Rio Gringa

Back to the Future: The Fear Fueling Brazil's Crisis

Brazilians don't want history to repeat itself, but no one's coming to the rescue to turn things around.

The circus/impeachment vote in Brazil's lower house on April 17. Photo: PRB Nacional/Creative Commons

Two dead bodies lay on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, as beachgoers play soccer and walk by, unfazed. It’s hard to shock a Carioca. The two men had died when a nearly four-month-old bike path — built by a company under scrutiny for shoddy engineering and possible corruption — collapsed after getting hit by a strong wave, sending the two Cariocas into the sea and to their deaths.

#FOTO - Sad holiday in Rio - At least two people were killed after the collapse of a new elevated bike path pic.twitter.com/nAE1CkyK26

— Felipe Dana (@felipedana) April 21, 2016

This, in a state that's now so broke that it's stopped paying pensioners and has delayed salaries for half a million public-sector workers, leading dozens of categories of professionals to go on strike, from police to doctors. That also includes teachers, meaning around 50,000 students in the state are out of class — while at the same time, a movement is spreading with students occupying 65 schools to protest the abominable state of public education. 

This, in a state where in the favelas, even in the so-called "pacified" ones, gun violence rages on, and sometimes spills over into the city's wealthy neighborhoods. Muggings are still a part of life. The picturesque Baía de Guanabara is still filled with sewage and garbage, as disgusting as ever after authorities failed on their promises, for the umpteenth time, to clean it up. 

#Rio's Museum of Tomorrow....with rubbish of today..the future, really? (Portuguese) https://t.co/Sir0DKT2JS pic.twitter.com/5hW3wor5KH

— Gary Duffy (@Duffygary) April 30, 2016

This, in the Olympic City less than 100 days away from the games. Is this the Rio of the 1990s, or 2016?

Rio's broken promises and local crises are a microcosm of what’s happening throughout the country, as an economic and political crisis makes Brazil’s current situation seem in some ways like a blast from the past. Another impeachment, another bust after the boom.

And that’s what’s helping drive the partisan divide, an underlying current in the impeachment debate. Many Brazilians are terrified to go back to the way things were. (That excludes some in the elite and a minority who support military rule who wouldn't mind going back to how things used to be.)

In the political realm, both members of the government and opposition are now using the word “coup” to describe scenarios that would hurt them: impeachment and new elections, respectively. 

The word “golpe” is a loaded term in Brazil and evokes the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964–1985. It brings to mind torture, disappearances, and censorship. It also evokes media manipulation that helped support the dictatorship, and with today’s media bias, some argue not much has changed in that particular area. 

Impeachment isn’t a new concept in Brazil’s relatively young democracy — there was a presidential impeachment in the 1990s — but by framing the debate in this manner, it fires people up, especially on the left.

On the other hand, many Brazilians don’t want to go back to a time when corruption flourished with impunity, when there was no accountability, when politicians could literally get away with murder. Arguably, corruption is still a major problem, but between the mensalão trial, the Car Wash investigation, and new transparency and corruption-fighting measures, there’s hope things are improving, if slowly.

Another fear is that of poverty and economic decline. Candidates and political flacks fed the fear of regression during the last election, which have persisted during the impeachment process. The government stoked fears that the opposition would eliminate social programs and hurt the poor. (Ironically, the economic crisis forced that same government to cut or reduce some of those programs.) Bolsa Familia, the most important program, is still intact, but the government claims the opposition will do away with it if Dilma is impeached.

Meanwhile, riding the wave of anti-corruption excitement, some in the opposition marketed themselves as the “patriotic choice” during the last election. So did those lawmakers who support impeachment — they framed a yes vote as the patriotic thing to do, alleging a route for change, for moving ahead.

So with the slow-motion implosion of the country’s institutions and economy, there’s a fear that Brazil is cursed to repeat its past. And that’s not an unreasonable fear.

