February 12, 2005; Rio De Janiero: Right after I returned from the World Social Forum, I had just two days of work before Carnaval began. I spent it planning for after Carnaval. In my next blog, I will talk about my plans for the coming months at Viva Rio. During this blog, I’ll tell you a little story about what I learned during Carnaval that will help my work at Viva Rio.

As I wrote earlier, my landlady’s maid invited me to parade in Carnaval. Well, she was true to her word. She was also a fantastic host, and now, certainly one of my better friends and favorite people here in Brazil. Still, she doesn’t want her photo on the web or her name posted.

The actual parade experience has been written by thousands of travel writers before me, if you want to hear about it, send me an email (alex@advocacynet.org). I want to talk about another side of the revelry in Rio.

I stayed at my friend’s house in one of the favelas in the Madureira neighborhood, two city bus rides and a little over an hour from downtown. It was a wonderful, lively time. Her large family converged on their old neighborhood for Carnaval in full force.

Even though her mother has moved away, they still preferred the old neighborhood for Carnaval, proud to show off to me the vibrant pulse, tight community and lively narrow streets of Madureira.

A typically narrow street in Madureira.I visited for lunch, to arrange my costume for parading in Carnaval and to see what her life is like. When she invited me to stay for three more days, I was taken aback by her comfortable hospitality. I asked, “are you sure you have room?” She laughed. “Of course. Plenty.” I stayed for two days, and have already returned once.

There was a constant stream of neighbors and relatives throughout the first day. Many stopping in the see the gringo, others because that’s just what they do. Several of them never left. At bedtime, by my count, fourteen of us, mostly her young nieces and nephews, shared the small two bedroom house. I was on a floor with two others, next to the bed where her sick uncle slept.

It was a great time, reminiscent of Thanksgiving as a child in a large family, Halloween, and new years eve all packed together. That isn’t counting the street parades and partying outside at night which had an intensity that exhausted me hours before the Brazilians batted an eyelash.

It was obvious that children are the joy and energy powering the house. It is too much to describe all the charming little episodes, except to say that when few options for recreation are available because of money and security, leave it to a horde of happy children to find ways to bring out daily smiles.

With that said, the favelas of Rio, as I just mentioned, are not all smiles. I learned some very interesting realities first hand that had only been library research before. Heres a little story.

The adults, for our part, had the advantages of beer to aid in the revelry. And after many daytime hours of drink and dance at the house and nearby neighborhood I took the hosts’ advice and lay down for a short nap.

When I woke up and went for a walk with one of the adults, she made an off-hand remark about soapy reddish water running down the street, “Careful, blood.” As in, “watch out, don’t step in the dog poop.” I stepped over it, looked at the neighbor sweeping the sidewalk up the street.

Later I realized it probably wasn’t a coincidence that it was on that walk that I saw a person carrying a large gun for the one and only time. Usually, to outside eyes, it is hard to know who and where the armed traffickers are during the day in this particular favela.

It turns out traffickers had beaten a man on the street while I was napping. The interesting part is not that this happened, though it doesn’t happen everyday. The interesting part is why it happened. All of this was already old news to the community by the time I woke up less than an hour later, and my version of the story is through the grapevine, though I trust its accuracy, if not in details at least in the broader points it makes.

The ‘victim’ was a thief who had just robbed a couple at a nearby bus stop just outside the favela. Neither he, nor the couple lived in the community. He fled running into the favela and up the same street in this picture. The traffickers saw the thief running into the favela, chased him, and asked what he was doing. The woman who was robbed came up and told the traffickers her story.

The traffickers maintain order in favelas to keep police from having to enter. If a man beats his wife, he is kicked out of the community. If a thief robs a couple and runs into the community, the punishment, apparently, is a serious beating and then he is let go. The traffickers returned the cell phones to the couple and that, it seems was that.

The important part of this story to me was not that a beating took place while I napped. This anecdote shows that there is a logic to the violence that still seems so incomprehensible. I am told, the traffickers want to be left in peace, they want to never have to deal with rival traffickers or the police. Everything else is normal life in the favela. But anything that might bring in other traffickers, or the police, like crime, or say, certain photographs, is intolerable.

My friends who live in Madureira talked with mixed opinions about the traffickers. They have grown up with them for decades, they are personal friends, they protect the community and would certainly come before the police as people to turn to for help. Still, my friend wants to move out, because what she fears most is that her son may become one of them.

The next day, I witnessed a more dispersed effect of the violence. We tried to buy potatoes for lunch. All the stores were closed. All of them. Banks, pharmacies, corner stores, everything, on what would otherwise have been the busy main street of the neighborhood. (Larger neighborhoods like Madureira are broken up into smaller favelas, and still have main thoroughfares in between, with bus routes and all the normal shops any other area would have).

Madureira houses 2005.My friend explained to me that all the stores were closed by order of the traffickers because the police had killed one of them during the night. Every time the police kill a trafficker, the traffickers show respect and assert their power by forcing all the shops to close, damaging commerce and the economy. This is devastatingly sad to think about.

The community at large, which has nothing to do with the traffickers or the police except by lack of other options, is forced to pay the economic and convenience price of a drug war that at best leaves their children witnesses to awful lifestyles and at worst leaves them killed or killers.

The shop closings stay in effect for one day and in Madureira, which is a relatively calm favela despite this weekend of activity, can happen twice in a week or not even once a month.

Both examples of the violence in favelas I witnessed while enjoying Carnaval had a logic to them. And, when you think about it, even an understandable logic. If it hadn’t been for the shop closings, I wouldn’t have known about the traffickers death the night before.

It raises awareness of a problem. It puts pressure on the City, the only party in a position to control the Police, to stop them from using deadly force. This demonstrates the same kind of thinking that the Advocacy Project suggests oppressed groups do about their situation.

Lest this analysis is confused with sympathy, lets never forget that the traffickers are also the oppressors in this case. But it is interesting to note, they are applying the same strategy a more respectable group might employ: to put pressure on the oppressor, raise awareness and support for the cause.

I couldn’t sense whether residents blamed the police more or the traffickers for the shop closings. The only thing that was clear was it was just filed away as a fact of life, no real blaming. This is just what happens in the favelas of Rio. That is the saddest part; everyone has lived this life too long to feel any outrage.

The final note for any of you worried friends out there, is that you should find the pattern of violence in these examples. The people in danger are the people who also perpetuate the danger, the traffickers, criminals and, sad to say, the police. The rest of community is on the sidelines of a horrific battle, forced to watch and salute the victor.

I would also fall into the category of the sidelines, giving no cause to traffickers, police or others to harm me. And as the logic of the violence becomes clearer, I feel safer. A dangerous situation is much more frightening before you understand it, and after, much more manageable.

This weekend, I really started to understand the logic of the danger, and it is more clear now, that I do not fit into the logic as a target, just as the over 95% of community residents who don’t fit in to the logic either and go about their daily lives, smiling, and waiting to move out so their kids wont grow up to be a part of the ordered violence.