Carandiru

View of the the remains of Carandiru prison on the right and the still existing women’s state penitentiary in Sao Paulo, on the left. On October 2, 1992 Sao Paulo’s military police erupted into the prison during a riot which became progressively harder to control. Over one hundred inmates had died before it was all over. One hundred and two of them were killed from gunshots wounds attributed to the Military Police another nine died from stab wounds. None of the police were killed. Survivors claimed the police had also fired on inmates who had surrendered or were hiding from the riot in their cells.

In 2002 the prison was finally demolished and developed into the park, Parque da Jueventude. Sao Paulo, with over 1,500 square kilometers and a population approaching 20 million has few recreational areas. The original plan for this park was actually never completed, due to a lack of fund.

The New Neighbors

In southern Sao Paulo, on 72,000 sq. meters, surrounded by an additional 52,000 sq meters of green areas, an all new integrated condominium complex is in it's final stages of construction with an investment of over USD $700 million. Parque Cidade Jardim, will hold nine residential towers, three commercial towers, an exclusive shopping center, a luxury spa, seventeen heliports and a mixed residential hotel tower linked to the Fasano chain. The apartments vary in size from 237 to 1800 sq. meters and are valued between USD $800,000 to $12,000,000. Sixty percent of them were sold before its inauguration in 2006.

The condominium looks over one of Brazil's most polluted rivers, the Tietê. The Panorama slum holding some forty families once stood in the same spot. Their shacks were bought out at USD $20,000.

Bomb Test

The wall in the background, divides the slum Jardim Elivana and separates the housing project, while protecting private land from being occupied. Three weeks ago, the body of a twenty-year old was found along this wall. Almost precisely where the two other children are walking along. Someone had tied a bomb around his waist and then blown him up. No one, really seems sure why they killed him in this manner, what they do know is that this boy was up to no good and got what was coming to him. Revenge? Justice? Murder? This is the life in the periphery. It used to be a lot worse I was told.

Out here it's best to keep the police out of it. Out here the laws are made at home.

The Silent Bride

I walked into a wedding on the eastern periphery of São Paulo in Guianazes. Odd? A white mute man and his black mute wife communicated in sign language amongst their guests.

Here in Brazil, people don't make a big deal about race. Interrelations are as common as the sun. It's much more about class. Who you are.

She was a funny girl.
Good Luck.

Tenode Pora

Barely known to most of the nearly 20 million residents living in São Paulo, are the three Guarani Indian villages, two of them federal reserves, in the extreme south of the city. Located in the metropolitan area, the largest village known as Tenode Pora, meaning Beautiful Village in Guarani, is compromised of over 800 Indians.











This village, nearly ten years ago, was suffering from perdition mixed with a loss of identity and a victim of alcoholism. Today, with a new Caçique (Chief) Timoteo Wera Poty, the village and its inhabitants are recovering their ancestral dignity and reviving a living culture.

However, like 95% of the city, it also suffers from the effects of mass urbanization. Over the last fifteen years, the tiny 26 hectares granted to the Guarani are threatened by the urbanization slowly surrounding its natural realm. Anything from shantytowns to illegal settlements cause harm to the the reservation. Today ironically, urban planning has arrived from the inside, as a major habitat contstruction plan was practically imposed on the Indians to avoid a continuous subsidy of their natural way of life.

City Hall over the last four years erected a plan to build brick homes with concrete floor for the Guaranis. Nothing wrong with brick homes, but for people who are fighting a way of life and livelihood, concrete floors are cold and unnatural to the earth floors they prefer. The next three blog installments will speak of the importance of understanding the way of life these Indians have held for hundreds of years and why we still have a lot to learn from them in the XXI century.

Looking For A Battle

815 AM. Last stop in the Jardim Pantanal. Will not be back until October.

10 Million Daily Users

It's 6:15 AM. The trains have been coming in from the periphery since 430 AM. They are packed. The Subway trains to get here to leave the city at 530 AM was packed too. It's at least a 45 min train ride in or out from the station.

Castles

Eight o'clock in the morning. Northern of Sao Paulo, Brasilandia to be exact. Inside the Jardim Elisa Maria neighborhood, a soft fog rolls through the neighborhood. A river, a very polluted one, runs at the bottom of the valley/ A sort of hidden "favela" it is.

