Guardian Latin American correspondent Tom Phillips visits Jacarezinho, one of Rio’s biggest favelas, the day after police carried out the deadliest raid in the city’s history
Anushka Asthana talks to Tom Phillips about the police raid in Jacarezinho favela, in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. On 6 May police stormed the favela, targeting one of the city’s largest drug gangs, known as Red Command. Twenty-seven men were shot dead by police and one police officer was killed. Police, politicians and some parts of the media called the operation a “surgical” success. Human rights activists, community leaders and residents of the favela have described it as a massacre and are now calling for justice.
Tom tells Anushka about visiting the favela and meeting the residents the day after the attack. Rio’s favelas have suffered countless horrors since the drug conflict began to intensify in the mid-1980s and cocaine and war-grade weapons began flooding communities such as Jacarezinho. Since then, thousands of people – the majority young black men – have lost their lives to the relentless, corruption-fuelled skirmishes between police, drug traffickers and, increasingly, paramilitary gangs with ties to the state.
