RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil unveiled a state-of-the-art radar system yesterday that is intended to help unlock the mysteries and economic potential of the vast Amazon region, as well as track down lawbreakers. President Fernando Henrique Cardoso flew to the jungle city of Manaus to inaugurate the Amazon Surveillance System, a $1.4 billion network of radar stations and computers built by defense contractor Raytheon Corp., based in Lexington, Mass. The system will monitor activity including illegal landing strips, climatic conditions, and soil composition in the world's largest wilderness. [continues 505 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Despite spending billions of dollars, the United States is losing ground in the South American drug war. Those billions were supposed to train police forces, whip soldiers into shape, spray crops with defoliants and teach farmers how to grow anything but coca plants. In Peru, coca-eradication efforts stopped July 2. In Bolivia, authorities last year had nearly ended the growing of coca leaves, which are refined to make cocaine. Now, farmers are back at it. In Colombia, the president-elect's vow to eliminate the nation's burgeoning coca crop has shrunk to a pledge to attack only industrial-size plots. [continues 776 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - A journalist on an investigative assignment is decapitated and dismembered. Prominent politicians are accused of ties to death squads. Warlords financed by drug money rule large swaths of territory. It sounds like Afghanistan or Pakistan, but it's happening in Brazil, a fragile democracy into which Americans have poured billions of dollars and considerable diplomatic effort. Both investments are now at risk from the lawlessness and the growing power of drug-financed gangs. Many Brazilians say theirs is a nation of two governments these days: an official one and a parallel state ruled by criminals. [continues 470 words]
More than a month after the disappearance of a crime reporter, Tim Lopes, caused a national outcry against drug lords and inept and corrupt police work, his charred remains were recovered from a clandestine cemetery. He vanished on June 2 while pursuing an undercover investigation into gangs that dominate the squatter slums of Rio de Janeiro and was reported to have been executed by a local drug boss nicknamed Elias the Madman, to shield his activities. [end]
Violence Out Of Control: Gangs Attack City Hall, Murder Journalist, Enslave Residents Of Shantytowns RIO DE JANEIRO - Drug-trafficking gangs attacked Rio's city hall this week, firing more than 200 automatic rifle blasts into one of the municipal complex's buildings in the downtown core during work hours. A few weeks ago, the remains of a high-profile investigative journalist were discovered in a shantytown, or favela, in the city's northern suburbs. Tim Lopes, a reporter for Globo TV was carrying a hidden camera while researching a story on drug trafficking and violence in one of the city's more than 500 shantytowns. When drug kingpins in the shantytown discovered what he was doing, he was brutally tortured and murdered. [continues 865 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, June 27 - Gang leaders had taken control of the weekend funk dances in the neighborhood, selling drugs openly and forcing young girls to have sex with them. The police had been alerted but had done nothing, so the residents of the slum known as the Favela da Grota turned, like so many others here before them, to the crusading crime reporter Tim Lopes. Mr. Lopes was last seen on the night of June 2, on his way to one of the raucous dances. The charred remains of the camera he was carrying have been found, but Mr. Lopes never returned, and two gunmen for the drug lord who controls the neighborhood have horrified the city by boasting to reporters and police officers that he was kidnapped and killed on orders of their boss. [continues 906 words]
Rio De Janeiro - Put reason aside, for a moment, and imagine this: American students are taught that the Amazon should be taken away from Brazil and made into an "international reserve" under United Nations administration. United States Army special forces are training in Florida to seize control of that zone once it is established. And, to accelerate the process, Harvard University advocates the immediate dismemberment of Brazil. All of this, of course, is pure imagination. The Brazilian imagination. From birth, Brazilians are taught that "the Amazon is ours." But their government has never been able to exercise effective sovereignty over the region, which in any case remains an exotic mystery to most Brazilians. The result is a national paranoia: a conviction that outsiders - especially the United States, with its checkered history in Latin America - envy Brazil's ownership of the world's largest tropical forest and want it for themselves. [continues 843 words]
MANAUS · Towering above the treetops near the Amazon's winding Rio Negro, a gigantic spinning radar points skyward, obscuring a splendid view of puffy white clouds. In a control room miles away, technicians sit transfixed to computer screens, gathering and analyzing the information the radar collects. The radar is only one piece of a complex jigsaw puzzle of some of the most advanced surveillance technology that will attempt to provide an electronic view of the darkest reaches of the planet's largest and most mysterious rain forest. [continues 545 words]
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil's first ever survey of drug use showed Wednesday the country's consumption of illegal substances is "not alarming," despite having some of the worst drug-related violence in the world, officials said. The study showed that 19.4% of Brazilians have tried an illegal drug at least once, putting Latin America's largest country well behind the United States where 38.9% of people say they have tried drugs, but above Chile with 17.1%. US government estimates, disputed by Brazilian authorities, have shown that between 40 and 50 tons of cocaine is consumed in Brazil a year, making it the world's second-largest consumer of cocaine, after the United States. [continues 272 words]
