Perverse Integration: Drug Trafficking and Youth in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

ZALUAR, ALBA

"Criminalization of the informal sector relativized poverty and exclusion as the primary causes of the violent drug trafficking found in the favelas and other low-income neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro."

In 1994, the United Nations Economic and Social Council stated that "organized transnational crime, a new dimension of more `traditional' forms of organized crime, has emerged as one of the most alarming of challenges." With its singular threat to the security and the economies of all countries--developing and transitional ones in particular--transnational organized crime "represents one of the major threats that governments have to deal with in order to ensure their stability the safety of their people, the preservation of the whole fabric of society, and the viability and further development of their economies."(1)

This paper mainly focuses on the activities of the informal drug market in Brazil and the social and cultural changes that accompany it at the local level. I will not, therefore, discuss the intentions or consequences of the Brazilian government's law enforcement policies and techniques. It is sufficient to say that the repression of the drug trade results in drug scarcity, which in turn raises the price and affects the purity of the merchandise. Accordingly, profits multiply and more people are willing to take on the risks of illegal business at all levels--from wholesale to retail trade--organizing their activities so as to curtail the risk of detection and prosecution and increase profits. This potential for profit has also increased corruption in state institutions.

Little has been published in Brazil about the supply of illicit drugs and the organizational strength of the trafficker networks, particularly regarding their connections to the legal economy. Scant attention has been given to the political and economic interests related to the drug economy, particularly with regard to the interaction between the formal, legal economy and the illegal activities of the economic underworld.

The question that remains to be comprehensively discussed is how the effects of poverty and accelerated urbanization and immigration are linked with institutional mechanisms and the presence of networks(2) of organized crime.(3) Although poverty and accelerated urbanization are clearly connected with the results and causes of exclusion, organized crime crosses all social classes and has bonds with organized legal business. Therefore, it cannot survive without institutional support from state agencies. The related issues of violence, criminality and insecurity cannot be properly understood if removed from larger political, social and economic frameworks. One must assume that many impoverished young Brazilians have insufficient employment possibilities to avoid becoming vulnerable to the drug trade. They are estranged from their families and from older generations, betrayed by an ineffective school system, and lack professional training. Below, I will examine this phenomenon, which Manuel Castels and John Mollenkopf have termed "perverse integration."(4)

The changes in the informal market in Rio de Janeiro because of the presence of drug traffickers in the city's favelas or shantytowns contributed to the extensive criminalization of the informal sector. Criminalization of the informal sector, in turn, relativized poverty and exclusion as the primary causes of the violent drug trafficking found in the favelas and other low-income neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. This very risky enterprise is eventually fatal for most of the low-income adolescents who join the drug gangs. It has also prospered via hierarchical, ruthless and fluid organizations that are more than merely "a work alternative" or a "survival strategy" for gang members. Below I describe the limitations, dangers and virility ethos of this activity that mobilizes many young favelados and examine their relation with cultural, political and economic spheres.

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC BACKGROUND OF THE DRUG MARKET

The illegal drug market is doubtlessly one of the biggest sectors of the modern global economy It has, to a greater or lesser extent, become economically and socially integrated into almost every country Since economic sectors--especially illegal ones--intermesh formal with informal markets, and connect governmental agencies with criminal organizations, drug related businesses permeate many sectors of society, including sectors that often function in the formal economy Drug-related activities include robbery, because the trade of stolen goods such as trucks, cars, jewelry and domestic appliances provides alternative currencies for buying drugs. Drug trafficking is also diversified in the sense that it follows the networks already used for other illegal activities, such as smuggling, governmental corruption and gun trafficking.(5) This is not only clear in the case of banks and transport companies that provide services to illegal businesses, but also for legal businesses such as the real estate market that are a key mechanism for money laundering. There are certain types of symbiotic relationships between different actors with common and interrelated interests to form a social, economic and institutional fabric that supports the drug trade.(6) The money and the power that go with the trade are not the only explanations for the expansion of the illegal drug economy Political power and cultural processes which led to the growth of drug use, and the societal changes that followed this growth, are equally important and have been studied less.

The international context is rather dismal. Over the last decade world-wide production of illicit drugs has increased dramatically. Opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled, coca production has tripled, new synthetic drugs have been developed and consumer demand has increased.(7) Brazil has become not only a channel for cocaine transportation to other countries, but it has also become a center for this drug.

