Many locals and expats warn visitors from wandering the favelas, but Santo Domingo is relatively safe.
Pacification has been generally welcomed in favelas, where residents have seen a drop in crime.
BBC: Brazil police arrest alleged drug chief of Rocinha slum
Although many people fear the favelas, I was the recipient of great hospitality while there.
For example, more than half the people in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (slums) are black.
Latin American scholar Simone Buechler spent years researching several of the largest favelas in Sao Paolo.
To date, police have occupied some 20 favelas to drive out the dealers who controlled the areas.
BBC: Brazil police arrest alleged drug chief of Rocinha slum
Middle-class Paulistanos never go anywhere near favelas, even though their maids and drivers probably live in one.
The capital today is Brazil's most socially segregated city, its poor huddled in favelas on the outskirts.
More than 20 of Rio's most dangerous shantytowns, or favelas, have been occupied by police and army forces.
Into this sadness, in the late 1960s, came Janice Perlman, a young American sociologist and self-confessed lover of favelas.
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"People will not only come Rio more, but also the favelas will become a tourist attraction themselves, " he says.
The favelas, or slums, of Brazil's urban centers are breeding grounds of violence.
Both depict a popular representation of Brazilian favelas as dense, poor neighborhoods dominated by drug traffickers and corrupt police officers.
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Rio has changed a lot since the Earth Summit, but the poverty still remains in the favelas along the hillside.
Since labour chases wealth, soon the mountain towns were brimming with favelas (self-built settlements), hurled up haphazardly on treacherous slopes.
Some of the new money is also going on installing the paving, lighting and sewerage that turn favelas into neighbourhoods.
Around 80% of all violent crime here occurs in the favelas (shanty towns), fuelled by drug dealing, drinking and poverty.
The occupation of the shanty towns or favelas is part of a plan to secure access to and from Rio's international airport.
Hours after the games closed, the city police raided half-a-dozen favelas (shantytowns).
The number of homicides in Sao Paulo has jumped to almost 1, 000 so far this year, largely concentrated in favelas or slums.
Favelas were cleared around the lagoon between Ipanema beach and the hills behind and in Leblon, now the most expensive part of town.
ECONOMIST: To get out you need education, hard work and luck
People in the favelas will not only enjoy great soccer matches with the presence of their idols but also have great soccer matches.
In Brazil's favelas, it helped some 900, 000 people obtain "potable water piped directly into their homes, " and about 1 million receive sewer services.
Her research has produced one of the most detailed accounts we have of the social, economic and political order of the Sao Paolo favelas.
More than half of the original study group had moved out of the favelas, suggesting they are not the dead-end that many people suppose.
ECONOMIST: To get out you need education, hard work and luck
Some 1, 500 police and commandos took part in the operation in the northern favelas of Jacarezinho and Manguinhos, which began at 05:00 (08:00 GMT).
Many Brazilians who once inhabited the gang-ridden shanty towns, known as favelas, now have the disposable income to shop for aspirational products, from cars to DVD players.
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One of the most visited favelas in the city is Rocinha.
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And yet, despite Rio getting richer, the favelas are not shrinking.
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Football is ideally adapted to kick-arounds in the favelas of Brazil or the shanty towns of Africa, which continue to produce many of the world's leading players.
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