Rio to pacify more favelas ahead of World Cup

A day after police took over Brazil's largest drug-infested favela, Rocinha, and two smaller ones, Rio authorities said they planned to pacify dozens more ahead of the 2014 World Cup. For the first time in decades, heavily armed security forces on Sunday stormed Rocinha, Vidigal and Chacara do Ceu and peacefully occupied the slums overlooking Rio's wealthiest neighborhoods, without firing a shot and with no resistance from drug traffickers. The operation widened the security perimeter around Rio's residential and tourist area as Brazil prepares to host football's 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Police have so far arrested six people and seized 43 guns, two bazookas, a shotgun, several grenades and about a ton of illegal drugs, local media quoted an official in Rio's special operations battalion as saying. Also recovered were clothes that simulated police uniforms, apparently used by drug traffickers to try to evade capture. Slot machines, more than 20,000 pirated CDs, ninja masks and 75 motorcycles were hauled in, too. "This occupation has a strong symbolic value by its location, in Rio's richest area, and completes a cycle of occupations in the southern zone of the city in those tourist areas most directly linked to the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games," said Professor Ignacio Cano, of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University's violence analysis center. It opens the way for deploying police pacification units (UPPs) specially trained to deal with communities which for years have been ruled by drug traffickers and paramilitary militias. The occupation will also make it possible to provide sorely needed social services such as basic sanitation and trash collection. More than 1.5 million people, a third of Rio's population, live in 1,000 slums perched on steep hillsides across the city. Since 2008, when Rio authorities launched the pacification drive, 19 UPPs have been established and the goal is to set up 21 more before the 2014 World Cup. Each UPP can cover several favelas. "We cannot stop regaining territory" from delinquents, said Rio state governor Sergio Cabral. "This program is planned and will be implemented... There is a plan for setting up 40 UPPs and this will be accomplished," he insisted. Press reports said the next target for occupation would be the Mare Complex, a cluster of 16 favelas home to some 130,000 people located near the international airport and the road leading to Sao Paulo. Many of the criminals who have fled pacified slums have taken refuge there. Several months ago, police occupied the Mangueira slum, enhancing security around the famed Maracana stadium, where the World Cup final will be played. On Monday, some 170 people began a thorough cleaning of Rocinha and neighboring slums, which is expected to last a week. The challenge for authorities is to improve trash collection in this labyrinth-like mini-city built on a hillside and to provide it with water, sanitation and lighting. "Rocinha is a city that grew in an unplanned manner, on a steep slope and with few access roads for trucks and equipment," Carlos Roberto Osorio, the municipal secretary for public services, told the daily O Globo. He conceded that a new blueprint to renovate it would require effort. After Sunday's assault, police found a makeshift cemetery in the tropical forest that surrounds the Chacara do Ceu shantytown overlooking the Atlantic. In Rocinha, they also located the homes of drug kingpins Antonio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, also known as Nem, and Sandro Luiz de Paula Amorim, also known as "Peixe". Both were arrested on Thursday as they tried to flee. On Monday, Rio authorities offered to reduce Nem's eventual sentence if he would cooperate with the probe into drug trafficking and police corruption in Rocinha and other shantytowns, Rio state public security secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame told Globo television. "Nem knows not only the "architecture of trafficking" but "also (police) corruption," he added. "We eagerly hope that he can give us whatever type of information so that we can put an end to this problem."