While poverty decreased in the last decade, bringing millions into the new middle class, the crisis is sending millions back into poverty. There’s already talk of another so-called “lost decade,” with the recession predicted to continue. 

2013-2023 vai ser a década perdida da minha geração (tempo que, com sorte, PIBpc vai levar para voltar ao pico) pic.twitter.com/wKnySH2HE9

— Drunkeynesian (@drunkeynesian) April 28, 2016

Zika is getting all the headlines, but Brazil is also battling a dengue epidemic and a swine flu outbreak; both disease are more likely to kill those infected. Several states are broke, not just Rio, and more could follow. The pre-salt oil bonanza hasn't quite come to fruition, especially given low oil prices and the scandal rocking Petrobras. 

While the country’s distracted by the impeachment process, Congress is pushing controversial legislation, from trying to roll back the country’s landmark net neutrality law to literally attempting to abolish environmental compliance for public works.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This time, it was supposed to be different.

There’s a tired trope that Brazil is the country of the future. But in the early 2000s, after Lula was elected to office and the country stood poised to ride the commodities boom, there was a sense that change was here to stay: economic growth, institutional stability, millions leaving poverty, and Brazil as a global player. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, this time Brazil would finally break the cycle. Now, maybe Brazil would be a so-called “serious country.”**

On the surface, like a fresh coat of paint, it looked like positive change was there to stay. But underneath, in the foundation, some things stayed the same. Especially politics.

As Brazil’s late rock star Cazuza once sang: “Eu vejo o futuro repetir o passado/Eu vejo um museu de grandes novidades/O tempo não para.” [“I see the future repeating the past. I see a museum of great novelties. Time doesn’t stop.”]*

 

So who can stop history from repeating itself?

That's the problem with the political crisis, and Brazilian politics in general. There is no truly new leadership waiting in the wings, and like zombies, even the most reviled politicians often come back.

Surveys show that a majority of Brazilians support impeachment, but a majority also support getting rid of Vice President Michel Temer, who will take over if the president is removed from office. Eduardo Cunha, the man third in line of succession, is under investigation on multiple corruption charges, and is widely hated by the Brazilian public, yet is still holding on as president of the lower house of Congress. The fourth in line, Renan Calheiros, has come under fire for corruption multiple times, yet is still somehow president of the Senate. 

Given these realities, a survey found that more than 60 percent of Brazilians support new elections as a solution to the crisis.

The desire for new elections is also understandable after the embarrassing display in Congress broadcast live last month, when representatives from the Chamber of Deputies cast their votes for impeachment with singing, spitting, confetti cannons, and a long list of reasons that had nothing to do with the charges against the president. Plus, around 60 percent of members of Congress face charges of their own, ranging from corruption to even homicide.

But with no new political class, who could not only rescue the country from the abyss, but also really bring about change? And this doesn’t just include the presidency, but Congress, too. And without political reform, how can the system really change?

The answer is that new elections would likely bring many of the usual suspects. After all, some of the country’s most corrupt or disgraced politicians still grace the houses of Congress — including the president impeached in the 1990s and a politician wanted by Interpol, among others. 

In the latest polls for a potential 2018 presidential race, the top names in contention are Lula (who already served two terms and whose reputation took a hit during the current crisis), Marina Silva (who lost in the last presidential election), Congressman Jair Bolsonaro (a far right-wing politician with a neo-Nazi flair), Aécio Neves (who narrowly lost the last presidential election and stands accused of several corruption charges), and Geraldo Alckmin (governor of São Paulo whose approval rating is around 30 percent).

So this month we’re likely to see Temer, a typical, old-school politician — sometimes described as the butler from a horror movie — take over during the trial phase of impeachment. That means one of the country’s most reviled politicians will become VP, unless the Supreme Court intervenes. Meanwhile, Congress continues to chip away at progress, one bill at a time.

They say you get the government you deserve. But as Brazilians say, ninguém merece. Nobody deserves this.