These houses reminded me of ancient ruins in the deserts of Morocco. Like homes coming out of the mountain. Caves almost. Will these houses remain 200 years from now? 500? Will someone dig them up or will the city actaully urbanize these areas properly someday? I doubt it.

Death of the Everyday Man

When death comes, it makes no difference of class, color or creed. It simply takes and leaves behind a carcass to remember. To the poor man in dire circumstances never makes the news and hardly the obituary, unless his death is violent and affects the interests of those who read the or hear the news.

This weekend I've returned to the Jardim Pantanal and death once more circled the neighborhood.

Ivo da Silva was 42 years old and a cook at a fancy restaurant in downtown Sao Paulo. He was run over and fatally killed while riding his bicycle on vacation. The details are sketchy. Ivo was cycling on a busy avenue and was hit by a 19 year old motorist, without a driver's license conducting his ill mother, most urgently, to the hospital in his father's mini public transport bus. The motorist claims Ivo was zig zaging and smashed against the bus. The window shield was smashed and could claim some truth to it. However, the bicycle was intact? The motorist appeared in court with two lawyers. No witnesses were found for the victim's family.

The only truth left is that dead people don't speak.

Ivo, leaves behind three adolescent children and his wife. He was mourned in his home. His body in a cheap and too small a coffin, his feet popped out, was laid out inside his garage. The neighborhood passed to see.

This man arrived in the Jardim Pantanal like thousands of other, some 15 years ago searching for work and place to live. Originally from Pernambuco, he was among the first to begin the occupation, in what used to be an environmentally protected area. A hard working man he had fought several floods to keep his home safe. The Jardim Pantanal continues to be a problem when it rains. The streets still flood and the sewage drains improperly into the Rio Tiete.

The real tragedy is what the family will now have to do to survive. Life claims its debt like it does anywhere else. There are only two ironies. One, out here in the periphery traffic is scarce and so to die of a bicycle accident can only reflect the inherent urban violence. Two, Ivo was an evangelist and on top of him lay a cross with a crucified Jesus.

In death we are at the mercy of all, not just the lord (sic).

Back to a Nowhere Home

Miriam used to live in the occupied Prestes Maia 911 in downtown Sao Paulo. Her youngest daughter, aged two, developed an allergy so severe to mold in the building it scaled her skin. The doctor told her she had to move out of wherever she was living. Miriam works as a social assitant for an NGO helping homeless people get off the street. This same NGO helped her buy a one room cinder block house on the periphery slum Jardim Pantanal. Was this a coincidence? I finally found a tie to the Prestes Maia occupation and to the expanding periphery settlements.

She bought the house for US$2,500. She has a paper entitling her to the house but the land on which it stands is owned by someone else, so it's ok until the owner claims the land. In other words someone built a cinder block house on illegal land and sold it. For Miriam to keep her job she has to get her children back into school. Downtown they all went to school. It's full of schools out in the Jardim Pantanal but there are three times as many children. After two months in the periphery she found school for her two eldest. She was thinking of taking the youngest with her downtown, drop her off at the kindergarden and then go to work. She starts work at 7 am. This means she would have to leave home at 430 am walk to the train for 30 min, take a 1 hour train, take the subway to the kindergarden and then go to work. Her social counselor prohibited her from leaving her home with her child at such early hours.

Miriam had been working for the NGO St. Lucia, where she had a contract offer for $US350 but upon entry they reduced it to less than $US250. Then they fired her and she received a new job offer before moving out to the periphery. She couldn't take it because of the prohibition by her social counselor. However Miriam is absolutely sure she can get a new job if she moves back to the downtown area. That will take months Her husband, who beats her frequently, stayed in the Prestes Maia because someone obviously had to put food on the table. So the family has a home now, has poor schooling for the children and the parents are seperated for better or worse.

Out here in the periphery her children have nothing to do but hang around the mean streets. Downtown they had a park one block away. Downtown there was infrastructure, restaurants, supermarkets, public transport, etc. Here there is nothing, her home doesn't even have a bathroom and she'e living in dangerous part of the slum. She now believes in the MSTC (Movimento Sem Teto do Centro), even if its corrupted. The MSTC is a socialist movement occupying abandoned buildings downtown, in an attempt to get people off the street or those who can't afford a rent. Miriam knows that no matter what she's not staying here. She's going back to the MSTC and to another occupied building. And she's going back to fight, because she's living proof as she says that when city hall evicts the over 250 families in the Prestes Maia and spreads them out in to the periphery the will have nothing, once again.