Rio de Janeiro
The 27 October edition O Globo, Rio's largest daily newspaper, featured an editorial cartoon on the front page instead being buried further back in the op-ed section. This is a bit unusual, even though it was placed below the fold, but its up-front placement underscores the concern of most of the population and numerous city officials. The message is that before the ground has even been broken for the first venue for the games several very public and violent incidents of crime that have occurred--just in the three short weeks since it was announced that the city was awarded the winning bid for the 2016 Olympic games--are now giving Rio a bad image.

The cartoon was fairly simple and to the point. It showed a white background covered with the five, multi-coloured Olympic rings--not unlike the many placards that were placed all over the city in the weeks leading up to the final award announcement. The only difference between this editorial cartoon version of the placard and those placed all over Rio is that this one featured numerous bullet holes and the caption "The Pre-Olympic Games."

The cartoon was largely in reference to the shootout on 17 October in the Morro dos Macacos (Monkey Hill) favela in the northern part of the city that resulted in the sunrise downing of a police helicopter. Subsequent firefights between the drug gangs and police units left dozens dead in the following days.

One photograph carried by almost all Brazilian

But the problem that Rio is now having is that the crime is not limited to the sprawling "have-not" favelas that are more different from the "haves" part of the city as East Berlin was from its western half. Like that famous line from Robin Williams in the film "Good Morning Vietnam" after his character narrowly escapes being blown up by a bomb planted in a local popular Saigan bar: "you wanna know the assumption is perfectly safe around here? Well, it's not. The fighting's not in the hills, it's downtown. It's a couple of f--ing blocks from here!"

Downtown, or the area in Rio known as Centro, is exactly where Evandro Jo o Silva, the leader of one of Rio's more popular community outreach programs, called AfroReggae, was murdered the previous weekend. The organization has had a good track record of persuading youth in the favelas to give up drugs in favor of music and is well-respected. Silva was shot and robbed at about 0130 in the morning, which is not a good time to be on the streets in this city, but for someone who works everyday in some of the most dangerous parts of the city the environs of the downtown business district probably do not seem so threatening.