Furthermore, the local impact of transnational organized crime--or, if one may say so, globalized crime--has sui generis economical, political and cultural characteristics. In it, those who are in strategic positions in the large network of transnational connections may profit quickly and easily due to the lack of institutional limits, using violent means to resolve conflict.(8)

Among illegal drugs, cocaine is today associated with a lifestyle that puts great value in money, power, violence and consumption of goods with a reputed trademark. Due to very high prices of the drug, which is more costly than gold in several places,(9) its trade has become a source of enormous and rapid profits, as well as significant violence. In this case, the profits to be made are not engendered by productivity or greater exploration of labor, but by the illegality of the enterprise itself.(10)

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND

Post-modern society has undergone an accelerated process of social, economic, political and cultural transformations, which have caused social fragmentation and increased the importance of leisure and consumption activities to ascertaining and defining social identities. Such transformations mean that conventional moral restraints, which exist to some degree independent of the law, have weakened. They have not been replaced by new post-conventional ethics that are based on personal freedom and mutuality, respect for the rights of others, or the use of dialogue to arrive at an understanding. What is left is an alternate form of ethics. It surpasses the one existing in civil law or in the conception of interpersonal contracts that bind private domains. It exists also to a certain extent in organized crime.(11) Gambling, drug use and pleasure seeking become objectives in and of themselves for sectors of the population, especially among youth. This makes businesses that exploit the illegal consumption highly profitable, precisely because they are illegal. They constitute an illegal sector that produces and distributes goods supporting the "mass consumption of style."(12) The demand that guarantees high profits is generated by changes in lifestyle associated with individual consumption. "Style consumption," including the use of illegal drugs, is more expensive than post-war family consumption. The secure and comfortable domestic patterns of middle class families stand in contrast to the new conceptions of work that have accompanied changes in consumer habits.

Cultural and economic values in Brazilian society have likewise developed in this way. During the 1970s and 1980s, values based on individualism, consumption, and modernity became widespread. Drug trafficking is part of this new social, economic and political environment, since it is an individualistic entrepreneurial activity and one of the most organized underground and illegal activities.

Finally, due to the violence associated with drug trafficking, a culture of fear has developed around it, increasing social prejudices against the young shantytown blacks, or mestizos favelados, that are associated with the trade. Middle- and working-class Brazilians see these youths, regardless of their real connections with crime, as purveyors of havoc in society. Some of them feel it is as if God no longer exists, moral parameters have weakened, and institutional restraints are unjust, inefficient, on nonexistent.(13)

DRUG TRAFFICKING IN RIO DE JANEIRO(14)

Fear of drug-related dangers in Brazil is not mere hysteria created by the onslaught of media messages. It is, to a certain extent, realistic. Data on violent crimes in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and many other Brazilian cities justify this fear within the urban population. From 1982 and 1990, homicides increased from 23 to 63 per 100,000 inhabitants, and occurred mainly at the poor periphery of Rio and not in the municipality itself. The number of minors who became crime fatalities was three times higher in 1985 than in 1982. Official data from the Ministry of Health(15) also showed that in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, "external causes" (a euphemism that includes murder) was the third largest cause of death, after cancer and circulatory diseases. However, of male deaths between the ages of 15 and 39, 84 percent were caused by "violent" causes. In Brazil, four men die per woman on average, but between the ages of 15 and 29 years, eight men die per woman and, in some poorer municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro, this rate reaches the amazing figure of 15 men per woman.

Inflation, recession and increased poverty only make matters worse. From the end of the 1970s onward, gun possession has endowed youngsters involved in the drug trafficking war with a "military" power that undermines traditional authority. As more young hoodlums carry guns, local politicians, businessmen and policemen became the focus of their aggressive behavior. Many of Brazil's schoolteachers and local leaders have lost their authority over youths that now wield the power of money and guns.(16) More students carry guns to school, and children sometimes cannot go to school because rivalries in the neighborhoods are settled with gunfire. Even experienced, politically-concerned adults who have worked in neighborhood organizations such as Samba schools, dwellers' associations and soccer teams, have become almost powerless.(17)

Economic and Social Scenario of Drug Trafficking in Favelas(18)

The emergence of a new form of illegal informal market, tightly intertwined with criminal activities, lays a framework for the current economic and social situation in Brazilian cities today Informal markets have long existed, providing the poor with minimal skills and qualifications with viable income-generating activities. These informal markets have well-developed personal networks and complicated sets of rules for occupying the main streets in the major urban centers of the country. However, for the past few decades, street vendors who sell various goods stolen from trucks, residences and pedestrians, or contraband smuggled from other countries such as Paraguay and Bolivia have joined them. Informal trade, which traditionally has been a way out of unemployment and a legal, ethical alternative to work in the formal sector, has thus become tied to organized crime at several levels. This becomes even clearer in organized criminal connections with gold shops, auto repair shops, used car lots, and antique dealers. For example, some legal truck transport businesses are part of the network for truck robbery.

