On March 14 of last year, VICE correspondent Ben Anderson headed to Rio to find out how the notoriously violent city was preparing to deal with an influx of rabid soccer fans from around the world. The answer was a pacification program led by a special police unit (BOPE) intent on curbing the rampant gang activity and drug trafficking in the favelas closest to the city's tourist areas. The officers, clad in fatigues and carrying heavy-duty weaponry, resembled troops during a military occupation more than they did a local police force.Over the coming weeks we will be serializing season two of VICE on HBO, beginning with episode one, which features Ben's report from Rio along with VICE founder Shane Smith's look at America's astonishingly wasteful spending on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. This week we checked back in with Ben to get his thoughts on his story now that the World Cup is over and the country's next global hosting gig, the 2016 Summer Olympics, is just around the corner.VICE: When you spoke to Marcelo Freixo, a Rio state representative and an outspoken critic of the pacification program, he said that there are 50,000 homicides in Brazil per year. Why are journalists borderline obsessed with gritty tales of cities like Chicago, when places like Rio exist?
Ben Anderson: I went there because, knowing those numbers while seeing this massive glossy advertising campaign, it just seemed insane that such a big, shiny international event [like the World Cup] could be in one of the most violent cities in the world.What was the energy like walking around the favelas? The statistics make it seem more dangerous than a war zone.
I've been to lots of war zones and it was scary there, because it felt like we were completely vulnerable and were in the hands of the traffickers. It was us, a fixer, and our cameraman, and that's it. We were literally surrounded by concentric circles of armed, sometimes high—often high—teenagers with the latest assault rifles. One night when we were watching them cut coke from a fresh batch, which they said was from Colombia, guys with assault rifles over their shoulders were snorting it while they were mixing it with baking soda. And two of them were having an argument that got really heated. It felt like any second one of them would just lift up the gun and shoot. And that felt completely out of control. Not good.What's the drug culture like in Brazil as compared to other drug-producing countries, like Colombia?
In Colombia and Venezuela, you don't see as much usage. But on the beaches and in the favelas of Rio, it feels like there is usage. You feel a kind of nervous, tense energy everywhere where things could get violent. I'd been to Rio three times before this trip, and I think I'd seen one fight the entire time I was there. This time, even when I wasn't working, I saw two or three fights and a dead body about a block away from Copacabana Beach. It just felt like the atmosphere—I don't know if you've been at clubs or parties where people have done too much coke—but it just felt like it could provoke a real explosion of violence. It felt like that to me everywhere in Rio, and it hadn't felt like that before. Maybe what I had seen influenced what I was thinking, but it did feel like the coke was really being used there.In a lot of drug-producing countries like Afghanistan, which is the one I've spent the most time in, it feels like a product they're able to grow and sell fairly easily. It doesn't feel like the usage is an issue. It just happens to be the thing they sell. It could be fruits or vegetables. It just happens to be opium in Afghanistan, whereas in Rio, it wasn't just the fact that they were criminals who had to violently protect their part of the trade, it felt like the drug was being used a lot as well.How much progress did Rio eventually make with the pacification trade, and will they ever occupy 100 percent of the favelas?
The pacification plan is kind of a euphemism because it isn't necessarily aimed at pacifying the most violent favelas or the favelas controlled by the drug traffickers. It's pacifying the favelas that are closest to the prime real estate, or are themselves the prime real estate. From that point of view, it's going really well, and the routes from the World Cup stadium are protected. But if you go three or four miles down the road to the poor areas where the tourists never go, they're not being pacified at all. And they're not going to be. So it's really control and development of the nicest real estate in Rio rather than the areas most under threat.Who gained something from the plan, besides the government? Who was eager to get that World Cup economic influx?
The incredible thing is that originally half of the budget was funded by real estate developer Eike Batista. He started building a five-star hotel on the site of one of the best-placed favelas. He built a cable car up and down the favela as well.That's the incredible thing about Rio. This paradise and the beach with all the beautiful women and the cliches exist next to so much violence. If you're on Ipanema Beach, you can often hear gunshots or screams coming from the hillside favelas.And how do the people living in the favelas feel about the occupation? Is life better for them under the drug traffickers or without them there?
It's kind of mixed. We talked to some of the locals who said life is better under the traffickers, because the areas that are run by police militias are just as violent and corrupt, only they don't allow trafficking. The police, they say, are only interested in drug traffickers, and don't give a shit about things like domestic violence or rape, for example, whereas the traffickers don't allow that.So domestic violence and rape and burglary would go up in those areas that had been pacified. In some of the trafficker-controlled areas, people would say, yeah, no one dares rob or rape beat their wife or girlfriend here, because the traffickers will kill them. Some people said life was better since pacification, but there were plenty of people who said they felt like they were under military occupation.So, ultimately, based on what we saw during the World Cup, is the Brazilian government effectively keeping tourists from getting shot?
