The Rio-Recife Blog

Response to Reader’s Questions

The following is a response to the reader’s questions and comments posted a few days ago.  I want to thank Anonymous for her very thoughtful reaction to reading the blog. Thanks :)

 

Pacification and Social Exclusion

The film City of God (2003) does do an excellent job of portraying life in the slums of Rio de Janeiro circa 30 years ago, tracing their modern development from the 1960s through the early to mid-1980s, although it puts excessive attention on the centrality of drugs and violence in community life.[1]  The novel by Paulo Lins (1997) that inspired the movie, which is essentially a fictionalized composite of hundreds of interviews recorded under the direction of anthropologist Alba Zaluar in the early 1980s, is also an essential read to further contextualize the violence that overwhelmed Rio de Janeiro in that era.  Neither work, of course, tells the whole story, especially since the actual history and structural organization of the Cidade de Deus district is quite unique in relation to other favelas. 

Incidentally, City of God was the first Brazilian film I ever saw.  It was Valentine’s Day of 2004, at a beer-serving theatre in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that no longer exists.  I had gone to see the film alone, which was a bad idea, especially on lovers’ night.  But it did inspire me to learn more.  When I finally visited the real Cidade de Deus on the west side of Rio de Janeiro, it was nothing like I had imagined.  The main part of it is an enormous complex of government-built high rise apartment buildings surrounding dingy, broken plazas.  Unlike most other favelas, interpersonal trust seemed extremely low.  Most people avoided conversation with me altogether, for there was a sense that nefarious eyes combed the grounds from the mold-darkened high rises above.  This tense silence was finally broken by gunshots, which temporarily united all in a bizarrely gleeful (adrenalin-induced) run for their lives that resembled the spontaneous joy of a multitude caught in a sudden rainstorm. 

As you mentioned, many of the students I worked with in Rio (nearly all of whom lived in favelas) were concerned that the construction of schools and placement of local businesses within favela communities was in essence a political conspiracy to isolate and segregate the poor from the wealthy.  This fear is based on a long history of blatant attempts by the economic and political elite (almost everywhere in the world) to hide the social eyesores born out of severe labor exploitation while continuing to benefit from that exploitation.  Incidentally, Cidade de Deus was originally created in order to relocate slum dwellers from the wealthy south side of Rio to the far away west side.  Many had lost their homes to severe flooding in the mid-1960s, but a great many more were forcefully removed at the behest of wealthy families unhappy with the proximity of the poor. 

All said and done, however, the concerns of my students regarding the placement of schools and businesses in favelas today, I believe, amount to an empty and hyper-politicized conspiracy theory, popular among youth.  While public officials are arguably more preoccupied with creating a perception of public security and social development rather than actually correcting deep social inequalities, it is wrong to think that placing schools and businesses in any community will increase its isolation from surrounding areas.  While a superficial logic might suggest that these new institutions will create self-contained communities, any type of social and economic development will in fact increase interconnectedness with the rest of the city, not decrease it. 

I have not been back to Rio de Janeiro since April 2012, but my understanding is that very little has changed since then.  A few more favelas have been pacified, and several more are expected to be occupied by the police during the next two years, but general trends as described in earlier posts of this blog remain strong.  That is, pacification seems to be working very well in a number of small favelas, particularly with respect to the significant drop in homicides and shootouts in those areas.  In the larger favelas, like Rocinha and Complexo do Alemão, the police are far from usurping the de facto authority of drug traffickers, and are perhaps already entrenched in patters of coercion and corruption that threaten to undermine much of the progress made until now.  Further, it appears that the installation of UPPs (Pacifying Police Units), while expelling the kind of high-profile violence often characterized in contemporary Brazilian film from many favelas in Rio’s south side and downtown/port area, it has pushed this very same “system” of violence into a great many new areas previously unexposed. 

It is quite possible that political will to maintain current UPPs in Rio’s wealthiest and most touristic areas will exist beyond the 2016 Olympics, but I believe it very unlikely that much will be done to stop the problem from spreading to new areas off the radar of media and politics.  Considering the typical “balloon effect” of repressing drug production and distribution, any policy of police saturation is likely to have similar consequences that ultimately will reveal its serious limitations.