Since my early research on youth gangs during the 1980s,(19) I have found that illegal drug trafficking is integrated into both the formal and informal sectors of the economy, because it employs few people full-time and allows many more to earn money informally as street vendors. Even at the extremes of this vast network--the boca de fumo of the favela--the language used in business is very professional; marketers of illegal drugs are familiar with things like profit margins, accounting, inputs and outputs. They have their bookkeepers, owners and managers. The drug trafficking community is similar to the Italian Mafia in that it lives in a culture of violence, conspicuous consumption and exploitation of the weak. But the drug networks of the favelas are unlike la Cosa Nostra in that they are not based on personal dependence and loyalty or on family ties. Brazilian drug trading is not a family business; it has no "big chief," and it works in networks, although these networks are not always horizontal. There is great inequality within the selling point, or boca de fumo, in terms of power relations or the division of profits and gains. In other words, the networks may be vertical, with the following parts: the trafficker or owner; managers who control the point of sale; vapores (sellers who may stay in one place, or move rapidly from one to another depending on arrangements with the police); and street sellers (inside the favela or out on the pista, or asphalt), who are always changing positions. The verticality of shantytown organizations is expressed symbolically in the language of gang members and their neighbors, in their comparisons between the concept of a weak head (cabeca fraca) vs. a strongman; between networks guided by "remote control" (teleguiado) vs. by a chief commander; and decisions motivated by others vs. decided for oneself.

The qualities of cabeca fraca, teleguiado and externally-motivated actions are those of the gang's employees (bookkeepers and vapores) and the many "little airplanes" (go-between sellers) that they use. Such persons may receive a salary or a small percentage on their sales, or only a small amount of the drug for personal use. Even when the payments are monetary, the wealth often comes back to the trafficker, because most of the employees are viciados, or heavy users.

The characteristic qualities of the strongman, the chief commander, or the independent decision-makers are those of the owner or trafficker and his managers (usually three). They are usually the only ones who have guns, and who profit most from the business. According to interviews, on the sale of only 200 grams of cocaine, one kilo is paid to the matuto or intermediary who left it on consignment. Of this 500 percent profit (partly obtained from mixing the cocaine with other cheaper substances), half goes to the "man in the front" or trafficker, 30 percent to the manager who does the accounts, and various percentages to the vapor who remains at the trading point. The vapor is the one who distributes the papelotes, or small amounts of cocaine, to the avioes, the very young dealers who deliver the drug to the customers. The avioes are the most commonly arrested and prosecuted, and most of the time become entirely responsible for selling their small amounts. They may sell them after malha-las (mixing them with cheap substances) in order to raise their profits. Sometimes, they may consume the drug, but then run the risk of being killed by the trafficker.

Among the avioes, the main incentive for allegiance and participation is pride in their identity as part of the gang. Their identity is tied to the use of guns, and defiant activities such as robbing and looting, with which they seek fame recognition and eventually, if they prove themselves, ascendancy in the hierarchy of the organization. The recruiters might rationally need between 10 and 30 permanent dealers to man the various trading points in a neighborhood. The strategies they employ in recruiting young members are based on the promise of earning "easy money," power and fame.(20)

Some of the more business-like traffickers in Rio have established legal enterprises, such as freight companies, taxis, bars, bakeries and gas stations. Participation in such activities is not equally possible for all drug gang members. Youths have been killed for the very fact that they, the lower echelons of the gang, managed to accumulate money or bought properties for their families, thus calling into question whether they might always remain indebted to the "owners" of the drug organizations.

Despite the occasional stories of dubious or short-lived success among avioes, most lose their money quickly in payments to corrupt policemen, lawyers and by their own lavish consumption. When owners or traffickers are short of money or want to increase their share in the business, they organize robberies, car thefts or muggings, and call out those youths considered to be tough and willing to comply with their rules to come along or perform these crimes for them. Traffickers lend guns to the youth, even if they are not part of the permanent drug trafficking gang. This is what some of the disillusioned youths who are caught in the violent strife call the "devil's condominium." It is like a condominium because it is based on an informal contract, and a sharing of guns; it is devilish because it is so often fatal. Young men engaged in these crimes frequently die in the circles of vengeance into which they are brought.

By the end of 1970s, the drug trade was synonymous with urban warfare in the favelas. Its participants accepted that disagreements or conflicts were best solved by violence. In any case, appeals to the justice system would be unheeded. Criminals who wanted to protect their cocaine outlets could not afford to lower their guard for a moment.

Today, it requires violence for the leader of a drug gang to prevail. A "front man," the owner or trafficker in charge of an outlet, is obliged to keep all his workers in line to make sure his competitors are not selling more or better goods, or acquiring more firepower. He has to maintain his position vis-a-vis his supplier, who is potentially dangerous. If he fails, he knows he will be ripped off, have his spot taken, or be wiped out by competitors from both inside and outside his gang. Carrying a gun at all times and maintaining constant surveillance over the gang's power are everyday concerns for him.