*Maybe he had a vision of the Museum of Tomorrow?

**O Brasil não é um país sério, or Brazil isn’t a serious country, is a phrase Brazilians throw around when they get down on their country. It's often wrongly attributed to French President Charles de Gaulle, but it originally came from a Brazilian: Carlos Alves de Souza Filho, Brazil’s ambassador to France from 1956 to 1964. The diplomat uttered the phrase during an informal, off-the-record discussion with de Gaulle in Paris, and a Brazilian journalist in the room wrote down the now infamous saying. It’s also symbolic of the so-called “mutt complex” in which Brazilians are super critical of their homeland, but are also sensitive to foreigners who voice those same critiques.

Q&A with Papo Reto's Raull Santiago

Santiago and Papo Reto.

Papo Reto, or Straight Talk, is a group of citizen journalists in Rio de Janeiro documenting life in the Complexo do Alemão favela. They were responsible for exposing the circumstances surrounding the death of 10-year-old Eduardo de Jesus, shot and killed by police in April, and they've been especially effective using video to reveal police abuses, working with Witness and gaining international acclaim. Next month, Al Jazeera is slated to release a documentary about the group.

I met one of the group's founders, Raull Santiago, while he was in New York for a Witness panel and the international launch of Cufa. Later, he told me more about the group and its future.

 Why was Papo Reto created?

 Papo Reto happened naturally and became a collective around March 2014. At the end of 2013, there were really strong rains in Rio de Janeiro. Here in Complexo do Alemão, many homes were destroyed. People in the favela involved in social issues worked together and managed to help families with everything they needed after the disaster. After that, people went back to work. Me and so many others were concerned about social issues and trying to help out in some way. So we saw the potential of working together as a team to help people who lost their homes. Some people continued working together and we became the Papo Reto collective. Papo Reto was born from the idea of the strength we had working together.

What's the role of Whatsapp in the work you do?

The role of "zapzap" and so many other tools and social networks are essential, since it's through them that we communicate in real time, and often in strategic ways about everything happening in the favela. Our Whatsapp groups are popular resistance groups, guerrilla communication, collective protection.

What do you consider Papo Reto's greatest achievement?

We're not seeking achievements, but rather collective advances. We're less than two years old, but through our work we've already put Complexo do Alemão on the map in a real way. We've done this showing the violation of rights as well as showing what's positive in the favela. Our importance is being able to bring the name of Complexo do Alemão to the world and have an impact to be able to transform our reality in a positive way. Achievement means having more and more people learning about us through multimedia, and multiplying this knowledge and potential.

Policeman filming an Alemão protest.

The group has received threats due to your work. What kind of daily risks do you face?

The majority of people in Papo Reto received at least five threats, all of them, unfortunately, from public security agents; in other words, the police. The biggest risks are having false evidence used against us, or being kidnapped by the police, or being shot and killed based on the simple fact that we exposed the violent and wrong ways that public (in)security forces use in the favela.

What are your plans for the group's future?

Continue working with communication. But we don't have a base or headquarters, even a small one, to hold meetings, store equipment, or hold workshops that require certain material, so that's a goal. Our big plan is to multiply the methodologies and techniques we've been learning to show the reality of young people who live in conflict zones, prejudice, racism, and other abuses.

Images used with permission from Papo Reto.

Juliana Barbassa's "Dancing with the Devil in the City of God"

Juliana Barbassa is a person I've known through the grapevine for years since she arrived in Rio as the Associated Press correspondent. I didn't meet her in person until two years ago, when I was in Rio at the tail end of the massive street protests. I was fascinated by her trajectory and her unique eye for reporting in Brazil.

Barbassa was born in Brazil, but grew up all over the world because of her dad's oil company job, living not only in Rio but also in Iraq, Malta, Libya, Spain, France, and the United States. She went to UT Austin for undergrad and to UC Berkeley for graduate school. She joined the AP in 2003, and became the AP Rio correspondent in 2010.

