Bibi Perigosa was furious. She had discovered text messages on her husband's phone that made it pretty clear he was seeing another woman. Perigosa, which means "dangerous" in Portuguese, was not the most beautiful woman in the favela, but she was one of the most recognisable and popular. She had a personality that was simultaneously overwhelming and attractive.
But Perigosa was in a difficult position. Her husband, Saulo de Sá Silva, was second in command of the drugs cartel that ran Rocinha, the favela where she lived. Since Silva had escaped prison 18 months earlier, in December 2005, he'd become busier than ever -- the drugs business was booming -- and his success had led to a rise in income and attractiveness to other women.
There are around a thousand favelas in Rio de Janeiro, but Rocinha is the largest. It is surrounded by Rio's three wealthiest districts -- Gávea, Leblon and São Conrado -- where a vast market for cocaine has grown since the 80s. The rich white kids of Rio's middle class have a lot of money and like to party; and, because of its location, Rocinha is estimated by the police to shift 60 per cent of the snowstorm that falls on the city after drifting across Latin America from Colombia and Peru. Sinha had built a large part of the Rocinha cartel's market share.
Silva is short, with a square, unassuming face that reveals the multicultural heritage common among Brazilians -- indigenous South American, European and African. His role within Friends of Friends (known universally by its Portuguese acronym, ADA), one of Rio's three warring cartels, was significant and, to some degree, serendipitous. Silva was convicted for drug dealing in 2004 (when he was close to completing a degree in mathematics) and consigned to Rio's notorious municipal jail, Bangu. He was fortunate enough to enjoy the financial support of Luciano Barbosa da Silva, known as Lulu, the then don of Rocinha, and bought himself a number of privileges, including conjugal visits from Perigosa. He didn't have to live in an overcrowded cell with multiple occupants but instead shared with a middle-class prisoner who had studied chemistry.
During his time behind bars, something happened that would enable ADA -- via Silva -- to develop a significant advantage over its rivals: Silva's cellmate taught him to turn "pasta base" (base paste), the intermediate cake, into powdered cocaine via purification. Silva escaped from Bangu in December 2005 by removing the air-conditioning unit in his cell, and quickly developed the only cocaine refinery operating out of a Rio favela -- the rest of the cocaine sold in the city had already been refined in Colombia, Peru or Bolivia. As a result, Rocinha's profits tripled more or less overnight.
Perigosa's lifestyle transformed immediately. She had money to burn and she had status -- but now she also had female rivals who were vying for Silva's affection. When she confronted her husband about the text messages, he denied the accusation vehemently. But, every day, he left home at seven in the morning and didn't return until midnight, sometimes later. Perigosa was left at home with their two young children going stir-crazy.
To alleviate her frustration and anger, Bibi often turned to Orkut, the social network owned by Google. At that time, the network seemed close to becoming a serious challenger to MySpace and Facebook -- it was enormously popular in emerging markets such as India and Brazil. The platform played a key role in the huge rise in internet use in Brazil. Perigosa was a committed user. "It's so boring having cash," she posted one day, underneath a photograph of herself with her fists stuffed full of bank notes. Some of the comments she received weren't welcome: "While you're hanging out at home, Bibi," one young woman mocked, "your precious Saulo is off screwing other women." Then, in August 2007, Perigosa showed off by posting a photograph of herself with a gun Silva had left in the house. The behaviour was risky -- he had already warned her to be careful about what she posted. He considered social media an unnecessary form of self-exposure. After she'd uploaded the photograph, Perigosa thought about his warning and pulled the picture.
Later, Perigosa posted a message on Orkut asking her mother to call her. She included her own telephone number. She removed it minutes later after realising it was a foolish thing to do, but it was too late. Every post, every photograph, every message was being monitored in real time by Brazilian investigators.
The police had set up wiretaps to monitor Perigosa's telephone calls. First they heard her in conversation with her mother. Before long, she phoned Silva. This was what investigators had been long been hoping for -- now they finally had the phone number of the deputy commander of ADA.
