“At this moment in history, there are two urgent questions, vividly focused in Rio: can this city, the jewel in Brazil’s battered crown, halt the seemingly inexorable process of social disintegration as factions wage war on factions? Drug gangs versus drug gangs; drug gangs versus police; police versus apparently everyone (shocking but true, read on). And can culture, that last life raft of the idealistic, come to the aid of a community’s identity, perhaps ensure its survival?”