Seth Kugel's Notebook:

The Rio war

If it had happened three weeks earlier, we might be looking at a 2016 Olympics in Madrid, Chicago or Tokyo, the three candidate cities where a police helicopter was not shot down by drug gangs this weekend.

To be fair, it is extremely unlikely that a battle like the one fought between two drug gangs that control neighboring favelas — by Monday evening leaving three officers and 11 suspected criminals dead — will happen during the Olympics in 2016. That is because in the likely event that drug-infested favelas do not disappear in the next seven years, the city and state will spend great energy to strike deals so that the gangs will behave themselves while the world is in town. But that’s energy that will not be spent preparing for the more basic security needs of something so complex as an Olympic Games.

The weekend’s violence is the kind that breaks out from time to time, but it took on an added significance so close to the Olympic decision. Some of the details, as reported by the Brazilian press, are frightening. That helicopter might have been downed Saturday morning by anti-aircraft machine guns, not your typical inner-city munitions. Ten city buses were incinerated. The police were completely aware (through intercepted phone calls) that one gang, the “Red Command,” would be attacking the other gang, “Friend of Friends,” but were powerless to stop it. The reason, according to the state’s security secretary as quoted in Folha de Sao Paulo: the favela has “hundreds of entrances.” He also said that though the police were on hand soon after the invasion began at 1 a.m., they did not take action until 7 a.m. because police do not enter favelas at night, as a matter of policy, “without proper preparation.”

And more: the attacks were believed to have been ordered by prisoners of a high-security facility in the state of Parana, hundreds of miles away. O Globo reported that police may now know the favelas where the instigators of the attacks are hiding — in several cases, favelas with high drug activity that the police have not entered in months.

O Globo, the city’s paper of record, is calling it A Guerra do Rio, or the Rio War. The helicopter incident, was followed by ten deaths of alleged criminals on Saturday and two more on Sunday. There was also a macabre scenario in which the police entered the favelas to track down two of the bulletpocked bodies of drug dealers that had been left behind. By today, 4,000 police officers had been mobilized for follow-up operations related to the violence.

To be on Copacabana Beach when the Olympic decision was made was to be reminded that this city knows how to organize a heck of a party. The violence over the weekend reminded everyone that this city does not control what goes on within its own borders. So, with seven years to go and billions of dollars of expensive infrastructure projects to undertake and challenging security tasks to tackle, which characteristic is more important?

Tegucigalpa 2009, Rio 2016

There’s only really one story in Brazil these days: whether this country of 190 million is ready for prime time as a major geo-political player. Or perhaps more accurately, how far along is Brazil in its inevitable march toward that status. Being the “last in, first out” of the financial crisis was a real PR bonanza, and President Lula’s political skills on the world stage, backed by a skilled diplomatic corps providing support (or pulling the strings, you be the judge) has resulted in glowing coverage from the world press.

But chinks have also appeared in the armor. To cite one rather silly example, Barack Obama’s only barely on-the-record statement to Lula in London (“This is my man. I love this guy. He’s the most popular politician on earth”) has become comically overused and blown out of proportion here that it almost makes Obama look like a political genius. Lula is forever indebted to him for a phrase that cost him maybe two breaths. How seriously do you take a country that is so tickled by 10 off-the-cuff words from the president of the United States (and ignores Obama’s next sentence, “It’s because of his good looks,” that seems to imply he is not entirely being serious)?

Now, the same week Brazil is crossing its collective fingers and hoping the International Olympic Committee picks Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Games — which would make it the first South American city to do so — it finds itself in a mess in Honduras. Brazil has been positioning itself as at the very least a regional mediator (and at most a U.N. Security Council member) steering a moderate middle road between Chavez and Co. and the United States and more conservative Latin American leaders. Honduras’s elected president, Manuel Zelaya, has holed up in Brazilian embassy … or, more accurately, has taken over the Brazilian embassy and is using it to organize/rile up his own supporters. Lula has come down hard on the what he calls the “golpistas,” or coup leaders, the government of Roberto Micheletti, who took power three months ago and kicked Zelaya out of the country. This is hardly the stance of a middleman, and seems to align Lula with Chavez. Doubts remain whether Chavez and Lula planned the whole thing beforehand, though Brazil vehemently denies it and notes it didn’t ask for this role, but had to take in Zelaya when he appeared at the embassy door.

