Rachel Glickhouse – The Christian Science Monitor, 2/11/2014
Flamengo is a picturesque middle-class neighborhood in Rio that sits on the Guanabara Bay with tree-lined streets and upscale apartment buildings. There’s a big park on the water filled with joggers and bikers, and soccer games going on at all hours of the day and night. In this area, you can catch breathtaking views of the bay and Sugarloaf Mountain, and Corovado looming above the water. But on Jan. 31, a Flamengo resident came upon a completely unexpected sight in this neighborhood – a sight that sparked national furor. It was a young black man stripped naked, beaten, and chained to a post with a bike lock around his neck.
It wasn’t only shocking, but it brought to mind the type of scene you’d see during the slavery age. And like the rolezinhos, the incident represents a perfect storm related to issues of race, class, and security.