Reply #4: Once upon a time

[Squeech]

the drug lords were pillars of the communities, the de facto government. They did their level best to maintain order, which was a good thing because nobody else would. The police (who are extremely militarized in Brazil) wouldn't even enter a favela (slum community) except in overwhelming force.

Do you remember, about a dozen years ago, Michael Jackson was planning to film the video for his song "They Don't Care About Us" in Rio, using favela kids as dancers? The government called it exploitative, because Jackson was just throwing money around to get his way, and the drug lord from that particular favela said Yeah, by all means, exploit us! We can use the money! (There isn't any public education in Brazil the way we understand it, for example. Every dancer Jackson hired would have been able to go to school on that money.) But the government was determined not to allow it, and arrested the guy on bogus currency-hoarding charges. Jackson ended up doing the video in Bahia, using (if I remember right) the samba school Filhos da Gandhi.

But the scenario in City of God seems to be correct: the old, somewhat civic-minded drug lords have yielded to a new generation who are themselves users, and generally scatterbrained and sadistic.