*Quite a set of photos.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/29/rio-drugs-war-jon-lee-anderson
(...)
"We were walking through the favela – a mess of slapped-up houses of corrugated tin and unpainted brick, dreadlocked tangles of pilfered electrical wiring, and graffiti-covered walls and alleyways where little shops and rudimentary bars selling beer and cachaça jostled for space with storefront evangelical churches. Parque Royal is built on what used to be a mangrove swamp, and Iara's home sits on a litter-strewn bayside promenade. The air stinks heavily of raw sewage, but no one seems to notice. Rough-looking armed young men, drug dealers from her gang, guard the alleyways. She spoke with them so that they would not do me any harm.
"Iara had a tattoo of a scorpion on her left arm, surrounded by the initials of the people closest to her: her three daughters, her mother, her sister, and a niece and a nephew. Iara's father left her mother when she was a year old. Her mother was an alcoholic, she said, "but she isn't any more." She was now an evangélica. Iara had played football as a girl, and had been good enough to practise with professionals – she named a couple of well-known players. She had even been on TV. But her older brother used to beat her. "He said I was a lesbian."
"When she was 14, Iara entered the local branch of the Pure Third Command. "I slowly got involved to protect myself from my brother, to get respect," she said. "Once I joined, we had no more trouble from him." Iara's brother was now in Bangu, a prison west of Rio, where most of Brazil's gangsters are sent, and which the gangs also control. "He's in prison for the sixth time," she said. "He was a drug dealer and a robber."
"Iara's oldest daughter, 14, came up to tell her something. She wore a pink T-shirt and shorts. When she had gone, Iara said proudly, "She's a good girl, very responsible. She even tells me off." As the gang's woman in Parque Royal, Iara earned a salary of 500 reis a week (about $250) as well as a percentage of the drug sales. She usually made around 1,000 reis a week: "If the product is good, sales are better." It was enough to support her family. "My only problem is I am addicted to weed." She laughed. "If it was up to me, I would smoke only four times a day, but the problem is, whenever I go out, there's always someone smoking a joint."
"She had "retired" the year before, she said. But when her successor was shot, Fernandinho's deputy, Gilberto Coelho de Oliveira, whom everyone knew as Gil, had asked her to return to her duties, and she had...."