Exceptions to this "normal," organized violence occur frequently, of course. Inexperienced young gang members might engage in warfare because of rivalry over a woman, a minor scuffle, or any act that may be taken as provocation. Such provocations are often anything that threatens the status or masculine pride of youngsters trying to assert their virile, manly status, or "sujeito homem."(21) As a result, the cultural context in which violence and drug trafficking thrives has led to a change in understandings of masculine identity among the gang members, characterized by what has been called their "warrior ethos."(22)

Disillusioned pushers thus describe the life of drug pushing as one of distrust and animosity where there is no mutual respect except for the other man's gun. Theirs is a sexually charged, virile world, in action as well as in speech. All the men carry guns; to carry a gun is to "fucking strut" or to "have your iron in your belt." To brandish one's weapon, proudly described with sexual overtones such as "pulling your gun out," is a common practice among such urban outlaws, albeit one that often proves fatal. Instead of using the verb "to rob," the preferred expression is "to mount" their victims, a phrase used to describe mugging people on the streets as well as for breaking and entering houses. To kill somebody is to "lay them down." The prime audiences for such displays of machismo are apparently the women the gang members are trying to impress with power and the money in their pockets. The young men seem to never tire of bragging that "chicks" go for men who carry guns because they feel more protected. Ironically, these sorts of young criminals are notoriously known to often be the first men to be grabbed in police raids.

There is another crucial motive for constant warfare among dealers. Drug outlets in the favelas are divided into two organizations: Comando Vermelho and the Terceiro Comando. These two opposing networks control most of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. When a friendly quadrilha (gang) in a favela needs either drugs or guns, other members of the same gang in other favelas will help out when possible. Therefore, even if not coordinated entirely as in a Mafia hierarchy, the drug trade in Rio has a very efficient horizontal arrangement by which a quadrilha that runs out of drugs or guns immediately can get them from its allies. These comandos replicate the features of a geographically-defined network, including central diffusion points and horizontal reciprocity. Even though guns and drugs are lent quickly to the allied crews, the violent reciprocity of private vengeance is imperative in the absence of a negotiable or juridical form of conflict resolution. And so adolescents continue to die in wars for the control of trading points. It should not be forgotten that trafficking in Rio is sometimes very complex, sometimes disentangled, for there are many gangs and individuals striving for power and positions inside the trade.

Outside the favela, drug-selling activities involve many actors that have long worked on the streets in other sectors of the shadow economy: prostitutes, doormen, taxi drivers, small shopkeepers, bar tenders, and the camelos, or street vendors--the foot soldiers of the informal market. In the districts we studied, these actors buy drugs at the favela in order to sell them for a higher price on the streets elsewhere in the city. Thus, they have combined their legal selling activities inside the commercial centers of those districts with drug dealing. They perform this activity only with the permission of the trafficker from the nearest favela, especially if they operate on streets nearby; if not, they run an acute risk of being killed. This is especially clear in Copacabana and Tijuca, districts where selling in the pista has been more frequent than in Madureira, where everyone goes to the nearest boca de fumo inside one of the many surrounding favelas. The main reason for this is the lower price (half that of the pista) and the higher quality of the drugs to be found inside shantytowns, where only those acquainted with the traffickers are allowed in. Those buyers who choose to deal directly with the traffickers need to be prepared, however, to face the danger of gunfire or a quick execution in the case of the mere suspicion of betrayal an unpaid debt.

Drug Dealers and their Neighbors

According to the data collected in recent research, in some of the more traditional favelas, such as Serrinha in Madureira, a clear segregation exists between drug dealers and their neighbors. Neighbors claim that they maintain a distance from traffickers illustrated by phrases such as "they respect us" or "we do not have anything to do with them." They actively refuse to collaborate with traffickers, to let them intimidate local inhabitants or to show guns to small children. However, this cannot be said of all communities. At Serrinha only older inhabitants who practice Afro-Brazilian religions and support the old school of Samba tend to maintain this attitude, whereas newcomers belonging to Pentecostal churches seem to avoid confrontation with the dealers. The Pentecostals believe their attitude to be more realistic and justify compromise by claiming that it is impossible to accomplish things without the dealers' help.

Originally, favelas grew so close to each other that their streets and buildings virtually merged. Although neighbors still recognize the areas by their initial names, drug trafficking has created its own districts. In one of these complexes, Alemao, named after a gang leader of several unified favelas after his death, not only was there a state of war between the gangs, but neighbors were not allowed to trespass the borders imposed by the traffickers.

Gang symbols are important symbolic criteria in the rejection or acceptance of dealers. The Terceiro Comando uses the TCK trademark and Comando Vermelho has adopted the Nike trademark; they are used as badges of identification. Members say they belong to one of them, the way they would support a specific soccer team. Identity also comes by sharing the warrior ethos, which they accept with all its consequences by saying they have enemies everywhere and need guns. Members share a deep loathing of policemen and a fear of being considered informers (whom they refer to as "X9"). To be seen as an informer brings enormous shame and the risk of being killed. Recently however, some members have begun to verbalize hatred towards dealers who have killed friends, close relatives or innocent neighbors. Moreover, some of the heavy drug users,

who have connections with dealers, also vent the hatred they feel as a result of their cocaine use. This may be a sign that the epidemic of support for the drug gangs is weakening.

