Rio Bravo

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

The Man

On this particular night, a team of Americans are somewhere in Rio de Janeiro waiting for Antonio Costa. He is meeting us at a well-lit gas station before we rendezvous to a restaurant he promises over the phone will have “good Brazilian food.

We are all panning the busy and crowded streets of Rio for an elder statesman to drive up in a Honda Accord. That was our guess of his chosen mode of transportation, as it’s a reliable car that denotes durability without a hint of luxury. In a city with an ever-growing gap between the wealthy and the poor, that seemed a reasonable guess. We are correct about the Honda, but instead of it being a car, it is a motocross.

As Costa jumps off his motorcycle and takes off his helmet, the first thing we notice is his salt-and-pepper hair, and then as he introduces himself, his eyes. They’re not penetrating eyes that bore into your soul, but rather, they have a twitch. A twitch that suggests he is in a rush or that he needs to tend to unfinished business. He has a look that makes a person feel the weight of his journey. We decide to not look directly at Costa. It was clear that this is a man who would haunt us.

The View

Before meeting Costa, we had a couple days to receive an education about the city of Rio. Brazil and its most famous city are synonymous with three things: natural beauty, huge carnivals and the poor. It is nearly impossible to go anywhere without seeing and feeling a coalescence of these three attributes. It was all there — the beaches, the mountains, the plush greenery as far as the eye can see, the party music, the laughter, and yet, the palpable sense that something so beautiful had gone so terribly wrong.

As soon as we landed in Rio, we drove straight to Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer), the 138-foottall statue of Jesus Christ that stands tall above the city. The view from the tourist trap is jaw-dropping and leaves our knees buckling at such a sight.

From his feet we can see the famed shores of Copacabana; the outlines of hundreds of mountaintops, the expensive condominiums, and then we see a sight that abruptly breaks our hypnotic gaze. It is a sea of orange-brick shanty houses with tin roofs. These are the favelas— the slums of Rio. They appear right in the middle of luxury complexes and city buildings, akin to the bird’s-eye photos of Central Park in the center of Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

There is no camouflaging these mini-slum towns that number more than a thousand in Rio. These favelas are where the majority of the poor live, and most are run by drug lords who rule with machine guns and intimidation. These favelas are the eyesore of Rio.

With the city playing host to the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, the local government is doing everything they can to make sure the eyes of the world only see Rio through rose-colored glasses and not through the eyes of men like Costa.

The Gap

“Violence is the most serious social problem we are facing in Brazil,” Costa begins.

There is no formal introduction of his kids’ names or where he lives or his thoughts on the Brazil soccer team. Without trading any pleasantries, Costa begins rattling off numbers like Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man (on a bad day):

500,000 Brazilians were murdered in the past 10 years; 3,654 people were killed by police in Rio with a total of 23,050 people murdered, making Rio a near war-zone catastrophe. For every 100,000 people in Rio, 40 are killed (compared to 5.6 in the United States).

As we scarf down Brazilian food (and it was good, as promised), Costa’s dinner remains mostly uneaten. I wonder if he finds time to ever eat a good meal? And if he does, if he can even eat it slowly.

His English is broken and he sometimes looks to our Portuguese translator for help, but his passion for injustice needs no translation at all.

Costa’s mission was determined on Dec. 28, 2006 when he was preparing for a trip to the United States to conduct research for his thesis. A massacre took place that dark day as drug dealers killed 19 persons in city of Rio, eight of them were burned alive. It was at this moment, right before Rio was about to burst into celebration to welcome a new year, that Costa had his epiphany.

“I said, ‘I can’t see this and not do something,’” Costa recalls.

“I couldn’t go and do my research in the U.S. without doing something about Rio.

He felt compelled and called to respond to the injustice he saw every day in the only way he knew how — to go to the streets to help.

“At the beginning, I thought millions of people would go with me,” Costa says.

“But I was wrong. Not many people actually cared.”

When asked why people didn’t respond in droves, Costa spotlighted a cultural diagnosis that sounded as common to Americans as apple pie: “We live in such an individualistic society.”

The Call

Following his epiphany, Costa founded Rio de Paz (which, translated, means “River of Peace”). The elevator speech of his organization would state, “Rio de Paz is a movement of civil uprising, a human rights movement that focuses on the reduction of homicides in Rio.”

If the elevator were in a skyscraper, Costa would add that it’s an organization that aims to give a voice to the poor, build bridges by raising awareness and intellectual debates, shine light on the atrocities of the prison system, lobby for the people until the Brazilian government addresses key demands, restore human dignity and lastly, awaken the world to the plight of the marginalized in Rio.