Meanwhile, most of the Brazilian press has taken Lula’s side, at least semantically, adopting the term “golpista” and barely mentioning Micheletti’s argument for taking power; by comparison, The New York Times calls Micheletti the “de facto president” and notes high up in its story today that Congress was part of the coalition that “ousted” Zelaya.

There doesn’t appear to be a clear way out. Micheletti’s government has issued an ultimatum to Brazil, to define Zelaya’s status — presumably as an asylum seeker — or face the consequences of international law, whatever those may be. (The worst case scenario would seem to be an invasion of the embassy.) A group of Brazilian deputies — the equivalent of congressmen — are on their way to Tegucigalpa, where they will meet with the Honduran Congress and visit the Brazilian embassy. That does not sound so good. They will apparently be let in, unlike the diplomats from the Organization of American States who were expelled recently. 

In other words, quite a mess. At exactly the same time that the most potent criticism against Rio’s candidacy for the 2016 Games is, more or less “It could be a mess.”  As Andrew Downie pointed out for Time, the much, much smaller task of running the Pan-Am games in Rio in 2007 was, while not technically a mess, evidence that Brazil is more skilled at putting together pretty proposals than carrying them out. And, it what may be a coincidence but surely has the Chicago boosters overjoyed, the New Yorker has a feature this week about the uncontrollable Rio favelas. (Luckily for Rio, it’s not available in full online, and the New Yorker is not exactly on every corner newsstand in Copenhagen, where the vote will occur on Friday.)

The Rio proposal was the highest ranked of any of the four finalists, gaining a “very high quality” rating. But then again, Lula gained Obama’s ranking the most popular politician in the world,  and it’s not doing him much good in Tegucigalpa.

(Stay tuned, I’ll be in Rio on Friday for the announcement.)

Honduras, as seen from Brazil

Brazil is swept up in the drama at its embassy in Honduras, where, as most everyone knows by now, deposed president Manuel Zelaya is holed up after a dramatic and clandestine return to the country he was kicked out of, in his pyjamas, on June 28.

Front pages, TV news and opinion columnists are all over it. Clovis Rossi of Folha de Sao Paulo noted yesterday, from Pittsburgh, that the Honduran “coup leaders” have technically “attacked Brazilian territory” by cutting off electricity and water to the Brazilian embassy. His colleague Janio de Freitas wrote that the only relevant issue is “the removal of an elected president during the legitimate exercise of his mandate,” not the drama playing out around the embassy or Zelaya’s record as president. (The interim Honduran government’s argument that Zelaya was removed legally after violating the Constitution is virtually absent from discussion here.)

In O Globo, the headline reads "Lula Urges Speed of the U.N. After Wave of Looting in Honduras." The opinion page notes that the situation “leaves Brazil in a very uncomfortable position,” urges negotiations headed up by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias and warns against Brazil being associated with "any operation that has Bolivarian fingerprints." In other words, don’t appear to be aligned too closely with Hugo Chavez on this one. Estado de Sao Paulo reports that according to Lula’s advisors, Chavez was responsible for the suggestion that Zelaya head to the Brazilian embassy. The Estado headline reads “Brasilia Attributes Zelaya’s Return Plan to Chavez.”

Everyone is dying to know how far in advance the Brazilian government knew about Zelaya’s impending arrival, but so far, if they knew, they’re not telling; talking points have clearly been distributed. He “practically materialized in front of the embassy,” said the Brasilia diplomat in charge of Central America and the Caribbean. Lula, it appears, was alerted while in his plane on the way to New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, where he called for Zelaya to be returned to the presidency. If there was any communication between Venezuela and Brazil, no one is saying anything.

