Operation in two favelas left 121 dead, including four police officers and two teens, with 99 people taken into custody ...

Explore the shanty towns of Río Janeiro and their role in the city's cultural history. The shanty towns of Río Janeiro play a pivotal role in the city's cultural history. They are home to a rich ...

Police arrest a suspect during a raid against alleged drug traffickers of the Comando Vermelho criminal organization in the ...

RIO DE JANEIRO — After decades of delay and pressure, Brazil announced Tuesday that it will henceforth use “favelas and urban communities” to categorize thousands of poor, urban neighborhoods, instead ...

SOL NASCENTE, Brazil (AP) — The buzzing main avenue of this poor Brazilian neighborhood is filled with people popping off buses after work or grabbing a bite. Teens attend an open-air rap battle and ...

Armored vehicles rumbling through narrow alleys. Rifle shots cracking in heavy crossfire. Helicopters and weaponized drones firing from above. Soldiers in military gear engaged in violent combat.

Families of the scores of people killed in a deadly gang raid by Rio de Janeiro police began burying the dead on Thursday, with residents left reeling by the scenes of carnage and livid at law ...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- This kind of battle was good news for the impoverished, sometimes violent Cidade de Deus favela in Rio de Janeiro: a rap duel in a local bar held for the first time since the ...

None of the 117 people killed by police were among the 69 suspects named by prosecutors in the complaint providing the basis ...

Ian Cheibub for NPR It was a sunny September morning in Rio de Janeiro’s Parque Arará favela and volunteers were preparing plants to be placed on Reginaldo Gomes da Silva’s roof. Students from both ...

Rio has been the scene of lethal police raids for decades. In March 2005, some 29 people were killed in Rio’s Baixada ...

Rio de Janeiro’s favelas are the dregs of a city, teeming slums where the crime rate makes Harlem tame by comparison. The pastel-painted shantytowns with their deceptive names—”Pleasure Hill,” ...