Rio had the Pope visit as well, and I think that was a bigger event than either the Olympics or the World Cup, and the tourists were protected there. I think that it goes from the airport to the beaches and the beaches to the stadium, but they've built a separate road that has walls on either side of it at certain points so you can't even see the favela. So they've done a very good job of not getting rid of the problem but making a safe passage for tourists to skirt around it.
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Ben Anderson: I went there because, knowing those numbers while seeing this massive glossy advertising campaign, it just seemed insane that such a big, shiny international event [like the World Cup] could be in one of the most violent cities in the world.What was the energy like walking around the favelas? The statistics make it seem more dangerous than a war zone.
I've been to lots of war zones and it was scary there, because it felt like we were completely vulnerable and were in the hands of the traffickers. It was us, a fixer, and our cameraman, and that's it. We were literally surrounded by concentric circles of armed, sometimes high—often high—teenagers with the latest assault rifles. One night when we were watching them cut coke from a fresh batch, which they said was from Colombia, guys with assault rifles over their shoulders were snorting it while they were mixing it with baking soda. And two of them were having an argument that got really heated. It felt like any second one of them would just lift up the gun and shoot. And that felt completely out of control. Not good.
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In Colombia and Venezuela, you don't see as much usage. But on the beaches and in the favelas of Rio, it feels like there is usage. You feel a kind of nervous, tense energy everywhere where things could get violent. I'd been to Rio three times before this trip, and I think I'd seen one fight the entire time I was there. This time, even when I wasn't working, I saw two or three fights and a dead body about a block away from Copacabana Beach. It just felt like the atmosphere—I don't know if you've been at clubs or parties where people have done too much coke—but it just felt like it could provoke a real explosion of violence. It felt like that to me everywhere in Rio, and it hadn't felt like that before. Maybe what I had seen influenced what I was thinking, but it did feel like the coke was really being used there.In a lot of drug-producing countries like Afghanistan, which is the one I've spent the most time in, it feels like a product they're able to grow and sell fairly easily. It doesn't feel like the usage is an issue. It just happens to be the thing they sell. It could be fruits or vegetables. It just happens to be opium in Afghanistan, whereas in Rio, it wasn't just the fact that they were criminals who had to violently protect their part of the trade, it felt like the drug was being used a lot as well.
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The pacification plan is kind of a euphemism because it isn't necessarily aimed at pacifying the most violent favelas or the favelas controlled by the drug traffickers. It's pacifying the favelas that are closest to the prime real estate, or are themselves the prime real estate. From that point of view, it's going really well, and the routes from the World Cup stadium are protected. But if you go three or four miles down the road to the poor areas where the tourists never go, they're not being pacified at all. And they're not going to be. So it's really control and development of the nicest real estate in Rio rather than the areas most under threat.Who gained something from the plan, besides the government? Who was eager to get that World Cup economic influx?
The incredible thing is that originally half of the budget was funded by real estate developer Eike Batista. He started building a five-star hotel on the site of one of the best-placed favelas. He built a cable car up and down the favela as well.That's the incredible thing about Rio. This paradise and the beach with all the beautiful women and the cliches exist next to so much violence. If you're on Ipanema Beach, you can often hear gunshots or screams coming from the hillside favelas.And how do the people living in the favelas feel about the occupation? Is life better for them under the drug traffickers or without them there?
It's kind of mixed. We talked to some of the locals who said life is better under the traffickers, because the areas that are run by police militias are just as violent and corrupt, only they don't allow trafficking. The police, they say, are only interested in drug traffickers, and don't give a shit about things like domestic violence or rape, for example, whereas the traffickers don't allow that.So domestic violence and rape and burglary would go up in those areas that had been pacified. In some of the trafficker-controlled areas, people would say, yeah, no one dares rob or rape beat their wife or girlfriend here, because the traffickers will kill them. Some people said life was better since pacification, but there were plenty of people who said they felt like they were under military occupation.So, ultimately, based on what we saw during the World Cup, is the Brazilian government effectively keeping tourists from getting shot?
Rio had the Pope visit as well, and I think that was a bigger event than either the Olympics or the World Cup, and the tourists were protected there. I think that it goes from the airport to the beaches and the beaches to the stadium, but they've built a separate road that has walls on either side of it at certain points so you can't even see the favela. So they've done a very good job of not getting rid of the problem but making a safe passage for tourists to skirt around it.