Viradouro president shot; Mangueira secret tunnel

Viradouro´s president was shot yesterday afternoon under "mysterious circumstances" as he left the escola quadra. He´ll be ok - shot twice, rushed to surgery and is doing pretty well.

He´s a policeman who is "suspected" (=known) to have strong ties to the bicheiros of Viradouro, the kings of the illegal street lottery "jogo de bicho". Most escolas used to get a lot of their funding from the bicheiros. But the bicheiros´ influence has been weakened dramatically in recent years due to crackdowns against the jogo-de-bicho. In their place, the drug dealers are taking over the escolas. (See Mangueira update below). BUT - new development - in several escolas there are now policemen in upper administrative posts who appear to have struck a deal with the bicheiros not to prosecute them and to leave them at liberty. That´s apparently what´s going on in Viradouro.

Meanwhile - Mangueira still in the news. The police dismantled an enormous wall yesterday that the Mangueira traficantes had built around their drug-processing factory. Tons of cocaine too, not just pot, which makes more sense to me (I was a little surprised there was such excitement over pot, even a lot of pot).

Two new twists in the news today: Twist #1 is that Mangueira´s also been feeding drugs to two other escolas nearby (a Grupo A escola, Lins Imperial, and a Grupo B escola, Paraiso de Tuiuti, where I once attended a tamborim workshop). The Mangueira druglords have been using both those quadras for drug deals. Plus, Mangueira´s traficante guy also co-wrote the samba-enredos of both those escolas! (Suddenly it seems almost charming that such a big-league drug dealer guy should want to be a samba composer and get his songs into Carnaval.)

Twist #2 was that there is a secret passage from the bateria balcony of the Mangueira quadra to a little house in the favela behind the quadra. Shades of Hardy Boys. This so that known drug-dealers who want to avoid the public eye can get into the bateria without having to go through the front doors. Apparently the Mangueira bateria is where they have been meeting to plan the major drug deals. jeez.... no wonder they don´t like it when gringos ask if they can go up into the bateria to watch. They never would let me up there last year.

Reports are that last year, the then-president of the bateria, Ivo Meirelles, made a special trip to the head traficante Polegar, who was then in prison. Why? To ask Polegar to spare Meirelles´ life. Meirelles had been "sentenced to death" by the traficantes for revealing the existence of the secret bateria tunnel to the press.

Why bother to go someone who is in prison for help? Because, like many Rio drug dealers, Polegar has a full office set up in prison, with cell phones, and he runs his entire drug operation from there. Frequently they´re let out of prison to attend weddings and such. (Mangueira´s president last year got into a lot of trouble for sending the Mangueira bateria to play at the wedding of a traficante who somehow got out of jail in order to go to his own wedding. It was such a scandal that the Mangueira president resigned. This was last year. The more things change....)