Mafias run by rogue police officers are terrorising Rio

LATE LAST year mysterious trucks started dumping industrial waste at a precolonial archaeological site in Duque de Caxias, an industrial city of 900,000 people some 24km (15 miles) north of Rio de Janeiro. Environmental activists thought they knew who was behind it. Over the past decade, their battle to protect local nature reserves and the poor people who live near them has become a battle against criminal groups known as militias.

Prosecutors say that from the mid-1990s these groups, often made up of rogue police officers, started snatching swampy federal land. They filled it with dirt and sold the lots to families, mostly poor migrants from other states. In São Bento, a neighbourhood in the city, a hill overlooks thousands of identical tin-roofed shacks. “The militias control all of it,” says an activist. For a fee, they provide transport, water, cooking gas, cable television and internet. But they also flaunt heavy weapons, run extortion rackets and threaten to kill anyone who opposes them.