Putting a wiretap on Silva's number was the opening move in a law-enforcement operation named Service Provider. Alexandre Estelita and Reinaldo Leal, two experienced investigators from Rio's Civil Police, were tasked with uncovering the structure, operational methods and turnover of ADA in Rocinha. The favela had a population of 100,000 squeezed into a mere 3km2 that covers a steep hill rising from the Atlantic shore and cradled in a sloping bowl of the coastal rainforest -- officers were able to enter the favela only in large numbers and needed to be heavily armed. Most of the time the slums were no-go areas where the state had no purchase or influence. After Silva escaped from prison, the detectives assumed he had probably gone to Rocinha, but they couldn't be sure. Apart from the main road, Estrada da Gávea (which, in the 30s, formed part of Rio's Grand Prix racetrack), Rocinha is made up almost exclusively of tiny little alleys and lanes made dark by jerry-rigged buildings which cannot expand outwards and so are extended vertically. In Rio's urban warfare all the advantages lie with the heavily armed defenders of the favelas. Estelita and Leal figured that they could use social media and tap mobile phones to construct the make-up of Rocinha's drug gang without physically entering the slum.
With Silva's number in their database, the two cops were able to start tracking his movements. Unsurprisingly, he never left the favela. Inside the perimeter, he was safe -- no police would violate the sanctuary of Rocinha.
Estelita and Leal were shuttling between their office and the court in order to get a judge to sign off phone taps in Rocinha. Silva's number led them to Juca Terror, another senior player responsible for communicating with other favelas loyal to ADA. Then came several senior members of the supposed 400-strong ADA, gangsters with names such as Beiço, Total, D2, Lico, Vinni. Before long, the two detectives were mapping the relationships between dozens of the men and women running Rocinha.
But they were missing a crucial piece of information: they couldn't find a number for Nem, the don of Rocinha. Within the favela he was said to be omnipotent, yet Estelita and Leal knew virtually nothing about him. He was the boss, but he had never been picked up and never been photographed. The police weren't even sure if Nem was his real name.
Antônio Franciso Bonfim Lopes, Nem of Rocinha, had been born in the favela in May 1976 to an immigrant from Brazil's north east and a semi-literate mother who traced her antecedents back to the indigenous community. The family lived in a tiny shelter made of wood and corrugated tin -- Nem shared the bedroom with his parents and half-brother, who was 14 years older.
Although both his parents worked, his mother as a maid to a middle-class family and his father as a waiter, the boys grew up on a diet of rice and beans, supplemented by fruit from the surrounding forest. Nem's parents drank heavily and fought. When Nem was 12, his father, whom he worshipped, was shot in the knee during a hold-up at the restaurant where he worked. With his mother out working, Nem stayed at home to nurse him. The wound never healed and the boy watched as his father's health deteriorated. Ten months later he died of a heart attack.
Nem was intelligent but had to leave school to work. He found a job distributing Rio's equivalent of the Radio Times around the South Zone, the district that includes all the major tourist spots in the city, including the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf Mountain and the beaches of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon.
By his late teens he was thin and tall, about 190cm, with a distinctive narrow face and a slight overbite. His eyes were so jet-black that the irises and pupils seemed to merge.
He soon established himself as a leader; although he couldn't drive, he was made responsible for eight co-workers and a fleet of bikes and vans. He married Vanessa, his childhood sweetheart, before saving enough to move into a hovel of his own in Rocinha.
In late 1999, their ten-month-old daughter Eduarda woke up crying with a stiff neck. After months of tests, doctors diagnosed an aggressive and potentially fatal autoimmune disease called Langerhans cell histiocytosis, in which the body's defences attack its bones and sometimes other organs. The treatment involved significant costs. Nem fell behind on the rent and the family was forced to return to move back to his mother's house. The medical authorities ruled the bathroom unfit for the baby and the family received a large bill for a specialist catheter required to administer the powerful chemotherapy Eduarda needed.
Eight months later, Nem was £3,000 in debt -- a fortune for a favela resident. He had no credit, so, after much soul-searching, he decided to request a loan from the only man in the favela with enough cash to spare, Rocinha's drug lord, Lulu.
Lulu's was a cash-rich industry. He handed out loans, usually to residents who wanted to purchase their own apartment. This served a dual purpose: the practice boosted the local economy, which was largely ignored by the state and financial institutions. It also recycled the profits from the drugs trade.
