Between Jesus and the Vice

It's 7:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday. I haven't been back here in seven months. I know this exactly because Marussia is not pregnant anymore and her baby is only two weeks old. She's 19. Tete's bar has also just closed yesterday after arguing over the rent with Edson. She's moved the bar into a darker part of the slum. It's good for her, there's a lot more alcoholics there, including the seven men there now, all drunk, including her husband. Tete has a thick moustache and she works hard. She worked and made more money as a hairdresser when she had her own beauty salon in the neighborhood. It's dark in this bar, cramped and humid. She left the salon business because like her husband she got lost in the booze.

I move on to Gel's house. He's got a new home and now runs a small theatre company in the back. The house used to be a party salon so he now uses the space for the theater and rents it out for parties too. A rave is about to begin in a couple hours, this time the drug of choice will be ecstasy, not the usual coke and grass. It's a private party, so Gel will lock the door later in the night. No one gets in no one gets out! A young cross eyed samba singer has showed up in a skimpy little outfit. Gel's prey for the night. I'm in a t-shirt, jeans and sandles and feeling comfortable. She's complaining how hot it is. She's begging for the fire to be put out.

The police in the last two months have been hitting hard, cracking down on the noise pollution they say. The neighborhood knows they're cracking down on them and the little fun they have in their lives. This is the periphery of one of the largest cities in the world. Two thirds of a near twenty million population lives on the margins of the city. They occupy it and they live here because when they got here 15 years ago there was nothing but the bush and the Tiete river. It was easy then now it's overcrowded and dangerous.

The Pesquero, slang for a pick up bar, used to lie on the back of neighborhood on the river's edge. The community knows it belongs to the PCC (Primeiro Comando Capital), but it's owners and members are retired. Some weeks ago a young girl turned the mafia boss, Sergio, into the police. The PCC went out on a manhunt to kill her. They killed her alright but she was the wrong girl. The police, under pressure of the newly elected right wing government, cracked down on them. They've know of their activity for some time but the police here have to look the other way sometimes if they want to survive too. The Pesquero was a drug trafficking joint and the best place to pick girls, drunk, stoned and high on expressing their sexuality. Most people told me they shut the place down because the original land owner wanted his land back. Why? Who could benefit from building anything out here?

It's late, past midnight, and I'm searching for Bola, a University of Sao Paulo, social worker student. He lives in the local public library run by a Marxist cultural group. I'll be spending the night there. Bola is hanging out with Wagner and others watching a DVD. I sit in and watch his 56 year old father under a 100W light bulb fixing wrist watches. Tomorrow he'll head downtown to a local street fair. Soon after the movie's over a small rat climbs out the window. Wagner's father starts to train the dog again to learn how to hunt it down.

The next morning I've gone looking for Dona Fia. I bumped into her 44 year old son Donizete. It's almost 11:30 am and he's drunk, can barely speak and much less walk. We head back to his house. One of his younger nieces, Vanessa, has returned to the neighborhood. She used to be part of the PCC until her partners in crime were killed in front of her. Seven days earlier to their death they had robbed a car at gunpoint in the exact same place. Four evangelists were inside. The driver handed over the car and told the assailant that he was handing him over to God. The next time they tried to rob a car, the police were waiting for them. Vanessa managed to get away and soon afterwards became an evangelist.

Her younger brother Eduardo was at the house too. The family lives in adjacent concrete blocks. One each for three sisters, a tiny hole in the wall for Donizete while Dona Fia lives up stairs in a dark brick room. Eduardo had a near fatal motorcycle accident two years ago. He's blind in one eye and partially crippled on one leg. He too was reborn into the Pentacostal faith soon after. Today he's at the house because he's left the temple and some of its followers in brand new Fiat have shown up to try to get him back in. Vanessa told me he's gone back to drug trafficking. The PCC now uses him as a transporter.

Vanessa and him at are odds over family troubles. They love each other but can't resolve their differences as she tries to steer him away from where she almost died. The room becomes an hallucinatory half bible half psychological therapy talk, where only Jesus can provide the answer to the devil's acts here present. The world is coming to an end they keep repeating. Earthquakes, wars, global warming are all signs that Jesus is coming back. Vanessa cries in frustration too because upon her return to the neighborhood, within an hour, her cell phone has been robbed and she has been accused of stealing someones credit card to purchase it. The same people she says have her cell phone.

Saint Mathew is being read by the evangelist couple. The couple describes how they too survived a near death experience where killers came to their house in search of the husband. Jesus of course made sure they were saved. Donizete sits in a corner yelling, "It's all lies". His mother Dona Fia threatens him with a sandal. It all ends in a circle of prayer for the family, for Eduardo, for Vanessa, for Donizete and for the photographer who has joined them on this gathering under the word of Jesus.

Vanessa heads around the corner to the local bar. She's drinking beer with her cousin as her nine month old child sucks on dirty lollipop that has fallen to the ground more times than she has. She tells me she's coming back to the neighborhood as soon as she either leaves her husband or gets him off the drugs. Alex, is at the bar too. He's 21 yrs old. I haven't seen him in seven months and he looks as happy go lucky as ever.

Alex has three kids from three different women. None of them let him see his kids. He became an orphan shortly after his father brought home the AIDS virus to his mother. Alex says his father denied it until he died of AIDS too, shortly afterwards. His father engaged in prostitution regularly. His only family is his older sister, abandoned by her husband with seven children. The eldest seventeen. Alex's new girlfriend has gotten him a job at a chocolate factory where her father manages the place. He's optimistic. Fabiano, a friend of Gel's theatre company is hanging out with Alex at the house with his soon to be wife and her child. She got pregnant when she was 17. I ask them about Jacqueline and her sister Evelayne. I had been shooting Jacqueline shortly after she gave birth at 17. Alex could not recall. I could and how he had hit on both of them. When I showed him the pictures he remembered. He also remembered having slept with both of them.


Sex here is like a cigarette, you have so many of them you only remember those that burnt your fingers, or those you got pregnant. Condoms are so easily available it's not a question of sex education. The girls don't pressure the boys to use them because it's a good way to trap them or to get up on the social scale and pounce around saying your a mother now, an adult, somebody!

Life is short and feeling as much joy as possible is not a priority, it's a right you can't deny yourself here. I stayed on talking about sex and it's meaning. It's wild here, they say, I don't know what to tell you. They kept on drinking cheap wine, the "Nightrain" like stuff Guns N' Roses sings about during their junkie days in Los Angeles. It's well past 4 pm and I'm drunk. Time to get some lunch. I find David and Cimar smoking a joint in the corner. That's another story to tell, but like the local Hip Hop group Os Racionais says, "periferia é periferia... em qualquer lugar" (anywhere you go.. the periphery is the periphery).