A Change of Tone

As you noted, there was a substantial change in tone when my research shifted from Rio de Janeiro to Recife.  Part of this change reflected a substantial shift of environment.  Recife continues to be a much more lethally violent city than Rio de Janeiro at the per capita level, and just three years ago was considered the most violent city in all of Brazil.  It is also a city cursed by a particularly obstinate retention of colonial social norms and class divisions, struggling to reconcile this with modern capitalist economic growth.  My change in tone, at least in part, reflected both this violence and my inability to fit in, or find my place, in such a conflicted social milieu. 

[section deleted by request of anonymous.2]

On Rape

Regarding rape, I wanted to thank you for sharing your own story.  I fear there are so many stories untold, but that it is extremely important for society to start paying attention, and for anyone who has suffered such aggression to simply talk and release his/herself from any sense of shame she might carry inside. 

You ask what can be done to prevent rapists from acting out and why rape happens with such astonishing regularity.  Laws expressly forbidding rape and proposing serious punishment for the crime or rape are present in written form in most countries.  Indeed, a quick look at New Mexico’s rape statutes might quite easily deter a naive man from ever touching a woman or child sexually against their will and express consent.  But alas, rape laws are normative rather than positive.  That is, they reflect the behavior we as a society think people should conform to in the most abstract sense, but not what we actually conform to in any concrete way. 

In the eyes of society, rape is extremely rare, and because of this perception, we look at most rape cases and assume that they cannot possibly be “legitimate” rape, but rather a regrettable intercourse that is the consequence of female foolishness, irresponsibility, promiscuity, and immorality. And as a consequence of this perception, rape laws are, in fact, at least 85 percent unenforceable (see rape post in Albuquerque blog). 

Being unenforceable means impunity.  Impunity is tantamount to legality.  Legality is suggestive of condoning.  Condoning is akin to suggestive.  Suggestion leads to action.  And culture, in turn, becomes one characterized by pervasive rape and complete denial that of.  Rape culture, that is ours.  How to stop it, I believe, is a matter of conscientious cultural transformation.  But like an individual plagued by pathologically self-destructive behaviors, society too would have to actually want to change in order to do so. Or perhaps I am just wallowing in pessimism, a sort of shield against the pain of hope.  

The Political Scientist

Political science is fundamentally a philosophical pursuit, insofar that we attempt to identify and make sense of patterns of human and political behavior for the mere sake of knowledge.  As a study of politics, it is often far removed from the actual practice of politics, which concerns the concrete organization and distribution of power in human communities.  That said, many political scientists certainly are attracted to the field primarily for the desire to make the world a better place.  Such altruism is plausible, I think, considering the very miniscule financial rewards associated with most social sciences.  Whether we are effective in this regard is another question entirely. 

On Mexico

One of the most important differences between Brazil and Mexico is their relative proximity to the United States.  The simple geographical fact that Mexico shares a 2,000-mile border with the largest drug consuming country in the world means that it was inevitably to become enmeshed in a problem of transnational organized crime.  While Brazil is also a transnational hub for drugs originating from Colombian and the Andean countries bound for Europe, these shipment lines are no where near those of Mexico to the United States.  In Brazil, local drug consumption drives most criminal violence, while in Mexico transnational cartels infiltrate the larger political system much more thoroughly and fight for dominance over much larger territories.  It is my opinion that the problem in Mexico is far more intractable and dangerous because of this. 

There are, of course, a great many more differences, but that is for a volume of books :) 

Reader Questions

 

Hello Michael,

 Thanks for responding with your email address because I had far too many questions than the limited space on your blog would allow. Here goes:

 

Rio and Recife

 I had seen the movie, City of God, a few times so I had a little background into what life used to look like in the favelas. What I was most surprised to learn was the security that was precariously kept by drug traffickers when they weren’t at war with rival gangs. I agree with your assertion that the state needs to invest in services and infrastructure in the favelas rather than just an occupying police force in order to make pacification a success. However, the points that your students brought up are legitimate concerns.

