It is one of the most notorious postcodes on earth - a sprawling red brick shantytown that has been under the control of heavily armed drug traffickers for nearly four decades. This week, however, police claimed the gangs were no more in the City of God, the Rio slum made infamous by Fernando Meirelles' 2002 film.
On Tuesday, after two months of incursions, special forces celebrated the "conquering" of the City of God by hoisting the Brazilian flag over a creche they said was used as a base by traffickers.
Until the success of Meirelles' film, City of God, or Cidade de Deus, was a little-known slum on the western outskirts of Rio. Based on a book of the same name published in 1997, the film documented the bloody struggle between cocaine traffickers that ravaged the community during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the actors recruited from Rio's favelas.
Attempts to evict the real traffickers from the City of God, which is home to about 50,000 people, are part of a police initiative that authorities hope will help them regain control of the slums. In their battle against the city's three drug factions, police have traditionally launched "hit and run" attacks on the favelas. The police kill more than 1,000 people each year, according to official figures, many during such raids.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/15/brazil-drugs-trade
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