Erismar Rodrigues Moreira | |
---|---|
Born | 1975/1976 |
Died | (aged 29) |
Nationality | Brazilian |
Other names | Bem-Te-Vi |
Known for | Head of Amigos dos Amigos |
Predecessor | Luciano Barbosa |
Successor | Orlando Jose Rodrigues |
Criminal charge(s) | Drug trafficking and smuggling, illegal distribution of cocaine |
Erismar Rodrigues Moreira (died October 29, 2005), also known as "Bem-Te-Vi", was a gang leader in the Brazilian slum Rocinha, in Rio de Janeiro. He was considered to be the most wanted criminal in Rio during his prime.
Moreira's family moved from Ceará [1] to Rocinha looking for work. His father then left Moreira's mother and children, traveling south. Moreira joined his first gang, Comando Vermelho (Red Command), at age 14. He stayed with Commando Vermelho until early 2004, when he switched allegiances to Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends), which then quickly took control of Rocinha.
In April 2004 Luciano Barbosa, the Amigos dos Amigos boss, was killed by police, and Moreira took his place, controlling cocaine-packing and selling. He gained the nickname Bem-Te-Vi. Moreira was known for his extravagant lifestyle. He often carried around guns needlessly and had several girlfriends. His band and himself had several gold plated pistols and assault rifles. His large gang had a complete hierarchy of various layers including bodyguards, security guards, contention keepers, soldiers, pushers, and watchguards. [2]
Always very ruthless, anyone crossing certain understood laws of the shantytowns or most certainly an undercover policeman caught by this gang would be brought to end by one choice from a number of possible gruesome deaths. The parallel power that dominates the favelas brings cops to one particularly popular execution within the underworld's street justice called the "micro-ondas" (micro-wave), which carbonises a body inside a flaming, gas-soaked stand of tires.
Moreira was alleged to have connections with prominent Brazilian soccer players (for example Júlio César, former Inter Milan goalkeeper), musicians and actors. [3] Moreira also gained the respect of the Rocinha populace by hosting expensive parties and defending the community. Moreira was killed by Police in Operation Trojan early in the morning of October 29, 2005. [4] Moreira was succeeded by his cousin, Orlando Jose Rodrigues, but was executed three days later by Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes and replaced by an unknown figure solely known as "Roca". [5]
Favela is an umbrella name for several types of impoverished neighborhoods in Brazil. The term, which means slum or ghetto, was first used in the Slum of Providência in the center of Rio de Janeiro in the late 19th century, which was built by soldiers who had lived under the favela trees in Bahia and had nowhere to live following the Canudos War. Some of the last settlements were called bairros africanos. Over the years, many former enslaved Africans moved in. Even before the first favela came into being, poor citizens were pushed away from the city and forced to live in the far suburbs.
Rocinha is a favela in Brazil, located in Rio de Janeiro's South Zone between the districts of São Conrado and Gávea. Rocinha is built on a steep hillside overlooking Rio de Janeiro, and is located about one kilometre from a nearby beach. Most of the favela is on a very steep hill, with many trees surrounding it. Around 200,000 people live in Rocinha, making it the most populous in Rio de Janeiro.
Sebastião "Tim" Rodrigues Maia was a Brazilian musician, songwriter, and businessman known for his iconoclastic, ironic, outspoken, and humorous musical style. Maia contributed to Brazilian music within a wide variety of musical genres, including soul, funk, disco, jazz, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, romantic ballads, samba, bossa nova, baião and música popular brasileira (MPB). He introduced the soul style on the Brazilian musical scene. Along with Jorge Ben, Maia pioneered sambalanço, combining samba, soul, funk and rock and roll. He is recognized as one of the biggest icons in Brazilian music.
Comando Vermelho, also known as CV, is a Brazilian criminal organization engaged primarily in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, protection racketeering, kidnapping-for-ransom, hijacking of armored trucks, loansharking, irregular warfare, narco-terrorism, and turf wars against rival criminal organizations, such as Primeiro Comando da Capital and Terceiro Comando Puro. The gang formed in the early 1970s out of a prison alliance between common criminals and leftist guerrillas who were imprisoned together at Cândido Mendes, a maximum-security prison on the island of Ilha Grande. The prisoners formed the alliance to protect themselves from prison violence and guard-inflicted brutality; as the group coalesced, the common criminals were infused with leftist social justice ideals by the guerrillas. In 1979, prison officials labeled the alliance "Comando Vermelho", a name which the prisoners eventually co-opted as their own. In the 1980s, the gang expanded beyond Ilha Grande into other prisons and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and became involved in the rapidly growing cocaine industry. Meanwhile, Brazil's shift towards democracy and the eventual end of the military dictatorship in 1985 allowed the leftist guerrillas to re-enter society; thus, the CV largely abandoned its left-wing ideology.