Back in 2013, Barbassa was kind enough to invite me over to her beautiful home in Flamengo, where I also met her dad and now-husband Christopher Gaffney, every Rio journalist's favorite curmudgeon and one of the top experts on global mega-events. We talked about the protests and the World Cup and Barbassa's career and what it was like to go from writing for a wire service to writing her first book. We also talked about her experience going to grad school for journalism, which in retrospect I credit her for inspiring me to do.

That meeting confirmed what I suspected: that Barbassa is someone special when it comes to understanding Brazil and being able to translate its cultural idiosyncrasies. She's able to capture the nuances of a native while also providing the perspective of an outsider.

And now, finally, you can see the result of Barbassa's hard work with her new book, coming out July 28. (Pre-order your copy of the book here.) Below, see my impressions of the book, my Q&A with the author, and when you can meet Barbassa during her book tour.

My Thoughts on the Book

Called Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro on the Brink, the book explores what's been happening in Rio over the last few years in a way that I really think has never been captured as well as she does. The reporting is incredibly deep and thorough, from poring through documents to an exhausting number of hours spent in the field.

Overall, the book is exquisitely written, a blend of a memoir and some of the best reporting you will find on Rio de Janeiro. Some parts are heart-wrenching (see the chapter on the mudslides), and some parts are laugh-out-loud funny (don't miss the anecdote about the Mexican entrepreneur and how he got his Brazilian visa.)

Not only does she get into the nitty gritty of security, gentrification, evictions, environmental degradation, and mega-event preparation, but she digs deep into the history of Rio's ongoing conflict. She revealed things that were new even to me, including a Rio policy that helped drive killings by police.This book should be required reading for any journalist who plans on covering the 2016 Olympics.

And instead of devoting a whole chapter to 500 years of Brazilian history, as is common in English-language non-fiction books about Brazil, she elegantly weaves historical facts into the narrative about what's happening now. And when she explores historical sites few people even know about it, you feel like you're there with her.

Barbassa combines the reporting with her own story of living in Brazil and around the world, making it an even more intriguing read. (Warning: if you have ever lived in Brazil, her chapter on trying to find an apartment may give you PTSD flashbacks.)

And even though during her time in Rio she went from being single to getting married, her relationship isn't part of the book. For this I really admire her, since this is usually a big part of female-written memoir-style books. It's clear that her time in Rio was a personal journey about coming to terms with her birthplace.

In other words, read this book ASAP.

Meet Juliana

Barbassa and Gaffney are now living in Switzerland, but Barbassa is heading to  the U.S. for a book tour this month. Meet Barbassa and get a signed copy of the book on the following dates:

• JULY 29: Porter Square Bookstore, Cambridge, MA
• AUGUST 4: The BookMark Shoppe, Brooklyn, NY
• AUGUST 5: Americas Society, New York, NY
• AUGUST 7: Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL

 Q&A with Juliana Barbassa

What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching the book?

I was taken back by the early history of the Comando Vermelho. When I first became aware of the gang in the late 1980s, they were already a powerful, violent entity making headlines with boastful interviews, a cinematic prison escape, or bloody confrontations with police. But they had that motto, Peace, Justice and Liberty. It seemed incongruent.

Reading about the gang’s early days in the Ilha Grande prison from books like “Quatrocentos Contra Um” or Carlos Amorim’s “Comando Vermelho” made me curious about the environment that shaped these men and their aspirations. I sought out those who were there or remember that time, like the Professor, dug for old news clippings, and finally, searched what’s left of the uncategorized prison archives, trying to understand who they were, how they lived, what influenced their thinking.

 

In particular, I spent hours going through daily prison logs, fascinated by the the minutia of everyday life in this terrible place - who fought with whom, which prisoners were punished for smoking marijuana, gambling, fighting, what there was to eat, what each man brought with him when he came in, who got visits. Much of it was mundane and unvarying, but the accumulation of details made them, their needs, their cells more real.

