Brazil: War on Children - Softcover

Dimenstein, Gilberto

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0906156629 ISBN 13: 9780906156629

Verlag: LAB (Latin America Bureau), 1991

Inhaltsangabe

"Brazil: War on Children" is a journey through the underworld of Brazil's ten million street children. The author interweaves first-hand reportage, interviews and statistics to paint a picture of life for the children. He discovers a world of pimps, muggers, prostitutes and petty criminals; homeless children who live in fear of sudden death at the hands of the off-duty police and other vigilantes who make up Brazil's death squads. Dimenstein interviews the Church workers who risk becoming death squad targets themselves by befriending the children and trying to bring them hope. He also talks to the authorities who turn a blind eye, to the killers and to the children themselves. An introduction by Jan Rocha, the "Guardian"'s Brazil correspondent, shows how the children are just the most visible casualties of one of the most inequal societies in the world. It describes the impact of the policies of President Fernando Collor de Mello on Brazil's poor.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jan Rocha is a freelance reporter and wriiter and has worked for the BBC and The Guardian

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Brazil

War on Children

By Gilberto Dimenstein

Practical Action Publishing

Copyright © 1991 Gilberto Dimenstein
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-906156-62-9

Contents

Glossary, iv, 
Preface, vii, 
Map, viii, 
Introduction, 1, 
1 'My life is like the wind', 17, 
2 'I killed you because you had no future', 28, 
3 Angels of death, 42, 
4 Heroes or villains?, 52, 
5 Supporting murder, 63, 
6 The law of silence, 71, 
Resources and Action, 82, 
Index, 87, 

CHAPTER 1

'My life is like the wind'

It is a simple, old, two-storeyed house painted yellow. The windows are protected by grilles and there is a patio at the front. There are no trees and no garden. Inside, there is no furniture and no household electrical appliances, only a table and formica chair. Visitors sit on the floor in one of the less sweltering rooms. The fridge is broken and there is no money to fix it. Despite the heat, which is often over 100 degrees fahrenheit, there is no fan. The place is clean, though it is impossible to stop the dust getting in. However, if you look out across the neighbourhood you realise you are in a comparatively imposing building. The view takes in a kilometre long pile of shacks separated by filthy roads; pregnant women carrying basins full of clothes; ragamuffin children playing with wooden sticks and chunks of metal, improvising games in pools of stagnant water.

The building houses the Catholic Church's Pastoral do Menor, the Pastoral Service for Children, in the diocese of Duque de Caxias on the periphery of Greater Rio de Janeiro, one of the most violent regions in Brazil, and inhabited by 3.5 million people. The Pastoral is situated in the Lixão (Big Tip) shanty town where rival gangs battle for control of the drug trade, and the inhabitants scrape a living from petty crime, odd jobs and badly-paid employment. The house is respected by the neighbours as though it was some kind of a temple. During the day the children in their filthy shorts play in the house's narrow corridors. Many of them may end up with their names inscribed in red letters on the rustic two-metre plaque with a white background, strategically placed in the entrance hall. It is the list of children murdered by the death squads of Duque de Caxias.

These days the list is not quite so carefully maintained. 'I have stopped counting. It wore me down. I found that each time we protested at the death of a child, more children were killed. It seemed like they were taking their revenge', says Volmer do Nascimento, 38, worker at the Fundaçao Nacional de Bem-Estar do Menor, the National Foundation for Child Welfare (FUNABEM), ex-leader of the Children's Pastoral Service and currently one of the coordinators of the Movimento Nacional de Meninos e Meninas de Rua, the National Movement of Street Children. Volmer, who spends part of his time at the Pastoral's house, adds sadly, 'We don't have any money to spare at all. We have just one paid worker and he gets the minimum wage. Even then, we can hardly manage to pay him. But I bet there would be plenty of money available in Brazil or abroad if an academic wanted to write a thesis on the problem of abandoned street children.'

Volmer is delicate and dark-skinned, a fast and physically expressive speaker. For the last four years he has brought the children of the shanty town together to discuss their lives and try and find solutions to their problems. In 1986 he began to realise, that dozens of the children who spent time at the Pastoral house were disappearing. He and his wife, Joana D'Arc, who have two children of their own, began to investigate. They soon discovered that the children were being exterminated by the death squads of Greater Rio de Janeiro with the discreet support of the police.

Supported by the Catholic Church, Volmer alerted the authorities to the systematic murder of children, most of whom were supposedly responsible for petty crimes. This provoked the wrath of the death squads and the police in the region. One day, a well-known killer approached him and, smiling, said, 'Volmer, it's your turn next, isn't it?' Dom Mauro Morelli, Bishop of Duque de Caxias, was also threatened. One of his diocesan workers answered the telephone one day and heard a cavernous voice say, 'Tell that lousy bishop that we have got him in our sights.'

Since Volmer publicly accused people by name, he has received a stream of anonymous threats over the phone. He named, among others, João Pedro Bueno, known as 'Pedro the Devil', and his son João Alberto Neves Bueno, both employed by the Justice Department. Answering the phone on one occasion, he received an even darker threat than usual. A voice said, 'I think the best way to get you to stop is to kill your two children.'

Volmer and his wife refused to give in as they felt that the killers ran too great a political risk if they tried to kill the family. 'I know that one day they will get me. They won't kill me now because I have pointed a finger at a lot of people and they would all be suspects. But the day my work leaves the public eye or if I stop working with children, I am a dead man', says Volmer.

A silent war

The case of Volmer and the children of Duque de Caxias is not an isolated one, nor is it the most dramatic. In the backstreets of the country's big cities, a silent war of extermination is being waged against young petty criminals. The war involves the use of beatings and torture. Although the exclusively police death squads of the 1970s have practically ceased to exist, this latest war is promoted and organised by members of the police force. The groups involved are often given names such as 'death squads' and justiceiros ('avengers'), and the police encourage their activities on the grounds that the children are dangerous and will never mend their ways. The police and death squads do not target children for the sake of it, but because they see them as criminals. Children are increasingly to be found among their victims because growing numbers are forced on to the street to make a living, to contribute to the family income or because there is no school for them.

The war on children is one of the least known aspects of Brazil's social crisis. According to the Ministry of Labour, unemployment is three times higher among juveniles than among adults. Official statistics also show that 44 per cent of children and adolescents are from families with a per capita income of half the minimum wage, while half of these families have a per capita income of a quarter of the minimum wage. There are 27 million children, therefore, living in a state of poverty which reproduces and cultivates violence, and provides an ideal climate for the growth of the death squads.

Although it is difficult to be precise, and the tendency is for underestimation, the number of children murdered by the death squads for their supposed involvement in petty crime reached an average of approximately one a day in 1989. Out of every 100 children in the country who are victims of a violent death, 33 are killed by the death squads. In Rio de Janeiro alone, from January to July 1989, 184 children and adolescents were murdered.

To get an idea of the scale of these killings, it is enough to remember that in the Lebanese civil war, when the whole country was in flames, 850 people were killed in the six months from March to August 1989. During this period, in Lebanon, according to official statistics and the Red Cross, 30 children died as a result of the war;...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: LAB (Latin America Bureau)
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1991
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0906156629
• ISBN 13: 9780906156629
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 98
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland