Word: rio
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like policemen in almost every U.S. city, the police of Rio de Janeiro are convinced that their country's legal system makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to convict criminals. Furthermore, there is no capital punishment, and no matter how serious the offense, a convict never serves more than 30 years. Some of Rio's cops think that the coddling of criminals has gone so far as to become unendurable. Taking the law into their own hands, they have formed small, clandestine death squads, and now execute any criminal who they think has cheated...
Last year nearly 200 criminals were found dead in and around Rio, and the death rate shows no sign of slackening so far this year. In the last two weeks, nine new murders of hoodlums were in the local news. The details of their deaths were grimly familiar. Found on lonely roads outside the city, some of the victims had their arms tied behind their backs. The bodies of at least two were marked with cigar burns. Two more had nylon ropes looped around their necks. One man had been shot five times in the mouth, another three times...
...Rose. In official statements, Rio police have frequently and vociferously denied that they have anything to do with the killings; they claim that warring gangs are to blame. Last week, however, a TIME correspondent reported that several lower-and middle-echelon police officers have admitted to him that death squads are indeed manned by off-duty cops. They claim that the majority of hoodlum killings are disguised gangland slayings, but they concede that many are summary police executions. According to one informant, who was a charter member, the first squad was organized in 1958. It was a tightly knit group...
When the Brazilian army ousted leftist President João Goulart and rescued the country from the edge of chaos in 1964, joyful crowds danced in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and hailed the soldiers as their heroes. Last week, as Brazil marked the fifth anniversary of the army's revolution, the only celebrations were those staged by the military, and the only praise came from the generals themselves...
...Garner, "She takes after her dear departed mother." "Mother died?" Garner says with appropriate sobriety. "No, she just departed," says the mayor dryly, exiting screen left. The film abounds with set-up/tag-line jokes which work well, carrying it through a story line which parodies both Hawk's Rio Bravo and Ford's My Darling Clementine (Sheriff holds murderer despite efforts of murderer's family). One takes Burt Kennedy seriously; he wrote a series of Budd Boetticher-Randolph Scott films now recognized a minor masterpieces, and directed some excellent films including Welcome to Hard Times and The War Wagon...