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Rio de Janeiro is a city of mountains, and the hillsides are covered in favelas. The favelas, as slums here are called, are ruled by heavily armed drug trafficking gangs that, because they occupy the high ground, have managed carve out a territory that is beyond state control. Favela residents live in a legal no-man's land where the rights and protections of citizenship do not apply. They receive no city services or police protection, cannot acquire title to their property, and are forced to rely on criminal gangs to settle neighborhood disputes. This is now changing. In 2008, the state launched a program to regain control of these territories. Special operations forces invade a favela and send the traffickers running. Once things have settled down, less heavily armed Units of Pacifying Police, or UPP's, patrol the neighborhood. With the UPP's come infrastructure improvements, city services such as garbage collection, and social programs. Relations between favela residents and the UPP officers are tense. People don't trust that the UPP's will stay, and they know that if the traffickers return, perceived collaborators will be charged, as they say. Many fear that the program will end once the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics have passed. In the meantime, however, there is an opening for favela residents to demand the rights and protections that have been denied to them for so long. If they win their claim to full citizenship, the view from the mountaintops of Rio will never be the same. |