Culture is Our Weapon: AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio (Latin America Bureau Short Books) - Softcover

Neate, Patrick; Platt, Damien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1899365699 ISBN 13: 9781899365692

Publisher: Latin America Bureau, 2006

Synopsis

Culture is Our Weapon: AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio is a unique and remarkable book. It tells the story of this war through the eyes of both the protagonists and those it affects, revealing terrifying complexities of life on the frontline of one of the most damaging civil conflicts in Latin America.

About this title

About the Authors

Patrick Neate is the author of four novels. His book Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism in the US in 2005.

Damian Platt is Campaigner on Brazil at Amnesty International in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Culture is Our Weapon

AfroReggae in the Favelas of Rio

By Patrick Neate, Damian Platt, Sue Branford, Ralph Smith, Jean McNeil

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2006 Patrick Neate and Damian Platt
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-899365-69-2

Contents

Authors' note, vi, 
Preface, ix, 
1 Living in a War Zone, 1, 
2 The Cradle of Crime, 9, 
3 First Moves, 16, 
4 Rival Factions, 24, 
5 JB Tells his Story, 29, 
6 The Political Moment, 40, 
7 Funk, 48, 
8 Back in Alemão, 56, 
9 People and Perceptions, 64, 
10 The Factions, 73, 
11 Guerra, 82, 
12 How it Works, 93, 
13 The Police, 103, 
14 Three Survivors' Stories, 113, 
15 Trabalhadores or Traficantes, 126, 
16 Junior, 135, 
17 A Different Way, 143, 
18 The End of the Beginning, 154, 
Postscripts, 158, 
People and Places, 159, 
Further Information, 161, 

CHAPTER 1

Living in a War Zone

Leida

'Even New Year's Eve isn't safe. There are fireworks but there are lots of tiros too. My husband and 1 like to go up on the roof to see the view over São Conrado, but before midnight we go down to my mother-in-law's because we know there'll be shooting. So we begin our celebration on top and then, at five to twelve, we come down and wait – because there are moradores who've been hit by stray bullets at midnight.

'From inside the house you can't really watch anything at all. If you climb on a bathroom chair and peer out, you can just about see something. But even so, it's only taking a peek. You see some of the fireworks and they're pretty. But at the same time you see the tracer bullets flying to and fro and, in the end, you give up and try to get some sleep.'

Leida is intelligent and unassuming, her manner exhibiting that quiet patience and dignity that so often seem to accompany a tough life. Six years ago, she left her family in the northeastern state of Maranhao to migrate south in the hope of finding a well-paid job. To an extent her wishes have been fulfilled. She works as a domestic help for two households in the asfalto and earns a salary that, though a pittance by most standards, is more than reasonable compared with those of the north-east.

She has married a Carioca from Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro's largest and most famous favelas. They live on the first floor of her mother-in-law's house and, at weekends, her husband toils on the lajé building a second storey. This upward expansion is the most common manifestation of social mobility in Brazilian favelas. If you can't, or don't want to, leave the community, you construct more space for yourself and your extended family by going up. Consequently, many of Rio's favelas are dotted with houses three, four or even five storeys high. These are typically solid, colourfully painted buildings that boast tiled verandas offering shade and a view. The common perception of favelas as crudely-built shanty towns is often mistaken.

If Leida has ambitions for her home, she has ambitions for herself too. She doesn't want to spend her whole life getting up at the crack of dawn to earn a tiny wage cleaning up after the wealthy, and she's already spent a year and a half training as a surgical assistant.

Her only access to such an opportunity was to pay for a course herself; a course that takes 600 hours to complete. Unfortunately, only those hours spent in the operating theatre count towards the qualification, and Leida had to pay 50 Reais to the hospital each month for the privilege of her training. She worked at night, slept between operations, and returned to her housekeeping jobs during the day. It was an impossible schedule and, in the end, she was forced to quit, but she still hopes to complete the remaining 500 hours of her training one day.

