In a matter of weeks the world will descend on Brazil's Rio de Janeiro for the the greatest show on Earth - the football World Cup.
But last night, as these dramatic pictures show, a favela near the iconic Copacabana beach turned in to what looked like a war zone.
Bloody protests, in which one person was killed, started in the area after a dancer Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira, 26, was allegedly beaten to death by police. According to his mother his body was littered with boot marks.
The BBC reported that demonstrators from the favela set barricades of tyres alight, leading to the closure of streets in the nearby tourist area of Copacabana.
The state secretary for security in Rio said: “The circumstances of the death of Douglas Rafael da Silva Pereira are being investigated.”
Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported some hotels are understood to have locked their doors in Copacabana, which is due to welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists in less than two months when Brazil hosts the World Cup.