Life and Violence

Ok so here we go, its been a busy week, Fluminense just won the Brazilian football championship, lots of things have happened and I'm behind on letting y'all know what's what. Let's crack a beer and get to work.

I've been teaching a couple of classes a week now, nothing serious, and I'm not sure the students like me. I talk too much and hate preparing lessons, especially since I'm paid very poorly. But now I started with a private student twice a week who pays three times more and likes to talk; he's a great, a contract lawyer at a downtown bank who's really, really into comics. Not just like "Oh I read graphic novels" or "I know all the names of Spiderman villains" but more like "I have 3,000 X-Men comics and 300 figurines I painted myself."

Lots of Brazilian nerds

Speaking of nerdiness, a few weeks ago I went to the Brazil Game Show, purportedly an exposition highlighting South American video game developers. It was actually completely dominated by Sony, hot dogs, and long lines. Overall it was underwhelming and crowded, and the convention girls were nothing special. They kinda looked depressed.

Kinda like Superman!

Then I went to the beach, swam in dangerous currents and got sunburned. Fortunately this gave me license to chill out only in my underwear at home, who readers who know me well will recognize as my favorite housewear. 

The next day I went up to the Sugarloaf, which is now what I call voluptuous girls as a term of endearment, and that was pretty neat as the first 'touristy' thing I had done really. The approach up the mountain is controlled by the military, and the previous week a gay man was shot by a soldier there (this was during the pride parade) for no reason. But then I saw some small monkeys ('Micu') and forgot about that.

The biggest news is all the violence and police/military operations that climaxed last week. As you probably have heard, the police invaded several slums in the north zone of Rio and will occupy them for some time. However this isn't really what affected or interested people here, and y'all didn't hear about it because of the latest bickering over in Korea.

It's kinda complicated, but partially the conflict is over the UPP, a 'peaceful police force' that was installed in several favelas around Rio. These new units are sent in to live with the locals, show the human and non-murderous side of the police to occupy and secure the slums after the murderous side has cleared out the bad guys. The governor started the UPP program to stop drug trafficking, but the dealers just decentralized and moved to other slums (the favelas are many and enormous. 1 out of 5 residents in the entire state of Rio live in a favela). Many of the gang leaders are in prison, but just give orders and command from there. When they heard that they were going to be transfered to federal prisons out of state, where life for them would suck a lot more and they would lose control of their gangs, they basically ordered their lackeys to start firebombing cars, attacking police posts and causing mayhem.

This is what started a two week orgy of violence and paranoia. Every day more and more reports of attacks on cars, busses and trucks came in, and people started staying in and not going to work. The metro was seen as safe so was crowded over capacity, which I remember sucking exquisitely. 

BOPE being badass

Most people said it was just a matter of time before this happened, as Rio's huge poverty and crime problems need to be tackled before the mega-events of the World Cup and Olympics. So for the next few days there were tons of cops everywhere, helicopters flying low, and other shows of force; down where I and most gringos and rich people live, there wasn't much except a few shootings and arrastaos. But in the north zone the BOPE, police and marines supported by APCs quickly expelled the gangs from several key neighborhoods. Some BOPE members even complained that the dealers weren't putting up enough of a fight.

Obviously a lot of bad guys got away, and they left lots of drugs (3 tons of marijuana and 300 kilos of coke) and guns behind. So where did they go? Probably to Rochina, one of Rio's largest and most famous slums, inconveniently located very close to Leblon and Ipanema, the richest neighborhoods. (Check out this video I took of a bomb scare in Ipanema.) At this point the gangsters are squeezed and trapped, and could get more dangerous. The two main factions, the Red Command and Amigos dos Amigos, are rumored to have formed an alliance against the cops (with whom they themselves had a treaty of sorts with). NEM, the supposed leader of Amigos dos Amigos that rules Rochina, controls the distribution of cooking gas there and buys silence by being a community benefactor and sponsor for the residents. He was involved in a nasty shootout in the Intercontinental Hotel a few months ago that highlighted how the gangs often paid off the police, how some BOPE members might be involved with the Amigos, and how a whole different problem of 'milicias' of ex-cops run extortion rings and protection rackets.

