Rio's OTHER Drug War

Brazil's own "war on drugs" has almost always focused on the poor and the favelas. The police go after the traficantes only in the favelas, ignoring white-collar drug use (such as cocaine, ecstasy, etc.). There is almost never any execution of arrests against anybody from the middle- or upper-classes for their involvement in the drug trade, be it as user or dealer (indeed, the elites often go into the favelas to buy their drugs, yet are almost never arrested or prosecuted). However, this seems to have changed (at least temporarily). Between Wednesday and yesterday, they arrested 10 ecstasy dealers (I could only find the story in Portuguese - apologies).

However, these arrests are nothing like the campaigns against traficantes in the favelas. Ecstasy is a middle-class drug here in Rio, and its dealers are middle-class. The biggest catch for the police yesterday was Marcel Dias Fernandes, who was arrested Wednesday and is allegedly the biggest ecstasy dealer in the Zona Sul. The Zona Sul ("South Zone") is where the middle- and upper-classes reside; its neighborhoods are much nicer, the police presence isn't as strong, and the political views are much more conservative. Every single young man and woman arrested yesterday and today lives in this area, and traffics in the Zona Sul, and one of the individuals was even arrested at his university (an area which, while not totally off-limits to the poor, is much more easily accessible to the middle-classes).

These arrests are a moderate victory from the standpoint of equality in the law. This campaign, the first of its kind, is the first time that the police have actively gone after drug dealers regardless of class. This isn't a case of going after traficantes in the favelas, or the poor who buy drugs - ecstasy is sold, bought, and used by the carioca middle class, period. So in that regard, it is a positive development, for it hints at the possibility of equality of treatment - all drug dealers, regardless of the drug, class, or neighborhood, will be pursued.

However, the emphasis here should fall on "hints at". There's no indicator that this campaign is anything more (or, to be fair, less) than a flash-in-the-pan effort, and the police may (or may not) very quickly abandon such efforts to arrest middle-class drug dealers, using this campaign to show their "accomplishments" and then going back to the favelas. However, the favelas will almost doubtlessly continue to bear the brunt of police force. Additionally, these students were calmly arrested - there was no police-takeover of the neighborhoods of Barra da Tijuca, Jardim Botanico, or Botafogo, and no imposition of de facto martial law, as is frequently the case in the favelas (the occupation of Alemão favela a few months back being only the most recent example of this). Finally, there is the question of prosecution. While many drug lords in the favelas never reach the courts because they are simply killed, those who do come to trial find themselves sentenced to heavy sentences and sent to unsanitary, overcrowded prisons in Brazil's backlands. This almost certainly will not happen to the middle-class dealers. At worst, they will get a few years and a slap on the wrist (and it's not unheard of here to have middle-class drug dealers serve their sentence outside of jail - not even house arrest).

I'm not the biggest fan of the drug war on the supply side without ever addressing the demand side (while Brazil isn't nearly as terrible as this as the U.S. is, it's still the basic thrust of its anti-drug campaign - go after the dealers, don't try to aid the users). However, that is the system as it operates right now. Given that, despite all of the caveats mentioned, it is definitely a positive thing that the police are trying at least somewhat to go after dealers regardless of class or place of residence. Hopefully, it will mark one more way in which special legal privileges for the better-off will disappear.