•                If the state builds schools and businesses there is that going to result in segregation?

•                Is that the state’s underlying motive (segregation) to this “poverty” problem or is just for show in the build up to Brazil hosting the 2016 Olympics?

•                 Did you get any sense that government officials are wanting to support or integrate this marginalized population or are they looking for a way to change public perception of the situation? 

•                Do you think the state’s commitment to pacification will wane once the Olympics are over and the people in the favelas will once again be left to their own devices?

•                Have you heard how things are going with this process since you left?

 As I mentioned on your site I went through a multitude of emotions while reading your blog. I felt the tone changed when you relocated to Recife. It felt darker, somber, more dangerous and I have to assume that the environment seemed that way by your description. I was wrong however in describing it as a lack of enthusiasm. While the blogs from Rio were mostly factual and reflective, the blogs from Recife felt more personal, poignant, poetic and moving. I cried when I read your description of Luana taking her newborn girl to her breast and you capturing the moment on film. “Something greater than light was captured” Indeed it was Mr. Wolff, and thanks for sharing that moment.

 

Rape

 Both your Rio/ Recife and Albuquerque blogs covered this insidious topic with sensitivity and compassion. This violent act has ripped apart the lives of far too many people and yet it is a subject that gets swept under the rug. My 2 sisters and I have all been the victims of rape and sexual abuse. The boy who trapped me in a closet when I was 6 and molested me, the teenage boy who slipped his dick inside me after I drank myself unconscious at a house party, the man who exposed himself to my sister when she was 5, and the man who broke into our house and held a knife to my twin sisters throat as he raped her, all have something in common. They are sick bastards who never spent a day in jail for what they did to us. My twin sister’s rape was the worst. The police had the man’s name and address, never arrested him and the police report listed it as “alleged” rape. 17 years later my sister realized that drinking excessively and staying in a dead end relationship because she was afraid to be alone, was not going to cure her of the trauma she experienced and is seeing a therapist to deal with it. My other sister and I have not sought counseling for our deep emotional wounds but perhaps it’s time.

•                What can be done to prevent/ deter would be rapists from acting out?

•                Why does this happen with astonishing regularity?

Political Science

•                Is it the role of the political scientist to analyze and report or do people choose this profession with the hope that they may someday fix terribly broken and corrupt systems?

•                How does the drug war going on in Mexico compare with situation in Brazil?

 Thank you sharing your experiences, and thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

 

Anonymous asked: I had many reactions while reading your blog. I was horrified, saddened, intrigued, frustrated and enlightened. I laughed, I cried and was left with a number of questions. 1- Have you heard any recent updates on how pacification is going in the larger favelas? 2- The tone of the blog seemed to darken when you got to Recife. Was that your reaction to that particular community or was all that time experiencing poverty, politics and violence seeping into your soul and dampening your enthusiasm?

Dear anonymous,

 Thank you so much for reading the blog.  I’d love to respond to your questions, but I would rather do so through email.  So, please, if you don’t mind, write me at leftopen92@yahoo.com or send me yours. 

Thanks,

M.

Luana

                                                                          Born

 Luana looked as if she had been tumble dried after her twenty-four hours of labor.  Her hair a ragged black mop and her eyelids fluttering out of sync, utter exhaustion flattened her frail body to her bed in the maternity ward.  Six other fatigued women raised disinterested eyes when I walked through the door, but Luana’s faint smile to me was one of profound alleviation and delicate triumph.  My own smile was merely the external flare of an intense electrical current pulsating from head to toe: the impulsive, convulsive joy of fatherhood, temporary and at once measured, for I am not the nor a father.  I only said I was to get past security. 

 And as no one seemed to doubt my claim to fatherhood when I first stared through the incubator window at the little light-skinned baby, I lived this lie for two days, constantly jolted by a bizarre sensation akin to sense of pride and purpose.  A pleasant, if fleeting, illusion.