Amigos dos Amigos is a criminal organization that operates in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. It was started up in 1998 when a member of Comando Vermelho was expelled from the organization for ordering the murder of another member. The gang's main rivals are Comando Vermelho and Terceiro Comando Puro. ADA controls many drug selling points in the North and West zones.
Proibidão, which literally translates to "strongly prohibited", is a subgenre of funk carioca music originating from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro where it began in the early 1990s as a parallel phenomenon to the growth of drug gangs in the many slums of the city. The drug gangs sponsored DJs and baile funks in the favelas they controlled to spread respect and love for their gang as well as hate to the other gangs. The music that resulted is proibidão.
Elite Squad is a 2007 Brazilian crime film based on the novel Elite da Tropa by Luiz Eduardo Soares, André Batista, and Rodrigo Pimentel. Directed by José Padilha, the film stars Wagner Moura, Caio Junqueira, and André Ramiro, and tells the story of Roberto Nascimento (Moura), a captain with the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, or BOPE, who leads a police crackdown on a series of Rio de Janeiro favelas in-preparation for the Brazilian state visit of Pope John Paul II.
Tim Lopes was a Brazilian investigative journalist and producer for the Brazilian television network Rede Globo. In 2002, the media reported him missing while working undercover on a story in one of Rio's favelas. It was later learned that Lopes had been accosted by drug traffickers who controlled the area, was kidnapped, driven to the top of a neighboring favela in the trunk of a car, tied to a tree and subjected to a mock trial, tortured by having his hands, arms, and legs severed with a sword while still alive, and then had his body necklaced—a practice that traffickers have dubbed micro-ondas.
The Military Police of Rio de Janeiro State (PMERJ) like other military polices in Brazil is a reserve and ancillary force of the Brazilian Army, and part of the System of Public Security and Brazilian Social Protection. Its members are called "state military" personnel.
The Pacifying Police Unit, abbreviated UPP, is a law enforcement and social services program pioneered in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which aims to reclaim territories, most commonly favelas, controlled by gangs of drug dealers. The program was created and implemented by State Public Security Secretary José Mariano Beltrame, with the backing of Rio Governor Sérgio Cabral. The stated goal of Rio's government is to install 40 UPPs by 2014. By May 2013, 231 favelas had come under the UPP umbrella. The UPP program scored initial success expelling gangs, and won broad praise. But the expensive initiative expanded too far, too fast into dozens of favelas as state finances cratered, causing a devastating backslide that enabled gangs to recover some of their lost grip.
Events in the year 2005 in Brazil.
On July 14, 2013, Amarildo de Souza, a 43-year-old bricklayer from the Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was called in for questioning by Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) officers on his way home from the market. Believed to be connected to drug trafficking activity in the favela despite having no prior involvement in illegal activity, de Souza was brought in for questioning during Operation Armed Peace, during which roughly 300 officers from Rocinha's UPP force flooded the favela in order to arrest drug traffickers. It was during this two-day long raid that de Souza was brought to the police station and never seen again.
Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, better known as Nem or Nem da Rocinha, is a Brazilian drug lord and one of the leaders of "Amigos dos Amigos". Lopes had a net worth of R$100 million, was the undisputed head of all drug trafficking operations in Rocinha and branded by the Brazilian government as "Public Enemy #1".
Events in the year 2019 in Brazil.
Brazilian militias, mainly in Rio de Janeiro, and some other cities of Brazil, are illegal mafia-like paramilitary groups made up of current and former police officers as well as Military Firefighters Corps officers, criminals, politicians, and military officers, operating also as a regular mafia by trade extortion and political influence.
Elias Pereira da Silva, also known as Elias Maluco, was one of Rio de Janeiro's most powerful drug traffickers. Maluco, a member of the criminal faction Comando Vermelho, commanded drug trafficking in thirty slums near Complexo do Alemão and Penha, Brazil. He was accused of killing over sixty people.
The armed conflict for control of the favelas in Greater Rio de Janeiro or simply Civil conflict for control of the favelas is an ongoing conflict between Brazilian militias, organized criminal groups Comando Vermelho, Amigos dos Amigos, Terceiro Comando Puro and the Brazilian state.
In January 2023, Brazilian journalist and actor Jeff Machado was killed in the Campo Grande neighborhood, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 44. His body was discovered on 22 May 2023, buried inside a trunk two meters deep and covered with a thick layer of concrete.
The Rafael Mascarenhas case refers to the accident that resulted in the murder of student and musician Rafael Mascarenhas on 20 July 2010. Son of actress Cissa Guimarães, he was run over in Gávea inside the tunnel, now called Túnel Acústico Rafael Mascarenhas, which was closed for maintenance, but there was no maintenance on that day and there were no signs from CET-Rio that the Tunnel would be closed. According to CET-Rio, the tunnel was closed only at the entrance to Favela da Rocinha, inside the Tunnel a U-turn was made through which two cars entered and one of them hit Rafael at a speed of approximately 100 km/h according to the expertise. The young man was skateboarding with two friends, in a place where the practice of the sport was also not allowed.