I enjoyed most the occasional finds that came from from the hands of the prisoners themselves -- a crude playing card made from the page of an encyclopedia, part of a seized deck, that was stuck inside one of the thick log books; the letters from inmates to those on the outside. The best examples of those were in the little museum that now exists on the site of the demolished prison: they have missives written by gang members on the inside asking their ‘brothers’ for some help with the prisoners’ Christmas celebration. These things were reminders of a time when the Comando Vermelho was an entirely different creature.

Was there a part that got cut that you especially liked?

Of course! There were long sections cut out to streamline the story. Within them were characters who deserved whole chapters to themselves -- in another book. One of my favorites was the section about Flávia Froes, an attorney whose list of clients reads like a who’s-who of Rio’s drug traffic dating back to the 1990s. She dredges up references to class warfare to frame the conflict between the state and gang members convicted in horrific murders.

But she’s not a lefty, bleeding heart sort; she’s tough, and she plays her over-the-top Carioca sexy to the hilt. The first time we met she was picking her way around crack users in trash-strewn alleys wearing six-inch stiletto heels, rhinestone studded jeans and a corset, her long blond hair swaying down to the middle of her back. But when we made our way to the heavily-armed dealers standing guard over tables stacked with baggies of crack, they respected her: it was all, “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am.” What makes her interesting as a person, and as a character, is that you’re left wondering how far she would be willing to go -- how far she has gone -- for her clients.

During the days of chaos that preceded the take-over of the Complexo do Alemão, when someone was carrying orders from imprisoned gang leaders to their soldiers on the outside, a judge ordered her arrest. Forty officers and a helicopter were sent out, but she got wind of it and went on the lam without a computer or a cell phone, untraceable. Later the charges were dropped for lack of proof, and Flavia was back, jaunty as ever, but there are many who never got over their doubts.

How did the book-writing experience compare to your work with the AP?

Daily news has specific requirements -- you work under deadline, keep your articles short and to the point. That’s the nature of news. It often meant having to do grab-and-run interviews, leaving before the conversation got really interesting; other times it simply meant leaving much of the nuance out of the final article.

My motivations for writing this book were many, but at the core was a desire for more time to report and more space to write. This came, in part, from my relationship to Rio. I wanted to bring the city to readers, but I also wanted to get into it myself, really get into it. Covering the city as a correspondent gave me breadth of experiences; reporting the book allowed me to return to the same person or place and see various layers. It gave me depth.

What do you miss most about living in Rio?

Living with my windows wide open all the time, except when it stormed. But then I miss the spectacle of those extravagant summer downpours. Friends and family, of course, particularly my nieces and nephews. The açaí from Tacacá do Norte in Flamengo. All the fruit. And the fresh fruit juice. The sweet man with the white handlebar mustache who sold vegetables at the farmers’ market in front of my building, and greeted me with a hug and a kiss every week. Running on the sand. The weather. I even miss the heat!

If you could write another book, what would it be?

I have some ideas. We’ll see!

Images courtesy of Juliana Barbassa.

Rio's Olympics Legacy: What Can't Be Fixed Overnight

Ever since I started writing about Rio de Janeiro, this is one of the most common questions I'd get from prospective visitors and expats: "Is Rio a war zone?"

My immediate answer is no, but the real answer is more complicated.

Rio is not a war zone in the sense of Syria or Yemen. And like other major cities in the Americas, much of the violent crime affects the poorest residents. Tourists aren't going to see tanks rolling down the street in Ipanema, and the typical foreign visitor is unlikely to see an exchange of gunfire.

But it's undeniable that armed conflicts in the city's favelas and suburbs between police, drug traffickers, and militias that developed over decades aren't going away.