 Maria Vitoria was born at 4:16 p.m. on July 10, 2012.  Her real father, 16-year old Edivan de Freitas Alves, was killed two and a half weeks earlier (see previous posts).   

 In his stead, Edivan’s diabetic father struggled into the ward on his peg leg to insist on naming the child Edivania, but his middle-aged bitterness was no match for Luana’s adolescent stubbornness.  During labor Luana had made a promise to God to name the baby after the Virgin if all went well.  “Edivania is an ugly name, anyway,” she grumbled at the severe man before her.  After unsuccessfully attempting to force a mother-daughter pose for a photograph, he grunted angrily and left the ward without saying goodbye. 

 “He’s an asshole,” she spit as the door closed.  “He used to beat Edivan all the time, and now he thinks this baby is his.” 

 A few minutes later Maria Vitoria started to cry, as babies do, and Luana lifted its tiny head to her breast, just as natural as the rain that fell lazily outside the ward window.  Something then happened.  Something changed.  A light hit her, went through her, radiated from her and flushed back out into the world and unto me.  She smiled to the sky.  My shutter clicked.  Something greater than light was captured.

 I am human. I am moved by the meaning we invent for symbols and stories to shelter so that these may in turn distract us from the despair of emptiness. I photographed your husband in his mortal pose, and felt my soul eclipse into death. I now photograph your smile over the child he left you, and my soul shutters speedily back to life. I invent this meaning and feel it. Luana, I am human.

                                                                    Family of Femmes

Back at her home in Santo Amaro favela, twelve women spanning four generations await Luana’s arrival with a surprise: neighbors and friends all chipped in to buy a magnificently pink crib set, aglitter with all the adornments a newborn’s family could dream of. 

Life goes on.

 There are no men left in the Dos Santos family.  Zuleide and Maria are great grandmothers in their mid-40s.  One husband died of liver failure, the other shot dead in his home.  Their daughters Patricia and Isabel are both in their early thirties, and each have several children, ranging in age from little Marisa of two years to Luana who will turn sixteen this October.   One of Patricia’s ex-husbands pays a pension that supports most of the family, while Bolsa Familia covers the rest.  Isabel, Luana’s mother, lost two of her husbands to violence.  Luana’s father was murdered when she was five years old. Branca, her 13-year old sister, lost her father shortly after she was born.  The other three fathers of Isabel’s children have legitimate families to feed, and so chose not to be bothered with more fatherly tasks.

 While it is genetically rare to produce all female offspring, the lack of fathers and father figures is normal in Recife’s favelas.  A recent survey indicated that 73% of households in the city’s favelas are headed by women. 

 The Dos Santos women had lived in two adjacent homes in Santo Amaro favela until the night Luana’s fiancé Edivan was shot to death in the front corridor of one.  Since then they huddle together in the two bedrooms of the second house, sleeping on mattresses leaned to the walls during the day to make space.  Luana refuses to step foot in the other house, and meanwhile the Dos Santos are looking for a renter for both.  They want to escape the memories.  “It does no good to remember,” they recite again and again the recipe for muddling through. 

 School is out, and the days are spent in and around their home watching novelas, painting finger nails, cooking, cleaning, waiting, receiving visitors, chatting endless nothings, entertaining pipe dreams, and acquiescing to much lesser fates.  There is spunk and perk in the skip and jump of little girls, and there is fire and flare in the loins of pubescent teens.  Mothers dream of being thin and desirable again to men, and grandmothers in bikini tops smile the grin of those who know they never lost it.  Day in, day out.  Time drags the willing and the unwilling alike across the fields of aging, and lends no ear to their giggles and cries.  Necessity mettles with dreams and doings, diverting paths and forcing others to repeat themselves.  A 13-year old brings in cash from a man of sixty suffering from impotence.  A 15-year old widow declares her love for an American man whose frigid hands she warmed in hers during a theatrical cult of the Universal Church.  Tragedy and joy weave constantly in and out of the monotonous fabric of existence.  These are not the infernal pits of les miserables, nor is it the carefree paradise of poverty.  It is only the maddening complexity of humanness.

                                                           A Delicate Balance

Today I hoped to interview Edivan’s parents in their home, but I was advised not to go there.  Rumors were spreading in the neighborhood that Luana had already found a new man, a wealthy white American who might marry her and take her away from poverty forever.  Edivan’s father let it be known that he had no love for this pompous foreigner, and nothing good in these bloodstained alleys awaited the man if he were to stick around. 

 I felt a strange tension in the air.  People in the streets had stopped making eye contact.  Clouds shifted restlessly as if trying to speak something out of breath. It would not matter that I am innocent.  Cultures were clashing.  Reason is a luxury, and luxury is scarce.  In an instant I packed my rucksack and departed. 

 Twenty minutes later an old digger kindly walks me towards the shady far north end of the Santo Amaro cemetery to Block A/23 C-05, where a sand placard washed half away by the rain exposes illegible scribblings of Edivan’s name, his date of birth, and his date of death.   And then we are left alone again.

I did not know him while he was alive. 

My lens descends over the boy as I adjust my shutter speed and flash bulb. He looks calm.  Asleep.  Click.  Morgue workers politely ask me if they can remove the body.  Women and children wailing outside, I nod. The gray bag swallows him so quickly.   

I only knew him as my brother.  That is the reason for everything I have done in all my life.  

The 24-hour Hangover

If the weekend is murder’s drunken orgy, Sunday is its hangover.  At 8:00 a.m. a brief birth of sun glistens on a caravan of media trucks speeding off from the homicide department towards downtown, where a group of churchgoers stumbled upon a body dumped roadside the night before.  Meanwhile, everything is closed but the Houses of God, and it is hard to find a cup of coffee.  An hour later another corpse is found dumped on the north side, as cold as the tropics will allow, and the sun is gone for twenty-four more hours.  The sky falls like lazy anger.  The Earth is one massive puddle waiting to be splashed. 

 Brunch at Leide’s Restaurant has a discount for cops, and so the tables are soon packed with uniforms of various colors representing the various specialty units of the Military and Civil Police.  GATI was created to combat a surge in carjackings that haunted the mid-1990s.  CIOE was formed to rescue kidnap victims back when ransom was all the rage.  CIPC, the canine unit, still sniffs for anything smelling of weed or explosives, and CORE guards hospitalized prisoners while waiting for something more exciting to happen.  But violent crime in Recife is not like war.  It is, rather, an attritional conflict threatening no more and no less than the general health and happiness of a society, and exciting operations tantamount to the boyish urban combat of Rio de Janeiro are rare.  And so a lot of guns sit together to each lunch over conversations about other things, like sports and salaries.  Conversations transcend unit, rank, and unlike Rio, even police institution. 

 At 2:00 p.m. a call comes in.  The body of 21-year old male was found floating in drainage ditch outside the town of Chã de Alegria.  After a dubious trek through the flooded muddy roads of a sugar cane countryside, and a temporary breakdown, the VK Gol squad car rolls into a grassy valley where a group of people wait blank-faced under variously colored umbrellas.  Morgue workers wait with them, standing in the light rain, mud splattering their white rubber boots.  Someone had roped the cadaver’s legs and dragged it onto the grass just out of smell reach on this windless day. 

 “Bibita” was last seen leaving a São Pedro party in town on Thursday night.  His brother, straining to be what they call a man, says with nascent tears that the boy had no enemies…per se…but he was just like his father, who died of liver failure a few years back.  Bibita was a cachaça drinker, and when liquored up, he rarely made any friends. 

“He never listened to his mother,” his stepfather laments over his corpse, which, covered in gold and green flies, is bloated to twice its normal size and grotesquely deformed. 

 Forensics specialists arrive after a half hour, and determine that death was caused by a blunt object smashed against the victim’s cranium.  Outside of Recife, in the impoverished countryside, the percentage of firearm-related homicides diminishes substantially.  Here it is sticks, stones, and machetes.

