• Drug dealers say no to crack in Rio

    Felipe Dana / AP

    A man smokes crack in the Manguinhos slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 7. Some drug bosses say they have stopped selling crack because it destabilizes their communities, making it harder to control areas long abandoned by the government. City authorities take credit for the change, arguing that drug gangs are trying to create a distraction and make police back off their offensive to take back the slums.

    Business was brisk in the Mandela shantytown on a recent night. In the glow of a weak light bulb, customers pawed through packets of powdered cocaine and marijuana priced at $5, $10, $25. Teenage boys with semiautomatic weapons took in money and made change while flirting with girls in belly-baring tops lounging nearby.

    Next to them, a gaggle of kids jumped on a trampoline, oblivious to the guns and drug-running that are part of everyday life in this and hundreds of other slums, known as favelas, across this metropolitan area of 12 million people. Conspicuously absent from the scene was crack, the most addictive and destructive drug in the triad that fuels Rio's lucrative narcotics trade.

    -- Reported by the Associated Press

    Read the full story.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    Traffickers and users gather at a drug selling point in the Antares slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    Traffickers sell drugs in the Antares slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    People gather in an area known as "Crackland" inside the Manguinhos slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    A trafficker test fires a riffle in the Mandela slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    Traffickers sell drugs in the Antares slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    A trafficker stands at a drug selling point that stopped selling crack in the Mandela slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    A masked and armed trafficker at a drug selling point that no longer sells crack in the Mandela slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    Crack users gather under a bridge in the Antares slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Felipe Dana / AP

    A crack user leaves a crack house near the Manguinhos slum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

     

  • Day becomes night in Brazil's 'cracklands'

    Reuters reports from Sao Paulo — When night falls, street crack marketplaces open for business.

    The gritty transactions of the drug trade take over in city neighborhoods that hum with legitimate commerce by day. Throngs of stupefied buyers crowd around dealers before skulking away behind the telltale glow of cigarette lighters.

    These are not the images that Brazil wants to project.

    Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

    A youth consumes crack on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro on March 19, 2012. Many Brazilian cities now have their own "cracklands," areas of the city where swarms of crack users have converted entire neighborhoods into nocturnal encampments doubling as open-air crack markets.

    Paulo Whitaker / Reuters

    A combination picture shows a street in Sao Paulo during the day and at night on March 19, 2012.

    Lunae Parracho / Reuters

    A drug user consumes crack in the old center of Salvador da Bahia on March 19, 2012.

    Reuters photographers recently spent 24 hours in eight of those cities chronicling their "cracklands," as the neighborhoods have come to be known. They went from the decrepit center of Sao Paulo, South America's biggest city, to the waterfront slums of Rio de Janeiro. From the Amazonian capital of Manaus, to the colonial tourist hub of Salvador.

    In each, swarms of crack users have converted entire swaths of central neighborhoods into nocturnal encampments doubling as open-air crack marketplaces.

    The images reflect what sociologists, health experts and law enforcement officials say is a rapidly growing problem that puts Brazil squarely in the center of the international drug trade. Read the full report.

     

    Paulo Whitaker / Reuters

    Crack addicts quarrel on a street in Sao Paulo on March 19, 2012.

    Paulo Whitaker / Reuters

    Crack addicts consume the drug on a street in Sao Paulo on March 20, 2012.

    Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

    Crack consumers gather in the Gloria neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro on March 19, 2012.