BRAZIL'S BENEVOLENT DRUG LORDS

RIO DE JANEIRO -- On a steep hillside, an organization is generously
maintaining the local soccer field, donating cash to help operate day-care
centers, providing cheap transit, staging musical extravaganzas, offering
medicine and food to needy families and assuring the security of the more
than 250,000 residents packed into the massive Rocinha ghetto.

There are many such organizations operating throughout Brazil. In Rocinha,
as in other favelas, the haphazardly constructed slums across Rio and other
big cities in Latin America's largest nation, the organizations are known
as "the Parallel Power" -- the new euphemism for Brazil's increasingly
omnipotent drug lords.

Residents of the favelas, where about 40 percent of the population in this
tropical metropolis can be found, say the well-organized gangs of drug
traffickers have essentially replaced the regular government. In a
relationship not unlike that between Italy and its old Mafia dons, the drug
lords of Rio have become the people's benefactors. In return, the
traffickers are winning greater control over their territory, a measure of
goodwill from the community and an expanding market for their wares.

A powerful drug gang called the Red Command, for example, is providing
residents with everything the legitimate government cannot, said Alexandre
de Brito, 43, a barber in Rocinha, widely considered Latin America's
largest shantytown.

"They help us out in so many ways, doing things for the good of the
community," he said, pointing to white Volkswagen vans darting up and down
the steep roads. The vans, he and others here said, were provided by the
drug dealers after residents complained about poor municipal bus service.

"The [traffickers] make the streets safe -- I haven't been robbed in years
- -- and if you're in need, they find a way to help you out," de Brito said.
"For us, they are not the problem, they are part of our solution."

The rise of the benevolent drug dealer, analysts here say, is part of the
new and growing cocaine culture in Brazil. According to a State Department
report compiled last year and disputed by the Brazilian government, this
sprawling nation of 170 million is the world's second-largest consumer of
cocaine, after the United States. Brazilians use an estimated 40 to 50 tons
per year, the report said.

The drug dealers have developed a controversial, sympathetic image here.
For instance, in "City of God," a successful Brazilian movie that was the
talk of the Cannes Film Festival this year, cocaine traffickers are
separated into good guys and bad guys. In the film, one particularly
heralded dealer is described by a narrator as "a guy who everyone loved" --
and a party for him is shown as a community event, attended even by members
of the local Catholic church.

"I think the point is that the traffickers are not psychopaths, as some
people would like to make them out to be," said Katia Lund, co-director of
the film. "They are human beings who are responding to their surroundings.
I don't think this is a glorification of traffickers, I think it's a
humanization of them. This is real, and it's happening all around this
city. The government can't provide the people with what they need, so the
traffickers often step in and fill in the blanks."

The traffickers have, in ways once unimaginable, gained a foothold in the
life of the city. In one highly publicized incident, Carrefour -- a
French-owned discount chain similar to Wal-Mart and Sam's Club -- allegedly
contracted a drug gang to send a message to residents after a wave of
shoplifting last year. According to a report compiled by Rio-based Global
Justice, a human rights group, two suspected female shoplifters accused
store officials of calling in gang members to "teach them a lesson." One of
the women claims to have been severely beaten and then forced to walk with
a gasoline-doused tire around her neck before her friend escaped and called
the police.

Critics are citing huge societal dangers in destigmatizing drug dealers --
not the least of which is underplaying the problem of Brazil's drug
violence. Last week, for instance, a notorious drug lord -- Luiz Fernando
da Costa, known by his street name Fernandinho Beira-Mar, or Seaside Freddy
- -- staged a city-wide revolt from his prison cell. Using a smuggled cell
phone, authorities allege, he orchestrated the assassinations of four
leaders of rival drug gangs -- touching off gang wars across Rio that
effectively shut down many of the favelas for days.

Such violent gang rivalries -- as well as clashes between the traffickers
and police -- caused the death of 3,937 children and adolescents from
December 1987 to November 2001, the Rio-based Institute for Religious
Studies said in a report this month. By comparison, 467 children and
adolescents were killed by weapons fire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
during the same period, said the report, which was funded by the Ford
Foundation.

The ruthlessness of Rio's drug dealers was also put in the national
spotlight in June, when one of the city's most respected investigative
journalists, Tim Lopes, was savagely tortured and killed by gang members.
Lopes's body was found burned and mutilated after he tried to film the
child prostitution and cocaine dealing going on openly at Rio's funk music
balls -- wild neighborhood parties hosted by drug dealers in the favelas
where drugs, sex and exploitation of poor youths are common.

"Brazil is facing an unprecedented drug violence problem, and perhaps the
biggest danger is that we are not taking it seriously enough," said
Argemiro Procopio, a researcher on the drug problem and a professor of
international relations at the University of Brasilia. "There is not enough
condemnation of the dealers going on -- in fact, we are now seeing just the
opposite. You have young kids and even adults out there who are idolizing
them. This has got to stop."

Deep inside Rio's favelas, however, the drug dealers appear to rule
absolutely. The favelas serve as the perfect fortress for organized crime
- -- they have one entrance and one exit, which are almost always guarded by
gang members. The gangs have become so well armed, possessing grenades and
even rocket launchers, that local law enforcement is finding itself at a
loss to combat them.

On a steep hill in Rocinha, Edmilson Valentim, a candidate for Rio's city
council in elections next month, handed out glossy fliers in the street.
When asked about the dealers, he began rattling off the good things they
have done for the community.

"There is no debate going on about whether they should be here or not --
they just are, it's a fact of life, and they make it easier on everyone by
helping out in the community," he said. "If we did not have so much need,
so much misery here, perhaps we would not need them. But we do have need
and misery, and someone needs to help the people."

On Rocinha's cement walls and along its winding corridors, posters
advertise free concerts that many people admit are financed by drug
dealers. Nene, a 34-year-old singer in a popular band who asked that his
full name be withheld, said his group requested, and received, permission
to play from the drug lords in several favelas. In recent years, the drug
lords have become the band's patrons, buying the musicians guitars and
other equipment. Nene said the traffickers are paying a Rio radio station
about $4,000 a month to play one of the group's songs twice a day.

The group's performances, however, are almost always used by dealers as an
opportunity to market cocaine to poor residents. The drug, mixed with cheap
baking soda, sells for less than $1 a line.

"Look, it's a chain of favors," Nene said. "The dealers pay us, the people
get entertainment, and the dealers then make some money off us by selling.
That's the way it works now. You don't have to buy drugs to listen to the
music, and the people seem to really like it. It works out okay for us."

It does not, however, work out for everyone.

Antonio Jemrefom, 10, criticized life in Rocinha: "I don't like it here --
there are traffickers everywhere with guns, and you hear shooting all the
time during the night. It scares me." He was interrupted by a
representative of Rocinha's community association, which government
authorities and criminal experts here have closely linked to the drug
dealers. The representative dismissed the boy's words as "the comments of
an uninformed child."

Still, Antonio continued: "But that's how it is. It's scary here."

Special correspondent Nadejda Marques contributed to this report.