Opposition to traffickers may also be explained by recent changes in the hierarchy of Comando Vermelho. The organization's elder leaders, most in prison, were ousted by younger traffickers who were more disjointed and had no ties among dwellers of the favelas. Violence against the favela dwellers increased because of this lack of personal connection, and local traffickers began to lose the respect of many neighborhood residents. Most of these young dealers evoked only terror among neighbors, rather than respect. The elder leaders decided to form a new organization called "Friends of Friends," based on principles of reciprocity, a tenet of open, continuously-expanding networks.

Ambivalence is clearly evident in terms used by some of the youngsters and their neighbors in referring to criminal actions. They are used to explain why they are trapped in a cycle of vengeance, blood feuds and police persecution. To "revolt" is to refuse to accept low wages and hard work. Such refusals, when they occur, are based on a concept of social justice and male pride that defies economic exploitation. However, injustice can be embodied in the actions of both drug-dealing criminals and corrupt and violent policemen. As a result, there is no clear-cut social stereotype of drug dealers, either purely positive or purely negative. The neighbors may praise them with respect for the many social activities they patronize inside the favelas, and simultaneously loathe them because of actions offensive to social sensibilities, such as the way they bully girls to have sex with them.

Drug dealers have ironically filled a perverse role as security guards in some favelas, expelling petty thieves and rapists--as well as police.(23) Some favelas are perceived as "safer" than others, in terms of the relative freedom to dealers have to trade drugs. Mangueira, near the district of Tijuca, is one of the safest, because policemen rarely go there; it is reputed to be one of the main drug distribution centers with a strongly armed mob. The main street, Buraco Quente, has a series of bars and small shops where dealers can openly negotiate. Another example is the Borel shantytown, which is close to the district's main shopping center. However, despite their controls, the very presence of the gangs and the way they deal with the young drug users create further incentives for criminal activities and violence, and drug dealers continue to be perceived with ambivalence and fear by many From time-to-time, police raids or conflicts amongst the dealers themselves shatter the illusory tranquility.

The growth of organized crime and the violence that has accompanied it is an unexpected challenge in the shantytowns' local socio-political life. The armed power of the traffickers has made drug trafficking an important political issue at various levels. Locally, the drug dealers have started to take interest in election for the dwellers' associations, and have supported their own candidates. Drug dealers have also interfered in the elections of board members of some Samba schools and blocos, or carnival groups, as well as in the election of the winning songs for the annual carnival parade.

Traffickers have succeeded in infiltrating voluntary and public organizations, such as the sanitation workers of Comlurb. In several favelas there were more than five people linked with the drug dealers who were on the payroll of Comlurb. Drivers and watchmen of the company have also been linked to drug gangs. Even those who are not part of the gangs are compelled to smuggle drugs or guns inside the Comlurb trucks from one place of the city to another, without causing suspicion. The same happens with drivers of ambulances on duty for public hospitals. Those who have not complied have been killed.(24)

Drug Trafficking, Morality and Institutions

Surprisingly, many criminals and legal workers share the same moral views of crime; rape, for example, is widely considered to be the most odious. No less perversely, the Brazilian Penal Code makes rape a crime punishable only by a short prison sentence. The next most serious offense, according to criminals and workers alike is murder, especially when the victim is innocent. All atrocities committed against the elderly, children and pregnant women are strongly condemned by the residents of the favelas whom I have encountered. Nevertheless, these people, some of whom are probably murderers themselves, clearly distinguish between crimes that are committed due to strong emotional reactions and those that are intentional. The qualitative judgements consider the small provocations that challenge masculine pride, and also adultery, which brings shame to families and neighborhoods to be somewhat mitigating circumstances. They believe that intentional murders underlie some kind of gain-or-loss calculation, habit or so-called "vice." Revenge motivates the greatest response. The reason for the ambiguity and seeming contradictions may be twofold: it may either serve to justify murder to the public, or to criticize the Brazilian justice system for its inefficiency, corruption and impunity which makes life in the poor neighborhoods worse. Rape is obviously linked to the virile ethos, a trait of the young criminals, whereas murder must be understood as part of the intricate web of the criminal justice system (that is, the justice of the criminals themselves), which is affected by drug trafficking, business and other organized crime considerations.

Of all institutions, the police and the judiciary are particularly poorly looked upon in the eyes of many favela dwellers. Where positive assessments are found, most refer to a specific policeman, or to a judge who made a just decision. Prisons and police precincts are regarded as factories or schools for criminals. In general, the justice system is viewed as being propelled by money, much as criminal organizations are. The police are seen to have accumulated tremendous power, which makes their members all the more prone to corruption. Furthermore, the police force often does not respect the constitutional rights of Brazilian citizens. Police torture prisoners, who are mainly poor and black, in order to get them to confess to crimes.(25) This does not endear them to the public.

