Posts
"With the streets no longer controlled by traffickers, television presenters are pouring into the sprawling Complexo do Alemão slum, until recently off-limits. Politicians have made regular visits, promising the region's 70,000-odd residents a "social occupation" alongside the military one. Cable salesmen and telephone companies are flocking to the area in search of new customers. A cinema has opened."
AND:
"Things are changing," says one resident, sitting in the Dawn Paradise's costume-strewn HQ – an abandoned beer factory on the favela's outskirts. "The community has become more sociable. Today you see society here more – we have a cashpoint inside the community, a bank. The gossip is that we're going to have a McDonald's in each of the cable car stations. A big pharmacy chain has just opened up at the top. The community is being opened up to the rest of the city. People who were scared to come here before are now coming." It was, he said, "the community's new reality".
ALSO: Hundreds of police in a 2009 operation called "Guillotine" sought to arrest 45 people, including 32 mostly Rio police officers.
The police were suspected of running protection rackets for illegal gambling, leading militia groups and taking bribes from traffickers.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/11/us-brazil-police-idUSTRE71A6BF20110211
