The Army in The Streets of Rio: Shades of 1964

From the public security blog of the O Dia daily (Rio de Janeiro). My translation follows, with comments in the form [italics --Ed.]

The State and Its Armed Forces v. Society

By João Batista Damasceno, political scientist at the Fluminense Federal University, justice of the state high court of Rio de Janeiro (TJ/RJ) and board member of Brazilian Judges for Democracy.

American films about legal proceedings always start with the names of the ligitants: The People v. So-and-so. In the Brazilian reality, however, it is not the People who oppose the defendant. It is the State and its armed services against which the People must defend themselves.

[Kramer v. Kramer. The People v. Larry Flynt. --Ed.]

The deaths of David Wilson da Silva, 24, Marcos Paulo Campos, 17 , and Wellington Gonzaga da Costa, 19, lead us to reflect on whether what we are seeing here is a crime committed by rogue public agents or the deliberate act of a police state in frank expansion.

The Providência shantytown and the Brazilian Army have a history going back 111 years. It was in Providência that former combatants in the Canudos Massacre settled in 1897, after the Army exterminated the wretched, fanatic followers of Antônio Conselheiro.

[If you ever read the sermons of the Conselheiro, you find a marked resemblance with American fanatic John Brown, author of the raid on Harper's Ferry. More than mere monarchist religious fanatics, the followers of the Conselheiro objected to the fact that the late Empire abolished slavery, the First Republic promptly reinstated it, and the official abolition of slavery in the 1890s was not really enforced, leaving a de facto slavocracy in place, especially in the Northeast, from where the Conselheiro drew his followers. --Ed.]

The Canudos War: History and Origins of the Shantytown

From a small hill in the city of Canudos, called Favela because of a variety of small fava bean that grew there, came the seeds that would later be planted on the Morro da Providência, located in the heart of what was known at the time as Little Africa, comprising the neighborhoods of Santo Cristo, Gamboa, Santa Rita, Candelária, Saúde, Praça Onze and Estácio. The planting of those fava beans gave the shantytowns their name: favela. Agriculture never prospered there, but favelas quickly sprung up everywhere.

Consigned to shantytowns and deprived of elementary rights, the young men of Providência, in Little Africa, spent four hours in military custody before being executed. Detaining or searching someone without probable cause would itself be an abuse of authority. “A well-founded” reason to search or detain is the expression the law uses. Suspicion is not enough. Their release after four hours in custody would also constitute abuse of authority. Without a foundation for the detention, why were they prevented from freely coming and going, though for only a short while? But above and beyond the assault on their rights, the young men, just like enemies without the rights afforded by the Geneva Convention, which governs warfare, were handed over to a rival drug gang. Their bodies were found on June 15 in a garbage dump in Caxias, in the Baixada Fluminense. Garbage dumps, shantytowns, and the abandoned neighborhoods of the urban periphery: These are the places to which the State consigns the poor. The spatial division of city of Rio de Janeiro during the XX Century was deliberately planned in this way.

From São Paulo, Brazil: Current Content Downloads, June 23, 2008

From São Paulo, Brazil: Current Content Downloads, June 23, 2008 (Google Video):

I am constantly reevaluating what I can do with free software in the way of video production. The results are not always stellar, especially because I admit I am not the most charismatic onscreen presence. I should either stick to producing — at which I also suck, but have a better chance of improvement with, maybe — with a telegenic anchor to read off the teleprompter, or else at least stop extemporizing my broadcasts and script them.

It also helps not to read the copy while hung way the hell over.

But what the hell. It’s just for fun, FLOSS skills maintenance, and future reference, anyway.

I was surprised at how much the severe butt-kicking administered by the cleats of Paraguay to the traseiros of the Brazilian national squad bugged me. I am not that big a sports fan. But I have to admit: That really, really bugged me. Maybe Brazilian civilization is finally assimilating me.

I mean, why move to the world capital of soccer madness if the national soccer squad is just going to keep letting you down?

And other program notes:

The Folha on Rio: “Reports Show Army Misrepresented Mission Up the Morro”

Extra (Globo, Rio de Janeiro): The Brazilian Army is hated in Rio but beloved in Haiti.”

Recebo os escombros de uma cidade abandonada e saqueada
“I am receiving the ashes of a city has been sacked and abandoned”
– Carlos Lacerda, assuming the governorship of Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro), December 1960

Relatórios mostram ação policial do Exército em morro do Rio: “Reports show that Army was engaged in policing on the Rio hillsides.” The Folha de S. Paulo reports today.

And in psychological operations.

The Folha does not produce said reports, tell us how they got them or explain why they .

I have closely followed the evolution of this debate over whether or not Rio de Janeiro ought to have the Army in the streets, maintaining law and order.

As you can imagine, in a country that had the Army in the streets for 20 years, dictating the law, closing Congress, disappearing people and engaging in state-sponsored terrorism, the issue is a sensitive one.

