The ‘garden of death’ blooms

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They’re calling it the ``Garden of Death’’ in Rio de Janeiro.

Cariocas, as Rio residents are known, awoke today to find 1,300 red roses planted in the white sands of celebrated Copacabana Beach. Each flower represents a person killed violently this year.

The Rio of Peace group also planted 700 crosses last month at Copacabana in a symbolic protest against the carnage. But the number of victims has accelerated rapidly in the drug wars, gang battles and other criminality that afflict one of the world’s most picturesque cities.

If things don’t improve, organizers warn, there could be 6,000 crosses or flowers in the beach by year’s end.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires