As I said before, there are good and bad people everywhere. It is no different with Rio's traffickers, and I will not dwell on examples given earlier. However, there is a huge difference of opinion between favela residents. One part has good experiences, the other bad experiences, but a pattern I saw with friends is that: If the traffic is carried out by residents who were born and raised in the favela, treatment with the population is usually beneficial. If they came from other communities, they can treat people like numbers. As favelas are usually invaded, whether by the police or by another faction, the traffickers who survive the clashes flee to other favelas dominated by the same faction as theirs.
It is common for the population to report day-to-day
problems to traffickers for them to solve. Need for money, theft, assault and
even domestic violence or rape are solved not by justice, but by trafficking.
The penalty is not categorized, whatever they decide. Just a conversation, a
beating, cutting off part of the body, killing, raping for revenge? Who knows.
What matters is: the parallel power that has been created is as strong as the
state, but it is not regulated. On the other hand, I have seen reports of
traffickers acting similarly to the militia and charging services and fees from
the population such as internet, gas and boycotting businesses, preventing people
from buying from it. It is unpredictable, it varies according to who gives the
orders.
In some favelas there are Bailes, huge parties that gather
people from everywhere, not just the favela. It is curious that sometimes the
police invade the baile because there is drug use there, but they do not invade
the party of the rich, which is as noisy and uses as much drug. In these
invasions, deaths and arrests can occur, however, for people who were born and
grew up seeing the drug dealers helping the people of the favela, when they see
the police invasion, there is no way to think differently that the police are a
villain in this story. Because they are seen by a portion of the people as
heroes, some are seduced by drug trafficking and some girls want to become
wives of a drug dealer as this leads to a more luxurious and promising life.
But they ignore that many who end or betray the trafficker receive punishments
such as having a shaved head or even death.
Let us remember that trafficking is an absolute power in the
favela, therefore, it is necessary to follow the rules imposed by them. Don't
even think about taking pictures of the members, it will set you up with a huge
problem. Once I was in a favela, at a friend's house, and down the street from
her house we took a selfie. A guy approached me on the street and told me to
put my cell phone away because I was pointing to a place where some drug
dealers slept, if they saw me pointing the phone they could hunt me down to ask
why I was taking a picture. It is almost a territorial animal instinct, a
predator protecting its space from threats. In that favela there was a high
hill, people told me that people were executed there, usually with shots and
then throwing the body from up there.
In short, the favela if dominated by trafficking is their
territory. Do not do anything that puts your power at risk and you will
probably be fine. We have to be careful here when we go to a favela not to use
slang that indicates that we are from a place dominated by another faction, it
can be a problem, it can be mistaken for a member of another faction infiltrated
and investigating, they can take you to the interrogation, and so on. Even
"good" dealers are dangerous if you put them in a position of action.
Information that surprises people outside the favela is very
rarely leaked. The traffic has already leaked organizing the favela to receive
donations of chocolates at Easter, where all families received a box of
chocolates. Signs of "Forbidden to consume drugs in front of children,
subject to solving in the worst way" or "Do not pollute the street,
throw garbage in the trash, have been leaked, otherwise we will know". At
this time of lockdown, I saw drug dealers forcing quarantine for people who did
not need to leave to work.
“Nem da Rocinha”, one of the biggest traffickers ever,
distributed a card for the resident to withdraw a sum of money from the traffic
to buy food.
I worked with a computer technician who worked in a
community, repairing computers at the school at the base of the favela. He was
called by the leader of the favela traffic and was scared to death escorted by
two traffickers. Once there, the guy served him a soft drink and as the owner
of a company, he presented the project of creating a Lan-House (in the early
2000s) for the children of the community to learn to work with computers. He asked
if the technician would know how to set up a site with 20 computers, paid for
by the traffic, and that he could charge the fair value of his work that would
be paid. And so he did, set up the room and earned his money, in addition,
received a bonus because he always treated everyone well inside, regardless of
the fear he felt when working there.
What I want you to understand is: Trafficking can be a
threat or a spokesman for the favela, everything depends on it’s will.
I am looking for someone to give a testimony from inside the
experience of the favela, I hope to bring it soon.
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