Complexo do Alemão

Complexo do Alemão
Neighborhood
Gondola lift leaving the Estação da Baiana (Baiana Station) within the Complexo do Alemão; which is used by local residents and tourists
Complexo do Alemão Location in Rio de Janeiro
Coordinates: 22°51′38″S 43°16′25″W / 22.86056°S 43.27361°W / -22.86056; -43.27361Coordinates: 22°51′38″S 43°16′25″W / 22.86056°S 43.27361°W / -22.86056; -43.27361
Country	Brazil
State	Rio de Janeiro (RJ)
Municipality/City	Rio de Janeiro
Zone	North Zone
Administrative Region	Complexo do Alemão
Area
• Total	2.96 km2 (1.14 sq mi)
Population (2010)
• Total	69,143

Complexo do Alemão (Portuguese: [kõˈplɛksu dw ɐleˈmɐ̃w], German's Complex) is a group of favelas (low-income historically informal neighborhoods) in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

An article published by O Globo in 2007 revealed the origin of Complexo do Alemão. After World War I, a Pole named Leonard Kaczmarkiewicz bought the land. It was not long before the place became known as Morro do Alemão (German's Hill) due to Kaczmarkiewicz's physical looks (a person of stereotypical European fair complexion is informally called alemão, galego or russo in Brazilian Portuguese, while gringo only apply to non-Portuguese-speaking tourists; these terms can be offensive, jocose or intimate depending on context, but are generally impolitely neutral).

The rural area began to change its appearance in the late 1920s, when the leather factory Curtume Carioca was founded. It attracted hundreds of workers to the region. When Avenida Brasil was inaugurated in 1946, the region started to progress and soon became the city's main industrial pole. Settlement building began in 1951, when Kaczmarkiewicz divided his land into plots and eventually sold them. The area evolved into the haphazard growth of favelas over several decades; which was parallel to what was occurring in other parts of Rio during the same time period.

On June 27, 2007, just a few days before the Live Earth concert in Copacabana and the opening ceremony of the XV Pan American Games, Complexo do Alemão was the stage of a huge operation led by the Military Police against the gang that controlled the area. Official numbers state that the police killed almost twenty people in the region. State attacks against favelas happened countless other times. Until the end of the Pan-American Games, Complexo do Alemão was under siege. The operation was not without criticism, since some viewed its purpose as being to suppress the drug dealers of the Complexo do Alemão favelas only during the Pan-American Games since Brazil's international image could have been hurt if anything had happened during the Games. The United Nations Children's Fund also criticized the operation, which injured four minors. It got the sobriquet Gaza strip.