Word: rios
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...Lido in Paris? A cabaret on Tokyo's Ginza? Rio's Copacabana? Hardly. The revue, well named Kicks, is packing New Yorkers and visitors into the Rainbow Grill, which in the past has been celebrated more for its 65th-floor view of New York City than for closeups of prancing showgirls. The revue is risque, sassy, elegantly mounted, and amusing, and its success may say something about the city's mood in troubled times...
...victims are often found lying in roadside ditches on the outskirts of teeming favelas, the makeshift slums surrounding Rio de Janeiro or industrial São Paulo. Their hands are usually tied behind their backs with nylon cord. The bodies often show signs of torture: cigarette burns, bruises, broken teeth, occasionally even castration. Almost all are riddled with gunshot wounds. Sometimes the corpses have been drenched in gasoline and then set ablaze, making identification impossible...
Those grisly scenes of execution are becoming alarmingly commonplace in Brazil's major cities. Hundreds of such deaths have been reported so far this year, over 150 of them in Rio's northern slum of Baixada Fluminense. On one typical day this month, Rio police discovered seven scarred and bullet-torn bodies. The victims included a suspected prostitute, a transvestite, a photographer and his girlfriend...
...responsible for the executions? The most frequent claimants are gangs of self-styled vigilantes who boast that they are fighting an underground war against the crime that infests the underpoliced favelas. Since 1965, the number of slum dwellers in Rio has risen from 450,000 to a staggering 1.7 million. Lacking adequate sanitation, schooling and jobs, the ramshackle favelas have become breeding grounds for crime and violence, out of which have come the countercrime and violence of the vigilantes. Explains Eduardo Fagundes, who is the present head of the Brazilian bar, "Ten years ago the death squads received open support...
...Rio, the vigilantes usually identify themselves as the Mão Branco, the White Hand, and their counterparts in São Paulo go by the name the Black Hand. Typically, a gang member will telephone local police and newspapers, announcing in mocking terms where the latest "meat" will be dropped; almost invariably, a corpse is found there...