RIO DE JANEIRO - Of all the things you could say to a cop with an automatic weapon after he's pulled you out of the car on the side of the highway at midnight, Isaac Chaves chose: "I've had 15 beers."
And why not? This is Brazil, the land of samba in the streets, beer on the beaches and kiwis in your caipirinha, the place where festivals of debauchery last for days. Drinking isn't a source of shame here. It's part of the daily celebration.
Besides, Chaves, 27, wasn't driving. He never does. He's a lawyer; he knows there are rules, too. "I don't even have a license," he said.
"He likes to drink," said the man behind the wheel that night, Bruno Mendes, 26, an accountant. "A lot."
The important question was whether Mendes had been drinking, because this is the new, more sober Brazil, at least on paper. Six months ago, the government imposed one of the strictest drunken-driving laws in the hemisphere, what people here call the "dry law." Anyone caught driving with a blood alcohol content of .02 percent or higher (compared with .08 in the United States) faces a $400 fine, loss of their license for a year, an impounded vehicle and jail time.
Many welcomed the move, with 35,000 people dying on Brazil's roads each year. Others were skeptical, including many Cariocas, as residents of Rio de Janeiro are known, who said the law was too harsh for the capital of carnival.
"The culture of Cariocas is bohemian -- they like night life, they like drinking beer," said Cesar Augusto de Castro Jr., a chief inspector with the federal highway police in Rio de Janeiro. "This law asks for a behavioral change, and it's hard to change their behavior."
The dry law, introduced in June, hit the country like a cold shower. Police swarmed the streets outside night spots in major cities, setting up sobriety-test checkpoints, handing out fines and seizing licenses. More than 5,000 people have been cited under the law, which joined a measure this year limiting the sale of alcohol along federal highways.
Likened to terrorismCritics have compared the police crackdown to terrorism. The law has been called authoritarian and unconstitutional, and the restaurant association is working to overturn it. Others have tried to adjust. The city of Sao Paulo added night bus routes to get drinkers home. The Brazilian beer maker AmBev started paying 10 percent of taxi fares for imbibers. Some bars and restaurants began driving customers home, while others strung up hammocks for revelers to sleep off their inebriation.
But it is difficult to say how well the new law is working -- or whether Brazilians' behavior has changed much.
The statistics suggest the roads are no safer than before. In the law's first five months, the number of car accidents on federal highways in Rio de Janeiro state rose 17 percent, compared with the same period in the previous year. Injuries also rose, by 32 percent, although deaths fell by 8 percent, according to police.
Across the country, the picture appeared worse. In those five months, accidents, injuries and deaths on federal highways increased over the previous five months.
Police said they were encouraged by accident figures in the initial weeks. But a problem quickly became apparent: It was difficult to enforce the law without breathalyzers.
"We don't have enough machines to do the tests," said Pedro Paulo Bahia, a spokesman for the federal highway police. "After a few months, people started to realize this."
Bahia estimated that Brazil, home to almost 200 million people, had 900 breathalyzers available. Highway police in Rio de Janeiro state have 13. Although there are plans to get thousands more devices soon, police said the shortage has hamstrung enforcement, particularly in the cities.
Police extortionDrivers report other problems.
"The police officers would stop people and ask for money, between $200 and $400 depending on how drunk you were," said Antônio Carlos, 68, who has been a taxi driver in Rio for more than 20 years, echoing the complaints of several residents. "The corrupt police officers were getting rich."
For Carlos and his colleagues, however, the law has also been a boon. In Lapa, a Rio neighborhood known for its all-night samba clubs, taxi drivers report increases in business of up to 30 percent in the dry law era.
"I just think people are more afraid now to drink and drive," said taxi driver Vailtom Mira, 41, idling outside a Lapa bar. "The traffic is a sign of that. Before, it would take 40 minutes to go around the block here. On Friday and Saturday nights, nothing moved. Now it's easy to drive around."
At a sidewalk table nearby, Arthur Vianna, 25, said he could appreciate the new law. "I have crashed my car twice. I was drunk. Completely drunk," he said, showing off a scar on his left forearm.
"I stopped for a while drinking and driving. But after two months I did it again, I have to confess," he said. "I don't have a car anymore."
Vianna, a recent medical school graduate, said that shortly after the law went into effect, he noticed a decline in the number of car crash victims coming in to the emergency room. But lately things seem back to normal, he said.
"There is nobody checking anything anymore," said his friend, Ameusca Santos. "You have the law, but nobody's enforcing it."
