What You Didn't Learn in Portuguese Class - Narco Slang

Stumbled across this list yesterday, when I researched Rio's illicit crack trade, of drug related portuguese slang.  It will come in handy for my undercover assignment reporting from behind the lines of the Comando Vermelho (one of Rio's infamous criminal organisations).   Oh would that I were so genuinely journalistic... 

Avião — (lit. plane) middleman  
Baba — good money 
Badaga — shoemaker's glue  
Badagueiro — glue sniffer 
Bagulho — joint 
Banhista — (bather) someone who steals from a friend  
Barato — high 
Baseado, bagulho, bomba — pot  
Bater pavão — steal  
Bater um — (to beat one) to prepare the cocaine for snorting it  
Bocada — (mouthful) — place to buy drugs  
Bob Marley — marijuana  
Boca-de-fumo — (mouth) point of sale of drugs 
Bode — (goat) urge to sleep  
Bodinha, bodinho — (little goat) girl, boy 
Branco — (white) cocaine, faintness  
Brecar — to dress well 
Cagoete — snitch  
Canaleta — (gutter) — vein  
Caô — craziness or boaster  
Chocolate — hashish  
Crackeiro, craqueiro — a crack user  
Dar o confere — to frisk someone while stealing  
Dar o gogó — (give the Adam's apple) to catch by the throat 
Dar uma luz — (give a light) transitory high  
Derramar — (to pour) steal from the 
boca-de-fumo Descuido — (carelessness) little theft  
Docinho — (little candy) lysergic acid  
Erva do diabo — (devil's weed) pot  
Fazer um ganho — (to make a profit) to steal  
Fino — (the thin one) pot cigarette 
Fralda — (diaper) pot paper  
Fritar pedra — (to fry stone) to smoke crack  
Imbalista — passerby who nabs a mugger 
Ir para Londres — (to go to London) to have sex  
Lombra — high 
Mardita — pot  
Marica — (pansy) any object used to hold the grass  
Matutos — (hillbillies) drug go-betweens in Rio  
Malhada — cocaine mixed with talc or corn starch 
Mela, merla — cocaine paste smoked in a pipe  
Mesclado — crack and pot mix  
Meter — to steal  
Metranca — gun or machine gun  
Mincha — metal bar to open cars  
Mocó — place to sleep  
Mula — (mule) person who carries drug in a bus or plane  
Nóia — (from paranoia) drug high  
Noiado — in a high 
Palha — (straw) bad quality pot  
Pedra — (stone) crack 
Pico — (prick) injection in the vein  
Pipar — to smoke a drug in a pipe 
Poeira — (dust) cocaine 
Plizzzzzz — mugging 
Preto — (black) pot 
Tuim — the almost instantaneous sensation provoked by crack  
Tyson — (as in Mike Tyson) strong, knocking-down pot  
Vapor — (steamboat) favela dweller who takes the drug to the consumer  
Viajar — (to travel) to be intoxicated by a drug 
Zoeira — high 

Thanks Brazzil for the info.

Just Another Murder In Rio

It's common to hear about people being murdered nearby.  Last month a homeless guy was stabbed in the neck in Largo do Machado, a busy square I walk across with the kids at least twice a day.  Last year during carnival a young girl who lived in a squat in Lapa was murdered on the Gloria end of the Aterro do Flamengo, her body dumped near modern art museum.  That's where I jog.

Thankfully I didn't personally see either scene.  Until now I have soothed myself with the conviction that as a middle class woman whose reality is far removed from that of a homeless addict or street kid, I'm not a likely murder candidate.  I'm also neither a fraudster not exciting enough to inspire a crime of passion, so I feel pretty safe.  These murders seem completely abstract.  It doesn't mean I don't feel compassion for the victims -I think about that young girl every time I go for a run - but it's just that those sorts of things don't happen to people like me.

But then I hear about a 30 year old French guy who was murdered this weekend on rua Silveira Martins, just outside the clinic where I vaccinate my kids right here in Catete.  Apparently a 56 year old deranged crack addict randomly stabbed the victim, who was taking an ironic fag break during a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.  Now that makes me freak.  Crazies totally losing it just around the corner from my home killing Europeans in their thirties. Yikes.  How am I supposed to protect myself and my children from that?

Researching Rio's crack problem makes for scary reading.  The drug arrived here relatively late compared to Sao Paulo, allegedly because the city's drug lords decided it was so destructive that it would be bad for business in the long run.  But it's here now.  It's claimed that as many as 90% of Rio's homeless are crack addicts but that it's also an increasing vice of the 'respectable' classes.  More than half of crack users who ask for help through the public health system are middle class youngster.

It seems that it's naive of me, then, to think in terms of us and them.  The risks of living in Rio are not limited to the 'marginais'. The middle classes are just as much a part of this complicated equation. Whether they are crack addicts or, more likely, just enjoy a spliff once in a while, they are greasing the machine that destroys the lives of many people here in this city...it's just a shame that it takes a murder of 'someone like us' to make us realise that we all have blood on our hands.