April protest in Complexo do Alemão. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

 

Stray Bullets and Police Killings

That's become clear in the last few weeks, as five people were killed in 24 hours in one of the city's largest favelas, Complexo do Alemão. The community had suffered through three months straight of shoot-outs every day.

One of the victims was a mother shot by a stray bullet in her own home; her teenage daughter was also injured. Another case was that of a 10-year-old boy shot in the head by a policeman. His parents, who say police also threatened them, packed up and left Rio, returning to their home state of Piauí.

In Brazil, police kill an average of 6 people a day.

Plus, stray bullet injuries and killings, once a scourge during the 1990s, are ticking up again this year. It's literally a laundry list.

Last week, a 16-year-old girl biking in the West Zone neighborhood of Jacarépagua was killed by a stray bullet, caught in the crossfire between rival drug gangs.

In March, a 63-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet in Del Castilho, and a 10-year-old flying a kite in the North Zone neighborhood of Engenho da Rainha was seriously injured by a stray bullet.

In  February, a girl was shot in the leg on a main street in Copacabana, and three days later, a three-year-old was shot in the spine by a stray bullet in the North Zone.

The Complexo do Alemão killing of the 10-year-old boy, Eduardo Ferreira, shook the city. A military policeman admitted he likely fired the fatal shots, and had a nervous breakdown. Rio's governor later confirmed this "mistake" the police made.

It's another sign that the state's pacification strategy remains to make long-term gains. The governor confessed that he doesn't expect peace in Alemão for at least 10 to 15 years, and that pacification is a "permanent process."

Deaths of children at the hands of police is nothing new in Rio. Between 2003 and 2012, 60 percent of Brazilian police murders of children took place in Rio state. Prior to 2011, forensics weren't even required in cases of killings by police, until the Juan case happened.

Never-ending Turf Battles

In 1999, the documentary Noticías de uma guerra particular, which is sometimes translated as News from a Private War or News from a Personal War, was released. It's an essential watch to understand the dynamics and history of Rio's armed conflict. This is a deeply entrenched conflict, and a government security presence is not enough to resolve it.

 

Over a decade later, the pacification strategy has yet to find a way to permanently rid the city of organized crime groups, including drug traffickers and militias. Some just get displaced to other areas, or new players pop up.

This is not a band-aid fix that can happen in a year, even if violence is temporarily on hold during the Olympics.

The Good News

Community media, including Voz da Comunidade, Coletivo Papo Reto, Fala Roça, and others are making it impossible to ignore what's happening in the city's favelas. Through live coverage on social media, eyewitness videos and photos, and daily reports from the ground, the government can't hide abuses and is under greater pressure to address community struggles with violence.

Protests following Eduardo's death were covered around the world, and put pressure on the government to sit down with Alemão residents.

Alemão protest this month. Image: Voz da Comunidade.

Rio's "Olympic legacy" is unlikely to include a permanent security fix. And if you attend the games, you're not likely to have to face this kind of violence. But those who call Rio home will.

Stopgap Trash Clean-up Stalls in Rio's Guanabara Bay

One of the big concerns ahead of Rio's 2016 Olympics is whether the city's waterways will be cleaned up enough to safely hold water sports events, such as sailing, rowing and swimming. The truth is that the Olympics were an opportunity to address a decades-old problem and to find sustainable solutions so that Cariocas themselves can enjoy their cities beaches, bay and lagoons without fearing skin diseases, gastrointestinal problems, or crashing into rusting refrigerators.

That prospect is looking even more unlikely.

Last month, Rio Governor Luiz Fernando Pezão insisted the city is on target to reach its Olympic clean-up goal, after another official said it wouldn't be possible. Pezão says 80 percent of the city's sewage will be treated by mid-2016, and claims Rio is already treating nearly 50 percent.

These comments came shortly before the state environmental agency launched an investigation into a massive fish die-off in the bay, with thousands of twaite shad floating in the water. (A similar die-off occurred in November 2014, which some specialists attributed to the region's drought.)

