Rio de Janeiro: microcosm of the future.

When George Hawrylyshyn found it necessary to dodge a stray bullet in the bedroom of his apartment in midtown Copacabana, situated on one of the breathtaking beaches in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he decided it was time to move to a quieter neighborhood.

He had been a correspondent for the Associated Press and was now a successful publisher, living in a plush part of Rio, but near a favela, one of the over four hundred slums in that metropolis of more than ten million people. In Rio one in every four Cariocas (as the inhabitants are called) lives in a slum. So for the rich and affluent there is almost no escape from the ever-increasing number of poor who exercise their right to enjoy the view from the hills overlooking the sea.

Until a few years ago the well-to-do and happy crowds frenetically tried to ignore the poor, dismissing their presence except when they were needed for household duties and hard, manual labor. But with the growth of gang activity and the incidence of gang wars over the past few years, such blindness is no longer an option. Politicians have become desperate and tried to demolish and eradicate these suburbs, often targeting the poorest of the poor. Earlier this year thirty people were killed at random by the police.

In Civil War, a recent book by Luis Mir, an emergency doctor in Sao Paulo, the author reports 600,000 fatalities over the past twenty years due to gang- and police-related activities in all of Brazil, a country of 182 million people. Leading Brazilian newspapers correct him and count 700,000.

Such levels of violence are equivalent to an undeclared civil war with more casualties than the war in Iraq. "We are all in pain and shock" says Nanko van Buren, a European aid worker in Rocinha, which, with almost half a million people, is easily the largest slum in Latin America. He works with Ibiss, a nongovernmental organization trying to improve the living standards of the poor. At least twice a week he finds himself dodging stray bullets as he runs for his life. He says that police officers have been arrested, suspected of the latest killings, but doubts things will get any better soon because "the root of the problem is the unequal spread of opportunity for schooling, housing, work, and healthcare. Some people here grab any chance to share some of the enormous wealth in this country. Unless there is a better distribution of wealth, this kind of violence will remain."

But even if such a distribution were readily done, ending the violence wouldn't be an easy task. More people under the age of twenty-six are killed by guns each year in Rio than in many designated war zones. Almost without exception they are all involved in drug wars, although some are victims of stray bullets. Most fatalities and killings take place in disputes over territory between drug gangs or between gangs and the police. Gangs employ mostly teenagers to guard their domains and give them ranks as if they were in a real army. They incorrectly presume that the police won't hurt children.

Colombian cocaine paste is smuggled into Rio where it is manufactured into cocaine and either distributed throughout Brazil or exported via the Amazon to Europe and the United States. With the money earned from these drug sales, gangs buy weapons from illegal arms markets in Eastern Europe. "These arms fuel the war in Colombia but also in several slums around the continent" Van Buren says. The gangs' financial resources are vast, enabling them to purchase weapons superior to those used by the authorities. For example, drug money allows gangs to employ infrared missiles to blow police helicopters out of the sky. Their cars are faster and better able to escape. As a result, "the underequipped, underpaid, and often corrupt police have to compete with them," says Saskia Pebbens, a University researcher from Europe who is studying the violence against and by the police. For four months Pebbens cruised day and night with the military police of the Twenty-second Battalion through the worst neighborhoods in Rio. She reports:

   The police [don't have] enough bullets
   even to train, their bullet-proof vests are
   not good enough, and their vehicles are
   in a deplorable state. They have to fight
   corruption both within the police force
   and on the streets. I witnessed the worst
   atrocities against them from [criminals]
   throwing rocks off bridges at their vehicles
   to planned murders and executions.
   It is an almost impossible task to reform.
   The truth is, common police officers are
   desperate for better working conditions
   that might result in better relations with
   the communities.

During the nightly cruises Pebbens fell in love with one of the police officers and married him. She says that, because the authorities had, in effect, abandoned the slums, a power vacuum was created and filled by the drug gangs. An average of two policemen are killed every week in Rio, most shot while on patrol. Some, however, also die off duty from acts of reprisal, perhaps while having a drink at a bar.

The government is determined that this will change. Concerned about how violence is tarnishing Rids reputation as a city of beauty, friendliness, and pleasure and the inevitable economic impact of a loss in tourism revenue, Justice Minister Marcio Thomas Bastos announced that almost $15 million would be allocated toward the creation of a new elite unit to strengthen the existing police forces and improve their working conditions. State authorities have enrolled 850 armed police officers to target drug gangs. Working in teams, they launch surprise raids in some of the more notorious of the 400 slums around Rio. A shoot-to-kill policy has been authorized whenever armed drug traffickers terrorize the local people. This uncompromising style, known as Operation Maximum Pressure, was first launched in November 2004 but briefly suspended during this past February's carnival.

A spokesperson for a human rights group warned that these new policies could backfire and result in more mistrust between slum dwellers and the police. This individual fears there will be an increase in violence and says that a complete overhaul of both the police and military police forces may be necessary to eliminate corruption.

"People in the favelas are extremely unhappy with the current situation. They want change--less violence and more peace--so they can develop their own, better life and lifestyles in poverty but with dignity," says Paulo, a local aid worker in Rocinha.

