Leaders of Rio de Janeiro’s heavily armed drug gangs agree on at least one thing with the head of Brazil’s army: An ongoing military intervention cannot solve the soaring crime and violence that is roiling the seaside metropolis.
“Will the army break this cycle of violence?” asked a leader of the Red Command, Rio’s most powerful drug gang, on a recent weeknight as deputies weighed marijuana and cocaine on a digital scale in a slum from which they operate. “Not a chance.”
The comments, made to Reuters during a rare visit to leaders of Rio’s two most influential drug gangs, come two months after President Michel Temer deployed 30,000 troops here, saying organized crime had “taken over Rio de Janeiro.”
The gang leaders are admitted criminals wanted by police for their role in drug violence.
Their viewpoint, which Reuters sought in an effort to understand both sides of Rio’s violent divide, reveals organizations that are unapologetic for their criminal activities but not likely to attack a military they see as a temporary inconvenience, at worst.
“Nothing will change,” said a leader of the Pure Third Command, Rio’s second most powerful gang and the arch rivals of the Red Command. He said he may lie low during the intervention but his foot soldiers will keep selling drugs.
“I will return and get back to work when they leave,” he added.
Two months into the army’s 10-month deployment, this metropolitan area of more than 12 million people is even more tense than before – riven by the recent murder of a prominent city councilwoman and, days later, police killings of eight young men in Rocinha, Rio’s largest slum.
The killings add to a mounting toll of homicides that spiked after a recent recession gutted Brazil’s economy and Rio’s public security budget. In just three years, as police went unpaid and ill-equipped, violent deaths here surged 35 percent, according to state figures.
Now, even the head of Brazil’s army, General Eduardo Villas Boas, says Rio should not expect a quick fix for violence that pits underfunded police against drug gangs and paramilitary militias that control large swathes of the metropolitan region.
In March, the first full month with the army in charge of security, 191 violent deaths were reported within Rio city limits, a 24 percent increase from February. Police killings of suspects jumped 34 percent in the same period.
While the military will work to restructure police ranks and root out pockets of well-documented corruption, real solutions must be “extremely long term,” the general said during a March briefing. Rio’s problems stem from “decades and decades of neglect and not meeting the population’s basic needs,” he added.
