‘Crime doesn’t pay’: drug gangsters turned podcasters ship message to Rio’s youth

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‘Crime doesn’t pay’: drug gangsters turned podcasters ship message to Rio’s youth

Patrick Salgado Souza Martins sat on the crest of the hillside favela he as soon as dominated and described the dream that modified his life.

A choir of angels surrounded the convicted drug lord as he dozed in solitary confinement. Glistening water bubbled up from the bottom. “I wakened in panic, lined in goosebumps,” mentioned Martins, then one in every of Rio’s most notorious legal minds.

Bewildered, the maximum-security prisoner opened his Bible to the E-book of Isaiah. “Although your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow … However in the event you flip away and refuse to pay attention, you’ll be devoured by the sword of your enemies,” he learn.

Throughout out of doors time within the jail yard, Martins summoned his jailmates and, to their perplexity, introduced he was leaving the faction. It was a call that nearly actually saved Martins from changing into one more statistic in Rio’s brutal four-decade drug battle.

Patrick Salgado Souza Martins: ‘Loss of life hangs over you 24 hours a day.’ {Photograph}: Alan Lima/The Guardian

Now, the rehabilitated drug baron is telling his story for the primary time as a part of a brand new podcast sequence he mentioned was meant to cease youthful generations following the identical path.

“My previous isn’t a very good instance for anybody … I’ve seen so many individuals die on this conflict,” Martins mentioned throughout a tour of his former area, a cascade of redbrick housing above one in every of Rio’s most costly seaside districts. In his gangster days, the 51-year-old father of 12 was referred to as “Patrick do Vidigal”.

The podcast 01 Sobreviventes (01 Survivors) is the work of a bunch of retired Rio gangsters, together with Martins, who’ve collectively spent many years in jail for crimes together with drug trafficking and kidnapping. Every week, they invite ex-offenders to inform listeners how they embraced a lifetime of crime – and, crucially, how they escaped. “We need to train younger those that crime doesn’t pay,” mentioned Alexander Mendes, 50, a former drug boss beneath the identify Polegar (Thumbling), who got here up with the thought.

Mendes, who, like Martins, was a senior member of the Rio-born Purple Command faction, mentioned he hoped to avoid wasting at the very least 100 younger lives every year by utilizing his experiences to focus on the hazard of taking on arms.

“I’ve misplaced 9 family members on this battle … and that’s to not point out my associates,” mentioned Mendes, who managed a favela known as Mangueira and was one in every of Rio’s most wished males till his 2011 arrest in Paraguay.

The podcast paints a wretched portrait of Rio’s seemingly inexorable slide into one of many world’s most threatening city conflicts, as assault weapons flooded the town’s disadvantaged favelas and tens of hundreds had been killed.

When one other podcast visitor, Alderico Medeiros, was rising up in a favela known as Acari in the course of the mid-Nineteen Eighties he remembered its kingpin, a Bob Marley lookalike nicknamed Tunicão, roaming the streets with an Uzi machine pistol. “He’d make it rain with that Uzi,” reminisced the 47-year-old who later ran the favela for six years and was referred to as “Derico de Acari”.

Alexander Mendes, 50, as soon as referred to as Polegar. {Photograph}: Alan Lima/The Guardian

However as the last decade ended a brand new weapon arrived in Acari: the M16 rifle, with which Tunicão induced a “deluge of blood” and misplaced his life after attacking the police. By the late 90s, the favela was awash with computerized rifles and the demise toll soared – claiming 80% of the gangster’s associates and, extra not too long ago, one in every of his sons too. “He was 22,” Medeiros mentioned.

The previous legal, who was a member of the Third Command faction earlier than discovering God in jail, practically died himself. “Once I wasn’t getting arrested, I used to be getting shot. Once I wasn’t getting shot, I used to be getting kidnapped,” mentioned Medeiros, eradicating his shirt to point out scars from an AK-47 shot that shattered his arm in 15 locations. He was shot eight instances battling rivals or police. “Simply think about my outdated girl’s coronary heart,” he mentioned over breakfast on the farmstead the place he lives in rural Rio, surrounded by jackfruit and mango timber.

In addition to exposing the cruelty of Rio’s drug enterprise, the true-crime podcast introduces a stranger-than-fiction rogues’ gallery of crooks who as soon as managed the unlawful commerce.

No story is extra astounding than that of the Frenchman nicknamed “the Gringo” who, together with Martins, ran Vidigal in the course of the 90s. The foreigner’s true id stays a thriller. However newspaper stories from the time say police knew him by the Brazilian pseudonym João Carlos dos Santos – and his story is straight out of a film.

In keeping with Martins, the enigmatic French firearms skilled fled to Rio after escaping from prisons in France, French Guiana and Paraguay. “He was a bit like a movie star: actually tall – 1 metre 90 [6ft 3in] – blond hair, blue eyes. He had an eagle tattooed on his chest … He’d go round with this monumental nice dane,” he mentioned. Improbably, by the early 90s the Frenchman had managed to develop into one of many seaside favela’s crime lords.

Alberico Medeiros, 47, on his farmstead. {Photograph}: Alan Lima/The Guardian

One newspaper known as him “the fear of Vidigal” and accused the Frenchman of torturing an underling to demise after he snitched to police. “In addition to chopping off his ears and tongue, he stuffed his henchman’s ears with fistfuls of cocaine,” earlier than capturing him within the head, the broadsheet O Globo claimed. “His tongue and ears had been nailed to a utility pole,” the newspaper added, incorrectly speculating that the overseas felon was Argentinian.

Martins mentioned Gringo’s profession unraveled when he made front-page headlines by saying a holdup in a thick French accent. Days later, police cornered him and he blew himself up with a grenade to keep away from seize.

On a latest night, Martins stopped for a pizza on Vidigal’s important drag, close to the place his French confederate died practically 30 years earlier.

“Brother, crime doesn’t pay,” the ex-trafficker mentioned because the nightly information described one more day of demise.

A police officer had been shot in a favela in north Rio – the nineteenth to be killed this 12 months. Police had killed six younger males within the Metropolis of God favela, together with one Martins knew. “That’s crime for you: demise hangs over you 24 hours a day,” mused the drug boss turned podcaster. “On daily basis folks die. It isn’t regular. But it surely’s life.”


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