Impunity and detailed information obtained through skilled investigation are other elements of the criminals' professional ethos. Many petty criminals and bandits never get caught, which encourages them to repeat delinquent acts. Joining drug trafficking gangs becomes even more attractive, since money may guarantee greater impunity either because the police do not investigate crimes, or because well-paid lawyers help them get around the judicial process.(26) The "goodwill" of a trafficker is crucial for a youngster's career. One of the many stories heard by our researchers was that of a twenty year-old man arrested because the local trafficker did not like him. The man was a go-between for a bar owner whose bar was located at the border of the favela in which both lived, who in turn worked as manager for the more powerful local trafficker. The young man was asked to carry a large quantity of drugs to another favela and was caught, arrested and tried because the trafficker had warned the police. Since he had no money to pay for a lawyer, this led to a prison sentence. Due to the absence of market regulations, adjusted prices, minimum wages and labor rights for the small dealers in favelas, income and cash flows concentrate at the top of the drug business hierarchy Lawyers, corrupt policemen and traders of stolen merchandise are others who profit the most from the shadow economy of Rio's drug trade.

In interviews, it became clear that youths noted that the criminal gangs provide security for their members, and that they ensure legal assistance to those well-situated in the organized crime hierarchy. They value such security highly when considering joining a gang. Because money can buy defense, and guns guarantee some protection, it is a rational choice for them to practice more crime in order to gain money, guns and respect within the gang. Idealized, absolute independence may just be a death trap for the young and for those around them.(27) On the other hand, few young, poor men establish themselves in the drug organization over the long run, as most die very young or go to prison. However, they all contribute to the enormous profits enjoyed by those who are well-placed in the networks, or who run the legal businesses connected with money laundering.

According to interviews over the last twenty years, the prevalence of armed robbery can be attributed to the fact that members of the gang can easily silence witnesses and accomplices through intimidation, while bribing policemen by trading in guns. This behavior does not completely eliminate the likelihood that a poor or less important criminal may go through the experience of being tortured by police or intimidated through extortion. Furthermore, as the justice system feels pressure expedite criminal investigations already in progress, criminals run the risk of being blamed for crimes that they did not commit. Young men in the favelas have work pressures and other institutional stresses with which to contend, apart from the secular gang world of violence and corruption. Corrupt, demoralizing police behavior actually enforces young men's propensity towards crime and criminal activity; our research uncovered at least two cases of "revolt," that is, the decision by youths to take up guns and follow criminal careers, which were due to brutal experiences at the hands of policemen.

The situation would be even more serious were it not for the fact that criminal activities have their own dynamics that serve to restrain their actions. Power relationships and the division of labor, even when very exploitative, are a case in point. As I said before, the lion's share of profits belongs to the owner of the boca de fumo, also called the trafficker. He gets almost all the profit, whereas his managers and vapores receive different percentages on the sales. Thus, if someone in the Rio drug gangs wants to become rich quickly, individual initiative is the most suitable line of action. However, individual initiative is risky; it may result in the loss of the gang's protection, which in turn may invite police persecution outside the gang's turf. It also could hinder climbing the gang's hierarchy quickly in order to gain more from the drug business. Independent and petty criminals are the most common targets of policemen, because they do not pay the regular bribe that allows business to take place without any disturbance. Nevertheless, they also make their decisions about "going into the movement" on the assumption that policemen have common ideas about who is a criminal, and may not differentiate between delinquents and workers since they all look the same.

To summarize, although workers and petty criminals see crime as correlated with punishment, penalties do not pose a threat due to widespread corruption of the judicial system, pressures and bribes, graft among policemen, and witness intimidation. Nonetheless, there are deterrents to criminal action. These stem not from the repressive action of policemen, but from values prevalent, if sometimes latent, within the communities themselves. First, attachment to family obligations and compromises may cause a feeling of vergonha, or shame. In the case of crime, vergonha is not associated with the classical Iberian notions of shame and honor, rooted in the purity of women. It is rather associated with a loss of dignity and family pride.

Secondly, the brutal rules that exist within the criminal gangs or inside the more inclusive world of organized crime do deter some young men from joining. This is despite the attractiveness of carrying a gun, of being part of a gang and perhaps most importantly, being feared and respected. Success for such men often depends on circumstances allowing them being able to move to another district, city or state, to disassociate from their former partners. Some may choose to quit the gangs, although this is a precarious choice to make. The traffickers and their managers, of course, fail to acknowlege the possibility of quitting the gang, as they are the ones who are getting richer and richer from the illegal business. Nonetheless, wealth alone does not prevent them from defeat or failure. There are many stories of criminals who have experienced treason from associates, wives, lawyers, or persecution from policemen envious of their riches. In other ones, their losses may be provoked by their own vices and lavish consumption.

