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Rio de Janeiro is almost as savage as it is beautiful. So after it was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, city officials took action to make the self-proclaimed "Marvelous City" a safer place. Authorities ramped up an already growing program that used "softly, softly" tactics to bring community police stations into the favelas where drug gangs held sway.

The traffickers went quietly at first, but if authorities thought the vicious and powerfully armed factions were beaten, they got a rude awakening this week. Rival drug gangs fought back, uniting for the first time in years to take on the police and terrorize a city that has seen more than its share of bloodshed. After five days of bus burnings, shootings, attacks and counterattacks, at least 39 people were dead, including some civilians caught in the cross fire.

The trouble flared on Sunday, Nov. 21, after drug gangs angry at the prospect of losing their territory fired on police stations and torched buses and cars. Such choreographed waves of attacks are not uncommon in Rio, but police usually seek to contain the trouble — and keep it far from the big tourist districts of Copacabana, Sugar Loaf and Christ the Redeemer — rather than counterattack. But this time, the reaction was different. "What we have are terrorist acts clearly [designed] to corner authorities and create a climate of 'This policy isn't working, because we can do what we want,' " said Rio Mayor Eduardo Pães. "We are not asking for a truce with terrorists, criminals, delinquents. This time we are not going to back down." Putting muscle and firepower into Pãaes' words, the Rio police borrowed massive armored vehicles from the navy that enabled the cops to enter the heavily built-up favelas with a measure of protection.

The traffickers retreated en masse up hills and along dirt paths into neighboring shanties. Vivid footage shot from TV helicopters showed bandits, their automatic weapons slung over their backs, fleeing on foot, on motorbike and crammed into the backs of pickups. Some appeared to be downed by police fire. "We have taken from these people what was never taken from them before — their territory," said Jose Mariano Beltrame, Rio state's security chief, using unusually warlike language. "They commit their barbarous acts, and they run for their hideouts, protected by weapons of war. It's important to arrest them, but it is more important to occupy their territory. Without seizing territory, there is no advance."

Advances have been hard to come by in Rio for some time, and not just in terms of security. Since losing its capital status to Brasília in 1960, Rio has been in decline; investment dried up, brains and businesses fled to arch rival São Paulo, and violence became endemic. The number of favelas grew exponentially, and everything from traffic violations to murder seemed to go unpunished. Rio state, which has a population of 15 million people, saw 5,794 people murdered last year. (By comparison, New York City, with a population around 8 million, had fewer than 500 murders in the same period.)

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