Right before the bid was announced, some thought Rio would lose out to another city. Why? Because of a long report in the New Yorker detailing the warfare scenario in some of Rio’s slums. Did you happen to catch that article? If not, I’ve got it for you (in PDF format). Also, The Economist weighs in on what needs to be done after winning the bid.

First, I’ll post the tease from the New Yorker online.

Iara is a manager of the favela of Parque Royal, in Rio de Janeiro, for a gangster named Fernandinho. She handled “community relations” on behalf of their gang, the Terceiro Commando Puro, or Pure Third Command. Parque Royal consists of a mess of slapped-up houses of corrugated tin and unpainted brick, dreadlocked tangles of pilfered electrical wiring, and graffiti-covered walls and alleyways where little general stores and rudimentary bars jostled for space with storefront evangelical churches. Mentions Fernandinho’s deputy, Gilberto Coelho de Oliveira. Gil, who was Fernandinho’s best friend from childhood, was said to be the more violent of the two. Parque Royal is situated on Ilha do Governador, the largest of the islands that dot the great inland bay of Guanabara. In a pattern that repeats itself all over Rio, Ilha’s residents live under the de-facto authority of a gangster and his private army.

Fernandinho is a thirty-one-year-old drug dealer named Fernando Gomes de Freitas. He controls all but one of the eighteen Ilha favelas on behalf of Pure Third Command. In addition to running Ilha’s narcotics trade, he takes commissions from some legal businesses, such as bus transport services and cable-television operators. In 2007, police calculated that Fernandinho earned about $300,000 a month from drugs, but speculated that his other sources of income might dwarf this. He is a fugitive— one of the most-wanted criminals in Rio—yet he lives openly in Morro do Dendê. There have been several high-profile police attempts to capture or kill him. The Pure Third Command started as a breakaway faction of the Red Command, the oldest and most powerful of Rio’s narco-mafias. Unlike the export-based drug cartels of Colombia or Mexico, Rio’s gangs are wholesale importers—of cocaine from Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, and of marijuana from Paraguay—as well as managers of their own retail distribution networks. At least a hundred thousand people work for the drug gangs of Rio in a hierarchical structure that mimics the corporate world. The state is almost completely absent in the favelas. The drug gangs impose their own system of justice, law and order, and taxation—all by force of arms.

Rio is the top-ranked city in the world for “violent international deaths,” with just under five thousand murders last year, at least half of which were drug-gang related. Two decades after the collapse of Communism the region’s Marxist guerrillas have disappeared, only to be replaced by violent drug mafias. The politician and former guerrilla Alfredo Sirkis likens the spread of Rio’s gang culture to Al Qaeda’s appeal to disenfranchised youths in Muslim societies. Fernandinho’s enforcers sometimes dismember their victims and are known as os Açougueiros—“the Butchers.” A few years ago, Fernandinho became friendly with Pastor Sidney Espino dos Santos, a popular local evangelical preacher, and he was “born again.” Mentions O Dia reporter Leslie Leitão. Pastor Sidney and Fernandinho’s relationship has deteriorated recently. The writer interviewed Fernandinho at his home in Morro do Dendê. Fernandinho claimed his function was not that different from a mayor’s. “People come to me with their problems and I look after them.” The writer pointed out the contradiction between Fernandinho’s religious faith and his continued life as a drug trafficker. He asked, “For you, where is the dividing line between right and wrong?” Fernandinho smiled, and said, “Who’s deciding?”