Nem had never engaged with drugs, never taken them. He was revolted by the associated violence, which had been a backdrop to his life. None of his childhood friends were in the business. They were all, like him, workers -- drivers, builders, waiters. But his baby girl was sick and he was desperate.
Two days before his 24th birthday he started the long walk uphill on Estrada da Gávea towards Road One, the favela's toughest area where the boss of the drugs trade had his office.
The encounter was more significant for Nem than securing a loan -- soon after the meeting he went to work for Lulu. Within five years he would become Rochina's most powerful man.
Nem's rise up the ADA hierarchy was swift. Lulu valued his employee's accounting abilities and experience as a distribution manager, which professionalised the cocaine sales to the South Zone's party people. While his rivals for power within the cartel swaggered around the favela showing off their machine guns, Nem's calm disposition and business acumen fast-tracked him to the top of the organisation. He figured out that, in order to appeal to Lulu, money would talk louder than guns.
But, in April 2004, Lulu was killed by Rio's paramilitary Battalion of Special Police Operations. His death triggered a low-level civil war in Rocinha that involved 18 months of coups and counter-coups. Finally, in November 2005, Nem emerged victorious after Lulu's likely successor was murdered.
The introduction of the cocaine refinery, set up by Silva, was a boost to the business and gave Rocinha an advantage over its rivals. The partnership between Nem and Silva worked well: the former used his charisma and financial acumen to generate support among ordinary favela residents, the latter upped turnover. And times were good -- a few months after becoming don and now divorced from Vanessa, Nem married Danúbia Rangel, a bottle blonde with sharp cheekbones and a taste for the high life.
By listening to Silva's calls to his foot soldiers over the next year, detectives Estelita and Leal discovered that one kilo of coca paste, which cost $3,500 (£2,250), rendered the same weight in pure cocaine, which sold for $8,000. They were also able to ascertain that a single smoke shop in Parque da Cidade, a small satellite favela of Rocinha, turned over $1,250 per day, amounting to nearly half a million dollars a year. Silva later confirmed to police that the Rocinha cartel was selling to other favelas, including some areas under the control of its greatest rival cartel, Red Command.
Nem understood the benefits but also risks to his business of the emerging networked, social age. He realised that the information revolution offered many more advantages to the law than it did to dealers. He dictated that computers were not to be used for business and ostentatious use of social media was outlawed. However, he found it impossible to control some of his soldiers and their partners. Above all, Nem regarded the mobile phone as a menace. Members of his cartel were forbidden to mention his name on the phone. When they did, they would refer to him by phrases such as "the one next to God". He needed to be in touch with a vast range of contacts: almost the entire police force surrounding the favela was being paid off by ADA. According to one of the gangsters responsible for making payments, the Gringo, at any one time there were eight police vehicles on the gang's payroll -- two at the top of the favela and six at the bottom. Each had two officers, both receiving about £15 per shift, a total of £720 for every 24-hour period or £260,000 annually. And it wasn't just the beat cops on Nem's payroll -- senior officers received larger sums. Their job was to warn ADA of potential raids.
This expenditure didn't include Nem's expenses inside Rocinha: ADA paid for funerals, the distribution of food to the poorest inhabitants and other provisions. He would need his senior managers to be contactable at any time. Wherever he went, Nem was accompanied by a member of ADA who carried a bag with 20 mobile phones. Each SIM only made contact with one other phone belonging to Nem's network of cops, lawyers, suppliers and gang members. The owners were forbidden to use the phones unless they had to speak to Nem. Little did he know that his network had already been compromised by Perigosa and Silva.
Nem frequently talked to members of the ADA about the importance of controlling the circulation of critical information inside the favela -- and managing what seeped into the outside world. This gave the people of Rocinha the impression that he was all-seeing and all-knowing. They called him the Master, a title he encouraged."He wasn't called the Master for nothing," Estelita explains. In jeans and T-shirts, with three-day stubble and shades, Estelita and his colleague Leal look, each time WIRED meets them, as if they have walked off the set of Miami Vice, yet are thoughtful and shrewd. "Nem would see himself as possessing greater wisdom than the others," Estelita says. "And he did. Apart from the power vested in him by weapons and fear, he had the power of intellect, which was allied to the power he accrued through his control of information." A "master", the detective says, is a character who has information and knows what he is doing. "If there were a police operation pending, he would order his assistants to tell kids not to go to school as there was going to be a raid." This of course meant that he had been tipped off. "So others thought he was like God," Estelita says. "So far as they were concerned, he just seemed to know everything. And he sort of did.