In an interview with Globo News yesterday, Zelaya gave terse responses to the Globo anchorwoman, seeming like he was either very tired, very annoyed, or maybe just very fed up with her awful Spanish. He said that the number of people in the embassy was around 50, down from 313 the previous day, and that in addition to having water and electricity cut off, they were being bombarded with “ultrasound” and electronic interference. Estado de Sao Paulo also posted audio of their interview with Zelaya.

How Much Do I Weigh?

It's pretty easy to be American here. Highfalutin discussions of cultural imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine aside, Brazilians are generally OK with us, at least since we swapped Bush for Obama. Teenagers dream of Disney World, Up is a box-office hit, Doritos are available on every corner, and even those weird cappuccinos they make at Starbucks (what, no chocolate?) are catching on.

But there is one situation where I am consistently humiliated to come from the United States.  It happened again today, during a superficial medical exam to clear me to use the gym facilities at my local SESC, a non-profit cultural center that bears some resemblance to a YMCA.

I was asked to fill out a form with basic personal information, then tick off check boxes about all the conditions I thankfully do not have. But then came the section I dreaded.

Height:

Weight:

In America, the answer would be 5’ 11”, 180 lbs. But that’s just gibberish here, not to mention just about everywhere else in the world except in the U.K.  (Brazilians do use the Portuguese word for inches – polegadas – to talk about the size of TV screens, but that's about it.)

Yes, I know there are convertors to be found online, and I’ve plugged in my stats countless times, but I can just never remember. Brazilians are generally flabbergasted to discover my infantile ignorance about the human body. It’s as if I couldn’t point to my own belly button.

“I’m sorry,” I sheepishly murmured to the doctor as I handed him the form. “In the United States, we only use pounds and feet and inches.” So he ushered me to the scale and weighed and measured me.

82 kilos. 1.81 meters.

Didn't ring a bell. But at least this time, I recorded it in my Blackberry address book. Under M for “Me,” though M for “Moron” seemed equally appropriate.

Reporters With Guns: Not a Good Time to Be an Innocent Paper Bystander

The Military Police of Sao Paulo, which is a fancy name for what we would call regular police, invited journalists to two-day training this past weekend on what they call the Giraldi Method. That’s a system one Col. Giraldi developed to reduce the number of deaths to both police officers and innocent bystanders during police operations in what everyone recognizes is an extremely violent and dangerous city.  The basic idea is “defensive firing,” to shoot only when absolutely necessary to save lives. As translated in the training, that means whenever a target appears where a menacing guy is pointing a gun at you (as opposed to a menacing guy with a knife who turns out to be an orange salesman doing some peeling). According to police material, in 1999 --before the method was introduced-- 318 police officers were killed in the line of duty. By 2007 it was down to 22.

That, as they say in our business, could not be independently verified.  But the method has been approved by the International Committee of the Red Cross and has been introduced across South America, so there’s something to it.

The police went all out, bringing their best instructors to the training center at Pirituba and outfitting us with flak jackets and .40 caliber pistols and teaching us how to shoot. That was day one. Day two we got to enter the staging areas where they simulate real situations…having us go around corners and peer through windows with our guns drawn, shouting at paper targets to drop weapons (“Aqui é a polícia! Larga a arma!” is my new catchphrase) and even negotiating with hostage holders (with guns pointed south, at the ground, to be less intimidating). Things got really confusing at the end, with an innocent kid in a skull-and-bones t-shirt popping out at you at point-blank range (I didn’t shoot him, but one of my colleagues nailed him right in the chest; another shot a supposed TV reporter carrying a non-threatening microphone) and a guy with a knife that charges at you when you’ve just run out of ammo (I blew it, not retreating behind a nearby wall to reload in safety).

It seemed the purpose of the training was two-fold: to show us how police are trained to fire only in dire circumstances (and sometimes not even then), and to prove to us that police work is scary and it can sometimes get confusing to know when to use your weapon.  (Not to mention that it’s scary to carry a loaded gun, period.) Mission accomplished on those fronts. How well the training really gets through to the massive, underpaid, at least somewhat corrupt police force is unclear, as anyone who has trained line workers of a large bureaucracy to do anything can attest.

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