Pacification in Rio

Gabriela Caceres

Art & Society

                 The pacification occurring in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas in Brazil is a risky event happening right now. The purpose of pacification is the Brazilian government’s attempt to remove the drug lords, armed drug traffickers and murderers from the slums to make it a safe place for Brazilian people. They’re also working on reducing crime rates before the world cup begins in June. Although it seems that the government is trying to replenish Rio, they’re using a controversial technique. If the Brazilian military catches you selling drugs in the favelas, or if they see you with a leader they’ll instantly kill you. I chose this particular event because I was recently watching a documentary on it and I have a lot of family and friends attending the world cup next month so it instantly concerned me. The corrupt part about this issue is that drug traffickers have been controlling favelas for years now and the government decided to deal with this ongoing problem recently. The government is spending so much money on new roads, the stadiums, clubs to attract tourists for the world cup but they’re barely helping the residents of the favelas, thus they feel neglected. The message of my drawing is to make people realize especially tourists visiting Brazil in June that drug traffickers are still controlling favelas and that pacification isn’t really effective and instead of the government focusing on spending money on buildings and on the world cup they should focus on doing that for the favelas. The location of this drawing would be in the entrance of the airport in Brazil or before entering the world cup stadium in Rio to capture peoples attention and to make them aware of what’s going on.