![]() It was named for a colonial-era Portuguese governor who built a sugarcane plantation there, but nowadays Ilha is at the edge of the sprawling metropolis of Rio, linked to the mainland by bridges and raised highways. Parque Royal is situated on Ilha do Governador, the largest of the islands that dot the great inland bay of Guanabara. “Everyone knows that if there’s a problem there’s one guy to go to, to fix it, and that’s Fernandinho.” And she liked Pastor Sidney, a popular local evangelical preacher, “because he talks to everyone, and if there’s someone who is going to be executed he goes and talks to the big man,” she said. She wasn’t, she said, although she sometimes accompanied her aunt to a church. When she had gone, Iara said proudly, “She’s a good girl, very responsible. Iara’s oldest daughter, fourteen, came up to tell her something. “He’s in prison for the sixth time,” 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. “I slowly got involved to protect myself from my brother, to get respect,” she said. When she was fourteen, Iara had entered the local branch of the Pure Third Command. Iara had played soccer as a girl, and been good enough to practice with professionals-she named a couple of well-known players. Her mother was an alcoholic, she said, “but she isn’t anymore.” She was now an evangélica. Iara’s father left her mother when she was a year old. Iara had a tattoo of a scorpion on her left arm, surrounded by the initials of the people who were closest to her: her three daughters, her mother, her sister, and a niece and a nephew. She spoke with them so that they would not do me any harm. ![]() Rough-looking armed young men, drug dealers from her gang, guard the alleyways. The air stinks heavily of raw sewage, but no one seems to notice. Parque Royal is built on what used to be a mangrove swamp, and Iara’s home sits on a litter-strewn bayside promenade. 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. She wanted to separate, he beat her.” Iara didn’t spell out how it was resolved, but it had been. ![]() There had been a problem the previous day: “A husband beating his wife. Iara usually dealt with problems by “talking to people,” but if the problem was big she would “take it up the hill”-a reference to Morro do Dendê, the favela where Fernandinho lived. ![]() “Before, there were some problems, mostly disrespect shown by the traficantes toward the locals,” she said. (She called it “the firm.”) It was a new position, but it was necessary. ![]() Iara handled “community relations” on behalf of her gang, the Terceiro Comando Puro, or Pure Third Command. John 17:15.” There was a bulge where a pistol was tucked into her shorts. Her T-shirt had a message, in Portuguese: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil. She wore a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops, and a black baseball cap over a ponytail. When I met her, Iara was organizing a tenth-birthday party for the youngest of her three daughters. Iara, a slight, dark-skinned woman of thirty-one, manages the favela of Parque Royal, in Rio de Janeiro, for a gangster named Fernandinho. ![]()
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