Brazil deployed troops to fight urban crime. Human rights groups were outraged. Residents were overjoyed. (home-page headline.) “They want to check my ID? Fine!” one resident said. The response illustrates a national reality: Brazilians want security — and are backing heavy-handed tactics to get it. But there are indications that the military deployments may not be working.

By Anthony Faiola and Marina Lopes @ WashingtonPost.com, March 25

RIO DE JANEIRO — To quell a burst of carjackings, supermarket lootings and murders, military troops rolled into this tropical metropolis last month heading straight for the slums. They set up checkpoints and sent armed patrols to root out criminals, searching everyone from children to grandmothers. 

The military campaign, the first of its scale since Brazil’s return to democracy in the 1980s, brought an outcry from human rights groups. Had this happened in the United States or Europe, some argued, lawsuits would have been filed. Communities would have rebelled.

But in Latin America’s largest nation — where security has emerged as the No. 1 issue amid a surge of urban violence — an extraordinary thing happened. Rather than view the move as an invasion, violence-weary residents of the favelas, or shantytowns, hailed it as a liberation [.....]