The cobertura

It's a Saturday morning and we're sitting on the roof terrace of an apartment block in an affluent part of Rio, the hillside overlooking the world-famous Copacabana beach district, 15 minutes walk from Avenida Atlántica. This is where we're staying.

After several days rushing around with an estate agent to be shown nothing but claustrophobic bachelor pads – all tacky décor and far too many mirrors – we finally got lucky. Aurélio, another north-easterner now living in Rocinha, led us to a bright, airy and frankly enormous two-terraced penthouse that he looks after for its owner, a French theatre director. It happened to be available, and at a bargain price too. The only condition was that Leida would come in every day to water the plants and make breakfast. No problem.

The flat is a cobertura – the chic, upper middle-class equivalent of the lajé – high on the eleventh floor. Paradoxically, however, the height of the penthouse setting actually sets us cheek by jowl with the neighboring favela and all its noise and activity. This is a typical Rio irony.

This favela, Ladeira dos Tabajaras, clusters around the road which winds its way up the hillside behind the building. Every morning is greeted by a chorus of barking dogs and crowing cockerels. But that's just the beginning of the daily racket. Saturdays, for example, are dedicated to blasting forró and funk, while Sunday nights are taken over by the thundering drums of the samba school: its weekly practice sessions are becoming ever more enthusiastic in the months leading up to Carnival. Despite the refined surroundings of the cobertura, our ears belong to the favela.

One day at dawn, the dogs and cocks are drowned out by the sound of a helicopter that spends hours hovering over Tabajaras. It's a civil police machine overseeing some sort of operation on the ground. This is one of many such operations being carried out in the city in early November that are most likely related to the police killing of Bem-Te-Vi, the boss of drug trafficking in Rocinha. He was one of Rio's most wanted men.

Since Bem-Te-Vi's death, the police have undertaken a number of incursions into favelas dominated by drug factions that rival Amigos dos Amigos (ADA – Friends of Friends), the gang to which Bem-Te-Vi and, consequently, Rocinha belong. The purpose of these raids? To squash any plans by ADA's rivals to invade and take Rocinha and wrest control of its lucrative drug trade.

Over breakfast we read the news. Bem-Te-Vi's immediate successor, named in the newspapers as 'Soul', has been killed by fellow members of ADA, the victim of an internal dispute – some 'friends'. Rio's papers follow each step in the unravelling drama as if it were a soap opera, and the sub-plots come thick and fast. Now, Bem-Te-Vi's patricinha girlfriend is arrested and photographed for the front pages. Now, Rio's Public Security Secretary poses ghoulishly for the cameras brandishing the dead drug lord's gold-plated Uzi. Now, and most bizarrely, a group of men gathering jaca fruit cause panic in a road tunnel near Rocinha when motorists assume they are a gang of armed traficantes. Dozens of cars are abandoned mid-tunnel and the men are seized by the cops along with the sacks and knives they were using to cut jaca.

The terrified atmosphere – all rumour and counter-rumour – owes much to concern that the death of Bem-Te-Vi will reignite last year's turf war between Rocinha and the neighbouring favela of Vidigal. In April 2004, Dudu, head of trafficking in Vidigal, led some 70 men in an attempt to take over drug sales in Rocinha. Numerous civilians were killed during several days of fighting, first between the two factions, then between those two factions and the police, 1,000 of whom were deployed in a belated attempt to control the violence. Dudu's attack took place two months after Rocinha residents petitioned the state authorities, saying they expected just such an invasion by traffickers from Vidigal any day. Their appeals for protection had been ignored.

Bulletins from the frontline

Most mornings Leida provides us with an update from Rocinha which we try to digest with our coffee and fresh papaya. Her calm testimony provides a fascinating and disturbing counterpoint to the newspapers' hyperbole. Today, for example, she describes the Sunday night they killed Soul, the way the shooting began in the upper half – parte alta – of the favela.