CONCLUSION

As I have attempted to establish, there is little empirical evidence to claim that drug trafficking offers integration into society to young favelados. The typical favela dweller is generally ambivalent to the trafficker. Their economic and social activities can yield different or contradictory outcomes because of the stakes and traps rooted in drug trafficking and because of the interference of the justice system in Brazil. The success stories are very rare. The poor favelados involved in crime-related activities have either died or have gone to prison, even if they held minor roles in the crimes committed. Most of the petty dealers who are now in this risky activity, excluding the owner or trafficker and his managers, live as poorly (but much more perilously) as their neighbors. Most of what they earn, however, ends up in other hands, especially those of corrupt policemen, and ruthless and powerful traffickers embedded within illegal drug networks that link favelas to other parts of the city, state, country and beyond. As for the petty dealers, they pay a high price for their vice, frequently with their own lives. This is due to the combined effects of the illegal as well as hierarchical nature of drug trafficking gangs and the unjust, violent and inefficient process of the justice system in Brazil.

(1) United Nations Resolution 1994/12, Economic and Social Council, 43rd plenary meeting, 25 July 1994, p. 1.

(2) The term "network" is used in two main ways in studies of drug trafficking. Firstly, it is anchored in concepts of territoriality and hierarchy. Networks may be thought of as international, or national, or associated with some regional metropolis, in order to better study the dynamics of how information and products move through them. On the other hand, by using an anthropologically based conception of social networks, one better understands ongoing illegal business activities in terms of the interpersonal relationships, ones based on secrecy and trust, on which they rely. This second understanding of networks is best applied to lower level drug trafficking that is often characterized by an intricate, decentralized web, see UNDCP, World Drug Report (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 129-135. See also Michel Schiray, "Les Filieres-Stupefiants: Trois Niveaux, Cinq Logiques," Futuribles, no. 185 (Paris, March 1994) pp. 23-41; Christian Geffray, "Marche Ouvert et Formation de Reseaux", Rapport d'Activite no. 2 du Projet: Effects Sociaux, Economiques et Politiques de la Penetration du Narcotrafic en Amazonie Bresiliene (Belem: ORSTOM/CNPq/Museu Goeldi, 1996) pp. 16-31.

(3) The term "organized crime" is often treated as synonymous with organizations like the Italian Mafia, but need not be. Its definition has been a subject of unfinished debate since the last century. Here, I will simply define it as sets of illegal activities that are spread through networks, have components of repetitive economic endeavour (but without the discipline, regularity and rights of regular work), whose main aim is profit (the easier and higher, the better). Organised crime networks also use variable methods and modes of exchange and often occur in secret, underground relationships. The polemics on this issue are well covered in Peter Reuter, Disorganized Crime: Illegal Markets and the Mafia (Boston: MIT Press, 1986).

(4) The concept of perverse connection was conceptualized in End of the Millenium (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) pp. 166-180. See also Salda Sassen discussion on underground economy separating criminal and other underground activities at "The Informal Economy" in Manuel Castels and John Mollenkopf, ed., Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1992) p. 81.

(5) These points have been raised by Alba Zaluar, Condominio do Diabo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ e Revan, 1994) pp. 98, 219-223; Christian Geffray, Rapport d'activite no. 2 du projet: Effects sociaux, economiques et politiques de la penetration du narcotrafic en Amazonie Bresiliene (Belem: ORSTOM/CNPq/Museu Goeldi, 1996) pg 33-46; UNDCP; and World Drug Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 126-139.

(6) See Hans T. van der Veen, "The International Drug Complex: When the Visible Hand of Crime Fractures the Strong Arm of the Law," European University Institute at www.unesco.org/most (January 1998) pp. 4-10, 34-38.

(7) ibid. pg 5 and UNDCP, World Drug Report (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 29-31.

(8) Globally, the existence of laws that prohibit such activities, foment practices and organizational forms that are both underground and violent in their means of negotiation (through threats, intimidation, blackmail or extortion) or in terms of aims towards conflict resolution (aggressions, murders or terrorism) of their commercial or private disputes.

(9) In New York the same pattern is found in the traffic of heroin. From the 1960s onward, trafficking was established in the Black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and the pattern continued with the more recent traffic of cocaine and crack, as shown by Mercer Sullivan, "Crime and the Social Fabric," in Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1992).

(10) See Pierre Salama, "Macro-economic de la Drogue dans les pays andins," Futuribles, no. 185 (Paris: March 1994) pp. 47-48.

(11) Mafiosi contracts damage third parties and, although they may avoid conflicts, are based on the participants' instrumental interests. The relationships of personal loyalty and reciprocity are not the outcome of personal free will, but are coerced mainly by the threat or use of physical violence or even by terror. See Alain Caille, Don, interet et desinteressement; Bourdieu, Mauss, Platon et quelques autres, 1st ed. (Paris: Editions La Decouverte/ M.A.U.S.S, 1996) pp. 13-21. Demonstrations of the chief's generosity and magnanimity exist, but are dependent on the whims and caprices of his personal power, leaving little space for the subject of argumentation and demand to appear. The mixture of fear, respect and affection that surround him does not nullify his despotic power.