 Learning of three more homicides in the area over the last month, I ask a detective why people here in these beautiful green hills are killing each other?  “Lack of education.  Lack of prospects,” he says, looking disheartened for the first time since brunch. 

Bibita was one of fourteen siblings, none of whom finished high school or had any hope of doing so.  They were all agricultural laborers, the socially immobilized legacy of slavery.  Where human dignity is so precarious, the symbolic bases of one’s manhood become extremely fragile, and actions in defense of these bases therefore become dangerously extreme.  Bibita may have done no more than offend someone at the Sao Pedro party.  This is good for the homicide department, as they fully expect the mystery to unravel itself quickly as the culprits go about informing the world that their dignity as men may have been bruised, but was certainly not broken.  If the process is slow, however, a serious danger arises.  The Brazilian northeast is land of family feuds, and whoever killed Bibita is now the enemy of thirteen brothers and sisters.  So much for these picturesque green hills, sweet land of sugar. 

 Two hours later the chief of the civil police personally calls the homicide department, whose operational jurisdiction is restricted to the metropolitan area of Recife and nearby towns, and makes a special request to cover a high-profile murder near the town of Palmares, one hundred miles away.  The body of a physician, the son of a state legislator and brother of a city councilman, was found in his underwear in a river bed after having been tossed from a bridge some thirty feet high.  Whispers spread rumors that the victim was gay, and automatic conjecture points to young male hooker bandits as culprits.  A steady rain holds for hours as we wait for fireman and morgue workers to assist in the complicated removal of the 250-pound corpse, which having been dead for nearly two days, is smelling of rot.  As the men lift the massive thing, fresh blood leaks from numerous perforations scattered across its torso and back. 

 The physician had been knifed to death in his own bedroom, wrapped in a blanket, transported out of town, and tossed off the bridge along with a bottle of whiskey, Coca-cola, two drinking glasses, and the 20-inch knife used to kill him.  The killer(s) then attempted to clean the crime scene, but ask any forensics specialist, and they will say this is a near impossible task when blood is involved.  In this case, signs of blood and physical struggle remain on the walls after being scrubbed with detergent.  All doubt dies when the bed is removed, and underneath, a drying puddle of blood. 

 It is 7:00 a.m. and sky alight when we arrive again at the homicide department.  The rain has finally stopped, and Recife is half under water.  Because it is now Monday, the vender is outside again, and I slam two cups of coffee and a cold chicken coxinha.  I have slept less than three hours in the last forty-eight.  Fighting exhaustion with caffeine and deep fried smooshings of thickly breaded shredded chicken clump, just to stoke courage enough to drive my motorcycle back home, I begin to understand the growth and form of policemen bellies.   

Post script:

Death.  So much senseless death.  Someone asked me today if I thought it would ever get better.  I said, yes, and I believed it when the words slipped off my tongue and fell into the dead space between us, ill-retrievable and demanding an explanation that I do not yet have.  It is merely a belief like that which so many have in such things as God or Luck.  Inexplicable and pointless to defend, a softer light it is to wake up to and rise to the forever mumbling callings of life.

Festas Juninas

The month of June in Brazil is one of popular festivities in celebration of São João (Saint John), whose June 23rd day of praise brings the masses to the streets from sundown to sun up.  Families and friends gather all dressed in hillbilly flannel tops and jeans, straw hats, and freckles painted on their cheeks to dance to forró and brega music around campfires stacked on the streets.  Children toss and launch booming fireworks, while young teens roam about in search of first loves and other related encounters. The iconic tunes of Luiz Gonzaga move the most arthritic of hips to sensual motion, while the more modern tunes of Sorriso Maroto bring all the young girls’ bottoms to the floor.  These festas juninas, in essence a harvest party juxtaposing a variety of traditions from all of Brazil’s cultural bases, are an explosive abundance of corn products and alcohol.  A celebration for one and all.  A time to eat, drink, and be merry.  A time to feel happy and free. 