Costa realized that most people would never choose to actually care about the issues of corruption and poverty. So naturally, Costa began to dream about how to bring the issues to the public in provocative ways.

“The poor cannot go and fight,” Costa says.

“They don’t understand the concept of democracy, they don’t have the concept of human rights. The problem of violence and corruption in Rio is an epidemic, and it has spread all over Rio. When the media begins to pick up on an issue, we’ll start setting up demonstrations.”

Demonstrations, as Costa calls them, are a primary tactic employed by Rio de Paz. They’re not the type of demonstrations we’re accustomed to in America, involving a few posters and a line of people shouting a few well-written slogans.

The demonstrations Rio de Paz carries out are attention-grabbing, the kind that has landed them on the front pages of the main newspaper in Rio, and has led to 500 interviews with worldwide media outlets such as Reuters, CNN, Associated Press and BBC.

“We’ll go to the street at midnight, and when the sun rises, we will have everything set up,” Costa describes.

“I believe the reason why the press covers our demonstrations is that, one, we are not a political movement, and two, the images are so strong. Through our images you can measure what has happened in our city.”

Costa’s demonstrations are swift, spontaneous and profoundly impacting. Using social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook, Costa’s organization can rally hundreds of people together to set up spectacles that will not only attract crowds, but also raise media interest.

“One time we put 16,000 coffins on Copacabana beach,” Costa described.

Other examples include lining up thousands of body bags on a famous beachfront, hundreds of people lying down near a heavily trafficked road and the overnight planting of 2,500 plants on a main road.

Usually these spectacles depict a specific atrocity (oftentimes based on the number of deaths or people who have gone missing), and almost always, are done on a scale so large that they create a visual image you can’t help but notice.

The Reality

In a recent ranking of the world’s most dangerous cities to live in, Rio ranked No. 4. Locals regularly talk about bullets flying across the streets, and during my stay there, our drivers would regularly take detours to avoid certain highways notorious for its random robberies and shootouts.

In the U.S., when we sense violence is at our doorstep, we trust in our police and government to right the ship. Unfortunately in Brazil, much of the problems stem from the corruption that flows from those called to protect.

“Our police are so corrupt,” Costa laments.

“We live in a city where the good cops cannot work because corruption is so strong. Police get millions of dollars from drug dealers. They trade guns, they negotiate to free drug dealers and sometimes they negotiate to give drug dealers to other drug factions. Everyone knows what they should do to diminish violence in Rio, but it is impossible to do it without addressing the exchanges happening between the corrupted power.”

With the pressure from Rio de Paz’s demonstrations, the local government has begun to occupy the favelas. However, fewer than 20 favelas are currently occupied by the government, and the remaining hundreds are still run by criminals, who “determine the destiny of the people,” Costa asserts.

“These favelas have been built without any plan or infrastructure,” he adds.

“It is run by people with guns — drug traffickers with no laws. Children are exposed to disease and there is no access to good education or good hospitals.”

The cyclical danger is the elephant in the room. If some of these youth survive and escape the favelas, many still eventually find themselves in prison, which may be one of the darkest human rights issues seldom spoken about in Rio.

The prison system serves as a microcosm of the corruption that pervades Rio. The prisons are comprised, overwhelmingly, of young people held captive in inhumane conditions. Sometimes 50 to 60 prisoners will occupy a cell that was intended to hold fewer than 20.

“In these prisons, you will find those who have been arrested for stealing fish living side-by-side with drug dealers and hardened criminals,” Costa explains.

“The prison has become the university for crime. After being released from prison, over 70 percent of those released return to prison … the concept of social reintegration does not exist.”

The Haunting

Brazil is one of the world’s richest countries with regard to natural resources. The people’s prowess in soccer is legendary, as are their large carnivals and their country’s beauty. With Brazil hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later, there is no doubt, the world will see and appreciate Brazil’s wonders.

Yet, just like Costa’s epiphany six years ago, it’s hard to not notice the poor, the victimized and the thousands of lives lost to murder.

“My heart is saddened by how late I began the fight,” Costa confesses.

Now, nearing 50, with his hair becoming more salt than pepper, Costa aches constantly for the injustice that occurs around him every day.

“Love is the special work that authenticates the saving faith in the heart of a human being,” he says.

“This love is above all. This merciful love compels us to do for others what they cannot do for themselves, even in the face of suffering.”

As he’s talking, Costa finally pauses, takes a bite of his food, which has probably turned cold, and says with firm conviction, “We have to fight for the sanctity of human rights.”

His eyes look directly at us. There is that twitch, almost as if to ask, Will you join me on this journey? I’ve been haunted ever since.