One of these days I am going to collect my clippings and write an article on the evolution of this debate. Some specimen clippings:

• Rio: “Army Gives Rio the Haiti Treatment”
• Haiti É Aqui: OAB Prepares Report on Haiti Mission
• Brazil: “Controversy Over MINUSTAH Mission”
• Haiti É Aquí: “Joint Army-Police Maneuvers in Rio”
• “Haiti É Aqui”: Embedded Reporter on the Army in Rio
• “Haiti is a Laboratory For Rio”: Estadão
• “Haiti É Aqui”: The Brazilian Army Takes Sun City

The Folha today:

Diferentemente do que sustenta o Exército, os militares faziam operações policiais no morro da Providência (centro do Rio). A atuação dos homens da Força Armada também tinha caráter “psicológico”.

Unlike what the Army has maintained, Brazilian soldiers were engaged in police actions in the hillside shantytown of Providência in downtown Rio. The activity of the armed forces also had a “psychological” character.

As condutas são do próprio Exército, descritas em nove relatórios assinados pelo general-de-brigada Williams José Soares, que comandava as tropas no morro, segundo informa nesta terça-feira o “Painel” da Folha, editado por Renata Lo Prete (a íntegra do “Painel” está disponível para assinantes do UOL e do jornal).

These actions come from the Army hierarchy itself and are described in nine reports signed by Brig. Gen. Williams José Soares, who commanded the troops on the Providência hillside, according to a story in the Folha’s Painel section, edited by Renata Lo Prete [sic], this Tuesday …

Brazil: CETIP’s New Debenture Venture

DCI – Comércio, Indústria & Serviços is a fine little business paper, focusing on in-depth strategic and trend stories that other business publications, like the Gazeta Mercantil and (the adequate) Valor Econômico, do not have. Smart folks. On my content budget, I generally find it worthwhile to skim Valor daily and read DCI in-depth at least three times a week.

CETIP, the Brazilian Chamber of Custody and Settlement, recently demutualized and probably looking to IPO, will now be assigned the responsibility of overseeing debenture issuance, in a bid to “debureaucratize” the process of obtaining capital through this common funding mechanism.

In assuming control of the National Debentures System, it will also assume sole control of the technology platform used to manage the system. (Which makes this a tech Big Dig story, and therefore up my alley.)

Indications are that CETIP will remain independent of the merged Bovespa-BM&F exchange — unlike, say, the business model under which Deutsche Bourse owns Clearstream. See

• The New Bourse Publishes on Clearinghouse Ambitions

Para desburocratizar os sistemas de emissão e controle de debêntures – títulos de dívida de médio e longo prazo emitidos por empresas -, a Câmara de Custódia e Liquidação (Cetip) assume, a partir de 1º de julho, o Sistema Nacional de Debêntures (SND). Com isso, passa a ter o controle do sistema de tecnologia que antes era dividido com a Associação Nacional das Instituições Financeiras (Andima).

In order to ease bureaucracy in the issuance and oversight of debentures — medium- and long-term debt instruments issued by firms — the Chamber of Custody and Settlement (CETIP) will take over the National Debentures System (SND) on July 1. With that, it will also assume control of the technology platform that it once shared with the National Association of Financial Institutions (ANDIMA).

“MSCI-Barra Rebalancing Will Benefit Brazil”

Don’t you know the ROI is going up, up, up, up, up … (to live in this town, you gotta be tough tough tough tough tough tough tough …) Click to zoom.

Relatório reservado nº3405 24/06/2008: The rumor-mill has it that the MSCI Emerging Market Index will promote some of its markets out of the “emerging” category, lending greater weight to Brazil, among others.

Disclosure: MSCI Barra’s EWZ exchange-traded fund is the only variable-rate security I own. I bought a fairly piddling amount at $19 on a whim at the suggestion of Omar the Art Director, a former co-worker, and saw it go as high as $102.

I have not seen the latest prospectus for the thing yet — our snail mail from New York arrives via clipper ship, rounding Tierra del Fuego. I remember thinking that the portofolio contained enough heterodox debt paper that I could not really make heads or tails of how it was supposed to track the iBovespa index. But then again, I majored in poetry.

Dentro do próprio Morgan Stanley no Brasil, já se dá como certa uma mudança no MSCI Emerging Market – índice criado pelo banco e que serve de balizador para seus investimentos em países emergentes. Nos próximos dois meses, Coréia do Sul, Taiwan e Israel, que representam 26% do MSCI, seriam promovidos a “mercados desenvolvidos”. Com isso, a expectativa é que o Brasil aumente sua participação no índice, o que geraria um maior fluxo de recursos para o país.

Inside Morgan Stanley Brazil, it is given as a sure thing that the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, created by the bank and used as a trial balloon for its investments in emerging economies, will soon see changes.