Treating sewage is one of the major goals of the clean-up, but so is preventing 80 to 100 tons of garbage from entering the bay every single day. Two stopgap measures to address this as part of the Olympics clean-up effort include eco-boats, tasked with trawling and removing trash from waterways, and eco-barriers, lines of floating plastic in the city's rivers to stop the flow of trash into the ocean and lagoons.

But even those efforts are faltering, according to a report in yesterday's O Globo.

According to the newspaper, the state government stopped paying the eco-boat operators, and they have ceased working altogether. The 10 eco-boats are able to remove around 45 tons of trash per month. The government is about four months behind in payments, and owes around half a million reais. The eco-boat's contract with the government is estimated at R$1.8 million for 2015.

Plus, the city's supermarket association was sponsoring the eco-barrier efforts, but it pulled the funding. As a result, of the 14 eco-barrier structures operating in 2012, there are only 7 left. In 2012, the barriers were capturing up to 900 tons of trash a month; now, it's only 150 tons per month.

Image: An eco-boat in Rio. Rio government/public domain from the Programa de Saneamento dos Municípios do Entorno da Baía de Guanabara.

A Tale of Two Traffic Stops

In the last few weeks in Rio, two different people passed through police checkpoints at two different places in the city. The consequences of these traffic stops reveal the city's social divisions, which in this case was a matter of life and death.

First, a video went viral this month after an irate driver flipped out on a police officer in Rio de Janeiro. It's a clear-cut of example of the "do you know who you're talking to?" attitude of the elite.

On January 30, Rio police tried to pull over a car as a part of a routine traffic stop in the city's West Zone. The driver, 50-year-old Ana Maria Lucas de Souza, refused, and police followed her for over a mile until she finally stopped. She then proceeded to scream at one of the cops and talk loudly on her cell phone. The police officer filmed the incident, which has tens of thousands of views on Youtube and across the web, as the video inspired ridicule and memes on social networks.

 

"I'm an architect! I can't be arrested," the driver yells in the video. She even tries to grab the camera out of the policeman's hand, and tells the cop: "I'm older than you." When the officer says he's going to tell his supervisor, she tries to pull rank, saying that she knows the higher-ups from working on government building projects. She was charged with contempt and is getting sued by the police officer for moral damages.

In one meme circulating around the web, a photo of the woman appears with the text: "I'm an architect. I'm working on projects for several UPPs [police pacification units]." Then what follows are images of what the government said UPPs would look like, gleaming modern structures, and then what many wound up looking like, which is shipping containers.

Meanwhile, across the city on February 8, another motorist wasn't so lucky. Mototaxi driver Diego da Costa Algarve, age 22, was shot and killed by police after he didn't stop his bike during a traffic stop in the Vila Cruzeiro favela. Some social media users pointed out the hypocrisy of the two incidents.

The shooting caused tensions to run high in the community, sparking protests in Vila Cruzeiro and during the victim's burial. Schools and businesses even shut down and around 100 mototaxi drivers demonstrated on Avenida Brasil this week. Rio State Secretary José Mariano Beltrame admitted the killing was wrong, and called it "disastrous." The homicide is now under investigation.

Bandidos Mortos: Which Brazilians Are Condemned to Die?

In Brazil, there's a saying: "Bandido bom é bandido morto." A good criminal is a dead criminal. It's the kind of perspective that forms when under the constant threat of violent crime. Though the death penalty is banned in Brazil, killings of alleged, assumed, and accused criminals happen often. More often than not, victims of extrajudicial murders, particularly at the hands of police, are black and poor. When a white, middle class person becomes the victim, it's a different story.

This issue came to the fore this week when a man named Marco Archer became the first Brazilian national to be executed abroad. The 53-year-old convicted of drug trafficking in Indonesia died by firing squad. President Dilma Rousseff herself appealed to her Indonesian counterpart on humanitarian grounds, but her request for clemency was denied. Brazil recalled its ambassador from Jakarta, and Rousseff said there would be diplomatic consequences.

