(...)tion Police find these favela folk an ungrateful

bunch. They in turn have had only

bitter experiences with the police. Previously

the only time you ever saw them

was collecting bribes, or in sudden shoot-outs.

You'd just come out of the shower,

ready to go to work; the police burst into

your house looking for a crook, shot you

dead and went off again without so much

as a by-your-leave. Oh yes, the drug trade

still continues, after the pacification.

The gangs are now entrenched higher up

the mountain, and spy the scene through

binoculars. But they no longer rule the

streets. You breathe more quietly now.

Metropolitan Rio has about one thousand

favelas. Several dozen-including the

largest-are pacified. Because we have

to be realistic, but without being cynical,

we can dare to say it's a start.

Recently I was sitting in an outdoor

café on the edge of a pacified favela as

a woman walked by. Tall, slim, young and

brown-toast colour, with a sinuous walk,

and everyone she passed (on the way

to the beach?) said 'wow'. She looked

straight ahead, and I stared after her in

somewhat melancholy fashion. In Rio,

many sigh, you see so many more beautiful

women than elsewhere. In Rio, others

sigh, the men are much more up-and-go.

But use your mind a bit and you know

that's not true. The proportion of grace-ful

and repulsive people, and those

in between, is the same as anywhere

in the world-statistics can't be fooled

by the mind's dreams.

(...)essence of our culture. Football more

than anything else gives us a greater

sense of freedom."

Recently I stood at Jesus's feet. From

the hunchback Corcovado Mountain,

he blesses the city. "My peace I give you,

my peace I leave with you": the Lord's

pacification programme. The incomparable

view over Rio, seven hundred metres

below, is the subject of many a clicking

camera and postcard sent home. From

here you can also see the hills where

the favelas lie, solidified avalanches of

houses tumbling down over each other.

If we could glide down to one such favela,

over broken-glass wall-tops, along streets

that branch out into alleys and dark gorges,

there too we would find the Lord-a thousandfold.

Albeit in various guises. There

is the Jesus of classical Catholicism,

enriched with African elements. There are

the Jesuses of the Protestant churches,

with their increasingly robust presence.

With the evangelical variants and especially

the Pentecostal Universal Church of

the Kingdom of God, with its daily singing

and prayer meetings and its weekly,

heavily attended exorcisms.

It is precisely these newer churches that

insist on personalised glad tidings. They

say you can change your life for the better,

with Jesus's help. So it exorcises your

devils: the booze, the drugs, the urge

to beat your wife. This therapeutic bonus

makes these churches very popular. But

for safety's sake the ancient African gods,(...)