The police have killed two of Paulo's sons and two other children of his are involved in drug trafficking. Another one, Carlos, his youngest, was threatened and blackmailed by the police. "Even though Carlos escaped the traffickers he is still a victim of police brutality and harassment" Paulo says. "To the outside world the perception is that we are all a bunch of criminals. That is a travesty of the truth. Most of us here in Rocinha and the other favelas around town are decent and hard working people.... It's just that we are poor because we lack the opportunity of education to get higher up in life"

In the past, throughout Latin America but particularly in Brazil, the favelas appeared as blank areas on city maps. Slums were regarded and branded as social scars that had to be removed. Since the people wouldn't leave voluntarily, they were removed by force. Zenaide, a maid living in one of the slums, had to commute two hours each way, every day, to her general housekeeping job at a Panama beach-front condominium. "If they move us farther out of town" she observes, "who is going to take care of us? How are we going to pay for transportation to get to and from work? Who will provide work and where? They think only of themselves and their businesses--never of the underprivilegedy Although she only makes the equivalent of $200 a month, she has managed to save some money in the bank and even to buy some land where she'll build a new house for herself and her husband of twenty-seven years. "What if they come and remove it?" she wonders. "Who is going to compensate us? We, the poor, have no voice."

Since Brazil returned to democratic rule in the late 1980s a new attitude toward the favelas began to evolve. Urban planners today work with sociologists and activists on project Favela Bairo ("slum neighborhood"), which began ten years ago, to help the poor help themselves. Rather than flattening slum settlements and forcing the inhabitants into public housing projects, under Favela Bairo the city is trying to improve living standards by upgrading the basic infrastructure, as well as providing basic social services. Slum dwellers are no longer treated as outcasts, and not all are gangsters or involved in the drug industry. The project's goal is to turn them into proud citizens of a safe and stable community.

"It's an understatement to say that the challenge is not small;' says one of the anthropologists working in the project. "These slums started to swell up a hundred years ago when the rich needed the poor in their households. The richer neighborhoods of Copacabana and Ipanema are at least 150 years ahead in development with almost all the necessary infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to post offices and electricity and running water in perfect and exemplary functioning order." Under project Favela Bairo, $600 million has been committed to building parks and streets and establishing public works in 120 of the over 400 slums throughout Rio. Services previously difficult if not impossible to obtain--such as running drinking water, electricity, garbage removal, day care centers, and counseling for domestic violence, sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and drug and alcohol addiction--will be made accessible to the poor.

Marcia Garrido, the program's manager, says it isn't hard to discover what is needed most: the people who live in the slums just tell the organizers. Of paramount importance to the project was choosing the right projects and supervising the allocation of funds. Proposals are discussed in detail with the community residents, who ultimately and democratically decide the location of changes in infrastructure projects based on the budgetary limits. "The quality of our life has improved a lot," says one of the residents during a community meeting in Santa Martha, one of the previously most notorious and violent slums. "We have paved roads now and don't have to walk in the mud to get home. We no longer drink poisoned and polluted water. And as a result of the improvements, we've started taking better care of ourselves, our children, and our homes, too. The children will definitely have a better life than we have had so far. And that is what it's all about."

Even the real estate markets in these areas are booming. Prices have risen almost 30 percent in the neighborhoods of some slums, particularly those with stunning views of the city. Businesses are mushrooming, some doubling since the project began.

One of those enterprises is a nongovernmental organization that teaches traditional Afro Brazilian culture and dances. After slavery was abolished in Brazil some 125 years ago (the last republic in Latin America to do so), blacks started to move to the urban centers looking for jobs, bringing their culture along with them. That is the basis for a social services program providing daycare for infants and toddlers. Every month the NGO stages a music and dance show for tourists in its effort to shorten the distance between the poverty in the hills and the affluence along the beaches.

Rio is not the only urban metropolis in Brazil, Latin America, or for that matter the world that has to deal with the swelling slum populations. Authorities recognize that 85 percent of the developing world's urban population now live in slums and half of those residing in African slums live in what the United Nations calls life-threatening and abject poverty. Shanghai, Bombay, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Manila, and Capetown are but a few of the world urban centers where squatter communities develop so rapidly they cannot even be called slums anymore. Like those in Rio, they consist of multistory buildings where house owners exploit the property and the people. All these "megacenters" have in common the fact that the residents pay no taxes and are living by their own rules, mores, and codes--operating an illegal and informal economy.

United Nations figures show that, within the next twenty-five years, one-quarter of the world's population will likely be living under similar circumstances. Fear of growing organized crime, fueling more illicit weapons, human trafficking, and unnoticed civil wars, may lead us to a catastrophe with unforeseen political and social consequences. Nanko van Buren declares, "[We must] tackle the problem from the roots and better distribute access to jobs and income, education, healthcare, and social services. It is not impossible."

Rio de Janeiro has given an example to follow. It struggles with rampant violence and crime but has made a sensible start--giving the poorest of the poor a sense of belonging, a sense of respect, and a sense of hope amidst the stray bullets even the affluent have to dodge.

Anton Foek is the nom de plume for publicist and broadcast journalist Anton Jie Sam Foek. Born in Paramaribo, Suriname, Foek has studied around the world and written several stories for the Humanist, one of which received the 1998 Project Censored Award.