At least one person is dead in rioting that has broken out from one of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and onto one of its most famous tourist attractions – legendary Copacabana Beach.  The uprising follows the death of a young man allegedly beaten by police.

“It started around 5:30 PM.  There was smoke everywhere, shots in the street and people racing for their homes,” said one young man who lives just over the line from the Pavao-Pavaozinho favela, which neighbors the well-heeled tourist centers of Copacabana and Ipanema.

25-year old Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira was a dancer on TV shows.  He had gone to Pavao-Pavaozinho to visit his four-year old daughter, encountering police “pacification units” sent in to calm the restive slum before the World Cup in two months.  But police mistook him for a known drug dealer.  They chased him into a school, and details of what happen get murky from there. 

Apparently, police claimed he died in a fall, but his mother said that, “He died at one in the morning.  More than 12 hours afterwards we got to see the body.  He was in a defensive posture, all beaten up.”

Daizy Carvalho lives in Pavao-Pavaozinho and works for a human rights group.  She can’t believe a role model for kids in the favelas has fallen to the heavy-handed police presence making way for the World Cup and Olympics in 2016.

“He was a mirror for youngsters, who are in revolt.  What kind of World Cup is this?” she asked.  “The people from the favelas need to unite and come out onto the street” to tell the world of what’s happening, and to call on tourists “not to come to the Cup.”