(12) Style is a concept has been used to substitute for culture and subculture. The term style has theoretical consequences and presuppositions that are inapplicable in such times of very rapid change in social identities and practices. Used first to designate what was called "youth culture," style then became the most suitable term to speak characterise the swift and transitory novelties in fashion of music, clothing, art, language and other juvenile behaviour that could no longer be exclusively interpreted on the holistic perspective of religion or of class culture, although not entirely disconnected with them. Saskia Sassen has explored the differences between class and style consumption in The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) pp. 279-283.

(13) See Alba Zaluar, Condominio do Diabo (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ e Revan, 1994) pp. 235-244; "Crime, medo e politica" in Alba Zaluar and Marcos

Alvito, Um Seculo de Favela (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da FGV, 1998) pp. 212-226.

(14) ibid. See also Alba Zaluar, "Gangs," "galeras" e "quadrilhas": globalizacao, juventude e violencia," in H. Vianna, Galeras Cariocas (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ, 1997) pp. 17-54. The data from the more recent research in three districts of Rio de Janeiro has been gathered by my research team at UERJ, the members of which are my graduate and undergraduate students. I thank them for their careful work.

(15) The data is available in a CD Rom prepared and istributed by SUS, Ministry of Health, entitled "Sistema de Informacao sobre Mortalidade 1979-1997, Dados de Declaracao de Obito."

(16) There are many studies which focus on school violence. Among the first ones see Heloisa Guimaraes & Vera De Paula, "Cotidiano escolar e violencia", Vanilda Paiva, "Violencia e Pobreza: a educacao dos pobres", both in (org.) Violencia e Educacao, Cortez Editora (1992). See also "Para nao dizer que nao falei de samba, os enigmas da violencia no Brasil" in L. M. Schwarcz, Historia da Vida Privada no Brasil, IV (Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998) pp. 296-302.

(17) I elaborate this argument in "Crime, medo e politica", in Alba Zaluar and Marcos Alvito, Um Seculo de Favela (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da FGV, 1998) pp. 212-226.

(18) This research stems from extensive ethnographical fieldwork done in a governmental housing estate during the 1980s, in addition to on-going research which compares styles of drug use and trafficking in three socioeconomically distinct districts--Copacabana, Madureira and Tijuca--in Rio de Janeiro.

(19) See Alba Zaluar, Condominio do Diabo, pp. 7-34, 100-116, 136-149.

(20) This point is made by myself in the book and pages cited above, and by my research assistant Paulo Lins who wrote a novel with the research material, published as Cidade de Deus (Sao Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1997).

(21) ibid. pp. 100,257; See also Marcos Alvito, "A honra de Acari" in G. Velho, Cidadania e Violencia (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ, 1996) p. 152.

(22) This concept is an important part of Norbert Elias' theory for the civilizing process. See Norbert Elias, The Cvilizing Process (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1994) or Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Quest for Excitement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993) p. 138.

(23) These facts may be the reason why so many communitarian leaders refuse to talk about the violent means employed by local drug dealers, as it happened recently during the trial of the policemen involved in the killing of 23 workers at a shanty-town (Vigario Geral), well-known for the feud between its young traffickers and the ones belonging to a close shanty-town (Parada de Lucas). In this feud, dozens of youth were killed.

(24) This is not the most important link between legal and illegal organizations, since it is mostly imposed by fear of dying at a very low level of drug trafficking. The higher level linkages between the legal and the illegal have not been investigated yet by those who should do the job: federal policemen and public prosecutors. Recently, Congress has installed an inquiry (CPI do Narcotrafico) to interrogate some of the personalities (businessmen, politicians, judges and so on) who were supposedly involved in secret activities of money laundering or wholesale trafficking. Lawyers and some member of the Judiciary have discredited systematically the powers that congressmen bestowed on themselves to inquire.

(25) This assertion is found in many studies made by Brazilian social scientists, such as Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Sergio Adorno, Antonio Luis Paixao et al., listed in a recent bibliographical review I wrote: "Violencia e crime" in S. Micelli, O que ler nas Ciencias Sociais Brasileiras: 1970-1995, Antropologia (Sao Paulo: ANPOCS, 1999) pp. 17-100.

(26) This research is described in Alba Zaluar, "Para nao dizer que nao falei de samba, os enigmas da violencia no Brasil" in L. M. Schwarcz, Historia da Vida Privada no Brasil, IV, Contrastes da Intimidade Contemporanea (Companhia das Letras, 1998) pp. 304-315.

(27) Zaluar, Condominio do Diabo.

Alba Zaluar is full professor of Anthropology at State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). She has also authored A Maqina e a Revolta, Condominio do Diabo and Da Revolta ao Crime S.A.