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- One of Brazil's most notorious drug lords bought a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile from an arms dealer by telephone while serving time in a Rio maximum-security prison, Brazilian officials said. A federal police official said Tuesday that police took custody of the missile, which was found in the prison director's office, and have dismantled it. Federal authorities believe the director was involved in negotiations for the sale of the weapon, the official told UPI. [continues 366 words]
An undercover TV journalist reporting on crime and drugs in Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns was tortured and put to death with a sword by a drug lord who runs his territory like a medieval fiefdom, police said. Tim Lopes of Globo television was captured June 2 as he tried to infiltrate a dance party in northern Rio de Janeiro, where gangs sell drugs and stage illicit sex shows. Lopes, 50, was taken to a nearby shantytown, where he was shot in the feet, brutally beaten and killed by drug lord Elias Pereira da Silva, police said. Gang members then burned Lopes' body. [end]
Brazil: An undercover TV journalist reporting on crime and drugs in Rio de Janeiro's shantytowns was tortured and put to death with a sword by a drug lord who runs his territory like a medieval fiefdom, police said Monday. Tim Lopes of Globo television was captured June 2 as he tried to infiltrate a dance party in the Vila Cruzeiro shantytown where gangs sold drugs and staged illicit sex shows. Lopes, 50, was taken to a nearby shantytown, Favela da Grota, where he was shot in the feet, brutally beaten and killed with a Samurai-style sword by drug baron Elas Pereira da Silva, known as Elas Maluco, or Mad Elas, police said. Gang members then burned Lopes' body. Police confirmed details of the killing from two members of Silva's gang who were arrested Sunday. [end]
It was reported last week that the Brazilian legislature had passed and President Fernando Cardoso was ready to sign a bill that would keep small-time drug offenders out of prison (see this article.). But Cardoso, who had given the green light for the legislature to pass the 10-year-old reform bill in December, has now vetoed the bill's provisions that would have eased penalties, citing constitutional reasons. Cardoso did, however, sign provisions of the bill enhancing penalties for drug traffickers. [continues 598 words]
BRASILIA, Brazil, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso on Friday signed into law an anti-drugs bill aimed at cracking down on traffickers but rejected parts that would have eased penalties faced by users. Cardoso vetoed some 30 percent of the bill -- approved by Congress in September after 10 years of debate -- because it was unconstitutional, Alberto Cardoso, the president's top security adviser, told a news conference. Cardoso said the president was set to send another measure to Congress that would maintain the essence of the original bill that sought to keep drugs users out of jail by giving them alternative sentences such as community work. [continues 304 words]
Sweeping New Laws Are Based On The View That Drug Users Need Treatment, Not Criminal Punishment. RIO DE JANEIRO - On the continent that produces most of the world's cocaine and much of its heroin and marijuana, its largest country is softening punishment on recreational drug users. The Brazilian Congress adopted landmark legislation that substitutes alternative punishments such as community service and rehabilitation for custodial sentences. The government will now treat recreational drug users not as criminals, but as people in need of medical and psychological help. [continues 815 words]
BRASILIA, Brazil - Brazil's new anti-drug initiative, which involves tougher punishments for drug trafficking and softer penalties for consumption, was criticized by some political analysts on Thursday as underfunded and inadequate. "This is a parody of a policy, a badly made draft of what should be an anti-drug policy," said Judge Walter Maierovitch, Brazil's former anti-drug czar. Under current Brazilian law, someone caught smoking marijuana can receive the same penalties as someone caught with a pound of cocaine. A bill working its way through Congress would stiffen penalties for drug traffickers while handing drug users alternative sentences like community work. [continues 304 words]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The poison on an arrow that paralyzes a wild beast in the jungle and a pill that can relax our tense muscles have something in common -- they both come from the curare plant discovered by Brazilian Indians. Now, the indigenous people of Brazil want this type of link between primitive hunting trick and modern pharmaceutical technology to be recognized as a property right that could bring much-needed cash to needy tribes, some of them on the brink of extinction. [continues 915 words]
Latin Nations Put New Emphasis On Fighting Operations RIO DE JANEIRO -- When Brazil and Bolivia announced recently that they had cracked a $260 million money laundering operation, the investigation was hailed as proof of a new commitment to stop an often-ignored crime that has flourished in a region where drug lords and corrupt politicians still hold considerable sway. Watchdog groups say that while money laundering remains a relatively unchallenged practice in Latin America, a wave of high-profile investigations like the Brazil-Bolivia cooperation, new regulations and tighter enforcement indicate that recent international scrutiny is forcing governments to take money laundering more seriously. [continues 643 words]
The Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has said he would authorize the shooting down of planes involved in terrorism, smuggling or drug trafficking. Mr Cardoso was speaking during a visit to the border with Colombia, a region where illegal airplanes have been involved in several incidents in the last years. A law approved by the Congress in 1998 allows the armed forces to shoot down airplanes within Brazilian airspace. But it needs further legislation before it can be implemented. [end]
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Flour and sugar sold in Brazil don't always have them, but packages of cocaine offered by a notorious Rio de Janeiro drug gang are now showing up complete with bar codes and price tags. Police said on Friday they had confiscated 260 packets of cocaine in a shanty-town near Rio, each with a sticker identifying the product by code 0001 and bearing the name of the merchants and a slogan -- "Now, it's us." A roll of supermarket-style stickers was also confiscated. [continues 126 words]
Inside Brazil
