1-60286-084-X
Translated into English for the first time, Elite Squad (Elite da Tropa) was a smash best seller in Brazil and has since touched off a firestorm of controversy that has been heightened by the award-winning film it inspired. Three brave members of Brazil’s Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE) are faced every day with a single duty: to derail the drug traffic inside Rio de Janiero’s numerous favelas (shantytowns). But a life in the this select cadre of highly trained military police is one forever at risk. Death is simply an every-day obstacle, enemies may just be those colleagues kept closest, and breaking the law is something often done to uphold it. Written by anthropologist and former Brazilian National Secretary of Public Security Luiz Eduardo Soares and two BOPE police cadets, André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel, this brutally intense semi-fictional account of the authors’ experiences in BOPE examines with painstaking candor the best and worst of human nature and enlightens readers on the universal weakness of government’s inability to control a thriving underground industry. Luiz Eduardo Soares was national secretary of Public Safety in Brazil. An anthropologist and political scientist, he teaches at two universities in Rio de Janeiro and has published 13 books. André Batista is a major in the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro and was a member of the BOPE from 1996 to 2001. He holds a law degree from PUC, the Catholic university in Rio. Rodrigo Pimentel was a BOPE captain from 1995 to 2000. He has a graduate degree in sociology from UERJ, the state university of Rio de Janeiro, and was a scriptwriter for the film version of Elite Squad.