The failed appeal wasn't just an effort to save a fellow citizen. Brazil bans the death penalty, and maximum prison sentences are capped at 30 years. By law, Brazil will not extradite foreigners who will face a life sentence or a death sentence in their country of origin. In Archer's case, the Brazilian government asked for his extradition so he could serve his jail sentence in Brazil.

Archer was a confessed criminal. He was a seasoned international drug trafficker who began hauling cocaine and other drugs in the 1980s across Latin America, the United States, Europe, and Indonesia. He grew up middle class in Rio's Ipanema neighborhood, and was a professional hang glider. As he began trafficking, he became a playboy, traveling the world and living large. But at one point, he got into a bad accident while hang gliding, ending in a long recovery and expensive hospital bills. So he went on a new smuggling trip to Indonesia, where he was arrested in 2003.

In a 2005 interview with a Brazilian journalist, he proudly said: "I've never paid income taxes, I've never had a checkbook, I never served in the army. I only voted once in my life, for Collor, a family friend." On his storied trafficking career, he said: "I've never had another job in my life."

----

The execution has divided Brazilians. Some say he deserved it, along the lines of bandido bom, bandido morto school of thought. Others have expressed outrage from a human rights perspective. Amnesty International Brazil Executive Director Atila Roque told Reuters:

"The impression that Indonesia is giving to the world is that the country is moving backwards, that it is decidedly willing to disrespect something which is so important for the world today. The world is moving forwards in reducing, suspending and halting the executions, and Indonesia is saying 'no.'"

Meanwhile, Brazilian writer Alex Castro wrote on Facebook:

"Dear Brazilian drug trafficker...do the exact same thing in Indonesia that you do in Rio's favelas or the outskirts of São Paulo, and get executed by the Indonesian government after a trial, instead of summarily, in the street, by a Brazilian military policeman. (Ah, to be Carioca, white, middle class; having a cool profession also helps. Avoid being black at all costs!)"

While Brazilian law prohibits the death penalty, in reality executions by state agents are common in Brazil. Between 2009 and 2013, over 11,000 Brazilians were killed by police, according to the Forum Brasileira de Segurança Pública. Last year, killings by police rose 30 percent in Rio de Janeiro, and nearly 29 percent in São Paulo. On average, police kill six people each day.

Black Brazilians are much more likely to be executed by police. In general, nearly three-quarters of Brazilian homicide victims are black. And in São Paulo, for example, police kill blacks at a rate three times higher than of whites.

Youth are often targets. One particularly terrible case happened this month in Rio de Janeiro. Patrick Ferreira Queiroz, age 11, was shot three times in the back by police during an alleged shoot-out with drug traffickers in the North Zone favela where the boy lived. Military police, part of the local "pacification" unit, claim Patrick was armed, and said they found drugs and a gun in his belongings. His father denies he had a gun, and his cousin said she witnessed police targeting and executing him, shooting him multiple times at close range. Police had detained Patrick a week before his death on suspicion of working for drug traffickers, but he wasn't charged and was released. One of Patrick's older brothers had also been recently detained for alleged ties to trafficking. Patrick had dropped out of school six months earlier, and was reportedly working at a local café.

Patrick was buried the day he would have turned 12. The shooting is now under investigation.

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In 2008, one of Brazil's most famous actors starred in a movie called "Meu Nome Não É Johnny." It's based on the true story of a white, upper-middle-class Carioca who became a drug trafficker, got caught, and was given a minimal jail sentence of two years, during which time he redeemed himself and got his life back on track. It's a vivid example of the vast differences in how judicial systems treat white and black drug offenders, as well as wealthy and poor offenders.

A documentary on Archer's life is already in the works. But don't expect a movie about Patrick any time soon.