Nem became popular among the Rocinha residents. This was in part because he developed an embryonic welfare state there. But his appeal was also because he had a strategy of reducing violence and homicides in the favelas.
As Rochina's economy improved, the favela developed a reputation for being safe. The slum became a brand. Everyone wanted to visit Rocinha -- football stars, the top music artists, politicians, academics, tourists and even the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The entire line-up of Rio's most popular football team, Flamengo, of which Nem is a fanatical supporter, pitched up and local megastar singers Ivete Sangalo and Claudia Leite performed there, as did the New York rapper Ja Rule. It may have dominated the cocaine trade, but Rocinha was also the only major favela with a tourist industry.
When Nem took power, annual homicide rates in Rocinha stood at about 60 per 100,000. According to a research unit into violence in the favelas at the Federal University of Rio, under Nem that number dropped dramatically to around 20 per 100,000 per year.
Nem exercised a monopoly on violence in the favela -- he was effectively prime minister and chief of police. With 150 men under arms, he kept peace in a community of 100,000. Rates of theft and assault also came down.
However, as Brazil looked forward to hosting the 2014 Fifa World Cup, the authorities launched a programme to eliminate the cartels from some of the favelas. The strategy, known as pacification, involved special forces who would enter a favela in force in order to decapitate and dismantle drugs organisations. In theory, this was to be followed up with a renewed effort to build schools and health centres and to accelerate rubbish collection and other municipal services, although there is little evidence of this having happened. In 2011, the state decided that it should make its presence felt inside the favelas for the first time in 50 years. Politics, a global sporting event and the demands of big business meant that the clock was ticking for Nem.
Time was already up for Saulo de Sá Silva: one Sunday in January 2008, he had been arrested -- in his swimming trunks -- in a flat in the resort of Maragogi, 2,000km north of Rio, by undercover police posing as tourists. The police had located Silva via a now familiar route -- Perigosa had posted on Orkut that the couple were undertaking a tour of Brazil's beaches. About 18 months later, a Civil Police team raided Rocinha and used the opportunity to make a sweep of Nem's house. They found a photo album belonging to Danúbia, his second wife. They included pictures of her climbing into a helicopter for a bird's-eye tour of Rio's tourist highlights.
A couple of days later these photos appeared in one of Rio's daily newspapers, O Dia. At a glance the photo didn't reveal anything that could be useful to investigators. But closer examination revealed a tall figure with a narrow face in the background: Nem. Unlike most drug traffickers, throughout most of his tenure as Don, there had been no photographs circulating of Nem. Outside the favela, nobody knew what he looked like.
Nem ordered every copy in the South Zone to be burned, but their destruction came too late -- the photo was already online. Nem was no longer a shadowy figure to the authorities -- they understood how his organisation worked and now they knew who they were after. On November 10, 2011, three police forces attacked Rocinha, racing each other for the chance to arrest Nem. As the favela swarmed with elite forces, Nem tried to flee in the boot of a car. The vehicle was stopped at a roadblock. One of the passengers claimed to be a diplomat before offering a bribe of $570,000. The vehicle was surrounded by the civilian, military and federal police forces. Today, Nem is imprisoned in a high-security federal jail thousands of kilometres from Rio. He wears the penitentiary's regulation blue T-shirt and cotton trousers and his hair is now cut short -- the curls are gone.
Convicted in 2013 of association with trafficking and sentenced to 12 years, he's now awaiting trial for homicide. The incarceration doesn't bother him. "If it happened all over again, I wouldn't do anything differently," he says. The reason is simple: Eduarda, his daughter, is now a 16-year-old who is doing well at school and hopes to go to university.
Misha Glenny is the author of Nemesis: One Man and the Battle for Rio (Bodley Head)
Illustration: Mike McQuade. Photography: Spiegel Online; AP Photo; Corbis
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
