good reason, witness protection. [continues 660 words]
Soccer legend Pele wept when he visited his son, who is in police custody in Brazil on suspicion of drug trafficking, and said he regretted he had failed to see Edinho was using narcotics. Edson Cholbi Nascimento, 34, known as Edinho, was arrested on Monday along with 51 others in the port city of Santos. He was being held at the anti-narcotics police headquarters in the state capital, Sao Paulo. In a letter released by his lawyer, Edinho, a former goalkeeper for Santos soccer club, said he was dependent on marijuana but denied being involved with drug traffickers. [continues 177 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO - (AP) -- Federal police opened fire on a twin-engine plane suspected of carrying drugs as it attempted to take off from an airfield in southern Brazil, killing the pilot, officials said Monday. Police first tried to seize the aircraft, but the pilot tried to take off anyway, endangering the lives of officers in another airplane, authorities said. Police fired at the plane, killing the 65-year-old pilot. A 50-year-old man who was aboard the plane was arrested. [continues 126 words]
Rio's drug gang leaders have been buying light weapons easy for children to carry: Similarities to use of children in African wars Long concerned with the plight of child soldiers in Africa, Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire (Ret.) has recently made a new discovery -- that drug traffickers in Brazil are increasingly recruiting children to the drug wars. Gen. Dallaire, who was the commander of the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping mission during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, sees the proof of this in a recent massacre in Rio de Janeiro, where nine adolescents were among the 30 victims. [continues 797 words]
Government will shoot down planes used in trafficking. The New York Times BRASILIA, Brazil -- After hesitating for six years, in large part because of pressure from the United States, Brazil has announced it will begin shooting down aircraft used in trafficking illegal drugs in its airspace. Only Colombia, the source of much of the cocaine and heroin sold in the United States, has such a policy in effect. But Brazil's northern Amazon corridor has become an increasingly busy and essential route in the global drug trade and is used for smuggling arms, gold and diamonds. [continues 314 words]
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidency with the election slogan "Love and Peace". But after 18 months in office his pacificist leanings are being tested by the growing menace of drug trafficking. An influx of cocaine and other narcotics is blamed for many of the 370,000 deaths by violence in Brazil during the 1990s. Drugs have financed arms purchases and intensified turf wars between gangs in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. Now, amid rising public anger at the level of urban violence, Mr Lula da Silva is to authorise Brazil's air force to shoot down any unidentified aircraft suspected of smuggling narcotics. [continues 654 words]
Brazil is close to adopting a plan to shoot down aircraft suspected of carrying narcotics over the Amazon jungle, the government has said. Colombia and Peru called a halt to the controversial practice in 2001 after the Peruvian air force mistakenly shot down a plane carrying missionaries. But experts say cocaine smugglers are violating Brazilian airspace to reach regional cities and markets abroad. Brasilia and Washington may share information to combat drug trafficking. Series of safeguards "It is the kind of measure one hopes never to have to enforce," said Defence Minister Jose Viegas, according to the O Globo news website. [continues 305 words]
Brazil will start shooting down aircraft used by drug traffickers under a government policy to be implemented by the end of the month. Peru and Colombia abandoned the controversial practice after the Peruvian air force, with the help of US intelligence in 2001, accidentally shot down an aircraft carrying American missionaries. Experts say that partly as a result of that suspension, traffickers have been able to increase their flights and drug supplies from Colombia, heightening pressure on regional governments to take tougher action. [continues 315 words]
Minor Drug Offender, Sent Back To Brazil, Slain Amid Desperate Plot To Return To U.s. CAMPINAS, Brazil - An Ohio man deported to Brazil four years ago for a minor drug infraction was gunned down here by drug-dealing teens. Friends say he had sought the teens' help to smuggle guns into Brazil and use the proceeds to sneak back into the United States. The case of Joao Herbert, 26, gained international attention in 2000, after his adoptive parents' inability to obtain citizenship papers for him, along with newly toughened immigration laws and Herbert's first-offense conviction for selling marijuana forced his deportation. [continues 379 words]
At Least 10 Killed in Slum Violence RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Rio de Janeiro's state authorities appealed Tuesday for the Brazilian government to deploy troops in a drug war in the city's biggest slum that has claimed at least 10 lives and forced the closure of many schools. With police at every corner, Rio de Janeiro's hillside Rocinha slum had its first night of calm since violence started Friday. But state governor Rosinha Matheus said although the police had stemmed the conflict for now, she wanted the military to safeguard Brazil's second-biggest city and tourist mecca. [continues 164 words]
Tourists Shocked By Shooting; Mayor Wants Federal Police Brought In RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- More than 1,000 police stormed into two Rio slums Monday, attempting to halt a violent dispute among drug traffickers that has left at least 10 people dead. Automatic weapons fire crackled as police swept through the Rocinha favela, or slum, and the nearby Vidigal slum -- both of which overlook the city's wealthiest neighbourhoods and trendy beaches. [continues 326 words]
The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved last Thursday a bill that removes the possibility of arrest or prison sentences for people charged with drug possession. Earlier in week, a meeting of the Latin American Harm Reduction Network (RELARD in its Spanish acronym) in Sao Paulo dissolved in acrimony amid allegations of corruption surrounding one of the group's most prominent members and charges of dirty doings during voting to choose new leadership. But while Latin American harm reductionists were recovering from the bout of infighting, the Brazilian lower chamber was making history. If enacted by the Brazilian Senate, which has already passed one version of the bill, drug users would be subject to community service, but not jail, for drug possession offenses. [continues 1490 words]
Grants Military Continued Control Over Anti-Drug Agency The Brazilian government announced Monday that the Brazilian anti-drug office, known as SENAD for its Portuguese acronym, will continue to be headed by a general and will remain part of the national security cabinet. The announcement runs contrary to the official position of President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva's Workers' Party (PT) and Lula's own campaign pronouncements. It also further unveils a deep divide in the Lula administration between those, such as Minister of Justice Marcio Tomas Bastos and Minister of Health Humberto Costa, who argued for placing a harm reductionist in the post and moving SENAD leadership to the justice ministry, and advocates of a more doctrinaire approach to drug policy based on the US model. [continues 886 words]
WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - Brazil is working with Peru and Colombia on a set of common rules to cover when civilian aircraft suspected of carrying illegal drugs could legally be shot down, Brazil's defense minister Jose Viegas said on Friday. Both Colombia and Peru are preparing to relaunch the U.S.-sponsored drug air interdiction programs, suspended since an accidental downing of a small aircraft in Peru in April 2001 that killed a missionary and her young daughter. U.S. officials often cite Brazil as a drug transit country, with traffickers using its vast Amazonian jungle to ferry out cocaine with planes and river boats. [continues 166 words]
Inside Brazil
