Between the morgue and the beach: the two faces of Rio after the shock of the massacre in the favelas

RIO DE JANEIRO (special envoy).— This Thursday the city appeared divided in two: to the north, the morgue and hospitals like stations of a painful and silent procession; to the south, the beach postcard that rehearses a normality with limitsglasses of caipirinha that are emptied early and speakers that fall silent at 11 p.m.

Between one scene and the other, there are only 15 kilometers, which they managed to unite on Tuesday when it was done the mega-operation “Containment” in the Penha and Alemão favela complexes, with at least 132 dead and more than a hundred arrested, a display that still shakes the city and divides waters between those for and against.

This Thursday a key piece of information was added: according to a document accessed by the São Paulo newspaper Sheet, The operation that was planned for a year was leaked four hours before it began. This led to clashes prior to the raid and two suspects later died in hospital after admitting that they were fleeing because they knew what was coming. That leak helps understand why violence broke out earlier and why the hallways of Rio’s Medical Legal Institute (IML) filled up so quickly.

In the IML the pain was based. The caravan to find their dead relatives had two stations separated by 150 meters. Behind the bars, there was a green truck from the Public Defender’s Office. He did not distribute answers, but he ordered helplessness: Ombudsman teams received, contained, oriented and accompanied.

Each person who arrived went through a first filter: they said who they were looking for and received instructions before walking the block and a half that separated the identification tent from the morgue door. It is a short journey on the map, eternal in the body.

The majority were young women who had left from Penha or Alemão; some wore t-shirts printed in a hurry, with the face of a brother or a boyfriendas an urgent way of naming his own. Outside, the wait was between sobs and lost looks.

Despite the pain, helplessness and desire for justice, when approached by the press, the answer was silence. This was the case of three sisters, who were wearing a t-shirt with their father’s photo and that they had designed for a previous birthday.

The calm in the midst of the pain at the door of the IML was broken around 6:00 p.m., when a group of relatives, who were demanding the delivery of the already identified bodies, decided blocking Francisco Bicalho avenue as a sign of protest. Tension increased when police officers lifted the block after throwing pepper spray at the protesters, who released the trace and returned to the sidewalk awaiting news about the delivery of the bodies.

Public defender Rafaela Garcés, coordinator of the Defensive Investigation Nucleus of the State Public Defender’s Office, explained that they were treating relatives in Penha, at the Getúlio Vargas Hospital and at the IML, and that they requested to participate in the expertise. The Public Ministry had entry from the beginning of the day; the Ombudsman’s Office, no. That’s why They demanded access to the expertise and asked for images from the police officers’ body cameras. so that the reconstruction is verifiable and the process transparent.

Garcés described scenes from the previous day that still weighed on him: bodies removed from the hills without preservation of the place, without the state service for the removal. Accurate counting was then impossible, and the release of bodies, a path of inevitable bureaucracies which began with the expertise and the first statement from the family. Then, they came out with a white sheet and a yellow sheet, they were two copies of the death certificate.

The Public Defender’s Office estimates that the volume of forensic material and images from the agents’ body cameras will be high. If the cameras were turned on from the beginning, the battery life should be sufficient; if they were activated later, there will be gaps to explain. Institutional reconstruction and citizen trust depend, in part, on this.

On that same map of pain, the Getúlio Vargas Hospital —located at the entrance to the Complexo da Penha— concentrated injured people and a “tense calm.” THE NATION reached that point where faces were serious and communication was almost non-existent.. On guard, movements were measured, conversations were short.

At two entrances to the favela visited by this means, men without uniforms observed each step of the team. A while later, When the crew was leaving, they followed them in a car to find out why they had been filmed. Given the response that it was a journalistic team from Argentina, he continued on his own. There were no attacks or formal impediments, but the surveillance was explicit: a reminder that the limits of movement exist, even if they are not written.

The leak of the operation adds a layer that makes these tensions more clear. As published by Sheetthe security forces learned during the early hours of Tuesday the 28th that the operation had “leaked” (it had been leaked) four hours before the raid.

In one of the entrances, around 20 motorcyclists crossed paths with police and opened fire; two of them died hours later in the hospital. According to the police record, those two identified themselves as leaders of the Red Command (CV) in Espírito Santo and indicated that they were escaping because they already knew about the imminent operation.

The report describes seized weapons and ammunition. The Security Secretariat was consulted by Sheet and did not receive a response until the publication of the note. The data not only provides chronology; suggests an operation that, exposed ahead of time, lit the fuse in advance and multiplied the risk for neighbors and for the forces themselves.

The most resonant leak confirms that the operation did not achieve its main objective: Edgar Alves de Andrade, alias “Doca”, the leader of the Red Command who only answers to Marcinho VP and Fernandinho Beira-Mar, escaped unharmed. According to the Secretary of Public Security of Rio, Víctor Santos, Doca used hitmen to set up blockades and force their way out of the Alemão and Penha complexes.

He was the priority target of Operation “Containment”, but he remains a fugitive. The anonymous reporting line offers 100,000 reais ($18,000) for information that allows his capture. His name is not new in police reports: in 2021, according to the investigation, he ordered the murder of André Lyra de Oliveira, alias Lápis, in Brás de Pina.

To the south, on the other hand, the last two nights, the city tried to be the postcard that goes around the world. In Copacabana and Ipanema, tourists and residents sought to resume the rhythm of a city set up for enjoyment.

There was music, but at a lower volume; glasses with caipirinha, but less toast; and a new habit: at 23, as under a self-imposed “curfew”, The speakers were turned off and the conversations became low.

For example, on Wednesday night only some stayed until the end of the match in which Flamengo eliminated Racing; the rest returned early. It is the echo of the residual effects of the fear left by the operation and that LA NACION recorded in flights, bars and sidewalks: plans adjusted on the fly, excursions to favelas canceled and a tourist map that was cut to the southern area. “It’s pretty quiet there,” they repeat.

Meanwhile, before seven in the morning, and with 22 degrees of temperature, dozens of people They had already turned to the beaches and Atlantic Avenue to do physical activity before the heat became unbearable. However, a storm that lasted most of the midday and afternoon forced a change of plans.

The double postcard—the morgue and the beach—is not just an aesthetic contrast. It is a real fracture: at the approaches to Penha and Alemão, businesses hesitate before raising the blinds; schools altered their schedules; The bus lines diverted routes and only this Thursday began to resume their natural circuits.

In the IML, The journey is measured by the frequency with which new families arrive in search of their loved ones. On Avenida Atlantica, on the other hand, the price of beach items or where is the best place to eat is negotiated.