'We didn't know what was happening at first. I called my husband and we went to lie down on the floor in the kitchen. You're safer there because it puts two sets of walls between you and the bullets. So we grab what we can and run to the kitchen. If there isn't enough time to get to the kitchen, we hide underneath the shower in the bathroom. It's a horrible feeling and nowadays it's happening more and more often.

'We heard them running past shouting "vamos matar", letting everyone know it wasn't the police. When I heard that, 1 shivered with fear because 1 thought it must be another invasion [by a rival faction]. From time to time the shooting stopped, then started again. It went on for an hour and a half. When we were almost asleep, we went back into the bedroom with our backs aching. We'd been in the kitchen for two hours in all.'

Leida tells us that because of the internal dispute, people are saying that there are many members of Soul's group who've fled or gone into hiding. Her neighbour has a son who was affiliated to Soul and he's disappeared. The other night ten traficantes went into this neighbour's house. Some of them were wearing masks but the neighbour knew exactly who they were since they used to work alongside her son. She told them she didn't know where he was. They said that if they found him he was dead. They claimed he owed them money and his mother didn't have enough to pay. 'In the end', Leida says bluntly, "what they're doing is asking the mother for money not to kill the son.'

As Leida talks, her eloquence grows and she gives a fascinating insight into life in the midst of Rio's drug war: 'I'll never get used to living like this. I've been here for six years but, before the war, Rocinha was the favela where everyone wanted to live. It was peaceful – shoot-outs were rare and it was calm. You used to be proud to say you lived in Rocinha. Now 1 can't tell some people that this is where I come from.

'I have a friend I can't even go and see. She lives near here in Ladeira das Tabajaras which is controlled by the Comando Vermelho, and there's no way I can go to her house. If they find out I'm from Rocinha and they don't like it, they could beat her up or expel her from the favela. I'm even frightened to take a bus that goes past favelas run by other factions. If I want to meet my friend we have to meet elsewhere; and I'm her daughter's godmother. She comes from Maranhão too – people arrive from the north-east all the time. For everyone that leaves Rocinha, two arrive. When there's a war, people move out, rent out their houses and so on. Other people move in and, if there's no fighting going on, they'll have the illusion that things will get better tomorrow.'

As Leida tells her story there is a rapid series of loud bangs from the hillside behind the fiat. It sounds like a dozen doors being slammed in quick succession. 'Tiros', she says, lifting a finger in the air. There are a few moments of quiet and then – BANG BANG BANG BANG – the bullets are flying again. 'They must be testing some new weapons,' she shrugs and smiles. The automatic gunfire, directly level with the plush cobertura, continues intermittently for a few minutes.

'I don't think there's anything good about o tráfico. You can't have a child because you're scared they'll get involved. You can't keep an eye on them all the time – you'd have to keep them in the house and you'd both end up as prisoners. My husband and I have talked about it a lot but we're not ready for all that yet. For instance, your child goes to school but you don't know what happens on the way from school to the house because you're out at work. So your kid could become a filho do tráfico. This happens a lot. You see ten-year-old kids with guns. A traficante might be in a bar, drinking and hanging out, and he'll give the kid a gun. And that kid feels like he's something. Then they'll ask him to run a message or deliver some money. The kid becomes an aviãozinho. That's it, he's in.

'My mother-in-law has a grandson who is seven years old. It's frightening. Below my house, there's a little bar. One day a traficante called him over. Luckily my husband was there and he was able to say no. My husband grew up in Rocinha and he knows most of them. That's the only time it might be beneficial to know a traficante.

'Say one of them is rude to you, you can go to another one you know who can speak to the boss. And the boss will tell the rude guy that if he carries on behaving like that he could die or be punished. So there's an advantage in knowing the traficantes in some situations but, even so, if they weren't there in the first place you wouldn't need to, would you?

'Many mothers are scared because of this. They're also scared of all the shooting and stray bullets. Their kids could be playing outside and all it takes is one bullet to finish someone's dreams. It must be very sad. And it's difficult for the mothers of traffickers too. Because no mother wants their kid to get involved. The trafficker might get killed by the police, another faction or even his own.

