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Hello and welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Nina Robinson and

this week I'm in one of the biggest urban slums or favelas of Rio de Janeiro

in Brazil. It's called Hossinia, where over 100,000 people live and it's

where a hugely ambitious experiment to rid the favelas of drug gangs is being

ramped up to a new much larger scale to include places like this.

It was the quietest I've ever heard Hossinia. It was, you know, this is a noisy, noisy, noisy place.

It all began here on November the 13th last year when Rio's elite squad

conducted a sophisticated military operation. Marcos Burgos has lived in

Hossinia for over a decade. He recalls what happened that night.

The next thing I remember, I had a hard time going to sleep, the next thing I remember

around 4 a.m. I just heard this noise. It felt like an earthquake going by and it was

basically like these tanks that were going to the street. They were so wide, they were

too wide for the road. They even scraped up some of the sidewalk and people's door

steps and stuff and it was just like rattling the house and the windows. Then

they were helicopters flying everywhere. You know, we knew it was on.

TV news cameras show press photographers following the hundreds of police and

Navy commandos as they walk with their rifles pointed through the narrow alleyways.

I didn't even do out of my house to get picture because I was scared that I don't know.

I was just scared that police may not react and blow my head up. But the amazing thing was

there wasn't a gunshot. This is surprising for Marcos because people who live here are

...