This book completes a trilogy by sociologist Robert Gay on the rise and fall of democracy in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro from the l970s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro (1994) describes the rise of democracy in two favelas during the l970s and l980s as part of a wave of multi-class democratic activism that swept the 1964 military dictatorship out of power in 1985. Rio de Janeiro favelas were beneficiaries, but also contributed to the movement. The emergence of strong resident associations (RAs) in the favelas is an integral part of a story of democratic institution-building in Brazil during the 1970s and l980s.
However, a new illegal economy arising out of drug trafficking during the l980s led to the appearance of drug gangs, which took control of many Rio de Janeiro favelas by the early l990s. Lucia: Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman (2005) shows the resulting sharp decline in democracy in the favelas during those years. The state was not present in the favelas to defend democracy, thus the resident associations had no choice but to submit to the power of drug gangs.
The book under review adds another chapter to the story. Lucia, the subject of Gay's previous book, and Bruno live in the favela of Jakeira as partners in a stable union. The names are fictitious in an effort to protect their identities. Bruno spent eight years in several Rio de Janeiro prisons during the 1990s, after he was surprised and arrested by civil police while distilling ten kilos of freebase cocaine. Bruno's testimony shows how gangsters serving time in prison exercised power over favela communities. Prisons became the headquarters for leaders of Rio's three principal organized crime factions—the Comando Vermelho (Red Command), the Terceiro Comando (Third Command), and Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends)—that controlled many favelas.
A barbaric, homicidal war among the factions went on inside the prisons, and outside, in the favelas. In this war, incarcerated faction leaders were able to send a steady flow of orders to favelas they controlled. Directors of prisons, always striving to avoid outbursts of violence by dissatisfied prisoners, could do little to interfere with such orders emanating from their prisons. Bruno also provides a detailed insider's view of the drug trade, including the structure of organized crime outside the favelas and within the prisons of Rio de Janeiro. The book never loses sight of favela realities, pointing out in its pages what is missing in the favelas. Sorely missing is the state and its authority, which includes the rule of law, or as Bruno puts it “warrants and procedures . . . that have to be respected. But not if you live in a favela, because [you're] in a favela, they [the police] come in shooting” (122).
Bruno, born in l967, identifies himself as a son in a large, poor rural family near Recife who worked on his father's farm and also for a jeweler in Recife. A chance meeting with a naval officer opened the prospect of a career in the Brazilian navy. Trained as a low-ranking corporal in Rio de Janeiro, he soon asked to be transferred to Corumbá on the border with Bolivia, where he was assigned to duty on a patrol boat. Moving from Recife to Rio de Janeiro, then from Rio de Janeiro to Corumbá, gave Bruno a stunning sense of the enormous dimensions of Brazil. He also quickly became aware of drug trafficking and other smuggling activities on the loosely patrolled border, and he saw the opportunities for personal enrichment. He became in turn a drug runner, then a drug supplier, and finally a distiller of cocaine.
Gay finds that Bruno is astute and quick-thinking, and notes his intense awareness and interest in his surroundings. Bruno is inherently honest, a quality he demonstrated in dealings with drug traffickers both as a supplier of drugs and later in prison interacting with officials and other prisoners. While in prison, he came to understand the essentials of citizen rights in Brazil. Intuitive at first, this understanding seems to have been consolidated when he took advantage of his own right to read books in a prison library. Among the books he read was The Handbook of Penal Laws, where he learned, among other things, that the rights of prisoners included education as part of a program of rehabilitation. This allowed Bruno to address a prison director saying that while we have duties in prison, we also have rights: “We want to study. We want to go to school.”
Bruno references citizen civil rights in his comments throughout the book. He recalls that prisoners trapped in a life of crime are often not even aware that they still have rights, let alone what those rights are. He also takes a stand against violence, whether it be the illegal violence practiced by guards against prisoners, or the violence of prisoners themselves against guards, or prisoners' violence toward other prisoners, whom they sometimes murder. In prison, Bruno would remind fellow prisoners of harsh punishments that follow acts of violence, including beatings by guards. He knew how to assert himself at timely moments, which favorably impressed prisoners, prison officials, even prison guards. This explains how he became for a time a leader and educator of prisoners, and why prison officials also turned to him from time to time for guidance.
Bruno also knows that prison officials in Brazil will bow to the authority of laws when it is invoked. He shared with prisoners an almost universal desire to escape captivity in Brazil prisons, where conditions are often described as subhuman, and tried to escape on more than one occasion. This brought harsh punishment, but also raised his prestige among prisoners. Bruno urged fellow convicts thinking about or planning acts of violence to instead plan and build tunnels under prison walls and escape to freedom beyond.
This book treats myriad subjects, but space limitations prevent discussion of more of them in this review. As he did in Lucia, Robert Gay writes illuminating, fact-filled conclusions to the eight chapters of conversations, which readers will surely welcome. Topics include cocaine, prisons, prison education, turf wars among drug gangs, and the border, where Brazil “rubs shoulders with every country in South America except Chile and Ecuador.” There is also a postscript and timeline of events, and the book is further enhanced by excellent endnotes.