'My mother-in-law lost a son. He was killed by the guys he worked with. In fact, he'd already quit trafficking but he knew too much. So they came back and killed him, even though she'd been to the boss in person to ask him to forbid it.'

We've told Leida why we're in Rio; that we're writing a book about AfroReggae. Perhaps this is why she's so frank with us. She knows about AfroReggae and their work and she asks if it's true that their bands are made up of ex-soldados. We tell her that, yes, some members of the bands and other people working in the organisation did work in the tráfico in the past. Leida has one other question: 'When they get out of trafficking and go into AfroReggae, do they manage to stay out?'

CHAPTER 2

The Cradle of Crime

History

There are some 600 favelas in Rio de Janeiro housing around a third of the city's six million inhabitants. In some ways they bear comparison with illegal shanty towns the world over, the inevitable by-products of urbanisation as people from around the country seek employment in the big city, alienated communities both excluded from and exploited by the 'city proper'. In several crucial respects, however, the favelas reflect both the unique history – recent and long past – and the unique present of Rio and, indeed, Brazil.

To many people's continued anger, the favelas are permanent settlements. Sure, you will come across the occasional ramshackle slum that looks like it might blow away with the first breath of wind, and, sure, many communities' sewer systems (or lack thereof) are far from ideal. But typically you're more likely to be struck by the sophistication of infrastructure than its absence. Favelas, for example, have running water and electricity (in the overwhelming majority of cases pirated from the national grid) and are characterised by solid houses, longstanding businesses and, in some cases, a flourishing (presumably illicit) market in real estate.

Accepted history tells us that the first favela was Morro da Providência in the centre of the city, which was colonised by a band of soldiers returning from the Canudos campaign in 1897. Fed up with waiting for free housing promised by the government, these soldiers built a community of their own.

Canudos, deep in the inhospitable interior of Bahia in the north-east of Brazil, was a settlement founded by a religious mystic known as Antdnio the Counsellor, who gathered thousands of followers around him to declare independence from and resistance to the national government. It is somehow a very Brazilian irony that the remnants of the army that squashed AntOnio the Counsellor's rebellion should have been the ones to found the first favelas: communities that, exactly like Canudos, are the direct consequence of state neglect.

Indeed, it is arguable that Rio's favelas are the best physical expression of the divisions at the very heart of Brazil: historical divisions between rich and poor, black and white, slave and slave-owner, and a native and African heritage juxtaposed with a European dream of modernity.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the mayor of Rio, Pereira Passos, launched an ambitious redevelopment plan for the city. Nicknamed 'the Tropical Haussman', Passos set about widening streets and knocking down unsanitary tenements in an attempt to rid the city of the epidemics (particularly yellow fever) that had long plagued it and create a modern and sophisticated capital worthy of the young republic.

But Passos's plans made no provision for Rio's working classes, a large number of whom were left homeless. What else could they do but take to the unwanted spaces, in particular the rocky outcrops that punctuate the landscape?

As is the case in all societies where the poverty gap is an unbridgeable chasm, the Brazilian state can be seen, both historically and today, as protector of the elite against the threat of the common man rather than protector of the rights of the individual. Only in Rio, however, do favelas loom above the city proper like cancers on its conscience.

These days, the most important characteristic of the favelas is that, in the absence of the state, almost everyone is controlled, supported and exploited by one of the city's drug factions, highly organised criminal armies that have evolved since the late 1970s. And few favelas bear the scars of this relationship more obviously than Vigário Geral. Vigário was once the headquarters of Rio's oldest and biggest faction, the Comando Vermelho. It is also the birthplace of AfroReggae.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Culture is Our Weapon by Patrick Neate, Damian Platt, Sue Branford, Ralph Smith, Jean McNeil. Copyright © 2006 Patrick Neate and Damian Platt. Excerpted by permission of Practical Action Publishing Ltd.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Latin America Bureau
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1899365699
• ISBN 13: 9781899365692
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 174