Just this is a tiny fraction of what's happening, it's all pretty confusing, and only the beginning. What is clear is that the government is cracking down hard, and enjoys huge popular support. Police and military convoys get cheered in the streets, not something you would expect from a county with a history of military dictatorship. The people are tired of the gangs and crime and trafficking, and do not mind when innocents die by police bullets. Some think the favelas should just be razed. This raises the very important issue of potential "fascism against the poor," as a friend of mine put it. BOPE shoot first and ask questions later; the people and politicians look the other way because they just want something done.

Football is Sweat and Flight

Football is huge here, bigger than anything comparable in the U.S., and all the stereotypes about South American football are true. They really do say 'GOOOOOOL!' and they do get into fights frequently. Choosing a local team is a serious consideration, and everyone wants me on their side. Adenir has his own approach. Football pervades every aspect of his life. He wrote a thesis, his 'monogram' as he calls it, unsolicited and by himself on how the public education system, the placement of football fields and the impact of football on society interact. Basically what I understood is that football is both capitalist and communist, whatever that means. Based on this 'monogram' he then produced a book of football poems and songs, the main work entitled "Football is Sweat and Flight." He sang it to me and after I congratulated him on his creativity his daughter said, "only my father writes poem-songs about football," to which Adenir replies, "it is very hard to write about football."

The furthest Adenir has taken the football metaphor is for explaining how he feels about Shakespeare. After lunch today I learned about goiabada, a cheese and guava paste dessert. It's pretty good, but not as good as knowing that the cheese part is called 'Romeo' and the jam 'Juliet.' This was Adenir's cue to clue me into another part of his 'monography,' where he wrote, "Shakespeare, he comes at you like a football, then, he send you away like a football." He gestures a triangle and explains, "You, and the Shakespeare, you take and he take, like in football." [Update: it turns out that's an actual quote more or less from the Comedy of Errors] Thinking about it later that idea actually makes sense in a way, but how he came upon the simile of football to describe the hermeneutics between text, author, and reader baffles me.

I got to see my first match ever last Sunday. I am not a sports fan and find it terribly boring when on the TV, but being at an actual game is surprisingly fun. It was between Vasco da Gama, the 'underdog' team of the poorer classes (which was also the first football club to allow blacks to play) and Fluminense, the current tournament leader and supposedly the 'aristocratic' team. The last time these two teams played, a Vasco fan died and there were riots. I was advised to wear muted colors and avoid raising my hands when near the hardcore fans of either team.

Arriving at the stadium was a little stressful, as there were hundreds of people jammed into a one-way street with cars trying to poke through the crowd. Cops were everywhere, but clearly outnumbered by the hooligans. The crew I arrived with was split between Vasco and Fluminense fans, although of the same family so nothing got rowdy. I went with the Vasco fan all the way around the stadium to the Vasco entrance, where it was markedly less crowded and crazy. Vasco was in 12th place and playing the 1st place team, so nobody expected much.



The game itself was pretty fun, but what was much more entertaining were the fans. They waved giant flags, played samba and team songs in the stands, and chanted insults at the other fans. The chants for both sides were pretty much like 'Ole, ole ole ole, fuck you [other team], fuck you.' They screamed ridiculous insults at the players, gestured what plays they should make, and almost went into a frenzy when Fluminense players started pretending to be injured to waste time. Listening to them, I learned words I'm glad I don't remember lest they slip out at the wrong time. My favorite fan was a little girl with vocabulary of a grizzled old sailor on shore leave.

After the match fans flooded the streets and tension was high. Around 20,000 people were shuffling out of the stadium, most of them drunk. Fluminense won 1-0, but faked lots of injuries, and Vasco had more shots on goal. To diffuse any unruliness were tons and tons of cops, just like in the movies. They had horses, giant nightsticks, and M4 carbines. The people living around the stadium in a near favela-like neighborhood took great advantage of this huge influx of drunken money and tried selling almost anything they had; music, water, drinks, snacks, and probably children if you asked. I didn't. The Vasco fan I was with looked physically defeated, and deflated even more as his uncle (a Fluminense fan) ragged on him the whole way home. I kinda zoned out during that part, so I all remember from the rest of the evening was seeing a paintball arena that also advertised itself as a sex-shop. I'm looking forward to visiting that establishment sometime.