 Unable to keep a rhythm, my hips sat alone while the firework bursts sent my manic nerves jumping in every which painful way.  So I decided to leave the party at midnight to visit my friends in the homicide department.

 If I had waited until midnight to catch a scene investigation, there was no need to.  Bodies were being called in as early as the detectives’ shift begun at 8:00 am.  Over a dozen people were murdered in Recife throughout the day, including a woman whose husband meticulously sawed off her limbs, stuffed her remains in a trash bag, and carried them by city bus across town to his own mother’s house for her to open, look at, and faint.

 The seventy-year old woman was still at the police station when I arrived, sitting blank faced in front of a television along with several officers who were cheering on a live middleweight UFC fight.  Her son was upstairs in handcuffs explaining how he killed his wife in “legitimate self defense.”  He had made no attempt to evade capture.   His was a murder for fame, the least important and yet most reported kind of all. 

 A new shooting had been called in just moments before I arrived, such that I was able to accompany a team right away.  We sped off through the campfire-lined streets at breakneck speed—with no seatbelts because the police are more concerned about surprise armed confrontations than car accidents—to the very familiar favela of Santo Amaro (see May posts for area description). 

 Crawling through the broken narrow streets of one of Recife’s oldest favelas in a Volkswagen goal weighed down with four men is difficult, especially when dodging campfires and dancing drunks who lost either the ear or the care for distinguishing a firework from a pistol shot.  The porch parties continued almost door to door up to the point of young Edivan’s last stand.  Sorriso Maroto kept ringing “Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay, assim voce matou papai” from across the way as the investigative team edged through a wall of swat police and into the narrow concrete alley where the sixteen-year old boy lay cold, a single bullet lodged in his chest. 

 His mother, his grandmother, and his little sisters hung on each other in front of their home nextdoor and wailed.  “My son, not my son! He did nothing to deserve this!” Her voice was deafening.  Where she aimed it the music died in respect for her loss. 

 In most cases of murder in Santo Amaro, no one speaks to the police at a crime scene for fear of retaliation by the fugitive criminal responsible for whatever the mayhem at hand.  But sometimes, like on this night, people are so revolted that they spill the beans if front of the world.  “The murderer’s nickname is ‘Junino,’” the victim’s mother proclaimed to the police.  “He’s a known killer here.  He ran across the main avenue after he shot my son.”   But twenty minutes later she panicked.  Tears ran down her shivering face as she screamed, “He is going to come back and kill us all!”

 Typical of crime scene investigations, versions reported of what happened varied wildly and evolved quickly.  Initially it was explained that the Edivan, the victim, did not know Junino, his attacker, and that he was summarily executed by the intoxicated boy who exploded in anger over a misfired bottle rocket.  But later the family broke, and uttered that Edivan did use drugs—sometimes—and that he did know his aggressor.  In fact, the day before he had gotten into an argument with him about something allegedly unknown.  Whatever the motive, a number of dry tightened faces must have looked on and thought, like I did, that it was surely a stupid one.  A completely unnecessary waste of a young life. 

 Shortly afterwards I found myself with another team speeding through the dark streets to another crime scene.  A man in his mid-twenties lay in a massive puddle of blood in the town of São Lourenço, on the outskirts of Recife.  He was a brick layer from Natal on temporary contract for road construction.  No one witnessed the shooting.  No one knew anything about him or his family.  No one cried.  He had been renting a tiny square house with two other men nearby for the duration of his work contract.  We busted in to speak with the two men, who drunk on cachaça and exhausted from a week’s work had no words or emotions to share about the man who just left this world.  Luiz Gonzaga never stopped blasting from the neighbor’s home.  The festas juninas went undisturbed.

 And such are the downsides of otherwise magnificent popular celebrations.  Everyone is drunk and in the streets.  The police are understaffed and spread thin.  Emotions run wild.  Scores are settled.  This Saturday night, June 23, 2012, the rainclouds parted and left all free to their glee and gore.  As Sunday sets, this report still awaits the discomfiting tally of homicides in the State of Pernambuco.  It is unlikely to look pretty.